Profile of Jeffrey Deutsch
Jeffrey Deutsch graduated from Baldwin Senior High School, in Baldwin, NY, and earned a BA in Government from Cornell University, in Ithaca, NY, and an MA and PhD in Economics from George Mason University, in Fairfax, VA.
Dr. Deutsch has been interested in politics, including political philosophy, the study of institutions and the politics of dictatorships from an early age. In high school, he read extensively on the Soviet Union and Soviet history, including every biography on Joseph Stalin he could get his hands on, as well as on Nazi Germany, Communist China and Idi Amin's Uganda. He also took college-level Microeconomics and Macroeconomics courses, earning As. Based on his understanding of the interrelations between politics, economics and law, after high school he enrolled first in the Communications, Legal Institutions, Economics and Government (CLEG) program (Honors) at American University, in Washington, DC. His coursework included American Politics (year-long sequence), Introduction to Systems of Justice, World Politics, International Economics and Political Economy of Economic Development. He also interned at the office of then Rep. Raymond J. McGrath (R-NY).
He then transferred to Cornell, to study political theory, the world economy, the application of these to current issues, various sources of political power and the politics of ancient Rome, Latin America, Communist China, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, among others. He published "The Legacy of Joseph Stalin," a discussion of Stalinist methods of terror, and "The Unplanned Planned Economy," a discussion of the chaos called "economic planning" in pre-WWII Nazi Germany, in the Cornell Political Forum, a scholarly journal published at Cornell and distributed worldwide.
In order to complement his theoretical and practical education in politics with a systematic understanding of institutions and what drives them, he entered the graduate program in Economics at George Mason University, well known for the use of economic analysis to illuminate political and legal decision-making. His fields included Industrial Organization - the principles underlying the formation of firms, other organizations and markets - and Law and Economics - the use of economic analysis to both explain and evaluate rules and institutions. He gave a talk "The Israeli Defense Force: An Exemplar of the Exploitation of Tacit and Local Knowledge," using economic understandings of institutions to explain the Israeli military's continued success. His dissertation - "The Problem of 'Rabid Tigers': Why Did Saddam Hussein Invade and Occupy Kuwait?" - examined Iraqi politics from February 1987 through the summer of 1990, showing that a period of prolonged institutional disruption attending "Iraqi perestroika" during that time could have given Hussein reason to invade and occupy Kuwait - even at the risk of war - in order to regain his credibility with a distrustful hierarchy.
Not confined to any one discipline, Dr. Deutsch understands politics - including (not distinct from) foreign policy - through political theory (the lenses through which political actors see their world and consider it legitimate or illegitimate), the economic analysis of institutions (the array of incentives, possibilities and constraints facing political actors), law and economics (the comparative study of systems of rules and rights) and history (since such incentives, possibilities and constraints depend upon such systems which have evolved over time and cannot be understood apart from their past).
Dr. Deutsch is especially, though not solely, interested in the study of Russia and her neighbours. He is Founder of the Rabid Tiger Project, a political risk consulting and related research firm, which specializes in (but is not limited to) Russia and Eastern Europe. He has conducted a study of Belarus, to support the asylum application of a gay Belarusian exchange student in the US. He has also been Contributing Editor for Russian Politics at Suite101.com , a free website dedicated to helping people find the information they need.
In his spare time, Dr. Deutsch reads extensively in economic theory, US constitutional law, comparative political systems, history and all sorts of humor. He also has a weakness for chocolate, Pizza Hut and the movies of the late Stanley Kubrick.
Dr. Deutsch can be reached at P.O. Box 1142, Severna Park, MD 21146, or by email at jdeutsch@rabidtigers.com .