Event Information

Despite the attention on the mid-term races, few elections are competitive. Electoral competition, already low at the national level, is in decline in state and primary elections as well. Reformers, who point to gerrymandering and a host of other targets for change, argue that improving competition will produce voters who are more interested in elections, better-informed on issues, and more likely to turn out to the polls.

On October 27, the Brookings Institution—in conjunction with the Cato Institute and The Pew Research Center—presented a discussion and a groundbreaking survey exploring the attitudes and opinions of voters in competitive and noncompetitive congressional districts. The survey, part of Pew's regular polling on voter attitudes, was conducted through the weekend of October 21. A series of questions explored the public's perceptions, knowledge, and opinions about electoral competitiveness.

The discussion also explored a publication that addresses the startling lack of competition in our democratic system. The Marketplace of Democracy: Electoral Competition and American Politics (Brookings, 2006), considers the historical development, legal background, and political aspects of a system that is supposed to be responsive and accountable, yet for many is becoming stagnant, self-perpetuating, and tone-deaf. Michael McDonald, editor and Brookings visiting fellow, moderated a discussion among co-editor John Samples, director of the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute, and Andrew Kohut and Scott Keeter from The Pew Research Center, who also discussed the survey.

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On November 7, millions of Americans will exercise their civic duty to vote. At stake will be control of the House and Senate, not to mention the success of individual candidates running for office. President Bush's "stay the course" agenda will either be enabled over the next two years by a Republican Congress or knocked off kilter by a Democratic one.

With so much at stake, it is not surprising that the Pew Research Center found that 51 percent of registered voters have given a lot of thought to this November's election. This is higher than any other recent midterm election, including 44 percent in 1994, the year Republicans took control of the House. If so, turnout should better the 1994 turnout rate among eligible voters of 41 percent.

There is good reason to suspect that despite the high interest, turnout will not exceed 1994. The problem is that a national poll is, well, a national poll, and does not measure attitudes of voters within states and districts.

People vote when there is a reason to do so. Republican and Democratic agendas are in stark contrast on important issues, but voters also need to believe that their vote will matter in deciding who will represent them. It is here that the American electoral system is broken for many voters.

Voters have little choice in most elections. In 1994, Congressional Quarterly called 98 House elections as competitive. Today, they list 51. To put it another way, we are already fairly confident of the winner in nearly 90 percent of House races. Although there is no similar tracking for state legislative offices, we know that the number of elections won by less than 60 percent of the vote has fallen since 1994.

The real damage to the national turnout rate is in the large states of California and New York, which together account for 17 percent of the country's eligible voters. Neither state has a competitive Senate or Governor's election, and few competitive House or state legislative races. Compare to 1994, when Californians participated in competitive Senate and governor races the state's turnout was 5 percentage points above the national rate. The same year New York's competitive governor's race helped boost turnout a point above the national rate.

Lacking stimulation from two of the largest states, turnout boosts will have to come from elsewhere. Texas has an interesting four-way governor's race that might draw from infrequent voters to the polls. Ohio's competitive Senate race and some House races might also draw voters. However, in other large states like Florida, Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania, turnout will suffer from largely uncompetitive statewide races.

The national turnout rate will likely be less than 1994 and fall shy of 40 percent. This is not to say that turnout will be poor everywhere. Energized voters in Connecticut get to vote in an interesting Senate race and three of five Connecticut House seats are up for grabs. The problem is that turnout will be localized in these few areas of competition.

The fault is not on the voters; people's lives are busy, and a rational person will abstain when their vote does not matter to the election outcome. The political parties also are sensitive to competition and focus their limited resources where elections are competitive. Television advertising and other mobilizing efforts by campaigns will only be found in competitive races.

The old adage of "build it and they will come" is relevant. All but hardcore sports fans tune out a blowout. Building competitive elections -- and giving voters real choices -- will do much to increase voter turnout in American politics. There are a number of reforms on the table: redistricting to create competitive districts, campaign financing to give candidates equal resources, and even altering the electoral system to fundamentally change how a vote elects representatives. If voters want choice and a government more responsive to their needs, they should consider how these seemingly arcane election procedures have real consequences on motivating them to do the most fundamental democratic action: vote.

