The Economist Articles for Oct. 2nd week : Oct. 13th(Interpretation)

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The Economist Articles for Oct. 2nd week : Oct. 13th(Interpretation)

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Leaders | Iran, Israel and the Palestinians

The year that shattered the Middle East

Kill or be killed is the region’s new logic. Deterrence and diplomacy would be better

Oct 3rd 2024

Ever since Hamas’s slaughter of Israelis on October 7th 2023, violence has been spreading. One year on, the Middle East is an inch away from an all-out war between Israel and Iran. Israel’s skilful decapitation of Hizbullah, a Lebanese militia backed by Iran, prompted the Islamic Republic to rain missiles on Israel on October 1st. Israel may retaliate, perhaps striking Iran’s industrial, military or nuclear facilities, hoping to end once and for all the threat it poses to the Jewish state.

Iran is certainly a menace, and use of force against it by Israel or America would be both lawful and, if carefully calibrated, wise. But the idea that a single decisive attack on Iran could transform the Middle East is a fantasy. As our special section explains, containing the Iranian regime requires sustained deterrence and diplomacy. In the long run, Israel’s security also depends on ending its oppression of the Palestinians.

Iran’s latest direct attack on Israel consisted of 180 ballistic missiles. Unlike an earlier strike in April, this time Iran gave little warning. But as before, most of the projectiles were intercepted. The salvo was a response to the humiliation of its proxy, Hizbullah, which until two weeks ago was the most feared militia in the region. No one should shed tears for a terrorist outfit that has helped turn Lebanon into a failed state. For the past year Hizbullah has bombarded Israel, forcing the evacuation of civilians in its northern belt. Israel’s counter-attack, unlike its invasion of Gaza, was long-planned. It has made devastating use of intelligence, technology and air power, killing the militia’s leaders, including its chief, Hassan Nasrallah, maiming its fighters with exploding pagers and destroying perhaps half of its 120,000 or more missiles and rockets.

This humbling of Hizbullah has triggered a crisis of credibility for its sponsor. For three decades Iran has tried to intimidate Israel, Arab states and the West with a twin-track approach of threatening to race for a nuclear bomb and organising an “axis of resistance”, a network of militias including Hamas, Hizbullah and the Houthis in Yemen. Now that axis is reeling: Israel has battered Hamas’s military wing in Gaza and outwitted Hizbullah. Suddenly Iran’s regime looks too weak to help its cronies—and, perhaps, to defend itself. Even its ballistic missiles are no match for Israel’s air defences.

For Israel the danger now is hubris. There could be mission creep in Lebanon, with limited infantry incursions morphing into a full invasion, a mistake Israel made in 1982 and again in 2006. Its impending retaliation against Iran poses even greater risks. One option would be to destroy Iran’s oil-export hubs, crippling the regime’s finances and rattling energy markets. Another would be to strike its nuclear facilities. Some in Israel see a window of opportunity. For now, Iran’s ability to hit back via Hizbullah is blunted, but in the next couple of years it has a strong new incentive to build its first nuclear weapon, to re-establish deterrence. The hard right of Israel’s ruling coalition, including Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, dream that a single, devastating strike on Iran now could end all major threats to Israel’s security for the foreseeable future.

This view is seductive but dangerous. It is true that Iran’s behaviour has grown worse since Donald Trump’s administration abandoned the deal to freeze its nuclear programme. In the past year Iran has accelerated uranium enrichment, armed the Houthis, executed hundreds of dissidents at home and supplied vast numbers of drones to help Russia kill Ukrainians. Its newish president, Masoud Pezeshkian, is supposedly a reformer but really a captive of conservatives. Yet for all that, Iran is unpredictable. Its clerical-military regime is unpopular at home and faces economic decay and a succession crisis when the 85-year-old supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, dies. A one-off attack on its nuclear sites might destabilise the regime. But it could fail to destroy those facilities, which are deep underground, and embolden hardliners who might dash even faster for a bomb, perhaps aided by Russia.

A more effective way to deter Iran might look like this. Israel, backed by America, should make credible threats to conduct repeated military strikes on its nuclear programme for years to come to prevent it from obtaining a bomb. America and its allies should enforce tougher sanctions on its oil exports, if it seeks to re-arm its proxy militias. In addition, there must be incentives to help Iran’s reformers. Diplomats should make clear that, if Iran stops its quest for nuclear weapons and arming its proxies and Russia, it will get sanctions relief. Though President Joe Biden has signalled he does not support a hasty attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, Mr Netanyahu may hope that a future President Trump will back a more hawkish approach. What Israel needs, however, is long-term bipartisan support from America, tempered with counsels of restraint.

American support and Israeli restraint will also be crucial in tackling Israel’s other big security problem: the Palestinians. Mr Netanyahu and his hardliners want Israelis and the world to look only at Iran, downplaying the threats in Gaza, where Hamas is all but crushed, and in the West Bank.

The narrow path to peace

Yet on the day of Iran’s strike more Israelis died from a gun and knife attack in Tel Aviv than from missiles, and the biggest loss of Israeli life in a year of war has been from Hamas’s home-grown killers. Never-ending repression, after the deaths of more than 40,000 Gazans in the past year, will breed a new generation of militants. In Israel, the settler movement and its toxic politics imperil the open values that undergird the country’s high-tech economy. Any rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, which could help contain Iran, depends on treating Palestinians better. An eternal occupation, by contrast, guarantees more human-rights abuses that would corrode Israeli society and strain, perhaps even break, the alliance with America.

As war escalates in the Middle East, Israel’s government believes it has the advantage. Perhaps it does. But the challenge is to translate military prowess into lasting strategic gains and ultimately peace. Without that, blood will keep flowing for years to come. ■

Asia | The outsider otaku

Japan’s new prime minister is his own party’s sternest critic

This could make it harder for Ishiba Shigeru to govern effectively

Photograph: Getty Images

Oct 1st 2024|TOKYO

ISHIBA SHIGERU, Japan’s new prime minister, knows what his colleagues think of him. “I have undoubtedly hurt many people’s feelings, caused unpleasant experiences and made many suffer,” he said apologetically in his final speech during the race for the leadership of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Throughout his 38 years in parliament, Mr Ishiba has been a gadfly. That outspokenness endeared him to voters, but made him an outsider within the LDP. His first four leadership bids failed. Someone like him could win only if the LDP faced a major “roadblock” and “divine will” intervened, Mr Ishiba wrote in a book published this summer.

Divine will or not, Mr Ishiba triumphed on his fifth attempt last week, and on October 1st he became Japan’s prime minister. His selection does not herald a drastic change of trajectory in Japan’s foreign or economic policies. But the gadfly may struggle to govern. That would leave Japan less capable of meeting the myriad challenges it faces at home and abroad. Mr Ishiba’s fate will depend largely on the LDP’s showing in snap elections for the lower house on October 27th.

Mr Ishiba’s surprise win reflects the sense of crisis inside the LDP, which has ruled Japan with only two brief interruptions since 1955. A recent scandal over the misuse of political funds has dragged the party’s approval ratings down. Though it is not yet in danger of losing power, many in the LDP worry about losing swathes of seats. By choosing Mr Ishiba, the LDP opted for its most popular figure, hoping that a change of leadership style will mollify an angry public. His victory also illustrates the fear that many felt about Takaichi Sanae, a hard-right nationalist whom Mr Ishiba edged out in a second-round run-off.

