Brookings: Latest From Brookings

Vice President Biden’s Visit to Brazil, Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago

Diana Villiers Negroponte — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:40:00 -0400

The Vice President and Dr Jill Biden head to Brazil, Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago the week of May 26th “to see a much deeper engagement within the Western Hemisphere.” After President Obama’s visit to Mexico and Central America in late April, why is the Vice President heading back to this hemisphere? Have not the issues of trade and immigration been addressed sufficiently? No, is the answer. Biden believes that:

[T]his is a moment to look forward to build – build the friendships and partnerships that are going to allow us to deal with the share challenges and shape – jointly shape a global system 10, 20, 50 years from now. It all begins now, it seems to me.
(Speech to the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, Washington, D.C., May 9, 2013)

What is the nature of these partnerships and why are they new? Has the United States not cultivated partnerships in South America since Vice President Nixon visited Venezuela on May 13, 1958. That trip ended with anti-American demonstrators rocking the Vice President’s limousine and unnerving both the VP and Mrs. Nixon. They never went back to South America.

Both the Alliance for Progress and the Cold War are over. Communism is no longer considered a threat. Instead, the growing middle class in the Western Hemisphere is seen as a rising market of 225 million consumers in the Latin America and the Caribbean. Biden is wrong to anticipate that this emerging group of citizens is wealthy enough and “could qualify for a gold card.” According to categories established by the Mexican Association of Market Research & Public Opinion Agencies (AMAI) the middle class is found in the socioeconomic C and D+ categories. They are urban, possess a car, take one vacation a year away from home and own cell phones, but they are not yet middle class in U.S. terms. Nevertheless, Biden is right in recognizing that this group of citizens accounts for approximately 40 percent of citizens in Latin America. They seek quality education and will over time become the professional class that holds that gold credit card.

This changing societal landscape will continue to place great demands on energy, transport and electronic goods. Thus the opportunity for U.S. businesses to invest in infrastructure, participate in the design of urban transportation, establish enterprises to produce the sophisticated electrical goods that consumers need. The Western Hemisphere will continue to provide the opportunity for increased trade and investment. Already, U.S. exports to the hemisphere have risen from $490 billion in 2007 to $650 billion in 2011. In 2013, U.S. trade with Canada and Mexico represents a trillion-dollar trading partnership. This translates into more U.S. jobs; quality jobs that design products, engineer projects, market goods and research means to reduce the carbon footprint. These benefits result, in large part, from trade in goods and services.

U.S. exports to both Brazil and Colombia have grown at a rapid pace, but there is room for further growth. According to the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, in 2012, Brazil was the 8th largest market for U.S. goods and services. In that year, the U.S. exported goods valued at $43.7 billion and in the three months ending March 31 2013, U.S. export of goods totaled $10.4 billion. This accounted for a U.S. trade surplus with Brazil of $11.6 billion, up 3.57 percent from 2011. In relative terms, the value of U.S. exports in private sector goods – not including U.S. military sales and defense expenditures – has increased by 183 percent from 2000 to 2012. More significant than total trade numbers is the nature of our exports. Over this period, the top value of U.S. exports to Brazil was in electrical machinery, plastics, aircraft and aircraft parts. Agricultural exports continued, but the growth is in sophisticated manufactured products. That explains Washington’s determination to build upon the Action Plan on Science and Technology Cooperation, the MOU on Aviation Partnership and Partnership for the Development of Aviation Biofuels with Brazil. Similar trading patterns and partnerships occur with Colombia.

Since the entry into force of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement in May 2012, exports of U.S. aircraft and aircraft parts have increased by 179 percent. Exports of U.S. railway locomotives and track fixtures have increased by 79 percent, and iron and steel articles have increased by 50 percent. Although agricultural exports have increased by 68 percent with soybean meal, rice and pork leading the way, the growth path will be found in electrical machinery and equipment. Colombia seeks U.S. government help in gaining membership to the OECD. Recent initiatives, such as negotiations with the FARC, early start on implementing a hemispheric-wide electrical grid, and significant reforms to Colombia’s education system justify its membership of this 34-member club. Biden should support Colombia’s entry into an association that shares a commitment to market economies backed by democratic institutions and focused on the wellbeing of all its citizens.

In his speech to the Council of the Americas, Biden identified the Western Hemisphere as democratic. He is right in identifying the rejection of military dictators who ruled most South American nations from the 1970s to the early 1980s. Electoral democracy is firmly established. In its Freedom of the World 2013 report, Freedom House categorizes Brazil and Trinidad & Tobago has “free.” Colombia is classified as “partly free” as it awaits a full investigation and prosecution of suspects in the murder of a local community activist and the director of a Colombian radio station. There is also concern regarding the independence of the judiciary in a case involving a newspaper editor charged with criminal libel. Apart from these three Colombian cases which occurred in 2012, Freedom House recognizes that the great majority of nations in the Western Hemisphere respect the rule of law, freedom of expression and the right of assembly.

However, Biden has also noted that Venezuela is not free and that its citizens, while given electoral democracy, do not currently enjoy “freedoms of expression and assembly” and protection from violence. A second reason for visiting the hemisphere at this time is to recognize that liberal democracy can better ensure the security of citizens, opportunity for economic growth and political stability through non-violent discourse. Three nations in South America are in danger of rejecting these values, preferring controlled economies and centralized power to benefit populist leaders. Biden is expected to address this divide and call for increased dialogue among neighboring countries.

Energy is an important theme for Biden in all of the host nations. Trinidad and Tobago is the leading Caribbean producer of oil and gas and its economy is heavily dependent upon these resources. Forty percent of GDP and 80 percent of exports come from oil and gas, but that industry only provides employment for 5 percent of its citizens, according to the World Bank. Consequently, there is more focus on the production of liquid natural gas (LNG) and renewable energy sources. Trinidad and Tobago claims to be the most advanced and dynamic economy in the English-speaking Caribbean, demonstrated by its high mobile phone penetration of over 120 percent. The potential use of mobile phones for banking, health and education services, as well as its energy potential should encourage Biden to consolidate a strong relationship with this leading CARICOM nation.

Finally, education is a critical theme, which is strengthened by Dr. Jill Biden’s presence on the trip. She is a professional teacher at community colleges where thousands of young Americans acquire the technical skills necessary to move into engineering and scientific jobs. She is also a strong advocate for industry partnerships between community colleges and employers. As President Obama seeks to develop the “100,000 Strong in the Americas,” a State Department program to increase international study in Latin America and the Caribbean through greater international exchange of students, he finds a strong partner in Jill Biden. She knows the advantages of public-private partnerships in education. Her visits to university campuses throughout this visit will focus attention on the importance of education in achieving social inclusion, healthier citizens and environmental sustainability.

The trip should consolidate U.S. partnerships not just with these three nations, but send a message that a new form of engagement with the United States is now possible. The days of U.S. hegemony in the Western Hemisphere are over, and a president and vice president no longer travel with a packet of aid. Indeed it was notable that President Obama offered no financial assistance during his visit to Mexico and Central America despite the recognition of “shared responsibility” for the drug-related violence. Instead, constructive partnerships are sought with offers to develop technology, share scientific practices and encourage our students to seek quality education both at home and in the United States. Biden can rightly conclude that this trip represents “…the most active stretch of high-level engagement on Latin America in a long, longtime.”

Authors

Diana Villiers Negroponte

North Korea’s Turn to Diplomacy: Resuming the Six-Party Talks?

Richard C. Bush III — Fri, 24 May 2013 12:14:00 -0400

As summer follows spring, so too does North Korea transition from provocative words and deeds to a seemingly statesmanlike desire for diplomacy and peace. Before, it threatened to hit the United States with nuclear weapons. Now it expresses a willingness to engage in dialogue, even to return to the Six-Party Talks.

But this is all part of Pyongyang’s playbook. We have seen these peace offensives before. The crucial question now is the basis on which North Korea might be willing to negotiate. Is it the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, which is the core of the Six-Party Talks and the stated objective of the United States, South Korea, Japan, and China? If so, there is a reason to engage – carefully. Or is it Pyongyang’s most recently enunciated point of departure – that Washington, et al., must accept it as a nuclear weapons state, with all the rights and benefits that that implies under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? That is a non-starter, because it is a recipe for instability in Northeast Asia and for prolonged tension in the U.S. alliances with South Korea and Japan.

The goal of American policy has not been to secure talks for the sake of talks. It has been to induce Pyongyang to understand that it can only have a normal relationship with the international community if it credibly undertakes a fundamental change in policy: regarding nuclear weapons, its relations with South Korea, its role in the region, and its domestic system. North Korea’s latest and predictable shift to diplomacy does not in any way guarantee that change in policy (it may indicate, however, that sanctions are beginning to work). After its recent belligerence and before anyone rushes to the negotiating table, it is up to Pyongyang to demonstrate to Washington, Seoul, Tokyo, and Beijing that the leopard is indeed going to change its spots.

Authors

Richard C. Bush III

Image Source: © Reinhard Krause / Reuters

The Containment Fallacy: China and the TPP

Mireya Solís — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:30:00 -0400

In recent commentary for the Financial Times, David Pilling argues that the central objective of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations is the exclusion of China. In his view, the desire to build an “anyone but China” club is due both to the perception that China got an easy pass when it joined the WTO and has continued to flaunt international trade and investment rules; and to the articulation of a larger political strategy to marginalize this emerging superpower. Pilling goes on to predict that the TPP will fail to deliver major liberalization as the traditional pattern of shielding sensitive sectors will emerge, and admonishes that only a much diluted trade agreement faces a realistic chance of ratification given the fractured consensus on the new proposed rules. In this rendition, the TPP appears politically myopic and economically irrelevant.

The argument that the TPP is a club that bars Chinese entry is inaccurate and unhelpful. China, like any other APEC economy, has the right to request entry into the TPP. Whether the Chinese leadership will judge TPP membership to be in their country’s national interest and whether TPP members can be persuaded that China is prepared to abide by the negotiated disciplines is a separate matter. But it is important to dispel the notion that the TPP precludes Chinese entry. In fact, this trade agreement scores better than most in incorporating an accession mechanism that has already delivered membership expansion from four to twelve members –now comprising 40% of world GDP. More fundamentally, it is hard to understand why TPP countries would pursue the counter-productive and unfeasible goal of marginalizing China. China sits at the apex of the world economy as it ranks number two in share of world GDP and is at the center of global supply chains. A trade agreement that by fiat sought to defy these fundamental economic realities would be foolhardy indeed. Hence the TPP concept is expansive: it aims to eventually develop an Asia-Pacific wide platform of economic integration, not to draw lines encircling China.

If Chinese exclusion were the selling point of the TPP for countries like Japan, then one would be hard pressed to explain why the Japanese government is concurrently negotiating two major trade agreements with China: a trilateral FTA in Northeast Asia and an East Asian trade agreement known as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). And the same is true for all other Asian countries in the TPP who already partake in the ASEAN-China FTA and are participating in the RCEP talks. The “us versus them” dynamic of security alliances is not really applicable to free trade agreements. The noodle bowl that characterizes the maze of FTAs illustrates the fact that in the world of international trade overlapping memberships render moot purely exclusive arrangements.

Ascribing an anti-China objective to the TPP is not helpful on three main fronts: 1) it provides political cover to protectionist interests, who argue that they should not be asked to undertake painful economic adjustments for the sake of trade agreements driven by geopolitical concerns; 2) it sends a chilling message to prospective members, who may fear that in joining TPP they will be seen as enlisted in the anti-China camp; and 3) it will discourage China from finding points of convergence with the TPP agenda if this is seen as capitulating to an American strategy of containment.

The most fundamental challenge to the TPP project vis-à-vis China is not that it is built around a faulty notion of containment, but rather that it may not constitute a powerful enough enticement to propel China to sign on to these new standards on trade and investment. China so far has reacted by accelerating its own trade initiatives in Asia. The risk that the United States and China will remain for the foreseeable future in separate trade groupings, without a significant bilateral dialogue on trade and investment, is very real. TPP negotiators cannot postpone the task of fashioning a strategy to engage China until after the TPP agreement is completed. They must be mindful of the fact that rules must be evaluated both in terms of their quality and dissemination potential. China must see in the new trade agenda a deal not unlike its accession to the WTO: while hefty commitments are to be expected, the accompanying domestic reforms will pay off handsomely in terms of improved economic performance.

Authors

Mireya Solís

Image Source: © Bobby Yip / Reuters

Supporting Broad-Based Economic Growth and Fiscal Responsibility Through Tax Reform

Adam Looney — Wed, 22 May 2013 02:30:00 -0400

Chairman Murray, Ranking Member Sessions, and Members of the Committee: Thank you for inviting me to share my views on the role of tax reform in supporting broad-based economic growth and fiscal responsibility.

The United States faces a daunting outlook for budget deficits, an increasingly challenging global economy for many American workers and businesses, and rising income inequality.

