Desh is represented by:
· Jagdish Bhagwati, economist, India/US;
· Kishore Mahbubani, author/diplomat, Singapore;
· Sunita Narain, environmentalist, India;
· Salman Rushdie, novelist/political commentator, India/UK;
· Amartya Sen, economist, India; and,
· Fareed Zakaria, journalist/author, US
I must find out more about Sunita Narain. Funny that Rushdie is now considered a political commentator. I’ll take an average DeLong blog over any of his recent commentary
A lot of people might still vote Rushdie. I’m sure a lot of people will vote hacks like Thomas Friedman (he who said people don’t fight fellow McDonald eaters) or Noam Chomsky (he who argued for liberating East Timor from Indonesian occupation, and when it actually happened decried western imperialism). Paul Krugman will garner a lot of votes, alas not for popularising free trade, but for being one of the most partisan columnists in the US. And I’m sure a lot of devout people will vote for Emperor Palpa, I mean Pope Benedict XVI.
No, I’ll not vote for Rushdie or Chomsky or Friedman. But another Friedman, Milton (no relation to Thomas as far as I know), could easily get my write in. Though I think Friedman’s ideas still carry a lot of influence, I guess he hasn’t written or said anything lately. So I’ll go along with the FP/Prospect mob:
Candidates must have been alive, and still active in public life (though many on this list are past their prime). Such criteria ruled out the likes of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Milton Friedman, who would have been automatic inclusions 20 or so years ago.
Another possible write in would be Alan Greenspan. This guy is influential. Perhaps more influential than any other individual. Okay, I guess people with WMDs are more influential. So rephrase it—Alan Greenspan is the most influential individual without access to a WMD. Is Greenspan public? His statements are public, and are analysed thoroughly by the financial press. Is he an intellectual? I don’t know, what makes an intellectual? After all, they have included Larry Summers. Hmmm, may be Greenspan would have made the cut if he had said women are just not into economics.
While I won’t write him in, I’m intrigued by the absence of Joe Stiglitz. I didn’t like his tirade against the IMF. But his recollection of the roaring nineties was quite good, and far less partisan than a typical Krugman piece. He is clearly an intellectual, and obviously carries huge sway over the anti-globalisation mobs around the world.
Right then, Greenspan is the write in. What about the top 5? Here are my picks, with some words why I choose them. My choices are clearly determined by the extent of my ignorance. For instance, I have no idea how influential various scientists in this list are. I have also tried to choose people that I think are actually influential (as in whose ideas affect actual outcomes), not people whose ideas I necessarily share. This means I rule someone like Jared Diamond out – even though Guns, germs and steel is one of the best things I’ve read, I’m not sure how influential he is.
With these disclaimers, here goes.
- Richard Dawkins, biologist/polemicist, UK
Christopher Hitchens is easily one of the best polemicists around, his has been the best argued case for the war in Iraq. Dawkins is just as good a polemicist as Hitchens. I choose Dawkins because he does a far better job defending Darwin than Hitchens does of defending Dubya. Sure, Hitchens’s is a harder task, but it was his choice to support the unsupportable. Besides, I think Dawkins’s fight against the religious obscurantists is more important than the so-called war on terror.
- Jagdish Bhagwati, economist, India/US
Free trade is an unmitigated good. And Clinton says Bhagwati was one of the few whose writings drove the point home to new Democrats. Now that’s influence.
- Ali al-Sistani, cleric, Iran/Iraq
Whichever way Iraq turns out, Ayatollah Sistani will have a large influence in the outcome. And how Iraq turns will affect the world for a while.
- Lawrence Summers, economist/academic, US
I remember an Economist cover from the late 1990s with Greenspan, Bob Rubin and Larry Summers with the title ‘committee to save the world’. I personally think Greenspan was the most influential of the three. But Summers makes the list, and gets my vote.
- Paul Wolfowitz, policymaker/academic, US
The list includes quite a few freedom exporters. But none of them actually influenced policy (and hence the eventual outcome) as Wolfowitz did. And now he heads the World Bank.