Mr Ishiba defies easy categorisation “because he’s so heterodoxical on the issues”, says Tobias Harris of Japan Foresight, a political-risk consultancy. He entered politics after the death of his father, a long-serving LDP politician, in 1981. His mentor was Tanaka Kakuei, a powerful LDP leader who championed the country’s poorer parts. Hailing from Tottori, a sand-dune-strewn prefecture on the northern coast of Japan’s main island, Mr Ishiba inherited Tanaka’s commitment to overlooked regions, as well as his emphasis on door-to-door campaigning. He calls himself a “conservative liberal”.

The new prime minister has also used his personal obsessions to help build his popular appeal. Like many of his compatriots, he is a train aficionado and loves ramen (he made headlines for eating 12 bowls in a day). He once appeared in public in the costume of Majin Buu, a character from Dragon Ball, a popular manga series.

The character he has played throughout his own career has been consistent. “He’s the party’s critic,” says Gerald Curtis of Columbia University. In the early 1990s he left the LDP, helping bring about its first electoral loss and earning himself a reputation as a traitor. After returning, he emerged as the most outspoken detractor of Abe Shinzo, Japan’s longest-serving leader, whom he accused of stifling debate. He believes a politician’s job is to “speak the truth with courage and sincerity”.

His own policy positions are hard to pin down, however. A former minister of regional revitalisation and of agriculture, Mr Ishiba frames his economic agenda around a vague desire to elevate Japan’s greying, depopulating countryside. On social issues, he has shown a liberal streak. He supports letting married couples keep separate surnames—a proxy for broader battles over sexism and family life.

A self-proclaimed defence otaku (obsessive), Mr Ishiba is a former defence minister and an avid collector of model planes and warships. He has long bristled at subordination to America, arguing for Japan to take on a bigger security role and create a more equal alliance. Although Mr Ishiba favours strengthening Japan’s armed forces to counter China, he also places great importance on maintaining dialogue. He is clear-eyed about Japan’s history of imperial aggression, and supports better relations with South Korea, its former colony.

Yet he has also advocated some provocative ideas that worry officials in Washington, as well as his own bureaucrats. Most notably, he has called for creating an “Asian NATO”, to link America’s various bilateral alliances in the region into a collective one. He has also suggested revising the agreement that governs how American military forces operate in Japan. The issue is a “classic Pandora’s box”, says Michael Green, a former American official.

As prime minister Mr Ishiba will face an uncomfortable choice. He can continue to pursue the provocative approach that won him public favour, but risk losing the support of fellow party members. Or he can bow to the realities of governing, but risk losing the public.

Some initial steps suggest that he will aim for pragmatism. Kishida Fumio, the outgoing prime minister, backed Mr Ishiba over the hard-right Ms Takaichi, in part to ensure that his diplomatic legacy remains intact. “We will inherit the entire foreign and security policy from the Kishida administration,” says Nagashima Akihisa, a veteran lawmaker appointed as a national-security aide to Mr Ishiba. Yet the prime minister still has his preoccupations: during his first press conference he defended his ideas about the alliance with America.

Either way, Mr Ishiba may have a tough time hanging on. The LDP’s right wing has been hostile to him: Ms Takaichi rejected the olive branch of a senior party post under the new leader. He has few loyal allies inside the party. He will have to navigate the upcoming lower-house elections, build ties with a new American president, and then face upper-house elections next summer. Many in Japan’s political circles already suspect that another LDP leadership struggle will soon follow. ■

China | The fear of falling

Worries of a Soviet-style collapse keep Xi Jinping up at night

China’s Communists have now been in power longer than the Soviets

Illustration: Ellie Foreman-Peck

Sep 30th 2024

IN LATE SEPTEMBER workers erected a new structure in Tiananmen Square. It is 18 metres tall, resembling a basket of fruit and flowers. Similar floral-themed displays have sprung up across Beijing in celebration of the 75th anniversary on October 1st of the founding of Communist China. This one bulges with giant peaches and gourds—symbols of long life. But China’s leader, Xi Jinping, worries about how long-lived his party’s rule will be.

Amid the festivities, state media have avoided mention of another milestone that this year’s National Day represents. At the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, Communists had been in power for 74 years in Moscow. The Chinese Communist Party has now surpassed “big brother”, as it once called the Soviet Union. When that empire disintegrated, the bloody suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 was a recent memory. With ruthless resolve China’s party crushed opposition and kept itself safe from the shock waves emanating from Moscow.

Now in his speeches Mr Xi frets about how officials’ vigilance has been weakened by years of prosperity, raising the dangers of Soviet-style decay. Even after a dozen years in power, during which he has carried out purges of potential rivals from the party’s senior ranks and waged relentless ideological campaigns to ensure the absolute loyalty of its nearly 100m members, Mr Xi appears far from satisfied.

The past few years have been tough. First came the chaotic abandonment in 2022 of Mr Xi’s “zero-covid” policy. Since then there has been an anaemic economic recovery which has prompted a desperate attempt to revive growth with attention-grabbing stimulus measures. Amid the gloom, reminders of the Soviet collapse have kept coming up in speeches, the media and party meetings. The purpose has not been to suggest that the country’s immediate difficulties might topple the party, but to caution officials to be on their guard against long-term, persistent dangers.

At the end of 2021, around the 30th anniversary of the Soviet collapse, party officials began convening internal meetings to air a five-part documentary about it. The series railed against “historical nihilism”, party-speak for criticism of the horrors of Stalinism and Maoism. It accused the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, of setting the trend with his “secret speech” of 1956 denouncing Stalin’s personality cult. This “ignited the fire of nihilism”, intoned the narrator. From then on, the documentary implied, the Soviet party was living on borrowed time. The viewings continued for weeks at government offices, state-owned firms and on campuses.

In October 2022, at a five-yearly party congress, Mr Xi hinted at the anxiety that the Soviet collapse still causes among China’s elite. “We must always stay alert,” he told the gathering, “and determined to tackle the special challenges that a large party like ours faces so as to maintain the people’s support and consolidate our position as the long-term governing party.”

The phrase “special challenges of a large party” has since become a leitmotif of party propaganda, much of it referring to the experience of the Soviet party, the only other big one that China truly cares about. Since the party congress, numerous books have been published with those words on the cover, including at least three this year. Academics have churned out papers on the topic. In July state television broadcast a two-part documentary on avoiding collapse, with part one on the special-challenges theme. Officials again organised viewings for party members.

Mr Xi has also kept on using the special-challenges term. It was the subject of a classified speech he gave in January 2023 to the party’s Central Committee. Part of it was published in March this year. “As the party grows larger, some may form small cliques or factions or engage in behaviour that undermines party unity and fighting strength,” he said. “A fortress is most easily breached from within. The only ones who can defeat us are ourselves.” Most analysts agree that there are no obvious splits in the party today, but their possible re-emergence clearly worries him.

In August Mr Xi mentioned Soviet history again. The occasion was the 120th anniversary of the birth of Deng Xiaoping, the leader who launched China’s “reform and opening” policy in the late 1970s. He praised Deng for “resolutely opposing the turmoil” in China in 1989 “against the background of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and dramatic changes in Eastern Europe”. He quoted Deng as saying: “No one can crush us.”

In the vast body of literature that China has produced since the 1990s on the Soviet collapse, a shift in emphasis has occurred under Mr Xi. Deng’s supporters used the Soviet Union’s fate as a way of pushing back against ideologues in the party who saw his economic reforms as a betrayal of Marxism. Similar dogmatism, they argued, had wrecked the Soviet economy, fuelling public discontent that hastened the country’s fall. In essence, this was the message of Deng’s “southern tour” of early 1992 that relaunched his reform programme.