Improvements in tax policy could help address these challenges by making our tax system more fiscally sustainable, more efficient, and more fair. Indeed, any tax reform will be evaluated based on how it affects each of those three criteria.

But improving on all three dimensions simultaneously is increasingly difficult because of tradeoffs between competing goals of efficiency, revenues, and equity.

Today’s long-term budget outlook means that we’re likely to need higher tax revenues in the future. And rising inequality means that changes in policy will be increasingly scrutinized for how they affect the progressivity of the tax schedule. But a tax reform that devotes revenues to deficit reduction and retains our progressive system would have much more difficulty achieving other goals—such as lowering tax rates.

In my testimony today, I want to describe some of these tradeoffs and some potential paths forward.

Tax Reform and the Budget

Much of the energy surrounding tax reform focuses on the model of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. In that reform, tax rates were lowered substantially and the lost revenue was restored by cutting tax breaks, deductions, exclusions, and other so-called tax expenditures. That reform enhanced economic efficiency without increasing the deficit. In the 27 years since then, however, the economic context has changed, making such a reform harder to achieve.¹

First, we face a dire long-run budget outlook; most believe that putting the budget on a sustainable path will require contributions from both spending cuts and revenue increases. Many hope that tax reform can help produce those revenues.

This makes tax reform more difficult because revenues allocated to deficit reduction are revenues that cannot be used to reduce rates, and vice versa.

Moreover, raising revenues and cutting rates at the same time is a tall order. At first glance, the list of tax expenditures is projected to add up to $1.4 trillion in 2015.² But that figure dramatically overstates the revenue gains that are available from cutting expenditures.

Some expenditures, including obscure items like imputed rent, would be difficult to eliminate for practical or administrative reasons; others, like credits and deductions for working families with children are integral to combating poverty and encouraging employment. These categories account for roughly one quarter of all tax expenditures.³ An additional one-third of the tax expenditures arise from the preferential treatment of savings and investment. And the largest non-savings-related expenditures include those for health insurance, mortgage interest, state and local taxes, and charitable contributions. These, and many others, tend to serve substantive goals, remain on the books because they were too difficult to eliminate in 1986, and, as you well know, are backed by popular constituencies.

In addition to political difficulties, there are basic practical issues to consider. Certain tax expenditures exist for the purposes of simplifying the tax system, to reduce record keeping, or to minimize the filing burden on taxpayers. Eliminating those provisions or scaling back others could make the system more complicated and onerous.

Because of such considerations, the Congressional Research Service warns that “it may prove difficult to gain more than $100 billion to $150 billion” each year from reducing tax expenditures.⁴ And those estimates are based on a 35 percent top rate; if marginal tax rates were reduced, eliminating a dollar’s worth of deductions would raise proportionately less revenue. In other words, if eliminating a dollar of mortgage interest today raised 39 cents, under a top rate of 25 percent, it would raise only 25 cents—37 percent less.

To put these numbers in perspective, in order to be revenue-neutral, the tax plan included in House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan’s budget would require eliminating roughly $450 billion worth of tax expenditures each year just to balance out the individual income tax rate cuts targeted in his plan.⁵ The plans initially developed by the Domenici–Rivlin Task Force and the Bowles–Simpson Commission, which reduce rates and contribute to deficit reduction, likely require reductions in tax expenditures of a similar or larger magnitude.

The gap between the reductions in tax expenditures required by such plans and those that could be agreed upon illustrates the challenge of formulating a plan that achieves both lower rates and higher revenues.

Tax Reform in a Progressive System

A second consideration is the issue of rising income inequality and its relationship to the tax code. Earnings have risen dramatically at the top—by more than 250 percent over the past 30 years for households in the top one percent of the income distribution. At the same time, many households at the middle and bottom have experienced stagnating or even declining earnings. Changes in the tax system over the past 30 years have exacerbated these problems; the very people who have received the biggest income gains in the past three decades have also seen the largest tax cuts. A progressive tax code is perhaps the most significant and powerful tool available to counteract income inequality. Indeed, there are increasing calls for policymakers to use the tax code for that purpose.

Such concerns were much less salient the last time we did tax reform. In 1986, the phenomenon of rising inequality had yet to be fully discovered or understood, and the technical expertise to measure how the tax system affected inequality had yet to be developed.

Today not only are concerns about the progressivity of the tax schedule heighted, but so is our ability to measure how tax changes affect different groups. That raises the level of scrutiny directed to reform and also reveals a substantive tradeoff: that any changes in rates and tax expenditures must balance out within income groups in order to retain a progressive tax structure.

In a series of papers, colleagues at the Tax Policy Center and I analyzed these tradeoffs by examining a hypothetical reform with the stated goals of maintaining tax revenues, lowering marginal tax rates, while at the same time ensuring a progressive tax system.⁶ We took as an example a plan that lowered the top rate from 35 to 28 percent and continued the low rates that apply to savings and investment. These rate reductions are roughly the same levels specified in earlier plans from Bowles–Simpson and Domenici–Rivlin, but are substantially smaller than those specified in Chairman Ryan’s plan. We asked what it would take to achieve other goals of revenue and progressivity.

In that analysis, we estimated the revenue losses due to lower rates, and then tried to pay for those revenue losses by eliminating tax expenditures. We assumed that certain tax expenditures were off the table because of the administrative difficulty of closing certain breaks; others were off the table because they provided preferential treatment for savings and investment.

Overall, the available tax breaks were enough to offset revenue losses from lower rates. But this resulting tax schedule, we found, was less progressive. Even when we implemented the most progressive way of reducing the remaining tax breaks, there was simply not enough revenue from these breaks in the top brackets to offset the revenue losses from lower marginal tax rates.

This result—that this sort of base-broadening reform led to a less progressive tax system—was true even when we incorporated revenue feedback, not just according to the standard dynamic effects used by Tax Policy Center, Treasury, and the Joint Committee on Taxation, but also additional feedback effects from optimistic estimates of potential economic growth, drawn from theoretical models.

The implication is that such a tax reform must give up on at least one of its stated goals: either higher-income taxpayers would receive a tax cut and middle- and lower-income taxpayers a tax increase; the deficit would go up; preferences for savings and investment would have to be reduced; or marginal tax rates would need to be higher.

Prospects for Reform

Of course, these considerations don’t rule out tax reform; indeed, many experts have put forward plans that provide more incremental reforms that simultaneously achieve efficiency gains, higher revenues, and a more progressive tax system. But such plans require substantial compromises.

For instance, certain plans proposed by the Domenici–Rivlin Task Force and the Bowles–Simpson Commission achieve their distributional goals by eliminating preferential rates for capital gains and dividends and curtailing other savings and investment-related tax breaks.

A host of other incremental reforms propose improving the efficiency of the tax system not by reducing rates but by reducing inefficient or wasteful tax expenditures. For example, deductions and exemptions—like for mortgage interest, that currently provide tax savings of up to 39.6 percent—could be replaced with flat credits of, say, 15 percent, providing continued support for homeowners but in a less-costly and more progressive way.⁷ An overall limit on the value of tax expenditures at 2 percent of income would provide an across-the-board reduction in costly tax expenditures.⁸ The President’s Budget includes a provision to limit the amount that certain tax deductions and preferences can reduce tax liability by to 28 percent. And at a meeting convened by the Hamilton Project last February, a bipartisan group of tax experts presented proposals to reduce benefits from the mortgage interest deduction, subsidies for fossil fuels, preferences for retirement savings, and the overall value of deductions.⁹ A common thread is that all of these proposals enhance economic efficiency, raise revenues, and increase progressivity.

Beyond economic appeal, proponents of this approach hope for political appeal. To paraphrase Harvard Professor Martin Feldstein: if Republicans want to reduce the deficit by cutting spending and Democrats want to increase revenues, by focusing on tax expenditures we should find a middle ground.¹⁰

1. For a further discussion see: Greenstone, Michael, Dmitri Koustas, Karen Li, Adam Looney, and Leslie B. Samuels. “A Dozen Economic Facts About Tax Reform,” The Hamilton Project (May 2012).

2 Marron, Donald B. “How Large are Tax Expenditures? A 2012 Update,” Tax Notes (April 9, 2012): 235.

3. For a description of these expenditures, see Nguyen, Hang, James Nunns, Eric Toder, and Roberton Williams. “How Hard Is It to Cut Tax Preferences to Pay for Lower Tax Rates?” Tax Policy Center (July 10, 2012): Table 1.

4. Gravelle, Jane G. and Thomas L. Hungerford. “The Challenge of Individual Income Tax Reform: An Economic Analysis of Tax Base Broadening,” Congressional Research Service (March 22, 2012): 3.

5. Tax Policy Center Table T13-0110

6. Brown, Samuel, William Gale, and Adam Looney. “On the Distributional Effects of Base-Broadening Income Tax Reform,” Tax Policy Center (August 1, 2012); Brown, Samuel, William Gale, and Adam Looney. “TPC’s Analysis of Governor Romney’s Tax Proposals: A Follow-Up Discussion,” Tax Policy Center (November 7, 2012); Marron, Donald. “Understanding TPC’s Analysis of Governor Romney’s Tax Plan,” Tax Vox (August 8, 2012); and Nguyen et al. (2012).

7. Batchelder, Lily L., Fred T. Goldberg, Jr., and Peter R. Orszag. “Reforming Tax Incentives into Uniform Refundable Tax Credits,” The Brookings Institution Policy Brief 156 (August 2006).

8. Feldstein, Martin, Daniel Feenberg, and Maya MacGuineas. “Capping Individual Tax Expenditure Benefits,” NBER Working Paper 16921 (April 2011)

9. See Alan Viard, “Replacing the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction,” Joseph E. Aldy, “Eliminating Fossil Fuel Subsidies,” Karen Dynan, “Better Ways to Promote Saving through the Tax System,” and Diane Lim “Limiting Individual Income Tax Expenditures” in 15 Ways to Rethink the Federal Budget, The Hamilton Project (February 2013).

10. Feldstein, Martin. “A Simple Route to Major Deficit Reduction,” The Wall Street Journal (February 20, 2013).

Authors

Adam Looney

Image Source: Chris Maddaloni

Banning Filibusters: Is Nuclear Winter Coming to the Senate this Summer?

Sarah A. Binder — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:04:00 -0400

It seems the Senate could have a really hot summer. Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has reportedly threatened to “go nuclear” this July—meaning that Senate Democrats would move by majority vote to ban filibusters of executive and judicial branch nominees. According to these reports, if Senate Republicans block three key nominations (Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Thomas Perez at Labor, and Gina McCarthy at EPA), Reid will call on the Democrats to invoke the nuclear option as a means of eliminating filibusters over nominees.

Jon Bernstein offered a thoughtful reaction to Reid’s gambit, noting that Reid’s challenge is to “find a way to ratchet up the threat of reform in order to push Republicans as far away from that line as possible.” Jon’s emphasis on Reid’s threat is important (and is worth reading in full). Still, I think it’s helpful to dig a little deeper on the role of both majority and minority party threats that arise over the nuclear option.

Before getting to Reid’s threat, two brief detours. First, a parliamentary detour to make plain two reasons why Reid’s procedural gambit is deemed “nuclear.” First, Democrats envision using a set of parliamentary moves that would allow the Senate to cut off debate on nominations by majority vote (rather than by sixty votes). Republicans (at least when they are in the minority) call this “changing the rules by breaking the rules,” because Senate rules formally require a 2/3rds vote to break a filibuster of a measure to change Senate rules. The nuclear option would avoid the formal process of securing a 2/3rds vote to cut off debate; instead, the Senate would set a new precedent by simple majority vote to exempt nominations from the reach of Rule 22. If Democrats circumvent formal rules, Republicans would deem the move nuclear. Second, Reid’s potential gambit would be considered nuclear because of the anticipated GOP reaction: As Sen. Schumer argued in 2005 when the GOP tried to go nuclear over judges, minority party senators would “blow up every bridge in sight.” The nuclear option is so-called on account of the minority’s anticipated parliamentary reaction (which would ramp up obstruction on everything else).

A second detour notes simply that the exact procedural steps that would have to be taken to set a new precedent to exempt nominations from Rule 22 have not yet been precisely spelled out. Over the years, several scenarios have been floated that give us a general outline of how the Senate could reform its cloture rule by majority vote. But a CRS report written in the heat of the failed GOP effort to go nuclear in 2005 points to the complications and uncertainties entailed in using a reform-by-ruling strategy to empower simple majorities to cut off debate on nominations. My sense is that using a nuclear option to restrict the reach of Rule 22 might not be as straight forward as many assume.

