The Rise of the Hipster Statesman

Money, fame, buzz—it would seem that hipster statesmen have it all. One could almost imagine Jimmy Carter standing in the West Bank, holding a boombox over his head, playing the song "In Your Eyes" over and over again until the Israelis and Palestinians relent. But I'm not holding my breath on it working.

There are two very powerful constraints on ability of the hipster statesmen to get anything done. First, the policy-entrepreneur approach cannot work on all policy problems. To update Truman's aphorism for the 21st century, when you are a statesman, you can choose your issues; when you are a politician, the issues choose you. Real politicians do not always respond to the pleas of statesmen, because they are busy avoiding the fate of becoming a statesman. Wealth, popularity and glamour might be enticing, but as Henry Kissinger once observed, power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

Second, calling attention to a problem is not the same thing as solving it. The assumption underlying the hipster statesmen is that once people become aware of a problem, there will be a groundswell of support for direct action—what Gore labeled "an opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level" after winning the Nobel. This is not how politics usually works, particularly in the international realm. Any solution to a problem like global warming, for example, involves significant costs—and the distribution of those costs is a contentious issue. Even if more people become aware of a policy problem, it is far from guaranteed that a consensus or compromise will emerge about the best way to solve it.

Drezner is an associate professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is the author of "All Politics Is Global: Explaining International Regulatory Regimes" (Princeton University Press).

© 2007