Mr Xi appears more fixated on the Soviet party’s loss of ideological and organisational discipline. This is evident in the huge effort he has made to rebuild the party at the grassroots, to beef up its presence in private firms and to enforce total obedience to his commands among party members. After the Soviet collapse Deng and his immediate successors abandoned talk of political reform but still tolerated limited experiments, such as allowing small NGOs to help victims of injustices. Mr Xi, in contrast, has crushed civil society. Chinese academics make clear why, arguing that Western-backed NGOs played a role in pushing the Soviet party over the edge.

China’s propagandists prefer not to dwell on a problem that is common to autocracies: how to ensure a smooth transfer of power when a leader steps down or dies. In 2010, two years before Mr Xi took over, a book published in China—“The Truth About the Soviet Union: 101 Important Questions”—included analysis of its succession strife. During Communist rule in Moscow, it said, the choice of leaders was determined by “brutal internal power struggles, decided by a handful of elders behind the scenes or even resolved through party coups”.

Mr Xi appears not to have drawn the lessons. He has shown no interest in grooming a successor and has changed unwritten rules to allow himself to lead for as long as he likes. The eventual transition to a post-Xi China may again evoke memories of the Soviet Union’s turbulent history. ■

United States | Taking the initiative

Many Americans can decide their own policies. What will they choose?

Three issues will dominate state ballot measures in November

Photograph: AP

Oct 3rd 2024|Los Angeles

“IWANT YOU to pick a sport to award $1m to,” Sondra Cosgrove tells her audience. Ms Cosgrove, a community-college professor, is trying to teach Nevadans how ranked-choice voting (RCV) works. The five sports with the most votes in the first poll (the primary) advance. In the second poll (the general election) basketball wins more than 50% of votes in the first round, eliminating the need for a run-off. If no sport had won more than half of the votes, the last-place finisher would be eliminated and their votes reallocated based on how participants ranked them. This process would repeat until a clear winner emerged.

Ms Cosgrove hopes the illustration will help voters understand a measure on the ballot this November that would amend Nevada’s constitution to allow the adoption of RCV and open primaries, where all candidates regardless of party affiliation are listed on one ballot. “I’ll explain this at birthday parties if I have to,” she says.

Keep up with the contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump with our US election forecast model

The race for the presidency and close Senate and congressional seats hog the attention in election years. But Americans will also vote this November on nearly 150 measures that can have a profound effect on state policy and society. By September 27th, over $600m had been spent on such initiatives. As with races near the top of the ballot, three things are dominating: abortion, electoral reform and immigrants.

Only 26 states allow voters to decide directly on policies via citizen-led initiatives or referendums. (“Initiatives” are placed on the ballot by citizens with thousands of signatures in support of a petition. A “referendum” allows voters to repeal or uphold a law.) Most of these states are clustered in the West. They joined the union later, and many wrote their constitutions under the influence of the Progressive movement at the beginning of the 20th century. Reformers wanted to give voters power as a check on political machines and special interests. In California, which has become a hotbed of direct democracy (often to its detriment), ballot measures were a way for reformers to counte the power of the Southern Pacific Railroad, which had local politicians in its pocket. Every state but one, Delaware, requires its legislature to put constitutional amendments on the ballot.

This year ten states will vote on measures that would protect access to abortion. The success of similar measures in recent elections has begun to spark a backlash against direct democracy. The Republican-dominated legislature in North Dakota hopes to increase the number of signatures needed to get an initiative on the ballot. In Arizona, lawmakers want to require signatures to come from different parts of the state so that, for example, reformers can’t get all of the support they need from Phoenix. Alice Clapman, of the Brennan Centre for Justice, says it is common for lawmakers to try to claw back power from voters. But she reckons this has increased since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022.

Seven states, including Nevada, are mulling open primaries, RCV or some combination of the two. The moves stem from a desire to elevate consensus candidates over fringe ones, and reduce mud-slinging. But research suggests that the effect of RCV on partisanship and extremism is limited. Lee Drutman, a political scientist who was once one of RCV’s biggest champions, has lost his enthusiasm. “A lot of people are feeling really frustrated with how our democracy is working,” he allows. “But if you’re trying to use [RCV] as a solution to polarisation…you’re just going to set yourself up for disappointment.”

Alaska will decide whether to repeal RCV; Missouri, whether to ban it pre-emptively. Such measures could become more common in future years if other state parties begin to feel that the reforms could threaten their power.

During the presidential debate Donald Trump said Democrats were trying to get unauthorised immigrants to vote for Kamala Harris. He has made similar fictitious claims since 2016. That paranoia has trickled down. Eight measures would ban noncitizens from voting. It is already illegal for unauthorised immigrants to vote in federal and state elections, and there is no evidence that large numbers of them try to.

Several other measures deserve a mention. For the third time in a decade Ohioans will try to end partisan gerrymandering. Californians will unfold their lengthy ballot papers to see ten questions. Proposition 33, allowing cities to expand rent control, is the most expensive in the country. Among the most interesting is Prop 36, which would increase prison sentences for some thefts and for drug crimes. Direct democracy may be under attack elsewhere, but in California it is still king.

The Americas | Everyone’s a winner

Why is football in Latin America so complex?

Money-grubbing and regulatory capture explain its Byzantine leagues

What’s the score?Photograph: Getty Images

Oct 3rd 2024|Montevideo

LATIN AMERICA is a football powerhouse. Its teams include Argentina (the current men’s world champions) and Brazil (the most successful national team in history). Yet if the region plays football with beauty and elegance, its league systems are achingly complex. Latin American competitions, now in full swing, can be more confusing than the offside rule.

For a fine example, look to Uruguay. In August cheers rang around your correspondent’s street in Montevideo when Nacional, a local team, won the country’s Intermedio (midseason) tournament. That competition sees Uruguay’s 16 best teams split into two groups. The top performers from each group compete in a final. This seems simple enough.

Yet every year these same 16 teams also compete against each other in an Apertura (opening) league that takes place in the first months of the season, and a separate Clausura (closing) league that does not start until the year is nearing its end. An ultimate champion is decided in play-offs that include the winners of the Apertura, the winners of the Clausura, and whichever team has come top of an annual table (created, confusingly, by combining the results from all three competitions). If any squad wins more than one of those, a blizzard of fine print is consulted to work out what happens. “We don’t even understand it ourselves,” laughs Juan Francisco Pittaluga, a sports journalist.

Elaborate formats are common all across the region. Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico have Apertura and Clausura systems of their own. Mexico has play-offs for its play-offs. Working out which teams will be relegated at the end of a season can require a calculator: in Colombia and Uruguay, among other places, this is determined by an average of results over several seasons. Why is it all so complex?

One explanation relates to player transfers. Some years ago Argentina decided its football season should coincide with the European one, to make it easier to sell players to European clubs. Yet that meant playing through January, when temperatures can reach 40°C and many fans are away at the beach. In 1991 Argentina pioneered the Apertura and Clausura system in part to create a midsummer break.

Yet there is clearly more to it than that. Running several short tournaments can allow for more matches in total (especially handy in Uruguay, a small country which has fewer teams in its top flight than, say, England or Italy). It is also supposed to create more matches that matter, boosting ticket sales and income from television rights. Latin American football is both cash-strapped by European standards and can be a route into politics (Mauricio Macri, a former president of Argentina, came to prominence running Boca Juniors, a big club). So bigwigs are forever creating new formats that might make money—and perhaps also a name for themselves.

Byzantine rules about relegation result from regulatory capture. When Grêmio, a famous club in Brazil, dropped down a division in 1991, authorities all but ensured it would shoot back up by declaring that a whopping 12 teams would be promoted the following season. European teams can only dream of the security some of their Latin American peers enjoy. In 2021 a dozen big European ones tried to start a league from which none of them could be relegated. Fans gave that plan a red card.