That gets us to the place of threats in reform-by-ruling strategies. The coverage of Reid’s intentions last week emphasized the importance of Reid’s threat to Republicans: Dare to cross the line by filibustering three particular executive branch nominees, and Democrats will go nuclear. But for Reid’s threat to be effective in convincing GOP senators to back down on these nominees, Republicans have to deem Reid’s threat credible. Republicans know that Reid refused by go nuclear last winter (and previously in January 2009), not least because a set of longer-serving Democrats opposed the strategy earlier this year. It would be reasonable for the GOP today to question whether Reid has 51 Democrats willing to ban judicial and executive branch nomination filibusters. If Republicans doubt Reid’s ability to detonate a nuclear device, then the threat won’t be much help in getting the GOP to back down. Of course, if Republicans don’t block all three nominees, observers will likely interpret the GOP’s behavior as a rational response to Reid’s threat. Eric Schickler and Greg Wawro in Filibuster suggest that the absence of reform on such occasions demonstrates that the nuclear option can “tame the minority.” Reid’s threat would have done the trick.

As a potentially nuclear Senate summer approaches, I would keep handy an alternative interpretation. Reid isn’t the only actor with a threat: given Republicans’ aggressive use of Rule 22, Republicans can credibly threaten to retaliate procedurally if the Democrats go nuclear. And that might be a far more credible threat than Reid’s. We know from the report on Reid’s nuclear thinking that “senior Democratic Senators have privately expressed worry to the Majority Leader that revisiting the rules could imperil the immigration push, and have asked him to delay it until after immigration reform is done (or is killed).” That tidbit suggests that Democrats consider the GOP threat to retaliate as a near certainty. In other words, if Republicans decide not to block all three nominees and Democrats don’t go nuclear, we might reasonably conclude that the minority’s threat to retaliate was pivotal to the outcome. As Steve Smith, Tony Madonna and I argued some time ago, the nuclear option might be technically feasible but not necessarily politically feasible.

To be sure, it’s hard to arbitrate between these two competing mechanisms that might underlie Senate politics this summer. In either scenario—the majority tames the minority or the minority scares the bejeezus out of the majority—the same outcome ensues: Nothing. Still, I think it’s important to keep these alternative interpretations at hand as Democrats call up these and other nominations this spring. The Senate is a tough nut to crack, not least when challenges to supermajority rule are in play.

Authors

Sarah A. Binder

Publication: The Monkey Cage

Image Source: © Joshua Roberts / Reuters

United Nations Global Education First Initiative's Youth Advocacy Group

Jenny Perlman Robinson — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:42:00 -0400

In September 2012 United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched a five-year education campaign, the Global Education First Initiative, to put every child in school, improve the quality of learning and foster global citizenship. To advise and support the implementation of the initiative, the Global Education First Initiative convened a Youth Advocacy Group of 15 young leaders from around the world. I sat down with two of the Youth Advocacy Group members, Joseph Munyambanza of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Anna Susarenco of Moldova, to discuss the group’s mandate and their personal commitment to education for all.

To see more videos about the Global Education First Initiative, please visit our YouTube page.

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The YAG Provides Grassroots Knowledge to Decision-makers On Improving Education

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Bringing Mentoring to the Refugee Camp

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Authors

Jenny Perlman Robinson

Shooting for a Century : The India-Pakistan Conundrum

Stephen P. Cohen — Fri, 24 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Brookings Institution Press 2013 275pp.

Synopsis:

Shooting for a Century is the first comprehensive survey of the deep historical, cultural, and strategic differences that make it probable that the India-Pakistan conflict will endure, despite many efforts by the international community to resolve it. Stephen Cohen develops a comprehensive theory of why the dispute is intractable and suggests ways in which it may be ameliorated. He draws on his rich and varied experiences in South Asia in exploring the character, depth, and origin of Indian and Pakistani attitudes toward each other. He proffers ways in which the tensions might be ameliorated, including a more active role for the United States on a range of issues that divide the nations.

The India-Pakistan rivalry is one of the five percent of international conflicts that have been labeled as intractable. The rivalry is one reason why South Asia remains the least-integrated region in the world, and despite recent steps toward normalization, the future could be as unpromising as the last sixty-five years. Can the two states resolve the many territorial and identity issues that divide them? Are there possibilities for their cooperation on one level, even if antagonisms remain? Should normalization from the bottom up be encouraged, or do they have to agree on resolving strategic conflicts first? Stephen Cohen provides an authoritative and instructive examination of these and similarly important topics in Shooting for a Century.

In the past fifteen years the stakes have become higher for both countries: each has acquired nuclear weapons and had multiple crises, and Pakistan has shown signs of failure. Ironically, as Cohen explains in Shooting for a Century, India is booming, but the time for normalization may not have come yet, and there are groups on both sides that would oppose it.

Praise for the work of Stephen P. Cohen:

"Stephen P. Cohen is America's most seasoned expert on Pakistan. . . .The Idea of Pakistan is impressive in its breadth and scope."—Foreign Affairs

"Stephen Cohen's India: Emerging Power is an objective, lucid, and incisive analysis of India's emerging role in the global village."—Dawn

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen P. Cohen

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{CD2E3D28-0096-4D03-B2DE-6567EB62AD1E}, 978-0-8157-2186-4, $29.95 Order

A Global Overview of the Growing Internal Displacement Crisis

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 24, 2013
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT

Saul/Zilkha Rooms
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

2012 saw the highest rates of internal displacement on record, with 28.8 million people around the world displaced within their own countries by armed conflict, human rights violations and violence. This is an increase of 2.4 million people over the number displaced in 2011. This rise was partially due to high-profile conflicts in countries such as Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo which had severe humanitarian consequences. People newly displaced in 2012 joined the millions who have been waiting for durable solutions to their situation for years, sometimes decades.

On May 24, the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) presented the findings of IDMC’s Global Overview 2012, which surveys the internal displacement situation in different countries around the world and analyzes the main causes that lead to the continued displacement of millions of men, women and children. Panelists discussed directions for more effective responses to this growing, but unmet crisis and explore the role of governments, civil society and the international community at large in ensuring protection, assistance and ultimately solutions for those caught in displacement. Panelists included: Joel Charny, vice president for humanitarian policy and practice for InterAction; Nancy Lindborg, assistant administrator for the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance at USAID; Elizabeth Hopkins, deputy assistant secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration at the U.S. Department of State; and Frank Smith, head of department, Middle East, Europe, Caucasus, and Asia, IDMC. Senior Fellow Elizabeth Ferris, co-director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement, provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion.

Audio

A Global Overview of the Growing Internal Displacement Crisis

The 100th Anniversary of the 17th Amendment (Direct Election of Senators): A Promise Unfulfilled?

Wendy J. Schiller and Charles Stewart III — Fri, 24 May 2013 13:58:00 -0400

Editor's Note: This paper on the 100th annivesary of the adoption of the 17th Amendment is published by Governance Studies at Brookings and is Number 59 in the Issues in Governance Studies series.

May 31^st, 2013 marks the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the 17^th Amendment, which ushered in direct elections of U.S. senators. The Framers established indirect elections – by state legislators – as a means of shielding the U.S. Senate from public influence and as such, allowed it to act as a counterweight to the directly elected House of Representatives. The impetus for changing the Constitution lay in the perceived corruption and inefficiency that marked indirect elections, and the 17^th Amendment was part of the larger Progressive movement that called for more open, accessible, and responsive government. At the same time, states instituted direct primaries for federal and state offices, which presumably gave more power to the voters and less power to party elites. This paper is based on a larger project which investigates the dynamics of Senate elections in the indirect system using an original data set of roll call votes for U.S. senator taken in all state legislatures from 1871-1913. Wendy J. Schiller and Charles Stewart III find that while U.S. Senate elections in the indirect age were more conflicted than previously believed, there are strong parallels to today’s Senate in terms of the types of candidates that run for Senate, the role of money in elections, the role of partisan elections, and the nature of Senate ideological and legislative behavior. More broadly, Schiller and Stewart suggest that the 17^th Amendment has failed to deliver on its promise, and has produced a Senate that is even less responsive to voters than it was under the indirect election system.

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Authors

Wendy J. Schiller
Charles Stewart III

David Dreier, Longtime Chairman of the House Rules Committee, Joins Brookings as Distinguished Fellow

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:17:00 -0400

Washington, D.C. — David Dreier, chairman of the Annenberg-Dreier Commission, and longtime chairman of the Rules Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, has joined the Brookings Institution as a distinguished fellow, Brookings President Strobe Talbott announced today.

At Brookings, Dreier will participate in a wide range of events, activities, research projects and conferences.

The Annenberg-Dreier Commission at Sunnylands was launched in February. Dreier brought to Sunnylands a high-profile focus on the greater Pacific, and the political and commercial relations transforming it. The commission will work on concrete steps to advance the free flow of goods, services, capital, ideas and people throughout the region.

“We are honored to welcome Congressman Dreier to Brookings,” said Talbott. “For more than three decades, David has been a leader in Congress and we look forward to drawing on his expertise across a wide range of policy areas, notably including advancing international trade, and strengthening democratic institutions at home and around the world.”

Dreier was first elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1980, where he served until January 2013. In Congress, he served as the youngest—and the first from California—chairman of the Rules Committee, playing a pivotal role in fashioning all legislation for debate in the House. He authored the 1995 congressional reform package that streamlined committee structure, promoted fiscal responsibility, created term limits for committee chairmen and opened committee meetings to the public and press. In 2006, he authored legislation to reform lobbying and ethics laws. Dreier is a longtime advocate of open commerce as an engine of growth and opportunity. During his tenure in Congress, he was a strong ally of both Democratic and Republican administrations in support of passage of free trade agreements.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the board of the International Republican Institute. Dreier is the founding chairman of the bipartisan House Democracy Partnership, which works directly with legislatures in 17 countries around the globe, helping to build institutions in new and re-emerging democracies. Additionally, he was the founding chair of the Congressional Trade Working Group that has built support for trade agreements for more than twenty years.

Dreier received his B.A. from Claremont McKenna College in 1975 and his M.A. in American government from Claremont Graduate University the following year.

Brookings’s distinguished fellows are individuals of particularly noteworthy distinction whose work across several fields of public policy puts them at the pinnacle of worldwide research and policy impact. Distinguished fellows are actively engaged in the life of the Institution, often with more than one of Brookings’s five research programs. In assuming the title, Congressman Dreier joins Jean-David Levitte, former French ambassador to the United States; Sadako Ogata, former president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and United Nations high commissioner for refugees; Jon Huntsman, former ambassador to China and Singapore and governor of Utah; Donna Shalala, president of the University of Miami and former U.S. secretary of health and human services; Itamar Rabinovich, an Israeli diplomat, scholar, and university president; Ed Rendell, former governor of Pennsylvania; Thomas Pickering, a career U.S. ambassador and former under secretary of state for political affairs; and Javier Solana, former secretary general of NATO and the European Union’s high representative for foreign and security policy.

Beyond the Arab Awakening: A Strategic Assessment of the Middle East

Thu, 23 May 2013 17:29:00 -0400

On August 28-29, 2012, the Saban Center at Brookings and the United States Central Command brought together analysts, officers, and policymakers to discuss the new and enduring challenges facing the United States in the Middle East.

The conference, Beyond the Arab Awakening: A Strategic Assessment of the Middle East, explored security developments in key countries of the region, focusing on those issues where the risks and opportunities for the United States are the greatest.

General James N. Mattis, then CENTCOM’s commander, delivered opening remarks, and the Honorable Michèle Flournoy, formerly the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, deliver a keynote address. The conference also featured experts from the Middle East as well as senior American analysts and officials. Together, the speakers and conference participants offered insights that went well beyond conventional Washington wisdom and provided valuable lessons and ideas for the U.S. military and policy community.

The proceedings from this conference include summaries of the sessions and the full text of Dr. Flournoy’s keynote address.

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Beyond the Arab Awakening: A Strategic Assessment of the Middle East

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The Future of Transatlantic Trade and Investment: Opportunities and Challenges

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:30:00 -0400

Event Information

May 23, 2013
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

On May 23, the Center on the U.S. and Europe (CUSE) and Global Economy and Development at Brookings, with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, hosted German Vice-Chancellor Philipp Rösler for an address on the prospects for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). In his remarks, Dr. Rösler explored the direction of EU-U.S. negotiations on TTIP and the current state of transatlantic economic relations in an increasingly globalized world.

From 2001 until 2003, Dr. Philipp Rösler worked as a doctor and medical officer of the Federal Armed Forces. In 2003, Dr. Rösler was elected to the state parliament of Lower Saxony and remained a member of this parliament and chairman of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) state parliamentary group until 2009. At the beginning of 2009, he was appointed minister of Economics, Labor and Transport and deputy minister-president of the State of Lower Saxony. In October 2009 he joined the federal government as federal minister of Health. He has been federal minister of Economics and Technology, federal chairman of the FDP and vice-chancellor since May 2011.

Senior Fellow and CUSE Director Fiona Hill provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion.

