I’m trying to figure out what to think about the Fannie/Freddie rescue deal. Brad DeLong summarizes the provisions. Unfortunately, it’s a bit hard for a lay observer to even figure out what’s happening here, much less whether or not it’s a good deal. Under the circumstances, one is inclined to suspect that obscure-but-consequential provisions of a complicated-and-important arrangement will be slanted toward the interests of the powerful and well-connected (i.e., those in a position to really monitor what’s happening) rather than you or I.

Big news in the only political system that matters as Canadian PM Steven Harper dissolves parliament and calls for early elections. Harper’s conservatives have been running the government since the last election, but they lack a majority. At the moment, though, the Canadian economy is growing quite nicely (rising natural resource prices are good for Canada) and Harper’s government is popular so they think they can pull it off. The Conservatives’ unpopularity in Québec, where they’re in effect the third party behind the separatists and the Liberals, makes it quite difficult, structurally speaking, for them to ever win a majority so if they manage do to so it’ll be a pretty impressive achievement.

UPDATE: Apologies! It looks like Canada’s changed more than I realized while I wasn’t paying attention and Québec conservatism is back, with the Liberals expected to finish third in the province. The Canadian right, like the American right, contains nationalist impulses and also decentralizing impulses — the former plays poorly in Québec but the latter can be made to work very well.

Joshua Kurlantzick writes that despite rapid growth in Asian economies, the continent remains too divided by rival nationalisms to cooperate and compete with a western-centric world order:

Whenever I visit Asia, I meet young people who detest neighbors they barely know. “The Thais, all they care about is money. Nothing else,” one Burmese acquaintance told me in Rangoon, despite the fact that he’d never actually been to Thailand. In one study taken last year by a leading Japanese nongovernmental organization, two-thirds of the Chinese polled said they had either a “very bad” or “relatively bad” impression of Japan.

As any politician can tell you, public opinion counts. In an open society such as the Philippines, rising anti-Chinese sentiment helped force the government in September 2007 to suspend China-funded projects valued at $4 billion. Even countries that have little history of animosity toward each other can be swept into a rage by the new nationalists. In 2006, after Singaporean state investment fund Temasek Holdings purchased Thai telecommunications giant Shin Corporation, Thai bloggers and online columnists condemned the deal, arguing that a Singaporean company would have control over sensitive Thai communications infrastructure. Thousands of Thais marched to Singapore’s embassy in Bangkok — a move that left urbane Singaporean diplomats, more accustomed to managing business deals than bullhorns, a bit flat-footed.

I would add that regime-type probably matters here. Two countries that both have firmly established open, liberal democratic political systems featuring the rule of law can cooperate with one another in deeper and more complex ways than two countries that don’t. When the commitment of one or both countries to the rule of law is in question, then cooperation requires a lot of trust, and trust isn’t necessarily in strong supply. In particular, unless the Chinese political system dramatically alters at some point, most countries — including countries that are not themselves democracies — will probably find it more desirable to partner with the United States or the EU when possible.

Michael Kimmelman reports on the banal aspects of governance in Gaza where, among other things, the ruling Islamist movement would like to clamp down on people’s access to pop culture resources but where political pragmatists say it’s necessary to bow to reality and let this stuff slide.

This reflects a larger pattern that we’ve seen around the world for quite a long time now. Sunni Islamist movements have a lot of success in opposition to incumbent regimes that are seen as corrupt and undemocratic. But Islamist ideology, when put in practice, has an overwhelming tendency to fail as a governing agenda. The popularity these movements are able to garner as an alternative to the status quo doesn’t really extend to all that much of their detailed agenda.