Jeopardy and simplicity are popular in the stands. Brazil boasts the region’s best league. Like many European ones, it has 20 teams, one sole table and—since authorities blew the whistle on shenanigans—simple relegation rules. For most casual fans, that is worth a cheer. ■

Europe | Sexual violence

A harrowing rape trial in France has revived debate about consent

Anything less than yes is no

Photograph: Reuters

Oct 3rd 2024|PARIS

For five weeks a harrowing rape trial taking place in a courtroom in the southern town of Avignon has shaken France. Dominique Pelicot, a retired 71-year-old, stands accused of drugging his then wife, Gisèle, raping her, inviting dozens of other men recruited online to rape her too while she was unconscious, and of filming them, all over a period of nine years. The trial, due to run until December, has opened French eyes to the horror of chemical submission and to what appears to be a disturbing misunderstanding of what constitutes rape, as well as to the remarkable courage and dignity of a woman who decided to make her ordeal public. French law on rape may now be changed as a result.

Mr Pelicot has pleaded guilty, telling the court “I am a rapist” and asking his former wife for forgiveness. Some of his 50 co-defendants, aged between 26 and 74, with varied backgrounds and professions, seem less clear. According to a count by Le Monde, a newspaper, 35 of the accused have contested the charges, arguing that they were not aware that they were committing rape. “Did you ask yourself whether she had agreed?” asked the presiding judge of one of the accused. “I never asked myself that question,” he replied.

Mrs Pelicot’s courage in deciding to waive her right to anonymity has been widely applauded. Each day she enters the court house, supporters clap. Gifts and messages of support have been sent from around the world. “Shame has to switch sides,” her lawyer’s words as the trial began, is now a campaign slogan. Only 6% of victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault in France file a police report, according to a survey by the interior ministry in 2022.

The case has put the crucial #MeToo question of consent at the centre of debate. French law defines rape as any sexual act committed “by violence, coercion, threat or surprise”. It includes no explicit reference to the need to obtain consent. On September 27th Didier Migaud, the new justice minister, said that he is open to writing consent into French law.

Consent-based rape law already exists in Germany, Britain and other European countries. After Sweden introduced it in 2018, accompanied by a campaign to stress that “Sex is always voluntary; if not, it’s a crime,” reported cases of rape surged, as did convictions. After a stomach-churning French trial, reform of the law would be a vindication. ■

Business | Schumpeter

The future of the Chinese consumer—in three glasses

What China’s biggest distiller, brewer and water-bottler say about its economy

Illustration: Brett Ryder

Oct 1st 2024

TO WESTERN PALATES baijiu is an acquired taste—and most never acquire it. China’s national fire water, at first whiff redolent of cheap potato vodka with a soupçon of fish sauce, is just too pungently unfamiliar. But whatever foreign investors plied with the stuff by their Chinese business partners make of the flavour, they appear to be lapping up shares in its makers.

Since China’s government announced a cocktail of policies to stimulate domestic consumption in late September, baijiu stocks have gone on a bender. Over the course of a week the biggest, Kweichow Moutai, gained nearly $90bn in market value—equivalent to a whole Diageo, the West’s top distiller, washed down with a Kirin. It is worth a cool $313bn, more than Coca-Cola. Throw in its six main rivals, also up by 40% or so, and the market capitalisation of big baijiu exceeds half a trillion dollars.

It is not just the distillers who are benefiting from the week-long rally. The share prices of large Chinese brewers look just as frothy. That of Nongfu Spring, China’s biggest water-bottler, has increased by a third. This compares with a rise of 25% for the CSI 300 index of mainland blue chips as a whole. In China, the way to an investor’s heart suddenly appears to be through the throat. Will it all end in a nasty hangover?

Not necessarily. There is a lot to admire about the Chinese beverage industry—most of all, its eye-watering profitability. Consider China’s most valuable producers of baijiu, water and beer, respectively. Last year 92% of Kweichow Moutai’s nearly 150bn yuan ($21bn) in sales was pure gross profit. For Diageo the figure was 60%. In terms of operating margin, Nongfu (at 33%) bests digital titans like Alphabet, Google’s parent company (31%), and Tencent, China’s most valuable firm (30%), let alone rival water-pedlars such as Danone, owner of Evian (13%). Bud APAC, the listed Asian subsidiary of the world’s mightiest brewer, AB InBev, offers a better return on capital than its Belgian-American parent.

All three firms are placing an interesting wager. When hundreds of millions of Chinese shoppers first came into some disposable income a couple of decades ago, they were happy to try any product in any category. Many customers are now becoming more discerning, not least because of a slowdown in the property market and a hit to sentiment. The stimulus at least offers hope of lifting the gloom. Some Chinese are still willing to part with their money, notes Euan McLeish of Bernstein, a broker. But the three are also hoping to make themselves especially indispensable to customers, by standing out on quality.

This task is simplest for the baijiu company. It controls 94% of the market for the very finest hooch, which sells for 1,200 yuan or more per half-litre bottle. It is distilled in Guizhou province and matured in ancient cellars. Virtually no other company has such facilities—or, given that the most coveted sort dates back to the Ming dynasty, which ended in 1644, any chance of getting their hands on one for another few centuries. Kweichow Moutai also enjoys a decades-old reputation as the go-to tipple at the top table of the Politburo or the People’s Liberation Army; its trademark white, red and gold bottle was a rare concession to branding even when Maoism was at its greyest. As a result, the company can spend less on marketing than its rivals, reckons Morningstar, a research firm. Kweichow Moutai’s mastery lies in maintaining scarcity and a nationwide distribution network, recently bolstered by a digital platform that enables it to respond to demand from retailers and other buyers in real time.

Nongfu, by contrast, has built a brand from scratch. Since its founding in 1996 it has marketed its core product as natural spring water from idyllic sources. This sets it apart from the distilled variety sold by many competitors—and enables it to charge a premium. The company is diversifying into other ready-to-drink beverages such as sugar-free tea and juices, which today account for around half of revenues, up from 40% in 2019. As with its spring water, these appeal to health nuts—a cohort that, unlike China’s population as a whole, keeps multiplying.

The health benefits of Budweiser are less clear-cut. Still, it and its fancier sister brands, such as Corona, Hoegaarden and Goose Island, make up for it by offering Chinese drinkers a dose of exclusivity. In contrast to budget beers, sales of which have been declining for several years, the thirst for fancier pints persists. Bud APAC’s closest rival in this category is CR Beer, which distributes Heineken in the country. But most of CR Beer’s products have been engineered to be cheaper than water, as Mr McLeish puts it. Another competitor, Tsingtao, tried to lift its flagship brand to premium status with the help of new packaging and celebrity singers. When their fame proved fleeting, so did the strategy.

Bottle shock

Kweichow Moutai, Nongfu and Bud APAC are banking on two developments. The first is the continued proliferation of high-earners. This looks like a safe bet. The ranks of Chinese bringing home on average $95,000 a year increased by 7% annually between 2017 and 2022, to 93m people, according to Bernstein. By 2027 they could number more than 120m. Another 200m entry-level premium shoppers may make $26,000, up from 170m two years ago. Together that would be nearly the current population of America.

The drinks trio’s second assumption is that those high-earners will open their wallets as readily as Americans do. Their recent reluctance to spend has worsened China’s deflation and spooked investors fearful of its dampening effect on earnings; the three firms’ share prices remain below their highs of four or five years ago despite the latest surge. But as long as Chinese incomes grow, consumers will fancy a tipple. Those still holding their nose rather than investing could soon instead be taking a snifter. ■

Business | Bartleby

What makes a good manager?