Lessons from America’s First War with Iran

Bruce Riedel — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:35:00 -0400

President Barack Obama has committed the United States to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran seems determined to acquire them. As the United States and Iran approach confrontation and possible war to halt Tehran’s nuclear program, it is useful to remember that America has already fought one war with the Islamic Republic of Iran. During the late 1980s, President Ronald Reagan intervened in the Iran- Iraq War in support of Baghdad and Saddam Hussein, ultimately leading to an Iraqi victory. The United States engaged in an undeclared yet bloody naval and air war, while Iraq fought a brutal land war against Iran. The lessons of the first war with Iran should be carefully considered before the United States embarks hastily on a second.

In hindsight, the central lesson of the war in the 1980s is that it is easy to start a conflict with Iran and very difficult to end it. The Islamic Republic of Iran is not easy to intimidate and is likely to retaliate asymmetrically. Another key lesson is to beware the advice of your allies, both Arabs and Israelis, who are prone to give irresponsible recommendations on how to deal with Tehran.

The Toll of the Iran-Iraq War

The Iran-Iraq War was devastating. It was one of the largest and longest conventional interstate wars since the Korean War ended in 1953. A half million lives were lost, and perhaps another million were injured. The economic cost of the war exceeded one trillion dollars.1 Yet, the battle lines at the end of the war were almost exactly where they had been at the beginning of hostilities. It was also the only war in modern times in which chemical weapons were used on a massive scale.

Although the war ended in 1988, it led to numerous aftershocks that rippled throughout the region including the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the liberation of Kuwait a year later, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The bloody U.S. war that President Obama recently ended in Iraq was the finale in this march of folly. The seeds of multigenerational tragedy were planted in the Iran-Iraq War. The world will live with its consequences for decades, if not longer.

There were no “good guys” in the Iran-Iraq War, only two brutal dictatorships. Saddam Hussein was a megalomaniac who built enormous, ugly monuments to his ambitions and dreamed of becoming the dominant power in the Persian Gulf, controlling the world’s oil supplies, and destroying Israel. At the end of the first Gulf War in 1988, Hussein waged genocide against his own Kurdish population. Ayatollah Khomeini created a theocracy in Iran which imprisoned and executed thousands of its own citizens, forced tens of thousands into exile, and even took American diplomats hostage.

U.S. Policy During the War

America had no natural partners in the Iran-Iraq War, but its interests dictated that the United States allow neither Saddam nor Khomeini to dominate the region and the world’s energy supply. For most of the war, it was Iran that appeared on the verge of victory, so Washington had little choice but to support Iraq.

For those who aspire to a national security policy built on the principles of the United Nations Charter or a moral high ground, Iran-Iraq was an immoral swamp. For American policymakers in the 1980s, there was a simple difference. When the war began, Iran held dozens of American diplomats hostage and even tortured some. Only after 444 days in captivity did Iran let the American hostages go. In contrast to Khomeini, many Americans hoped that the Iraqi leader was somehow redeemable and could be worked with as a difficult but manageable partner. We realize now that this was a mirage, but in the 1980s it was still a hope. Thus, America tilted toward Iraq, hoping it would hold back the “medieval fanatics” to the east from gaining control of the world’s oil reserves.

But “our side” kept breaking the rules. First, Iraq was the aggressor in September 1980. Certainly Iraq had been provoked by Iranian actions along the border, but the main act of aggression was carried out by the Iraqi army in the form of a massive attack. As long as Iraq held Iranian territory, Washington did not call for the restoration of the status quo ante as would be the norm for most international conflicts; only when the tables turned did the United States call for respect for the international border. Then Iraq began using chemical weapons—first, in a piecemeal and largely ineffectual fashion, but by the war’s end, on an industrial scale and with decisive effect. The threat of Iraqi chemical warheads on long range missiles cleared Tehran of many of its inhabitants in 1988, and Saddam began using chemical warheads to systematically kill his own people. Rather than fall silent, the guns of war merely changed theaters with the 1988 cease-fire, as the Anfal campaign against the Iraqi Kurds began, an act of pure genocide by the government that the United States had supported during the war.

The conflict was not President Ronald Reagan’s finest hour. At first he tilted toward Iraq, sending the CIA to Baghdad with critical intelligence in 1982 to thwart Iran’s war plans. It worked. Then Reagan tilted toward Iran, sending sophisticated arms to Tehran in an effort to get American hostages in Lebanon freed. It didn’t work. A few hostages were released but more hostages were taken. Then Reagan tilted back toward Iraq and Washington’s undeclared war followed in 1987 and 1988. The principal architect of the policy was Reagan’s Director of Central Intelligence, Bill Casey, who died before the Iran scandal forced his resignation and possible indictment.

Lessons for Today

So what are the lessons of this war for America today? The first lesson is that we should expect to be blamed for all that goes wrong. Both Iraqis and Iranians came to believe the United States was manipulating each of them during the war. Ironically, and perhaps naively, the United States tried to reach out to both belligerents through the course of the war— in great secrecy both times—to try to build a strategic partnership. The disastrous arms-for-hostages policy, which came to be known as the Iran- Contra affair, convinced Iraqis rightly that the United States was trying to play both sides of the conflict. The result was that when the war ended, the Iraqi regime and most Iraqis regarded the United States as a threat, despite Washington’s support during the war. That support had taken the form of critical intelligence assistance to Baghdad, considerable diplomatic cover, and largesse from our Arab allies who loaned tens of billions of dollars to Baghdad to sustain Iraq’s war effort.

Iranians call the war the “Imposed War” because they believe the United States subjected them to the conflict and orchestrated the global “tilt” toward Iraq. They note that the United Nations did not condemn Iraq for starting the war. In fact, the UN did not even discuss the war for weeks after it started, and it ultimately considered Iraq to be the aggressor only years later, as part of a deal orchestrated by President George H.W. Bush to free the remaining U.S. hostages held by pro-Iranian terrorists in Lebanon.

Although the war had tragic consequences for Iran, by portraying the conflict as a “David and Goliath” struggle imposed by the United States and its allies, Iranian leaders managed to consolidate the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The Revolution was fairly short in duration and its cost was miniscule in comparison to the Iran-Iraq War. For the generation of Iranians who are now leading their country, including men like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the war was the defining event of their lives and a major force in shaping their worldview. Their anti-Americanism and deep suspicion of the West can be traced directly to their understanding of the Iran-Iraq War. We should thus expect the next war to make Iran more extreme and more determined to get the bomb.

Another lesson of the first war is that Iran will not be easily intimidated by the United States. By 1987, Iran was devastated by the war, many of its cities had been destroyed, its oil exports were minimal. and its economy was shattered. But it did not hesitate to fight the U.S. Navy in the Gulf and to use asymmetric means to retaliate in Lebanon and elsewhere. Even with most of its navy sunk by U.S. Naval forces, Iran kept fighting and the Iranian people continued rallying behind Ayatollah Khomeini.

Iran fought a smart war, avoiding too rapid and too dangerous an escalation. As General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, has noted, Iranian behavior is rational, not suicidal.2 Iran will not take steps that endanger the revolution’s survival; the country will look to exploit America’s vulnerabilities in Afghanistan and Bahrain, as well as Israel’s in Lebanon and the Saudis’ in Yemen. In the 1980s, Iran created Hezbollah in Lebanon to attack American, French, and Israeli targets as punishment for American support of Iraq. Hezbollah then tried to assassinate the emir of Kuwait to punish that country for being Iraq’s outlet to the Persian Gulf. In essence, Iran expanded the battlefield of the Iran-Iraq War to other countries where it could exploit security vulnerabilities. We should expect the same in a future war, one for which Iran and Hezbollah have had decades to prepare. Indeed, Iran and Hezbollah are already waging a low intensity terror campaign against Israel from Bulgaria to India, and they have reportedly used cyber warfare against Saudi and Qatari oil companies.3

Another lesson is that ending a future war will be a challenge. In 1988, Iran sued for a cease-fire only after suffering catastrophic defeat on the ground against Iraqi forces and after Saddam Hussein threatened to fire Scud missiles armed with chemical warheads into Iranian cities.4 Iranians feared they would face a second “Hiroshima” if they did not accept a truce; indeed many evacuated Tehran in fear of an Iraqi chemical attack. For Khomeini, accepting the truce was like “drinking poison.”5 No two wars are identical, but history suggests that Iran will not back down easily.

The final lesson is to always scrutinize the advice of allies. Ironically, in the 1980s the closest U.S. partner in the region, Israel, pressed Washington hard and repeatedly to essentially switch sides and offer assistance to Iran. Israeli leaders, generals, and spies were obsessed by the Iraqi threat in the 1980s just as they are preoccupied by the Iranian threat today, and they longed to restore the cozy relationship they had with the Shah in the 1960s and 1970s. Through the Iraq-Iran War, Israel was the only consistent source of spare parts for the Iranian air force’s U.S.-made jets.6 Israeli leaders, notably Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, brought considerable pressure to bear on Washington for an American engagement with Tehran, and Iran-Contra was in many ways their idea. American diplomats and spies deployed abroad were told to turn a blind eye to Israeli arms deals with Tehran, even when it was official U.S. policy (in the Washington euphemism of the day) to “staunch” all avenues by which the Iranians might obtain weapons or other material needed for their war effort.7

America’s Arab allies provided equally bad advice. Egypt’s President Mubarak, Jordan’s King Hussein, and Saudi King Fahd all urged support for Saddam and Iraq, while turning a blind eye to Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against his own people. Egypt sent arms, Jordan sent volunteers, and the Saudis bankrolled Saddam’s war, while telling America that he was a born-again moderate who could be worked with and trusted. It was not to be.

Looking back a quarter century after the war in 1988 is revealing and sobering. America accomplished its immediate goals in the first war: it halted Iran’s advance into Iraq, defended the tankers in the Gulf, and contained the war from spreading into the Arabian Peninsula. Khomeini did not conquer Basra and Baghdad and march on Jerusalem as he dreamed he would. But today, Iran is the dominant foreign power in Baghdad, thanks in large part to another war America fought in the Gulf. President George W. Bush toppled Saddam and ended his brutal dictatorship, but in doing so, Bush opened the door to a Shia majority government which is much friendlier to Tehran than to Riyadh or Amman, or Washington. These are sobering reminders of the unintended consequences of wars.

The first American war with Iran helped make Iran a more radical and extreme country. A second war may well do the same. Thus another war with Iran to stop its nuclear program may ultimately prove to be the catalyst that pushes Iran to acquire a dangerous nuclear weapons arsenal. Rather than stopping proliferation, it could incite it further.

History of course does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Lessons of old wars should be carefully considered before entering new ones. Many Americans have forgotten the lessons of our undeclared war in the 1980s. We have fought so many other wars since: in Iraq (twice), in Afghanistan, and in Libya. While it may be easy for Washington to forget, no Iranian has.

This article was originally published by The Fletcher Forum.

Endnotes
1 Janet Lang et al, Becoming Enemies: U.S.-Iran Relations and the Iran-Iraq War, 1979-1988 (Plymouth, Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), ix.
2 Fareed Zakaria, “Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: We are of the opinion that the Iranian regime is a ‘rational actor,’” CNN Pressroom, February 21, 2012.
3 Nicole Perlroth, “In Cyberattack on Saudi firm, U.S. sees Iran firing back,” New York Times, October 23, 2012.
4 Lang, 169.
5 Lang, 196.
6 Lang, 89.
7 Lang, 90.

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The Fletcher Forum

Image Source: © Morteza Nikoubazl / Reuters

Politics, Higher Education and Health Care in the Austerity Era

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 22, 2013
9:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Register for the Event
The A. Alfred Taubman Forum on Public Policy

Since the onset of the Great Recession, public discussion has centered on whether spending or austerity is the best path to economic recovery. As evidenced by the sequestration, recurring debt ceiling fights and the ongoing euro crisis, clear policy prescriptions to kickstart anemic economies remain elusive. Often lost in the public discussion surrounding government budgets, though, is consideration of austerity’s implications for national politics and how policy is enacted and implemented. How has the debate surrounding spending versus budget-cutting shaped the political conversation in the United States? What has been austerity’s impact on the policymaking process?

On May 22, the Governance Studies program at Brookings will host a half-day forum centered on the changed political and policy conversations in the austerity age. The fourth annual A. Alfred Taubman Forum on Public Policy will convene leaders from academia, the media, government, and business to explore the far-reaching implications of austerity reform and philosophy on the American political landscape and today’s most pressing policy challenges, specifically in the areas of higher education and health care.

After each panel, participants will take audience questions.