Hillary Clinton was not ready on day one.

The autopsies of her defeat for the Democratic nomination contest all point to a series of early blunders by her campaign. Her campaign plan was simple: leverage her name recognition, early money lead, and organization to win the Super-Tuesday contests, thereby wrapping up the Democratic nomination in early February. As the inevitable winner, she could be the centrist candidate on the Iraq war and tout her experience as a problem solver.

But her over-confident and over-priced campaign consultants failed to recognize that in a “change” election, caucus attenders were not excited by an Iraq war centrist who also happened to be a Washington insider. Clinton’s lack of a plan to effectively contest the caucuses allowed Barack Obama to win what would be the all important delegate race, and more importantly, give him the mantle of momentum while she appeared mired in the mud at a crucial mid-February stage of the campaign.

But she was ready on day two.

She hit her stride late in the game by impressively winning a series of primary contests. All the more remarkable: she did so on a shoestring election-to-election budget while the media wrote her off as a spoiler. With a newfound voice that emphasized she was a populist who would fight for the people, her new message resonated particularly well as the economy continued to falter.

Unfortunately, by the time she retooled her message and got rid of the people who had driven her campaign into the ditch— campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle and chief strategist Mark Penn—it was already too late. Obama had built a nearly insurmountable lead in the delegate count.

It is here that the rules matter.

If states had not moved up or “frontloaded” the date of their primaries and caucuses, under the misimpression that doing so would give them a greater voice in the 2008 nomination, Clinton might be the Democratic nominee.

She would have received more delegates from Florida and Michigan, two states that she would have likely won if all Democratic candidates had vigorously campaigned, but was denied a full slate because these states violated party rules by holding their elections too early. Counting these contests was important for her delegate count and to her argument that she had won more popular votes than Obama.

If states had not frontloaded their primaries and caucuses, she would have recovered from her early stumbles before it was too late. She would have minimized damage from her disastrous February, when Obama racked up an impressive string of victories even in Virginia, where she might have done better given her later strength.

The irony is that Clinton was expected to benefit from frontloading. Only a candidate with name recognition, money, and organization could compete. Lesser candidates like Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson and even John Edwards would be quickly weeded out of the field, leaving her with only one real opponent to dispense with.

The lesson is that frontloading does not well serve the nomination process. Running for president is an unrehearsed drill. Mistakes will be made. Candidates become better as they learn how to campaign and to craft messages that work. Democratic Party leaders will undoubtedly look hard over the next four years at what steps can be taken to even out the flow of the nomination contests.

While these lessons may resound loudly for Democrats, they apply equally well to Republicans. Democrats permitted the process to play out over a longer time by awarding delegates proportionately; Republicans brought their nomination to a faster close by awarding delegates by winner-take-all. John McCain became the inevitable winner of his party’s nomination without even winning a state’s vote majority before his opponents dropped like flies.

While Republicans have delighted in the continued fight among the Democrats, McCain has been in a holding pattern since winning his nomination. Unable to use his time effectively to make headway with the American public, he has incurred problems in his own party. As evidence, 30 percent of South Dakota and Montana Republican primary voters registered a protest vote by voting for someone else.

Perhaps McCain won his party’s nomination too soon. He lost to George Bush in 2000 and has yet to demonstrate that he can run an effective general election campaign. He would have benefited from being more strongly tested, making more mistakes, and learning from them in the primary season. Now, he and his campaign will have to learn on the job in the general election, while they face, in Obama, an opponent who has been tempered in his party’s nomination fire stoked by Clinton.

Plenty of time remains for McCain to make his mistakes and for Obama to make more—and for both to recover before November. Campaigns often become so knee-jerk reactive to criticisms of any mistake that they fail to recognize the value in the lessons that may be learned. The primary election season is thus a valuable period for candidates to plumb their strengths and shore up their weaknesses, and we need to find a way to restore it as such.