Hint: not someone who says I am a good manager

Illustration: Paul Blow

Oct 3rd 2024

The Ig Nobel awards, an annual ceremony for laugh-out-loud scientific papers, celebrate the joyfully improbable nature of much academic research. One of this year’s Ig Nobel winners, “Factors involved in the ejection of milk”, was published in 1941 and tests whether fear causes cows to involuntarily drain their udders. Its authors drew their conclusions by placing a cat on a cow’s back and repeatedly exploding paper bags beside it. “Genetic determinism and hemispheric influence in hair whorl formation”, another winner, asks whether hair tends to swirl in the same direction depending on which hemisphere you live in.

Sometimes you come across an academic paper that asks a deeply practical question in a refreshingly plain way. “How do you find a good manager?”, a new study by Ben Weidmann of the Harvard Kennedy School and his co-authors, sits in this category. Answering that question well is important. Other research, to say nothing of the experience of everybody everywhere, shows that variations in the quality of management help explain differences in performance between companies and even between countries.

Yet a survey conducted last year by the Chartered Management Institute in Britain found that four in every five people entering management had received no formal training. And loads of bosses accrue managerial responsibilities for reasons unrelated to their ability to discharge them. Another paper, by Alan Benson of the Carlson School of Management and his co-authors, looked at the career paths of thousands of sales workers in over 200 American firms. They found that better sales performance increased the likelihood of people being promoted but was also associated with worse performance among their new subordinates. The “Peter Principle”, the idea that people rise up the ladder if they do their current job well until they reach a job at which they are incompetent, appears to be alive and well.

How then should managers be selected? The study by Mr Weidmann et al sought to answer that question by running a series of repeated experiments in which participants were randomly assigned to three-person teams of one manager and two subordinates. Each member of the team, including the manager, had to complete a number of problem-solving tasks. The manager’s job was to assign people to the task they were most suited to; monitor their performance and reassign them as needed; and keep them motivated. In the real world bosses do more things, but this captures a big part of their role.

The researchers found that a competent manager had about twice as much impact on the team’s performance as a competent worker. More usefully, they also found out which traits were associated with good and bad managerial performance. Teams run by people who said they really, really wanted to be managers performed worse than those who were assigned to lead them by chance. Self-promoting types tended to be overconfident about their own abilities; in a huge shock, they also tended to be men.

If appointing a manager just because he sticks his hand up and says he can read people is not a great selection strategy, what would be better? The researchers found that good managerial outcomes were associated with certain skills. One in particular stood out: people who did well on a test of economic IQ developed by researchers at Harvard called the “assignment game”, in which you have to quickly spot patterns in the performance data of fictional workers and match them to the tasks they are best at. (Anyone can play the game online: you end up with a percentile score and a mild headache.)

Since the assignment game is similar to the experiment in the study, you would expect people who were good at one to shine in the other. But for David Deming, also of the Harvard Kennedy School and another of the paper’s authors, that is precisely the point. Management tasks can be identified, codified and incorporated into selection processes: that is a better way of choosing bosses than drawing only on those who thrust themselves forward or looking at how people perform in other jobs.

There are echoes here of a paper by Alessandro Pluchino of the University of Catania and his co-authors, who found that it was better to promote people at random than based on how well they did their current role. That won an Ig Nobel in 2010. Just because something is funny doesn’t mean it should be dismissed. ■

Finance & economics | Buttonwood

Can Andrea Orcel, Europe’s star banker, create a super-bank?

An interview with the boss of UniCredit

Illustration: Satoshi Kambayashi

Oct 3rd 2024

The career of Andrea Orcel vividly encapsulates the recent history of European banking. At Merrill Lynch, now part of Bank of America, Mr Orcel advised on deals that formed part of the wave of mergers that crested in 2007, when a pan-European troika bought ABN AMRO, a Dutch lender. After the financial crisis of 2007-09, grand cross-border ambitions were ditched. Mr Orcel’s next job was to run the investment-banking arm of UBS, a Swiss champion.

After an abortive move to Santander, a Spanish bank, Mr Orcel landed on his loafers in the top job at UniCredit in 2021, shortly before interest-rate rises bounced the sector back to profitability. He is justifiably credited with the Italian lender’s resurgence; its share price has quadrupled since he was appointed. Now his designs on Commerzbank, a German lender, are testing the EU’s appetite for the integrated financial system its leaders say it needs.

On September 11th UniCredit said it had bought a 4.5% stake in Commerzbank from the German government, adding to its pre-existing position of the same size. Speaking to your columnist in Prague, where Mr Orcel had travelled to address colleagues in the grounds of the Strahov Monastery, the banker says he was surprised by the explosive political reaction that followed his bank’s investment. “We bought that stake transparently, with respect to our position and our intentions, in a process that was also transparent. We had every reason to assume that this was a welcome investment.” Since then UniCredit, through derivatives trades, has increased its position in the bank to just above 21%. Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, has fulminated against “unfriendly attacks” on the country’s lenders. One member of Commerzbank’s board says he is nauseated by the prospect of Mr Orcel cutting costs at the bank.

UniCredit’s German expedition is less surprising to analysts, who have long predicted consolidation in the country’s banking industry. Bosses of both firms have, in the past, talked about combining Commerzbank with HypoVereinsbank, the German lender UniCredit bought in 2005, according to Mr Orcel. They are “almost a perfect match” for each other, he says, noting the lack of overlap in states such as Bavaria. Mr Orcel reckons a combined bank would have a 10% share servicing corporate clients, reaching perhaps the low teens in the Mittelstand, Germany’s dense fabric of small firms. All to the good, he says: Europe’s economic competitiveness remains blunted by the lack of strong, pan-European lenders.

It is a compelling pitch, and one Mr Orcel makes energetically. But if UniCredit’s investment in Commerzbank becomes a takeover bid, investors are likely to pay less attention to potential revenue “synergies” than to reductions in the combined bank’s costs. Should that involve firing many workers, expect politicians to shelve their calls for ambitious continental renewal. Few doubt that Commerzbank could be run more profitably. During the most recent quarter, UniCredit’s cost-to-income ratio in Germany was 20 percentage points lower than that of Commerzbank as a whole. That’s a cavernous gap—even considering Commerzbank’s larger retail business. Mr Orcel says management staff at the corporate centre would bear the brunt of the cuts, implying few branch closures.

Mr Orcel says he has not hired investment bankers to prepare for a deal. If he does, how might Commerzbank prepare its defence? It would be unwise for it to rely on the European Central Bank limiting UniCredit’s shareholding, or the German government using its remaining 12% stake to hinder a deal. And there are few signs of a white knight galloping up the autobahn to give it more cover. Last week Bettina Orlopp, Commerzbank’s new boss, raised the bank’s profit guidance and pledged more shareholder pay-outs. But investors are cagey. The bank has a history of making rosy forecasts which it then misses.

If Mr Orcel ends up creating a European champion, he will then have to run it. The lack of a complete banking union would be a headache. So might politics around a merged entity in Germany. Is there a scenario where UniBank becomes CommerzCredit? Mr Orcel rejects the idea of moving a combined bank’s headquarters to Germany. The bank is “very, very proud” of its Italian roots, he says; moving north would be yielding to political pressure. Besides, Italians seem no more willing to give up their banking stars than their German friends.■

Finance & economics | Free exchange

Why economic warfare nearly always misses its target

There is no such thing as a strategic commodity

Illustration: Alvaro Bernis

Oct 3rd 2024

Between August and October 1943 American warplanes repeatedly bombed Schweinfurt, in southern Germany. The Bavarian town did not host army HQs or a major garrison. But it produced half of the Third Reich’s supply of ball bearings, used to keep axles rotating in everything from aircraft and tank engines to automatic rifles. To Allied planners, who had spent months studying the input-output tables of German industry, the minuscule manufacturing part had the trappings of a strategic commodity. Knock away Germany’s ability to make them, the thinking went, and its military-industrial complex would come crashing down.