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Politics, Higher Education and Health Care in the Austerity Era

Building New Democracies: Institutional Reform after the Arab Spring

Wed, 22 May 2013 01:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 22, 2013
9:00 AM - 11:00 AM AST

Doha Ritz Carlton, Doha, Qatar

On May 23, 2013, the Brookings Doha Center (BDC) hosted a plenary discussion on the challenge of institutional reform after the Arab Spring as part of the 13th Doha Forum. Speakers discussed how the countries of the Arab Spring could build new, representative governments, as well as how they could best balance demands for change with the requirements of an inclusive and successful transition. The discussion featured Ambassador Nabil Fahmy, former Egyptian Ambassador to the United States and founding Dean of the American University in Cairo’s School of Public Affairs; Dr. Rafiq Abdessalam, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Tunisia; Dr. Bernardino Leon, European Union Special Representative for the Southern Mediterranean; Nikolay Mladenov, former Foreign Minister of Bulgaria; and Michael Posner, former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. The discussion was moderated by BDC Director Salman Shaikh.

The panel opened with speakers taking stock of the situation of the countries of the Arab Spring, and Egypt and Tunisia in particular, more than two years after 2011’s revolutionary wave. Both Fahmy and Abdessalam pointed to the challenges their countries faced. “It’s impossible to deny that almost everybody [in Egypt] is frustrated at this point,” Fahmy said. He told the audience that he remained optimistic over the long term but was, over the short term, “quite disturbed.” For his part, Abdessalam acknowledged that Tunisia’s transition had been difficult. At this point, he said, the goal of the Tunisian “Troika” was to steer the country through this period “at the least possible cost” with an approach based on partnership and consensus.

These challenges reflected the scope of the change underway in these countries. Fahmy asserted that what is happening in Egypt is a “societal” transition, not merely an institutional one – an argument that Abdessalam seconded. Egyptians, Fahmy said, are now defining an Egyptian political identity for the 21st century. Mladenov identified this as a key point of difference between earlier transitions in Central and Eastern Europe and those in the Arab world: whereas the end goal in European transitions may have been relatively clear, in the Arab world it is still in the making.

In order to best conduct this societal dialogue, Mladenov emphasized the “roundtable” approach Bulgaria had taken to arrive at a consensus vision for the future. This had parallels with the Tunisian approach, which Abdessalam said was based on a recognition that no single faction could bear these burdens alone. Fahmy, meanwhile, expressed unhappiness that Egypt had entered the political process before setting its constitutional ground rules, a decision he blamed for Egypt’s polarization. When politics are put first, he said, political forces “pull you apart rather than push you forward.” Posner was also critical of the Egyptian case, and in particular what he saw as a “very flawed” constitution – both the drafting process and the resulting document.

Participants worked to put forward an approach that was forward-looking but also workable. Leon laid out the key points on which he had counseled these transitioning countries. He advocated a transition that held accountable those responsible for excesses and dramatically reformed fiscal structures and the security services. At the same time, he argued for retaining the personnel and institutions of the state and broadly accommodating officials not implicated in crimes as part of the former regime. Fahmy warned that by too-aggressively dismantling everything that had come before the revolution, you risked “destroy[ing] the core of the country,” while Mladenov cautioned against not going far enough – he said that old regimes “have a tendency to come back from the ashes.” Leon read the successes of al-Nahda in Tunisia and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt as evidence of a desire for change – but said that support for Ahmed Shafiq in Egypt’s presidential election and Beji Caid Essebsi in Tunisia showed the need for a process that was respectful to and inclusive of all parties.

Any solution, of course, has to match up with the aspirations of the peoples who overthrew their dictators. As Posner put it, these are “young societies” whose people want economic opportunity and a political stake in the future of their countries. Fahmy argued that people need to see real progress on reform and improving their quality of life if they are to remain committed to the transition.

Participants touched on different ways that the West could support these transitions and reform processes. Mladenov raised as examples both European efforts to assist political party formation and the EU Endowment for Democracy. Still, Leon said that it is “very important to listen to what these societies want.” Posner and Mladenov agreed that any process had to be domestically driven, given the particularities of any given country case; looking at examples as diverse as Argentina, Serbia, and East Germany, they rejected a one-size-fits-all model.

In a discussion of the Gulf role in supporting these transitions, Abdessalam praised Qatar’s role but condemned some other Gulf states’ fear of change and “pessimistic depiction” of what is now going on in Egypt and Tunisia. Fahmy said that the Gulf should continue to provide support for these transitions, but not for one party over another. Posner, for his part, was sharply critical of the Gulf states’ position on the uprising in Bahrain. Bahrain should have been a model for a managed transition to a constitutional monarchy, he said, but instead the Gulf had been silent as the Bahraini government declined to implement key recommendations of the “Bassiouni Report.” Mladenov and Leon, on the other hand, were much more positive about the support of the Gulf for the Arab transitions and the Gulf countries’ role as a partner for the West. Mladenov did warn, however, that the Gulf faced possible blowback from its involvement in the Syrian conflict.

Dr. Yassin Said Noaman, Secretary-General of the Yemen Socialist Party and former Prime Minister of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, had been meant to represent the Yemeni experience in the discussion but was ultimately unable to attend. Fortunately, Yemeni Minister of Information Abu Bakr al-Qirbi and Minister of Industry and Trade Saad al-Din bin Taleb were able to contribute during the panel’s question-and-answer session. They discussed the progress on and hopes for Yemen’s national dialogue and, in the case of bin Taleb, highlighted how previous regimes’ corruption and self-serving contracts had left their countries with an unsustainable economic burden.

Participants

Moderator

Salman Shaikh

Director, Brookings Doha Center
Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

Panelists

Ambassador Nabil Fahmy

Options for Reducing Nuclear Arms

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 22, 2013
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT

Saul/Zilkha Rooms
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Recent visits to Moscow by National Security Advisor Tom Donilon and Secretary of State John Kerry appear to have injected a more positive tone to U.S.-Russian relations, as Washington and Moscow prepare for meetings between Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin in June and September. Further nuclear arms reductions beyond those mandated by the New START Treaty, now in its third year of implementation, appear to figure high on the U.S. agenda. What sort of additional nuclear reductions, if any, should the United States now pursue?

On May 22, the Arms Control Initiative at Brookings hosted a discussion to explore the possibilities for further nuclear reductions, looking at the spectrum of possibilities. Brookings Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon moderated a discussion with Global Zero Co-Founder Bruce Blair, National Institute for Public Policy President Keith Payne and Brookings Senior Fellow Steven Pifer, co-author with O’Hanlon of the recent Brookings Focus Book, The Opportunity: Next Steps in Reducing Nuclear Arms (Brookings Press, 2012).

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Options for Reducing Nuclear Arms

Transcript

Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

20130522_reducing_nuclear_arms_transcript

Challenges and Opportunities: Aviation Emissions and the European Cap and Trade System

Joshua Meltzer — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:42:00 -0400

Editor's Note: This article was originally published in the Winter/Spring 2013 edition of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs: The Future of Energy.

On January 1, 2012, the European Union extended its cap and trade system, the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), to include CO2 emissions from all airlines arriving in and departing from EU airspace. The EU has claimed that this unilateral action was in response to the slow progress towards reaching a global deal. However, the EU remains committed to reaching a global solution to the problem of aviation emissions and hopes that including international aviation in the ETS will spur action.

These additions to the ETS led the EU to take positions on a number of important policy issues that remain unresolved in the international climate change negotiations. These include issues such as how to attribute CO2 emissions from aviation to countries and how to operationalize the environmental principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) – the notion that developed countries will do more to reduce their CO2 emissions than developing countries. Moreover, as many of these issues are also applicable to the broader UN climate change negotiations, the success or failure of the ETS approach to international aviation could affect progress in the wider climate change negotiations.

This article outlines how the EU has designed its system to address these challenges. It also provides an overview of the challenges to reaching a global deal on regulating CO2 emissions from international aviation. The final part of the paper considers the current state of international negotiations over avia- tion emissions and suggests pathways forward.

Read the full article »

Authors

Joshua Meltzer

Publication: Georgetown Journal of International Affairs

Image Source: © Darren Staples / Reuters

How Arab Public Opinion Is Reshaping the Middle East

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 21, 2013
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

The Arab awakening that began in 2011 is transforming the Middle East in ways that continue to surprise seasoned observers. As new political leaders and movements struggle for power and work to shape the region’s future, one thing is clear: public opinion is more consequential now than it has arguably ever been. How Arabs view themselves and the world around them will have enormous consequences for the region and the larger international community in the years ahead. How are changes in Arab public opinion shaping the changes occurring across the region? Have the U.S. and its allies done enough to understand and support the voices of Arabs seeking greater representation and opportunity?

On May 21, the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, as part of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, hosted the launch of The World Through Arab Eyes: Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East (Basic Books, 2013), the latest book by Nonresident Senior Fellow Shibley Telhami. Kim Ghattas, BBC’s State Department correspondent, engaged Dr. Telhami in a discussion of the book and the issues it raises. Martin Indyk, vice president and director of Foreign Policy at Brookings, provided introductory remarks.

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How Arab Public Opinion Is Reshaping the Middle East

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20130521_arab_public_opinion_transcript

Q&A: Legal Marijuana in Colorado and Washington

John Walsh — Tue, 21 May 2013 09:08:00 -0400

Editor's Note: As a part of our work on the legalization of marijuana, this paper is published in partnership by Governance Studies at Brookings and the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). It is edited by John Walsh, with contributions from Mark Kleiman [i] and BOTEC Analysis [ii].

Last November, Colorado and Washington voters approved ballot initiatives to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana—decisions that put them at odds with federal law, which continues to ban marijuana. The states are moving ahead with implementation of their unprecedented laws in the face of uncertainty regarding the response of the federal government. What exactly have the states voted to do? Given current federal law, how might the Obama administration respond? What are the trends in U.S. public opinion on marijuana policy?

1. What are the key features of the initiatives that Colorado and Washington Voters approved?

Both states legalized marijuana possession for personal use by adults ages 21 and older. Colorado, but not Washington, also legalized production for personal use (though Washington residents with medical recommendations may also grow their own marijuana). Both states will create systems of legal production and sale, subject to licensing, regulation and taxation. For those younger than 21, all aspects of marijuana use, possession and sale will remain illegal.

2. What are the major similarities and differences between the Colorado and Washington laws to legalize and regulate marijuana?

Washington and Colorado took identical approaches to possession and age limits: adults 21 and older can possess up to one ounce at any time, normally a misdemeanor charge. The states also appear likely to adopt the same DUI policy, restricting driving with blood THC concentrations higher than 5 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL). The Colorado laws are more liberal in that they allow unlicensed production for personal use (up to three maturing plants at a time) and non-commercial transactions up to one ounce.

The states’ laws share similar taxation structures, with modestly heavier taxes in Washington. Washington levies between two and three 25 percent excise taxes within the supply chain, depending on industry structure, yielding a total tax burden likely somewhere between 30 and 40 percent, plus sales tax. Colorado has enacted a 15 percent excise tax on unprocessed product and a 10 percent sales tax, for an approximate effective tax rate between 15 and 25 percent. The precise effective tax rates will vary based on the price of unprocessed marijuana relative to the total retail price, and with varying local sales taxes.

The laws impose different industry structures and build on their existing medical systems in different ways. In Washington, vertical integration across production and sale (i.e., a single entity producing and selling) is forbidden, and thus far no special allowances to current medical marijuana operators have been announced. In Colorado, the new legal structure is more consistent with its existing, vertically integrated medical market. Vertical integration will be required for commercial marijuana industries in Colorado until October 2014, when stand-alone producers and retailers will be allowed. Pre-existing medical marijuana operators in Colorado will also be given exclusive rights to licenses for the first three months.

3. What is the timetable for implementing the new laws?

Washington’s Initiative 502 requires rules to be in place by December 1, 2013. The current timeline calls for the state’s Liquor Control Board to publish draft regulations in mid-June, begin to accept and review license applications in August, and begin to issue licenses by December 1.

Colorado’s Amendment 64 requires the state’s Department of Revenue to adopt all necessary regulations by July 1, 2013, and to begin accepting and processing license applications on October 1, 2013. Current plans call for commercial retail sales by early 2014.

4. Who is responsible for overseeing implementation?

The commercial market in Washington State is to be supervised by the Washington State Liquor Control Board. No state agency regulates production and distribution under the state’s medical marijuana law; there are proposals for giving the Liquor Control Board such authority.

Colorado’s law vests authority to regulate the commercial market in the newly created Marijuana Enforcement Division of the Department of Revenue; the Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division was already regulating that part of the market.

5. What is federal law regarding the cultivation, distribution, possession and use of marijuana?

The Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of 1970 makes marijuana a Schedule I substance. Cultivation and distribution (which includes gift as well as sale) are felonies; possession for personal use is a misdemeanor. Use is not itself a crime, but there is no way to use marijuana without possessing it first, and possession of “paraphernalia” is also illegal. Cultivating marijuana 100 plants or more carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years under federal law.

6. What has the Obama administration said about the new state laws?

The Administration has yet to announce a clear policy on the new laws. President Obama, in a December 2012 TV interview with Barbara Walters, acknowledged that the voters of Washington and Colorado had spoken on the issue, that it “does not make sense” for federal enforcement to prioritize recreational drug users in states where use is legal under state law, and that there is a need for “a conversation” about reconciling state and federal law. At the same time, he pointed out that the federal law remains in effect and that the executive branch has the responsibility to enforce the laws.