Early voting has started in earnest in many states, marking a dramatic change in how Americans vote and how campaigns are run. Preliminary indications are that more people will cast their ballot prior to Election Day than in any campaign in the nation’s history.

Already, well over ten million people have cast their ballot for this November’s much-anticipated presidential election. This statistic is from just a few states and localities where these early voting numbers are available. In Georgia, for instance, more people have already voted early than voted early in all of the last presidential election.

These early numbers are startling, far outpacing what would be expected at this stage in the election. In the past, early voting starts as a trickle, with the spigot opening as the traditional Election Day approaches. These numbers could portend a higher level of early voting, higher overall turnout, or – most likely – both.

The apparent increase witnessed so far is part of the upward trend in early voting that has swept the country over the past two decades. In 1992, about 7 percent of all voters voted early; by 2004 that number exceeded 20 percent. The increase arises among states that have enacted early voting policies permitting people to vote absentee for any reason, to automatically receive an absentee ballot by mail or to vote at special early voting polling place in a high-traffic location.

Those who vote early have changed over the past 20 years. People who vote by traditional absentee ballot tend to be younger, single and highly educated; essentially students, military and professionals traveling on business.

Today, many people tend to be early voters, though early voters are on average older. This age disparity is consistent with the type of person who is motivated to vote early: a strong partisan who is certain of their vote.

Early voters obviously do not show up to vote on Election Day, which causes problems for exit pollsters stationed outside polling places. In 2004, the media’s national exit poll organization conducted phone surveys of early voters to supplement their Election Day polling. These surveys found that in all states – except Iowa – the early electorate was more Republican than the election day electorate, which is an expected pattern steeped in campaign folklore that a Democrat will win if they evenly split the early vote.

The deviating case of Iowa makes sense. In 2004, the Iowa Democratic Party conducted an intense early vote drive, a move that may have cost John Kerry the state since their Election Day ground game suffered.

We are seeing indications that Barack Obama’s campaign is successfully turning out their supporters in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, three states that provide demographic breakdowns of early voters. In Florida and North Carolina, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by two to one among early voters. In Georgia and North Carolina, African-Americans are a much greater share of the early electorate than of the overall 2004 electorate. What makes these numbers all the more impressive is not just their disparity towards Democrats, but that we would normally anticipate Democrats to lag behind Republicans at this stage in the game. Do not expect the well-financed Obama campaign to skimp on their Election Day mobilization efforts, either.

It is too soon to tell definitively if these early vote numbers represent a coming flood of early voting and Election Day turnout or if these represent pent up demand by enthusiastic Democrats finally able to cast their ballot. But that this question can even be asked is not encouraging for John McCain.

For McCain to win, he needs to turn the election around – now. The presidency is starting to slip from his grasp. Pre-election polling currently indicates Obama will hold all the states won by Kerry in 2004, plus Iowa and New Mexico. Obama wins the Electoral College if he wins Colorado, a state that he has had a small consistent lead in the polls throughout the year. More than 60 percent of Coloradans will cast their ballot early.

If McCain can not change the campaign dynamic, it will soon be too late for him to shift enough votes into his column to win. He may be able to take one of the states currently favoring Obama, but that will be an increasingly difficult task as ballots pile up in high-early vote battleground states like Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon and Washington.

It’s mid-October. Now is the time for an October surprise, before too many people can no longer be surprised.

View 2008 Early Voting Statistics »

Michael P. McDonald is an associate professor at George Mason University and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He calculates national turnout rates for academics and the media and he is co-editor of The Marketplace of Democracy: Electoral Competition in American Politics.

Event Information

As the recent primary in Delaware attests, this year's midterm elections continue to offer unexpected twists and raise large questions. Will the Republicans take over the House and possibly the Senate? Or has the Republican wave ebbed? What role will President Obama play in rallying seemingly dispirited Democrats -- and what effect will reaction to the sluggish economy play in rallying Republicans? Is the Tea Party more an asset or a liability to the G.O.P.'s hopes? What effect will the inevitably narrowed partisan majorities have in the last two year's of Obama's first term? And how will contests for governorships and state legislatures around the nation affect redistricting and the shape of politics to come?