The operation was costly for the Americans, with heavy losses of aircraft and crew. But it was effective: in just a few months Bavaria’s ball-bearing prowess was reduced to rubble. Yet soon it became clear that, despite Schweinfurt’s obliteration, German factories kept cranking out Messerschmitts and machine guns at just the same pace. America’s Strategic Bombing Survey, carried out in the aftermath of the war, found “no evidence that the attacks...had any measurable effect on essential war production”.

In the decades since, versions of this story have played out many times, most recently with America’s sanctions against Russia and its measures against China. Adversaries in both cold and hot wars have tried to deprive each other of a strategic commodity, only to succeed in one sense (access to that commodity was reduced) and fail in another (the crunch did not bring about economic collapse or military capitulation). In a book to be published next year, Mark Harrison and Stephen Broadberry, two British scholars, use a theory first set out in the 1960s by Mancur Olson, an economist, to explain this paradox. The concept of a strategic commodity, they argue, is an illusion.

A good is often described as “strategic”, “vital” or “critical” when it is thought to have few substitutes. America and China have strategic reserves of petroleum, because their leaders think oil cannot easily be replaced, at least in the short run. Some minerals are deemed critical because you cannot build a viable electric car without them. But Olson reckoned very few goods, if any, are truly strategic. Instead, there are only strategic needs: feeding a population, moving supplies, producing weapons. And no amount of pounding, literal or figurative, seems able to alter the target countries’ ability to meet those needs, one way or another.

To understand why that is, return to the classic definition of what, supposedly, constitutes a strategic good. The starting premise is that a class of goods exists for which there are no substitutes. But substitutes nearly always exist; and if a good really cannot be replaced in the short term, in the longer run it almost always can be. Make a commodity scarce or dear enough, a microeconomist might infer, and the mix of inputs needed to produce output start shifting naturally.

The way Germany responded to its wartime ball-bearing crunch illustrates these mechanics. It was quickly discovered that, in many cases where manufacturers used to swear by ball bearings, simple bearings would suffice. For the uses that remained, extensive stockpiles could be drawn upon, which bought time to build replacement plants and, eventually, engineer ball bearings out of many military supplies.

The lesson Olson took from all this is that the cost imposed on those losing access to a resource, however key, is not the sudden collapse of every industry that depends on it but the more affordable cost of finding workarounds. Over time such costs usually accrue, slowing growth, but they are hardly ever enough to capsize an economy. This suggests that another commonly used economic concept—that of the “supply chain”—is too narrow at best. Modern economies look more like webs, where the severing of one link is rarely sufficient to compromise the entire structure.

Olson could not have foreseen that economic warfare would develop into the sophisticated tit-for-tat of trade and financial sanctions that has been on full display since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The commodities those target come in many forms, from credit and energy to “dual-use” goods and software. Their aim, not always explicit, is generally to change the behaviour of their targets and deter others from mimicking them. Export restrictions work directly, by blocking shipments of certain goods to the problematic party, while other sanctions seek to limit access to hard currency by making it harder for their targets to export lucrative goods. Often a combination is used.

Despite its growing complexity, however, this economic arsenal—largely controlled by America—has mostly misfired. Early attempts were already disappointing. A study in 2007 by researchers at the Peterson Institute for International Economics looked at 174 sanctions campaigns waged worldwide between 1915 and 2000, of which 162 took place after 1945. It found that such sanctions achieved their goals in part or in whole in only one-third of all cases. Success was more likely when goals were narrowly defined, the target state was already economically weak and there was no history of previous antagonism with the enforcing party.

The net effect

This explains why sanctions against Russia, a hostile state flush with cash, were never going to meet their broad goals. In 2022 excitable analysts predicted that Russia was on the brink of a 1998 moment (when it slid into financial chaos) or even a 1917-style revolution (when economic implosion caused the end of tsarism). The resilience of Russia’s economy has confounded expectations. It has dodged sanctions partly by substituting goods it could no longer source. It also found new trading buddies—not least China—to replace those it had lost. In a webby world, the notion of “strategic partner” looks increasingly transient, too. ■

Science & technology | Island life

Isolated communities are more at risk of rare genetic diseases

The isolation can be geographic or cultural

This susceptible islePhotograph: Getty Images

Oct 2nd 2024

ISLAND LIFE is famously idyllic, but it’s long been known that islanders tend to experience disproportionately high rates of some rare genetically transmitted diseases. Faroe islanders, for example, who live on an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean, have a much higher-than-average incidence of carnitine transporter deficiency (CTD), a condition that prevents the body from using certain fats for energy. Inhabitants of Gran Canaria, meanwhile, an island off the north-western coast of Africa, are far more likely than average to have familial hypercholesterolaemia, a condition where the liver cannot process cholesterol effectively.

A new paper in Nature Communications provides one more such example. Jim Flett Wilson from the University of Edinburgh, who led the study, reports that people living on the Shetland Islands in northern Scotland have a one-in-41 chance of carrying the gene variant which causes Batten disease, a life-limiting neurodegenerative disease. The comparable rate elsewhere in Britain is one in 300, says Dr Wilson.

Such elevated risk is likely to be the consequence of genetic isolation. When members of a small population overwhelmingly reproduce with their fellows, the probability of children acquiring disease-causing mutations (known as variants) from their parents increases over time. This happens because of a process known as random genetic drift, says Dr Wilson, whereby some genetic variants become more common and others are lost. “This effect is magnified in small populations with little or no inward movement of new people to replenish the genetic pool,” he says.

Such isolation need not only be the product of encircling water. Dr Wilson’s new study also found “genetic islands” on the British mainland. In Lancashire, for example, the researchers found locals were more likely to have ten disease-causing variants—including one associated with Zellweger syndrome, a disease affecting the brain, liver and kidney which can be fatal in the first year of life. Those from the area were 73 times more likely to have the variant. In South Wales, one variant responsible for an inherited predisposition to develop kidney stones later in life was 44 times more common, whereas in Nottinghamshire a variant causing a severe blistering skin disorder was 65 times more common than elsewhere.

Such genetic islands can arise from geography and culture, says Dr Wilson, including a widely shared preference for individuals to pick spouses from the same community they grew up in. Some such islands are already monitored by health authorities. The NHS, for example, runs screening programmes for those of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, as around one in 40 Ashkenazi Jewish people carries harmful variants to the BRCA gene which make them more at risk of breast or ovarian cancer. This compares with around one in 260 people in the general British population.

The incidence of Batten-disease carriers among Shetland islanders is similar to that of the BRCA variant among Jews, says Dr Wilson, and yet no plans exist for a screening programme there. He says that the reliance on the “cascade” model, whereby people are offered testing only after a family member is diagnosed, is only half as reliable at picking up cases as universal testing on demand. Until such screening programmes are put in place, islanders risk being doubly isolated. ■

Culture | The next big thing

Turn down the K-pop and pay attention to K-healing

The rise of South Korean books about burnout has taken the world by storm

Photograph: Reuters

Oct 3rd 2024

The country that gave the world popular bands such as BTS and hits such as “Parasite” and “Squid Game” is now exporting something slower-paced. The publication of “Marigold Mind Laundry” in America and Britain this month brings attention to the latest South Korean trend: the healing novel.