The Department of Justice (including the Drug Enforcement Administration) has made it clear that the provisions of the CSA covering marijuana remain in force, with Attorney General Eric Holder expressing particular concern about the potential effects of the new state laws on marijuana use by minors. The Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has expressed continued opposition to marijuana legalization. Negotiations are reportedly taking place between federal officials and Colorado and Washington state officials.

During a March 2013 Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, Attorney General Holder, in response to Senator Patrick Leahy’s questions about the new state laws, promised to announce a formal policy toward state marijuana legalization “relatively soon.”

7. What authority does the federal government have with respect to the new state laws?

The federal government maintains the power to enforce federal law; however, it cannot compel states to assist in enforcing that law, and the states have no obligation to forbid the same drugs that the federal government forbids. The practical capacity of the federal government to suppress marijuana production and sale without cooperation from the states and localities is open to question, since more than 95 percent of marijuana-law arrests are made by state and local police rather than federal drug enforcement agents.

However, the systems of licensed, regulated, and taxed production and sale created by the Washington and Colorado laws are more vulnerable to federal control than the purely illicit markets, simply because participants in the legal markets are required to identify themselves by applying for state licenses. Federal law enforcement authorities have a variety of criminal and civil tools to deploy against the relatively small number of entities that will ultimately receive licenses to produce or sell marijuana.

By contrast, federal officials lack the resources to identify or take action against the individuals who can now legally possess marijuana in both states, or against individuals who are authorized to grow (but not sell) small amounts of marijuana, either as authorized medical users in Washington or all adult residents of Colorado.

It would be very difficult for the federal government, without local help, to prevent production shielded by those provisions from entering illicit interstate commerce and reducing illegal marijuana prices in neighboring states, and eventually perhaps nationwide. Thus, perversely, the federal government is better able to prevent the operation of legal, regulated marijuana production and sales than it is to prevent the operation of purely illicit markets.

8. Under current federal law, what are options are available to the federal government in responding to the new state laws?

Given the constraints imposed by current federal law, the federal government could (1) sue to invalidate the state laws under the Supremacy Clause and to enjoin state authorities from issuing licenses to marijuana growers and sellers; (2) use injunctions, threats of asset forfeiture, or criminal prosecution to shut down state-licensed marijuana businesses; (3) unilaterally establish a set of enforcement priorities to de-emphasize attacks on state-legal businesses; or (4) enter into cooperative enforcement agreements with the states that could implicitly allow state-regulated systems to function, though without making them legal under federal law.

The CSA itself (21 U.S.C. §873) directs that the Attorney General “shall cooperate” with the state and local governments in enforcing the drug laws, and gives him the power “to enter into contractual agreements [...] to provide for cooperative enforcement and regulatory activities.”

Federal accommodation of the new state laws would offer several potential advantages. It would increase the capacity of governments at all levels to shape the behavior of marijuana-industry participants; it might enable a joint enforcement focus on inter-state transactions; it would acknowledge the sovereign powers that the states share with the federal government; and it would enable the acquisition of more knowledge than is now available about the operations and consequences of legal, open marijuana markets. On the other hand, it would involve effective acquiescence by the executive branch in the open violation of unrepealed federal criminal laws, and its consistency with treaty obligations is questionable.

Shutting down regulated and taxed enterprises, whose operations could potentially be confined within the boundaries of a single state, might expand the scope of operation for unregulated and untaxed enterprises with far less reason to pay attention to state boundaries. Therefore it is an open question whether the goal of reducing drug abuse would be better served by accommodation or by a federal effort to shut down the Colorado and Washington systems.

9. What impact might the Colorado and Washington laws have on marijuana exports from other countries into the United States?

Since Colorado and Washington combined account for less than five percent of estimated total U.S. marijuana sales, legalization in those states is not likely to significantly cut the revenues of foreign drug suppliers (and in particular Mexican drug trafficking organizations) unless marijuana produced in Washington or Colorado can be distributed across state boundaries at prices competitive with Mexican imports. The price of exported marijuana from Washington or Colorado will depend on several factors, including (a) the price of production in state-legal markets, (b) the extent to which product diversion occurs before the imposition of taxes, and (c) the effectiveness of federal, state, and local enforcement efforts to prevent diversion and interstate trafficking. Finally, the ability of Washington- or Colorado-produced exports to compete with imports hinges on how many grams of lower-potency Mexican marijuana consumers will see as being equivalent to one gram of higher-potency, Washington- and Colorado-grown marijuana (i.e., how closely users view the two forms of the drug as substitutes).

Even in the extreme case that production in Colorado and Washington were to entirely displace Mexican marijuana from the U.S. market, Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) would see reduced profits but would not be crippled. They currently earn between a fifth and a third of their drug export revenues from marijuana; those figures do not include their earnings from sales for domestic Mexican consumption or their non-drug revenues from kidnapping and extortion. However, the potential effects of marijuana legalization on Mexican DTOs’ sales of other drugs in the United States are unknown. To the extent that marijuana sales help maintain an illicit infrastructure that facilitates smuggling and distributing a range of illegal commodities, reducing the marijuana market could have helpful spillover effects for reducing the markets for cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine.

10. What are the trends in U.S. public opinion on the question of marijuana legalization?

Since the early 1990s, U.S. public opinion has trended in favor of marijuana legalization. Currently, a majority of Americans support legalization by a margin of seven points—52 percent to 45 percent, according to findings from a Pew Research Center survey in March 2013. Support for marijuana legalization has risen sharply since 2010, by 11 percentage points.

Part of the trend involves the replacement of (largely anti-marijuana) pre-Boomer-generation voters with more marijuana-friendly Gen-X members and Millenials. But the trend towards favoring marijuana legalization extends across all age groups. The most striking change has occurred within the Baby Boomer generation, comprising Americans born between 1946 and 1964. Whereas only 24 percent of Baby Boomers approved of legalization in 1994, 50 percent now count themselves in favor of it. In the last decade, support has nearly doubled among the Silent Generation—those Americans born between 1925 and 1942—from 17 percent in 2002 to 32 percent in 2013. Members of so-called “Generation X”—Americans born between 1965 and 1980—have also trended in support of legalization, growing from 28 percent in 1994 to 54 percent in 2013. Among Millennials—those born after 1980—support has risen from 36 percent in 2008 to 65 percent in 2013.

11. Does the public favor federal accommodation of the new state laws or intervention to block the new laws from being implemented?

The prospect of federal intervention to override the new state laws appears to be widely unpopular. A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted after the November 2012 elections found that 63 percent of Americans opposed federal intervention in states that legalized marijuana.

Reflecting changing opinions regarding marijuana legalization, Pew’s March 2013 survey found that 72 percent of Americans believe that government efforts to enforce current marijuana laws cost more than they are worth. Consistent with the USA Today/Gallup poll, Pew also found that 60 percent of Americans oppose federal enforcement in states that have chosen to legalize, including 64 percent of Independents, 59 percent of Democrats, and 57 percent of Republicans.

12. Are other states considering legislation or ballot measures that would legalize marijuana?

Reportedly there may be initiatives for full commercial legalization on the ballot in Alaska in 2014 and in California, Maine, and Oregon in 2016. (Presidential years bring out an electorate more favorable to marijuana legalization than the off-year electorate.) The shape and fate of those propositions depends in part on outcomes in Colorado and Washington, including how the federal government responds.

[i]Mark Kleiman is Professor of Public Policy at UCLA, and Visiting Fellow at the National Institute of Justice.

[ii]BOTEC Analysis is a networked organization that applies the techniques of public policy analysis to the problems of drug abuse and crime control. BOTEC contributors include: Steven Davenport, Daniel Fisher, Tom Jacobson, and Jeremy Ziskind.

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What Should the Supreme Court Do About Affirmative Action?

Henry J. Aaron — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:42:00 -0400

Author's note: the following review of the book Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students Its Intended to Help and Why Universities Won’t Admit It by Richard H Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr. was commissioned by Leon Wieseltier of the New Republic on September 10, 2012. It was submitted on January 30, 2013. No editorial comment having been received to date, I am posting it on the Brookings web site.

The Supreme Court decision in Brown versus Board of Education was a watershed event in several respects. It crowned a lengthy legal campaign to overthrow segregation in public schools. It rapidly widened into a multi-front campaign to assure that African Americans, other minorities, and women would not be excluded from any important aspect of American life. And it invoked social science in support of a fundamental reinterpretation of the Constitution.

Following Brown, it soon became clear that removing legal barriers was not enough to end the legacy of discrimination. Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 speech at Howard University stated bluntly that “We seek not just freedom of opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.”

To counter the effects of past discrimination, Johnson said, it is necessary not just to remove barriers but also to offer help. Some assistance was procedural. Selective colleges, universities, and graduate schools began for the first time to recruit minorities actively and to mentor them. Other assistance was substantive, such as making race, sex, or national origin a ‘plus factor’ for jobs, contracts, and college admission. Programs of this sort immediately raised knotty conundrums for law, ethics, and social science. Were they constitutional? Were they fair? Did they work?

The legal problem was obvious. The 14^th amendment states: “No State shall...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act flatly bars consideration of race in hiring and promotion decisions. Many universities are state chartered and supported. Private and public institutions of higher learning receive federal contracts. The constitution and civil rights laws make no exception for discrimination practiced to redress past injustices.

Ethical issues are also inescapable. Giving African Americans or Hispanics a special break does not increase the number of jobs or slots in university classes. Giving them an edge means pushing others back in the queue. Many of those ‘others’ never personally did anything wrong. If giving such edges to past or present victims of discrimination was accepted, how large an edge was it fair to give and for how long?

In its earliest phases, affirmative action clearly helped its intended beneficiaries. In 1933 when Harold Ickes and his two lieutenants, Clark Foreman and Robert Weaver—later the first black cabinet officer under president Johnson—required that blacks be hired to help build public housing, there could be little doubt that African Americans benefitted from their action. When Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Labor, George Shultz, commented about discrimination in the building industry: “We found a quota system; it was there; it was zero,” there could be no doubt that moving from zero would help those who had been excluded. The nation was so far from the goal of fair treatment of minorities and women that possible conflicts with other objectives seemed remote. But when selective colleges and universities began to admit minority students with comparatively weak academic credentials, many of whom got poor grades and dropped out at distressing rates, a new question arose...did race preferences, at least in higher education, really help those they were intended to help?

Research on the impact of preferential admissions in higher education and litigation over its constitutionality ran on parallel tracks.

The policy of boosting enrollments at selective universities and colleges from what came to be called ‘under-represented minorities’ developed rapidly during the 1960s and 1970s. It coincided with efforts by those institutions to become genuine meritocracies. Although prestigious undergraduate and graduate programs had always favored the academically talented, they also held many slots for the offspring of previous graduates and generous donors. Athletic or artistic skills helped too, of course. Discrimination in admissions was routine, primarily to hold down the numbers of bright kids with the “wrong” religion or cultural background.

Then in the 1960s and 1970s, the weight attached to good grades and high test scores on entrance exams soared. Bragging rights came to those colleges whose entering classes had the highest scores on college entrance examinations. Some slots were still held for the progeny of previous graduates, the well-connected, the financially generous, and the artistically talented or athletically skilled. But academic standards for admission rose at both the undergraduate and graduate level. In simple terms, the ‘good’ schools, more than ever before, became academically excellent.

As far back as the 1970s concern grew that the policy of giving an edge to African Americans, Hispanics, and other members of under-represented minorities, however well-intentioned, might be doing more harm than good. Giving applicants from these groups an edge in admissions necessarily meant that, on the average, they came with weaker academic credentials than did whites. To be sure, selective schools offered matriculants big advantages—enriched environments, good connections, and, to those who graduated, a valued credential. On the other hand, students without adequate preparation might find the work just too difficult. As a result, they might even learn less than they would at less selective institutions. They might suffer stigma or be marked as second-raters or shamed as beneficiaries of unearned advantages, as many critics of affirmative action claim and some supporters fear. The result would be low-academic performance, high drop-out rates, wasted time and money, and, in extreme cases, blighted lives. The risk of these adverse effects would be larger the greater the gap between the student’s preparation and the norm at the institution they attended. This, in brief, was known as the mismatch hypothesis.

Determining whether a mismatch effect actually exists is extremely difficult. Even if admissions were race blind and even if there were no mismatch effect whatsoever, African Americans and Hispanics admitted to selective colleges and universities would predictably have lower grades and graduate a lower rates than do whites. This expectation is in no manner racist. It follows directly from two indisputable facts. African Americans and Hispanics applying to college have lower test scores and high-school grades on the average than do whites; and test scores and grades both are predictive of academic performance.