On October 4, a panel of Brookings Governance Studies scholars, moderated by Senior Fellow E.J. Dionne, Jr., attempted to answer these questions. Senior Fellow Thomas Mann provided an overview. Senior Fellow Sarah Binder discussed congressional dynamics under shrunken majorities or divided government. Senior Fellow William Galston offered his views on the administration’s policy prospects during the 112th Congress. Nonresident Senior Fellow Michael McDonald addressed electoral reapportionment and redistricting around the country.

Video

• Partisan Gridlock post-Elections?
• GOP Influence over Redistricting, Reapportionment
• Working Within Divided Government
• Good Conditions for GOP in 2010 Midterms

Audio

• Midterm Elections 2010: Driving Forces, Likely Outcomes, Possible Consequences

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• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

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• 20101004_midterm_elections

With little time remaining until the midterm elections, campaigning is intensifying and the outcome for control of Congress remains uncertain. Voter enthusiasm and turnout will be big factors in the elections, where Republicans have demonstrated a leg up in the party’s primaries.

On October 20, Brookings expert Michael McDonald answered your questions about what the polls and early voting are telling us about the upcoming midterm elections, in a live web chat moderated by POLITICO Assistant Editor Seung Min Kim. McDonald, with Seth McKee, is author of "Revenge of the Moderates," in today's POLITICO.

The transcript of this chat follows:

12:30 Seung Min Kim: Good afternoon, everyone! We have just under two weeks until the Nov. 2 midterm elections, and the Brookings Institution's Michael McDonald is here to answer your questions. Thanks and welcome, Michael.

12:30 [Comment From Dale Dean (Arlington): ] I was wondering from the historical record how closely early results mirror the actual results. Are there systemic distortions in early voting that are the same over many elections or do they differ with each election?

12:30 Michael McDonald: Early voting does not necessarily correspond with Election Day voting. Several data sources suggest the following: Overall, prior to 2008, more Republicans tended to vote early. In 2008, it was Democrats who voted early. We have to see 2010 will be a continuation of 2008 or a reversion to previous elections.

12:30 Michael McDonald: Another important factor is the number of early votes. For high early voting states like Oregon and Washington, essentially ALL votes will be cast early. In other states that require an excuse to vote absentee, the early voting electorate will be much smaller, and have a partisan character more similar to pre-2008.

12:31 [Comment From Katy Steinmetz: ] Are black voters going to turn out for Obama like they did in 2008? Why or why not? How big of a difference do you think this will make?

12:31 Michael McDonald: Since we started surveying, pollsters have found that midterm electorates -- compared to presidential electorates -- tend to be older, wealthier, better educated, and composed of fewer minorities. Sometimes Democrats can overcome this hurdle, as they did in 2006, of course. It would be highly unusual for African-Americans to vote at the same rate as they did in 2008. In some key races, in states with large minority populations, lowered levels of minority voting could be a critical determinant to the outcome.

12:32 [Comment From tim: ] Do the polls accurately reflect the relative turnout of Democrats, GOP and Independents?

12:33 Michael McDonald: Pollsters try as best they can. They try to forecast who is likely to vote by various methods that are not consistent across polling firms. So, this is as much as art as a science. There are a number of factors that may further affect the partisan composition of polls, such as if people are interviewed by live interviewers or automatically or whether or not cell phones are interviewed.

12:34 [Comment From Katy Steinmetz: ] When Republican pundits like Karl Rove predict gains of 60 or so seats in the House, does that help or hurt them (in terms of making Republicans complacent and driving Democrats to the polls)?

12:36 Michael McDonald: One of the big questions in this election is the relative effects of enthusiasm versus voter mobilization. Republicans are hoping the enthusiasm gap will help them to victory, while Democrats are banking on their organization to GOTV. So far as I can tell, neither side has a distinct edge yet.