These books about burnout can be judged by their covers, which ooze wholesome peacefulness. Most depict an attractive building in a soothing colour, with nature artfully arranged outside. In the stories characters leave behind stress in search of something more meaningful. A high-flier sets up a bookshop; a TV writer quits her job and starts pottery classes. A connection to a new place brings connections to new people on their own quests for well-being. From cats to kimchi, ice-cream to coffee, “cosy healing elements” abound, says Clare Richards, translator of “The Healing Season of Pottery”, a popular novel in Korea that is set for international release this autumn.

South Korea has long had a market for comforting tales with themes of healing, as has Japan. But the current trend emerged during the pandemic, when the genre started to dominate South Korean bestseller charts. The depiction of communal spaces held strong appeal during a time of social constraints, says Joy Lee, a foreign-rights agent. Like many pastimes, healing fiction thrived online, attracting young female readers seeking recommendations from social media. (Several novels were published online first or through crowd-funding, rather than through conventional publishing routes.) Enthusiastic reviews from K-pop stars helped fuel the craze.

International publishers have taken note. Bloomsbury, Hachette and HarperCollins have all published or acquired K-healing bestsellers; Penguin Random House will bring out three titles in the next four months. Korean fiction was suddenly in fashion and “completely exploded”, says Jane Lawson of Penguin Random House. The healing trend has become “utterly global”; many titles have contracts in between 15 and 20 territories.

This reflects a broader shift, with interest in translated fiction rising, especially among young readers. In 2022 sales of translated fiction rose by 22% in Britain; almost half of readers were under 35, according to the Booker Prize Foundation, which awards literary prizes. “We’ve always had very diverse genres in Korea, but now it feels like healing fiction equals Korean fiction” for international publishers, says Ms Lee, who notes that literary offerings within Korea are more diverse than what is being exported.

Why did South Korea spawn the healing novel? It is a function of its competitive culture, rife with burnout. Seven out of ten South Koreans report mental-health issues, such as depression; nap “cafés” are common in Seoul. The books’ characters wrestle with work exhaustion or job-hunt unsuccessfully. “I’m good at studying…I work super hard. How dare society turn its back on me?” laments a forlorn graduate in Hwang Bo-reum’s “Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop” (2022), a bestseller about a woman who quits her job and opens a bookstore. Ms Hwang wants to comfort readers by “providing a pat on the shoulder for those who’ve lost the joy in life, having pushed themselves too hard to do well”, her author’s note explains.

The genre’s success also indicates the appeal of escapism. Sometimes the novels’ locations are marvellous as well as mindful: a laundry that washes away trauma; a shop where you can buy dreams. The books benefit from slow reading, says Shanna Tan, a translator of several healing novels. Readers come to book talks with their heavily annotated copies in tow, words of life advice underlined. It is literary therapy—by the book. ■

Culture | No passing fad

Fashion photography is in vogue

Museums and collectors now want what were once panned as commercial images for their walls

Photograph: Vasilina Popova/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Oct 3rd 2024

ELTON JOHN had just finished a stint in rehab. Without the fog induced by drink and drugs, he found he was able to look at the world with “clear eyes”. So when David Fahey, a gallerist, showed him work by three fashion photographers—Horst P. Horst, Irving Penn and Herb Ritts—the musician was transfixed. It marked the start of what would become one of the world’s largest private photography collections. More than 30 years later, Sir Elton has amassed more than 7,000 images.

Given his passion began with fashion photography, so does “Fragile Beauty”, an exhibition of selections from Sir Elton’s collection, on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London until January. A recent show at the Saatchi Gallery, “Beyond Fashion”, showcased the artistry and experimentation of the genre in recent decades.

Elsewhere museums have focused on the oeuvres of single artists: this year alone there have been shows dedicated to the work of Penn, who died in 2009, as well as several contemporary photographers. An exhibition looking at the pioneering aesthetic of Deborah Turbeville, a fashion editor who became a photographer, opens on October 9th at the Photographers’ Gallery in London.

The art world is firmly fashion-forward. Exhibitions about designers have drawn hundreds of thousands of visitors. Artists including Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and Yayoi Kusama have collaborated with fashion brands; the Louvre, the Met and Tate Modern have all hosted catwalk shows or industry events. More attention is being paid to the talent involved in making beautiful things, and so fashion photography—a form which was once disparaged as crass and commercial—is now being celebrated for its creativity.

The genre is appealing to collectors’ as well as curators’ tastes. “The market for fashion photography is thriving,” says Emily Bierman, head of photography at Sotheby’s, an auction house. “High art and high fashion absolutely meet and have become very coveted and collected.”

Three living fashion photographers, Markus Klinko, Juergen Teller and Paolo Roversi, are among the top photographers seeing the most growth in interest on Artsy, an online art marketplace; year-on-year, inquiries about their work are up between two and three times. For a large print of one of Mr Klinko’s pictures of David Bowie with a wolf, originally taken for GQ, you can expect to pay more than $300,000.

Often fashion photography deals in a kind of fantasy: few, after all, stand next to a wolf or get to pose with pachyderms in a Dior gown. “It is about creating a fictional world,” Nathalie Herschdorfer, the curator of the Saatchi show, says, “where people can dream and escape.” The impulse to gaze on something bewitchingly beautiful is an enduring one, but it is particularly acute in times of turbulence.

Fashion photography jolts the viewer out of the grim and the quotidian.

Like other works of art, the images can transport you into the past. Clothes reflect the mood of the time, be it jazz-age ebullience or hippyish liberation. An image by William Klein, part of Sir Elton’s collection, features clothing and accessories inspired by astronauts: it was taken in 1965, when the cold war was raging and fascination with space was nearly universal. Contemporary work offers similar insights. Mr Klinko, who has photographed the likes of Beyoncé and Kim Kardashian, says he thinks of himself as a “documentarian of pop culture”. His work is often suffused with allusions to mythology as a way of exploring how “Society is worshipping celebrity almost like a religion.”

In the current digital age, people are constantly bombarded with images; anyone with a smartphone can fancy themselves a photographer. Yet rather than dulling interest in fashion photography, social media have heightened it, as they underscore the inventiveness of artists. Few, for instance, could recreate Horst’s dramatic compositions with corsets and skirts or Melvin Sokolsky’s “Bubble” series for Harper’s Bazaar, which required a crane to hoist the model into the air. Fashions may come and go, but the greatest fashion photographs stand the test of time. ■

Culture | Revisiting history

Was Abraham Lincoln gay?

A controversial documentary re-examines the president’s relationships with men

Looking at him from a different angle?Photograph: Bridgeman

Oct 1st 2024

DURING America’s civil war, in 1862, Abraham Lincoln reportedly began sharing a bed with his bodyguard, a soldier named David Derickson. The tittle-tattle was recorded in the diary of Virginia Woodbury Fox, the wife of Lincoln’s naval aide, who wrote about “a soldier here devoted to the president, drives with him, and when Mrs. L. is not home, sleeps with him”. She added: “What stuff!”

Mere gossip, you might argue—or simply a sensible idea, given the target on Lincoln’s back. But a new film, “Lover of Men”, examines four of Lincoln’s relationships, conducted from his 20s to his 50s, to claim that he had sex with men. A popular comedy play, “Oh, Mary!”, presents Lincoln’s wife as his beard; its run on Broadway was recently extended until January.

In the early 1830s, while working at a general store in Illinois, Lincoln shared a cot with William Greene, his co-worker, for 18 months. The bed was cosy: in a suggestive letter, Greene remarked that Lincoln’s “thighs were as perfect as a human being could be”. In 1837 Lincoln moved to Springfield to practise law and met Joshua Speed. They shared a bed for four years. “No two men were ever more intimate,” is how Speed summarised their relationship.