A hypothetical example illustrates how these two facts will produce different success rates for various groups. Imagine that colleges use an academic index for selecting students. The index can take on three values: 1 (high), 2 (medium), or 3 (low). Those with a higher academic index do better on the average in college than those with a lower score. Imagine also that out of every 100 whites, 35 score 1, and 35 score 2, and that out of every 100 African Americans and Hispanics 10 score 1 and 50 score 2. Selective schools admit only those who score 1 or 2, and they do so in a race-blind manner. Half of whites but only one-sixth of African Americans and Hispanics score 1. Those who score 1 do better in college than those who score 2. It follows that whites will do better in college on the average than will African Americans or Hispanics. This conclusion would not follow if tests and grades under-predicted performance of minorities relative to that of whites. But repeated studies have shown that tests and grades do not under-predict performance of African Americans and Hispanics.

The observation that African Americans and Hispanics who enroll at selective universities have lower qualifications for admission than do whites should therefore come as no surprise. Affirmative action adds to the difference between test scores and grades of entering students. But gaps would exist even if there were no affirmative action, and whether or not mismatch exists.

So, the challenge...how can one tell from the observation that African Americans and Hispanics do less well in college than do whites at selective schools whether this gap results from mechanical reasons of the sort just described or from harm inflicted through mismatch?

Simply comparing grades and graduation rates of various groups is not enough. The undeniable fact that students from under-represented minorities get poorer grades and drop out more often than white students do proves nothing about whether affirmative action helps or hurts its intended beneficiaries. One could go further and measure whether students at selective institutions do better or worse than do students with similar test scores and grades at other colleges and universities.

That is just what Derek Bok and William Bowen, former presidents of Harvard and Princeton, respectively, did in their evocatively titled book, The Shape of the River. This study, published in 1998, drew on a rich data set developed with the support of the Mellon Foundation, which Bowen then headed. The survey reported on a large data set—College and Beyond—reporting the college experiences, graduation rates, and subsequent earnings of 93,660 students who graduated from thirty-four select universities and colleges in 1951, 1976, and 1989. Using statistical techniques that controlled for the expected influence of high-school grades, pre-college admission tests, race, and certain other characteristics, the authors found that African-American students who attended elite universities did as well as or better than African-American student who attended less elite institutions. The authors reported that they found no evidence to support the mismatch hypothesis.

The Bok-Bowen study was highly influential. The authors are highly respected. The survey was large. The information it contained was broad and detailed. Even so, the survey data were not ideally suited to test the effects of affirmative action. The earliest surveyed cohort attended college before affirmative action was much practiced and it is not clear to what extent that cohort drove the results. The data came mostly from highly selective institutions. Furthermore, because the data have not been freely available, few scholars could check the Bok-Bowen findings or do additional analysis. The importance of making data available so that other scholars may try to replicate results and identify errors hardly needs emphasis in light of recent controversies regarding the impact of government debt on economic growth.

Bowen and other co-authors revisited the question of how college affects students in 2009 with a new study, Crossing the Finish Line, based on an even larger survey. This study reported on the experiences of 124,522 freshmen who began college in 1999 at one of fifty-seven four-year public universities. These institutions were generally less selective than those included in the College and Beyond survey. Bowen reported some startling results. Regardless of the quality of the high schools that students attended, their grades predicted college performance far better than did standardized tests. The 2009 study also confirmed the major finding of The Shape of the River—that after controlling for high-school grades, test scores, race, and socio-economic status, students were more likely to graduate from more selective than from less selective universities. Once again, Bowen and his co-authors found no evidence to support the mismatch—what they called the ‘over-match’—hypothesis. Students are well-advised, they said, to enroll in the most selective institution that will accept them.

Critics questioned whether the Bok-Bowen studies provided support for affirmative action. Invoking considerations of fairness, Stephen and Abigail Thernstrom noted that high graduation rates from elite institutions reflected not only the high qualifications of enrollees, but the high expectations for graduation at them. Besides, they emphasized, giving a race- or ethnicity-based edge to some necessarily involves a race- or ethnicity-based handicap for others. One of those groups with a race-based handicap, they noted, are Asians, whose academic credentials on the average outshine those of whites and who suffered much discrimination in American history.

Others argued that ordinary survey data are inherently inadequate to test the mismatch hypothesis. No survey can measure all educationally-relevant student characteristics. Specifically, surveys cannot measure aspirations or mental toughness, which are relevant to educational outcome and may be correlated with the schools students attend. Many social scientists argue that the best way, and sometimes the only adequate way, to test the effect of an intervention is the randomized experiment. Such methods are routine in medical and agricultural research, but they are not normally available to those testing the effects of affirmative action. Students cannot be randomly assigned to colleges. And, even if they could be, the very act would color the results. Normally, analysts are stuck with survey data. They can do no more than control statistically for every influence they can measure and hope that omitted factors are not very important.

From the earliest years of affirmative action, those denied admission to schools that gave minorities a race-based or ethnicity-based edge have challenged the practice in court. In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in The Regents of the University of California v. Bakke that the constitution barred the university from setting aside a fixed number of slots in its medical school class for under-represented minorities. But, universities could use race as a ‘plus’ factor in pursuit of ‘diversity,’ which, the Court said, is a legitimate educational goal. To this day, however, the Court has not defined exactly what diversity is or how one would know if it had been achieved.

Breaking with Bakke, the federal Circuit Court serving Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi ruled in 1995 in Hopwood v. Texas that the University of Texas Law School could not use race as a factor in admissions. The case never got to the Supreme Court, however, because Texas dropped the challenged admissions practices.

Seven years later, the Supreme Court heard a pair of challenges to admission practices at the University of Michigan. For undergraduate admissions, Michigan used a point scale based on grades, test scores, and other factors. One hundred points assured admission. Under-represented minorities received 20 points automatically. In Gratz v. Bollinger, by a 5-4 margin, the Court reaffirmed that the pursuit of diversity is a legitimate goal, but it ruled that Michigan’s procedure was not ‘narrowly tailored,’ did not in general treat each applicant individually, resembled a quota system, which the Court had disallowed in Bakke, and was therefore unacceptable.

At the same time, also by a 5-4 vote, the Court upheld a race-conscious admission policy by the Michigan Law School. In Grutter v. Bollinger, the court said that the use of race was acceptable because the law school considered many factors and did so on an individual basis. The swing vote in both cases and author of the opinion of the Court was the now-retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who has been succeeded by Justice Samuel Alito, widely thought to be less sympathetic than O’Connor to affirmative action.

The legal history is marked by chaotic disagreement. Not only has the court been divided, but the majorities have disagreed in the reasoning that has led to their judgments. For strong minded, independent jurists to reach a common position by different reasoning is not unusual. But the opinions reflect unresolvable internal conflicts. The Constitution guarantees equal protection, irrespective of race, national origin, sex, and age. Yet, American history is redolent of despicable violations of those principles. When, at last, Congress and private groups began to take steps to counter the legacy of discrimination, the highest court has been willing to curb, but not bar, these measures—at least, not yet.

While the idea that the best qualified people should get jobs, the best proposal should win the contract, and the best students should be admitted to selective colleges commands widespread support, few people adhere rigidly to the principles of meritocracy. They understand that in many cases no clear or reliable metrics exist for measuring merit. Furthermore, once one acknowledges that colleges and universities may legitimately consider factors other than test scores and grades in determining which applicants should be admitted, it is inevitable that some students refused admission will be better qualified on academic grounds than those admitted.

The point made in virtually every legal brief by a litigant complaining of discrimination because an African American or Hispanic with lower test scores or a weaker academic record was admitted reflects a profound confusion—such a result is inescapable once other criteria for admission are allowed to influence results. And because race, musical talent, athletic skills, and other non-academic characteristics predict academic performance less well than do grades and test scores, it is likely that those admitted because of such ‘non-academic’ qualifications will perform less well, on the average, than those admitted for purely academic reasons. Their grades are likely to be lower and they are likely to graduate at lower rates than those with stronger grades and test scores. Other influences, such as compensatory programs for the ill-prepared, easy grading (for athletes), or enrollment in ‘gut’ courses can partly or fully offset such tendencies. But the tendency is basic.

The issue of whether affirmative action in education is constitutional has returned to the Supreme Court docket. On February 21, 2012 the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in the case of Fisher v. Texas. Oral arguments took place on October 10, 2012. Outside interest in the case has been intense. The court received 90 ‘friend of the court’ (amicus curiae) briefs from interested parties, including social scientists.

Following the Hopwood decision, Texas adopted a simple policy of admitting applicants in the top 10 percent of Texas high-school graduating classes. Although the top-10-percent formula sacrifices some academic selectivity, it is a transparently reasonable admissions policy for a state-chartered institution dependent on state funds for part of its budget. It does not explicitly involve race or ethnic origin, but de facto residential segregation guarantees that this formula will result in the admission of more African Americans and Latinos than if admissions were based on test scores. Since its adoption, this formula has accounted for 60 to 80 percent of undergraduate admissions to the University of Texas. Following the Grutter decision, which sanctioned admission policies that considered race in a narrowly targeted, individual manner, Texas instituted what it called a “holistic” process to govern other admissions. The holistic admissions procedure uses both an academic index, based on test scores and grades, and a personal achievement index based on a wide range of other factors including two essays, family background, activities in the community and elsewhere, and race.

Ms. Fisher, a white Texas high school graduate, was in the 12^th percent of her class and therefore was not admitted on the 10 percent plan. Nor was she admitted through the alternative selection process. She was offered a place on a waiting list, which she refused. She challenged the constitutionality of the Texas admission policy, claiming that but for her race she would have been admitted and was thereby unconstitutionally denied equal protection under the law.

The briefs of the parties to the case focus on whether the use of race in the Texas formula does or does not qualify as ‘limited and individualized,’ as specified by Justice O’Connor in Grutter v. Bollinger. But the court may go further by limiting or overturning Grutter, and at least four justices are thought to be disposed to do so. Persuasive evidence that affirmative action harms those it is intended to help would buttress the ethical foundation for such a position. One of the amicus briefs, by UCLA law professor Richard Sander and legal journalist Stuart Taylor, argues just that. Their book, Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It, is a lengthy and rich argument in support of this position. So significant is this indictment of affirmative action that another amicus brief, by a veritable Who’s Who of empirical social scientists is devoted to rebutting the Sander/Taylor brief. Social scientists submitted several other amicus briefs, some in support of Ms. Fisher’s appeal, some opposed.

Mismatch extends and elaborates an indictment of affirmative action first presented by Sander in 2004 in a Stanford Law Review article. That article provoked intense controversy, personal invective, and allegations of data suppression. Mismatch recounts this controversy in score-settling detail and is, thus, also a personal memoir and an expose of intellectual politics in the academy, as well as a layman’s guide to social science research on a tricky subject. Co-author Stuart Taylor comes to this tale with the background of having written Until Proven Innocent, a chilling and devastating expose of the way a rogue—and subsequently disbarred—district attorney railroaded Duke lacrosse players after a stripper falsely accused them of rape, and tells how Duke faculty members and administrators rushed to condemn the players despite abundant warning signs of prosecutorial abuse.

Sander and Taylor do not argue that affirmative action is inherently harmful to its intended beneficiaries, but rather that it is pushed to a damaging extreme. To make their case, they lay out a theory of how affirmative action, as practiced by the most select universities and colleges, ramifies through much of higher education. A few top universities are able to attract most of the academically able African Americans and Hispanics. Although the academic credentials of these students, on the average, are not as strong as those of their white or Asian classmates, these African-Americans and Hispanic students are mostly able to handle the academic challenges they face at these top schools. Sander and Taylor argue that is why Bok and Bowen found that most of the minority students they surveyed graduate and do well professionally.

But that is just part of the story. The selective institutions, Sander and Taylor argue, so seriously deplete the limited pool of academically well-qualified minorities that lower tier schools, also trying to meet affirmative action goals, admit applicants with credentials so weak that these students do less well than they would at still less selective institutions. Mismatch can be inferred as well, Sander and Taylor argue, from the finding that a larger proportion of students with a given SAT score major in the difficult STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math) at less-selective than at more selective schools.

The reasoning is straightforward. First-level courses in these fields that serve as pre-requisites for upper division study weed out students who are comparatively weak at the institutions they are attending. Because affirmative action allows minority students to attend colleges where their academic preparation is comparatively weak, such students are more likely to get weeded out than they would be had they attended less-selective colleges and universities, where their academic preparation would have been more competitive.

The strongest evidence for the mismatch hypothesis comes not from data on undergraduate admissions but from information on law school graduates. The American Bar Association compiled data on thousands of law school graduates from a wide range of law schools—the Bar Passage Study (BPS). Because student grades and class rank depend, in part, on the average academic strength of classmates, students with a given academic index are more likely to get better grades at lower ranked law schools than they would at higher ranked law schools. Furthermore, African American and Hispanic students covered in the BPS were the beneficiaries of sizeable race- and ethnicity-based admission preferences at most law schools.

