Doesn't the US being strong enough to repeatedly evade the norm indicate that might really is the determining factor, and that Russia just isn't mighty enough to defy the US that effectively?
Define "the determining factor". If norms trump might in 80% of cases, but the handful of truly overwhelmingly mighty ignore the norms, it doesn't seem like a good reason to stop caring about the norms/to say they don't really matter.
I mean, you can say the same thing about laws within a single country, can't you? If you're sufficiently rich and cunning, you can get away with bribing left right and center. But that doesn't mean the laws against corruption are fiction and that we may as well not have them at all, because for every corrupt businessman bribing their way to an unethical building permit, there are dozens of ordinary people to whom it will not even occur to bribe their tax inspector (or whatever), to the general betterment of society.
I didn't say there were people rich enough to be completely above the law; but I thought it non-controversial enough that there are some people rich and well-connected enough to *get away* with various forms of bribery and corruption that, at a smaller scale, would be noticed and prosecuted.
I also didn't say anything about the US. Feel free to substitute a more corrupt foreign country if you want. My point is that 0.5% of a given group having a special cheat code that allows them to ignore the normal rules everyone else plays by, does not mean the rules aren't still the baseline.
I think for people who aren't rich it's not the risk of punishment that prevents them from, say, bribing a Congressman to earmark funds to benefit them, but rather a lack of means to accomplish that in the first place.
In a corrupt country there's typically less "state capacity" and enforcement of the laws generally. And in such places the "baseline" of what's actually expected and even normative can be quite different from how things are officially said to be. I'm thinking of Diego Gambetta's writings about Italian academia.
Doesn't the US being strong enough to repeatedly evade the norm indicate that might really is the determining factor, and that Russia just isn't mighty enough to defy the US that effectively?
Define "the determining factor". If norms trump might in 80% of cases, but the handful of truly overwhelmingly mighty ignore the norms, it doesn't seem like a good reason to stop caring about the norms/to say they don't really matter.
I mean, you can say the same thing about laws within a single country, can't you? If you're sufficiently rich and cunning, you can get away with bribing left right and center. But that doesn't mean the laws against corruption are fiction and that we may as well not have them at all, because for every corrupt businessman bribing their way to an unethical building permit, there are dozens of ordinary people to whom it will not even occur to bribe their tax inspector (or whatever), to the general betterment of society.
I don't think there's anyone rich enough in the US to simply be above the laws.
I didn't say there were people rich enough to be completely above the law; but I thought it non-controversial enough that there are some people rich and well-connected enough to *get away* with various forms of bribery and corruption that, at a smaller scale, would be noticed and prosecuted.
I also didn't say anything about the US. Feel free to substitute a more corrupt foreign country if you want. My point is that 0.5% of a given group having a special cheat code that allows them to ignore the normal rules everyone else plays by, does not mean the rules aren't still the baseline.
I think for people who aren't rich it's not the risk of punishment that prevents them from, say, bribing a Congressman to earmark funds to benefit them, but rather a lack of means to accomplish that in the first place.
In a corrupt country there's typically less "state capacity" and enforcement of the laws generally. And in such places the "baseline" of what's actually expected and even normative can be quite different from how things are officially said to be. I'm thinking of Diego Gambetta's writings about Italian academia.
https://crookedtimber.org/2010/03/23/why-does-italian-academia-suck/