Just how intimate is a touchy subject among scholars. “Such sleeping arrangements were not uncommon on the Illinois frontier,” asserts Michael Burlingame, a historian at the University of Illinois, who does not see any “proof of a homosexual relationship” in Lincoln’s bedsharing. Mattresses, after all, were expensive at the time. But once he was a lawyer Lincoln “could have afforded not only a bed but a house”, Thomas Balcerski of Eastern Connecticut State University says in the film; Lincoln was offered housing elsewhere but chose to stay with Speed.

When Speed returned to Kentucky in 1841, Lincoln became depressed. He wrote: “I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth.” The two men continued to exchange letters sharing their fears of marriage and women.

Lincoln’s aversion to women was remarked on. He “never took much interest in the girls,” Sarah Bush Lincoln, his stepmother, said. Marriage was helpful for public office, though, and Lincoln married Mary Todd in 1842. Lincoln had often signed his letters to Speed “yours forever”, but never missives to his wife.

To some, speculation about Lincoln’s sexuality is inevitable in an era obsessed with identity politics. But such surmising is not new. In a biography from 1926, Carl Sandburg, a Pulitzer-prizewinning biographer, wrote that the president had “a streak of lavender, and spots soft as May violets” (a euphemism for homosexuality). The passage was later removed.

It is only as same-sex relationships have gained legal and social acceptance that historians have reopened this line of inquiry. “Lover of Men” is part of a larger trend in revisionist history—the challenging of orthodox views and narratives. “Revisionism” can carry a pejorative connotation, and histories that dissent from conventional interpretation can be deemed heretical. Yet historians often update their understanding of the past. New methods of analysis and perspectives introduced by fresh generations of scholars alter received wisdom. For years scholars denied that Thomas Jefferson fathered children by his slave, Sally Hemings, as it was a proposition too unsavoury to stomach. Today most historians accept that he did.

Interpretations of Lincoln’s relationships have “shifted considerably”, says John Stauffer, a historian at Harvard University. Still, many scholars maintain that Lincoln’s relationships with men were platonic. One reason, according to Mr Stauffer, is that they treat Lincoln “as an almost godlike figure” and do not want to contemplate hidden sexual tastes. “Lover of Men” is unlikely to precipitate a wholesale re-eval‎uation of Lincoln’s legacy. Some Americans will continue to see the great patriot in much the same light as before; others will lambast the documentary’s findings as woke nonsense. In the 21st century, America remains a house divided. ■

Obituary

Obituary | The Economist

Obituary from The Economist. You've seen the news, now discover the story.

www.economist.com

Maggie Smith, the dowager countess of comic timing

She could transform herself into anyone, hilariously

Photograph: Shutterstock

Sep 27th 2024

BY THE time she was in “Downton Abbey”, the television series in which she played the waspish Dowager Countess of Grantham, Maggie Smith was 75 years old and had won every acting prize you could name. And yet, she told an interviewer, “I’d led a perfectly normal life…Nobody knew who the hell I was.”

That was not quite true; her fellow Brits already deemed her a national treasure. But she could go unrecognised in public because she disappeared so completely into her roles, switching occupations, temperaments and social classes with apparent ease. Whereas other stars often played themselves, she was a chameleon, always subservient to her role. On stage or screen she was poised and precise; in her rare televised interviews, she seemed hesitant, searching and uncertain. It would be easy to mistake her, in passing on the street, for someone who looked a bit like Maggie Smith’s slightly bewildered sister.

She was witty in life and devastatingly so with a script. Whether playing a humble piano teacher or a lofty aristocrat, her comic timing was deadly, her barbs slipping between the audience’s ribs like unexpected daggers. In “Evil Under the Sun”, her Daphne Castle says, of an old rival from the chorus line, “I could [never] compete. Even in those days, she could always throw her legs up in the air higher than any of us...and wider.”

She came from Ilford, an unprepossessing patch of East London. Her parents were lower-middle class and aspirational. She was raised amid Britain’s dreary post-war austerity, when petrol and bacon were rationed, and drew on this in 1984 in “A Private Function”, a dark comedy that her biographer Michael Coveney called “nearly perfect”. She played Joyce Chilvers, a social climber quivering with resentment and ambition. For Joyce, subsisting on spam is humiliating; she yearns for something fancier, and persuades her put-upon husband to steal a black-market pig. “It’s not just steak, Gilbert, it’s status!” When her plotting succeeds, she rewards him with the unforgettable line: “Right, Gilbert, I think sexual intercourse is in order.”

She was a happy but reserved child. Her father said she had “a private world” that he and her mother “had no access to”. She began acting in school, after her parents had moved her to Cowley, a suburb of Oxford. A peer recalled, “If there was a comic part, it would be played by Margaret Smith. She made us laugh, but we never saw her having a possible future on the professional stage.”

When she was 29 Laurence Olivier, then Britain’s most renowned stage actor and the director of the National Theatre, cast her opposite himself as Desdemona in “Othello”. He was “secretly afraid” of her, by one account. During a performance Olivier, annoyed by an offstage argument, slapped her across the face with his hand instead of the usual paper. She was knocked out cold; when she came to backstage, she reportedly said, “That’s the first time I’ve seen any fucking stars at the National.” (Olivier’s stage manager disputes this story.)

Her first Oscar was for playing an awful teacher in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”. Her performance was collected and commanding, a manipulative tyrant with a sugared exterior who treats others as pawns to be pushed about. Mr Coveney saw in this “subtle revenge on her Scottish puritanical mother and indeed on [her alma mater] Oxford High School”.

Her second golden statuette was for Neil Simon’s “California Suite”, in which she played a British actress awaiting the Oscars ceremony in a luxurious hotel room with her bisexual husband, as her moods vacillate between brittle hope of winning and deep gloom. She was also nominated for playing a prim chaperone, an eccentric roustabout aunt and, in 2001, for the role that began her late flourishing. Her career followed the inverse of most actresses’; her fame grew in tandem with her age.

Unlike many actors, she was “totally unconcerned about playing a dislikeable character”, and therefore liberated to play such parts with brio, gushed Julian Fellowes, the screenwriter of “Gosford Park” and “Downton Abbey”. In each of those period dramas, she plays a posh widow who looks upon her small, refined world with protective disdain. “Bought marmalade,” she sniffs in Gosford Park, when a maid brings her breakfast in bed. “I call that very feeble.” On her deathbed in “Downton Abbey”, she hushes her sobbing maid: “Stop that noise, I can’t hear myself die.”

In 1999 a very young Daniel Radcliffe played David Copperfield opposite Ms Smith’s Betsey Trotwood. The director told the boy: “Whatever happens...you will never again play the title role in a famous novel with Maggie Smith.” Two years later he was Harry Potter and she, appropriately, was Minerva McGonagall, a professor of magic who could transform herself into something completely different. (A tabby cat.)

Her first marriage fell apart. Her husband, Robert Stephens, a fellow actor, was desperate to be a megastar but never quite made it. She eclipsed him, though she was far less interested in fame, and he resented it. After putting up with his furniture-smashing and affairs for a while, she sensibly married a non-actor, Alan Beverley Cross, a playwright whom she had known since her late teens. It was a happy second act. He was “rock-like” and steady, which perfectly complemented her anxious obsessiveness. Her sons with Stephens, both thespians, one a Bond villain, called her “an extraordinary mother and grandmother”.

Still, she could summon her sternness when it suited—even if, in real life, it had a great deal more gentleness behind it than either of her dowagers. On a British talk show, while discussing how her “Harry Potter” role had introduced her to a new generation of fans, she recalled a boy asking her, “Were you really a cat?” She paused for just the right amount of time. “I heard myself saying, ‘Just pull yourself together.’” No doubt he did. ■