Based on data from the BPS, Sander and Taylor report two findings that, they argue, suggest mismatch. First, African American and Hispanic law school graduates with similar academic index scores (based on undergraduate performance) to those of whites passed the bar at lower rates than did whites. But if one controlled for both academic index and law school grade point average, there was no significant difference in passage rates of African Americans, Hispanics, and Whites. The reason why relative class standing influences bar passage, they argue, is that instruction and grading are geared to the median student in each school. Students who are weaker than average at a given school will find it hard to keep up, will learn less than they would if instruction was geared to their level of preparation, and will therefore pass the bar exam at lower rates than they would had they attended a school better tailored to for their academic skills. This finding implies that law school students should not follow the advice from Bok and Bowen gave to undergraduates—go to the most selective school that will admit you—but should instead be very careful not to over-reach.

Could both Bok/Bowen and Sander/Taylor be correct? The curricula at professional and graduate schools are notoriously austere. The environment in law school is ruthlessly meritocratic to an extent true of few undergraduate programs. If the conditions between undergraduate and graduate schools and among undergraduate programs are sufficiently different, affirmative action might help in some cases and hurt in others.

An intense intellectual battle followed Sander’s 2004 article and continues to this day. One exchange illustrates how hard the issues are analytically and how difficult it is to reach consensus. Two members of the Yale Law School faculty, Ian Ayres and Richard Brooks, noted that not all African Americans surveyed in the BPS accepted admission letters from the schools they had listed as their first choices. Some went to lower choice schools that were mostly less selective than the first choice schools. The students in the two groups were otherwise similar. If mismatch were a problem, they reasoned, students who went to first choice schools would be more likely to get low grades and less likely to pass the bar than those who went to less select schools. In an initial draft, Ayres and Brooks found no such differences and stated that the evidence provided no support for the mismatch hypothesis.

Sander reports that Ayres and Brooks shared their analysis with him and that he pointed out errors, which they then corrected. After the corrections were made, Sander and Taylor claim that the corrected results closely match what the mismatch hypothesis suggests—those students who did not go to their first-choice, relatively select law schools got better grades, graduated at a higher rate, and were more likely to pass the bar on their first try. But, they assert, Ayres and Brooks refused to modify the text of their initial draft. In addition, Ayres and Brooks are among the signers of the amicus brief by quantitative social scientists which is highly critical of the methods that Sander and Taylor use. This brief states flatly: “Sander’s research has major methodological flaws—misapplying basic principles of causal inference—that call into doubt his controversial conclusions about affirmative action....Sander’s research does not constitute credible evidence that affirmative action practices are harmful to minorities....”

Quite apart from the analytical case that Sander and Taylor make against affirmative action, Mismatch is an expose of politics and back-biting in the academy. It charges that those controlling what should be publicly available data refuse access to people who it is feared will come up with politically objectionable answers. It charges critics with refusals to admit demonstrable mistakes. Both Taylor’s earlier book on the Duke rape case and Mismatch report enough unreasoned and unreasonable behavior in the name of political correctness to make one gag. Most importantly, Mismatch charges universities and colleges with a stunning lack of candor regarding the extent of affirmative action and refusal to provide data with which analysts could evaluate its effects.

Although Mismatch indicts affirmative action in its current form, Sander and Taylor recommend that affirmative action be modified not ended. They note that minorities who are favored by affirmative action disproportionately come from favored socio-economic groups, children of professionals and others with higher education. They recommend that racial preferences be no larger than preferences based on financial need and socioeconomic status. The emergence of growing economic inequality heightens the appeal of class-based affirmative action. Precisely how such balancing of racial, socio-economic, and needs-based factors might be achieved is not explained in the book. Others have also urged class-based affirmative action as both fairer and politically more acceptable than race-based affirmative action—notably, Richard Kahlenberg who has taken that position for nearly two decades. Unfortunately, Sander and Taylor leave a key question unanswered—if current race-based affirmative action harms intended beneficiaries, why wouldn’t a mix of some race-based and some class-based affirmative action also do so?

Particularly troubling for a technically minded reader/reviewer is the absence from a book running to nearly 300 pages of any clear, technical presentation of the mismatch hypothesis. The authors say at the outset that in order to keep the book to a reasonable length, they are omitting ‘technical or elaborating material’ but that such details can be found at their website. At various other points in the book, readers are also advised that they can find further detail at the same web site. As I write this review and after personal contact with both authors, the website remains without such supporting material.

What conclusions should the Court and the public take from Mismatch and the cacophony of conflicting research on the effects of affirmative action? First, universities and colleges should provide qualified analysts access to data on admission practices. It is not credible that universities would suffer irreparable damage if their admission practices were publicized. Nor is it believable that minorities who benefit from racial preferences would wilt from the stigma if these practices were spelled out. The failure of colleges and universities to divulge data on the way affirmative action operates should not be tolerated. The best way to correct any over-use or misuse of affirmative action is not to ban it but to insist that its operation be illuminated with hard data and further analysis.

Second, on the major theme—the charge that affirmative action hurts its intended beneficiaries—I believe that judgment must still be withheld. Sander and Taylor present a powerful case that it does so in particular instances. But the character of college and university programs and their objectives is enormously varied. It is much more important to make sure that African Americans and Hispanics are well-represented among tomorrow’s public officials and business leaders and that they are well trained than it is to assure racial or ethnic diversity among tomorrow’s mathematicians and biomedical researchers. Meritocratic values have their place. So too do the values of inclusiveness. If there was ever a place where one size does not fit all, it is in the treatment of affirmative action within the academy.

Authors

Henry J. Aaron

Good Things Grown in Scaled Packages: Africa's Agricultural Challenge in Historical Context

John McArthur — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:42:00 -0400

INTRODUCTION

In recent years agriculture has experienced a renaissance of attention among economists and policymakers, especially those focused on sub-Saharan Africa. This heightened attention has been driven partly by research insights, partly by policy initiatives, and partly by a recognition that governments and major international development institutions had been neglecting the issue for many years. It has also been motivated by emerging trends in particular countries like Malawi, which implemented an ambitious small-holder subsidy program starting in 2005 and subsequently registered its first two consecutive years with average cereal yields above two tons per hectare in 2009 and 2010, according to recent Word Bank data.

One indicator of the renaissance is a sizeable increase in official development assistance (ODA) directed towards agriculture. ODA for agriculture was consistently in the range of $4 billion to $5 billion for the decade before 2006. Since then, it has experienced a significant jump, reaching more than $8 billion in 2010. Concurrently average African cereal yields per hectare experienced a slight uptick, rising above 1.3 tons per hectare for the first time in 2009, after oscillating in the range of 0.9-1.2 t/ha for more than thirty years since 1975. It remains to be seen whether these yield increases reflect the beginnings of structural change.

Africa’s average yields still remain much lower than those in any other region. Although Africa’s total factor productivity in agriculture is estimated to have increased in recent decades its food production per capita remains essentially unchanged since 1960. Continued stagnation implies fast-growing costs in terms of lives affected, as the region’s population is slated to surpass one billion people by 2017 and approach two billion by 2050, according to the U.N. population division’s medium projections. A number of recent papers have underscored the major role of agriculture in reducing poverty and accelerating economic growth, so the stagnant trends have important macroeconomic implications. Esther Duflo and colleagues have also investigated questions related to farmer choices around the key input of fertilizer, motivated significantly by arguments surrounding the role of subsidies.

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John McArthur

Implementing the Affordable Care Act: Organizational and Political Challenges

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 20, 2013
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

This program aired live on CSPAN.org »

The Affordable Care Act is the single biggest domestic policy accomplishment of the Obama administration, but most Americans have yet to feel its impact, since many of the most far-reaching provisions do not take effect until 2014. Although the Supreme Court upheld the law, it continues to face political opposition and attempts to slow down its full implementation.

On May 20, the Management and Leadership Initiative at Brookings hosted a forum on the organizational challenges of implementing the Affordable Care Act in a difficult political environment. A panel of experts discussed obstacles such as building the state exchanges, expanding Medicaid, the role of the IRS, enforcing the individual mandate, the reaction from the small business community and the effect on premium prices.

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Implementing the Affordable Care Act: Organizational and Political Challenges

Confronting Suburban Poverty in America - Release Event

Mon, 20 May 2013 09:30:00 -0400

Event Information

May 20, 2013
9:30 AM - 11:30 AM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

Click here to visit the Confronting Suburban Poverty in America website.

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty. Back then poverty was largely confined to inner-city neighborhoods and isolated rural areas. Today, the overwhelming majority of America’s poor live not in cities—but in the suburbs of its major metropolitan areas. Yet the paradigm of poverty in America, and the infrastructure for addressing the conditions poor families and communities face, has failed to keep pace with the reality of these changes. The problems of the growing suburban poor are now exacerbated by a weak economy and increasingly limited resources for nonprofits, philanthropies and government at all levels.

As with many challenges facing the nation, metro area leaders are leading the way in the search for solutions—learning how to do more with less and adjusting their approaches to address the metropolitan scale of poverty, collaborating across sectors and jurisdictions, using data and technology in innovative ways, and integrating services and service delivery.

In Confronting Suburban Poverty in America (Brookings, 2013), co-authors Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube, take on the new reality of metropolitan poverty and opportunity in America. On May 20, they along with some of the nation’s leading anti-poverty experts, including Luis Ubiñas, president of the Ford Foundation, and Bill Shore, founder and CEO of Share our Strength, and leading local innovators from across the country discussed a new metropolitan opportunity agenda for addressing suburban poverty, how federal and state policymakers can deploy limited resources to address a growing challenge, and why building on local solutions holds great promise.

Click here to visit the Confronting Suburban Poverty in America website.

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Confronting Suburban Poverty in America - Release Event

Confronting Suburban Poverty in America

Alan Berube and Elizabeth Kneebone — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Brookings Institution Press 2013 184pp.

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Presentation - Confronting Suburban Poverty in America

Synopsis:

In Confronting Suburban Poverty in America, Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube take on the new reality of metropolitan poverty and opportunity in America. For decades, suburbs added poor residents at a faster pace than cities, so that suburbia is now home to more poor residents than central cities, composing over a third of the nation’s total poor population. Unfortunately, the antipoverty infrastructure built over the past several decades does not fit this rapidly changing geography. The solution no longer fits the problem. Kneebone and Berube explain the source and impact of these important developments; moreover, they present innovative ideas on addressing them.

The spread of suburban poverty has many causes, including job sprawl, shifts in affordable housing, population dynamics, immigration, and a struggling economy. As the authors explain in Confronting Suburban Poverty in America, it raises a number of daunting challenges, such as the need for more (and better) transportation options, services, and financial resources. But necessity also produces opportunity—in this case, the opportunity to rethink and modernize services, structures, and procedures so that they better reflect and address new demands. This book embraces that opportunity.

Infographic; What’s Driving the Rapid Rise of Poverty in the Suburbs?:

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The authors put forward a series of workable recommendations for public, private, and nonprofit leaders seeking to modernize poverty alleviation and community development strategies and connect residents with economic opportunity. They have created an Action Toolkit so that anyone can be apart of confronting suburban poverty.

Event:

On May 20, the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings hosted an event marking the release of Confronting Suburban Poverty in America, co-authored by Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube. Below, you can watch a piece of the event with Elizabeth Kneebone, as she discusses how the landscape of poverty in America has changed.

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Read The New York Times Op-Ed on Confronting Suburban Poverty in America »

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Alan Berube

Elizabeth Kneebone

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{CD2E3D28-0096-4D03-B2DE-6567EB62AD1E}, 978-0-8157-2390-5, $28.95 Order

A Theoretical Framework for Kenya's Central Bank Macroeconometric Model

Maureen Were, Anne W. Kamau, Moses M. Sichei and Moses Kiptui — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:29:00 -0400

INTRODUCTION

This paper presents the theoretical framework for the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) macroeconometric model. In addition, it highlights the theoretical base for the model’s main behavioral equations. The justification for the model relates to its usefulness in aiding the policymaking process at the CBK. It is expected that the model will support the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) and Research Department in further understanding how the economy works through the complex interactions of various economic agents. The conduct of monetary policy requires fairly accurate analyses and forecasts backed up by sound economic theory and a rationale ensuring that effective monetary policy is formulated and implemented. In this regard, the model will provide consistent short-term forecasts of key macroeconomic variables such as economic growth and inflation. In addition, the model will be helpful in evaluating the impact of various shocks and policies on the economy. The MPC may also use the model as an instrument to help in structuring its communication with the public on the rationale behind its decisions.

This paper is organized as follows. The rest of Section 1 discusses the type of macro model developed, Section 2 presents the model’s logical and theoretical framework and illustrates the linkages between the monetary submodel and the other blocks of the model, Section 3 discusses the theoretical foundations of the model’s behavioral equations, and Section 4 concludes.