12:37 [Comment From Casey (DC): ] I have a question about the margin of error. Let's say candidate A has been consistently polling a point above candidate B, with a 3% margin of error. Is the fact that A has beaten B in all recent polls statistically significant, even with a margin of error? That is, wouldn't it be misleading to claim that A and B are tied (due to the margin of error) since A has been beating B consistently in the same poll, even by just a point? If they're truly tied, wouldn't we see A beating B half the time and B beating A the other half??

12:41 Michael McDonald: To quickly review, the MoE is determined by the number of respondents to a survey, and it does not linearly decline as the number of respondents increases [it declines by a factor of 1/sqrt(# of respondents)]. Suppose you have two polls with 1,000 persons each, then. You may treat them as two polls of 2,000. So, the MoE would decline, but it may not decline as much as you might think. Further, as I describe above, different pollsters use different techniques to create likely voter screens (and many other survey issues), so the polls themselves are not entirely comparable.

12:42 Michael McDonald: As a general rule, I like averaging polls and looking at trends among the same pollster. If all the polls are moving in the same direction, I tend to believe that a trend is real and not just statistical noise.

12:43 Michael McDonald: Finally (I know a long answer!): never trust a single poll. Unfortunately, the media tend to report their poll, or a surprising poll, and disregard others.

12:43 [Comment From Jazziette Devereaux (AZ): ] Do you think that early voting can prevent voters from learning facts about candidates that are presented in the feverish last two weeks of the election?

12:44 Michael McDonald: My favorite example is a John Edwards voter who was upset in 2008 that he had cast his vote before he dropped out of the race.

12:46 Michael McDonald: Early voting has certainly changed campaign dynamics. No longer can an opponent release the October surprise the last week. Their opponent gets a chance to respond. And it makes elections more expensive since campaigns need to be active throughout the entire election period. So, there are pluses and minuses.

12:46 [Comment From Mark, Greenbelt: ] Is it your feeling that early voting favors one party over another generally, or is it all case-by-case?

12:48 Michael McDonald: Prior to 2008, more Republicans voted early. In 2010, more Democrats voted early. So, far more Democrats are voting early in 2008, so it may be that 2008 was a watershed election for early voting. Still, in a state-by-state basis, Republicans tend to do better among early voters in states that require an excuse to vote an absentee ballot (early voting rates are much lower, too!).

12:48 [Comment From Rosemarie (NH): ] How do you think negative campaigning impacts turnout?

12:50 Michael McDonald: It used to be that people thought negative campaigning decreased turnout, but since then, numerous studies have shown it increases turnout. People are apt to be interested in slowing down and watching the accident on the side of the road. The media certainly enjoy covering the most negative campaigns, too.

12:50 [Comment From Malcolm, DC: ] Do you have any stats about early voting so far, and can you draw any conclusions?

12:50 Michael McDonald: They are here. So far, over 2 million people have already voted!

12:52 [Comment From Borys Ortega: ] How do you see the Obama support base (liberals, young people, etc) in terms of enthusiasm?

12:52 Seung Min Kim: And in addition to that, it seems like the White House and Democrats are doing a lot more outreach to young voters, with the MTV/BET town halls and the large rallies at universities. Do you think that will have any effect, considering young people have a low turnout rate for midterm elections?

12:53 Michael McDonald: Since we began surveying, polls consistently show that young people, minorities, the poor and uneducated tend to vote at lower rates -- perhaps the most ironic thing about this election is that the people most affected by the economic downturn are the least likely to vote.

12:55 Michael McDonald: The Democrats need to counter the Republican enthusiasm by expanding the electorate. Their strategy is to do voter mobilization targeted at the low propensity midterm voters, like the youth. We will again have to see how effective the Democrat's mobilization will be compared to the Republican's enthusiasm.

12:55 [Comment From Rosemarie (NH): ] Has there been any correlation between the level and campaign spending (especially on advertising) and the results?

12:57 Michael McDonald: A funny statistic is that the more an incumbent spends, the worse they do. This is because they are spending to counter a threat from a viable challenger. This is why this is one of the most difficult questions to answer -- surprisingly. We do not know the marginal effect of another dollar spent because the other campaign is also spending money.

12:57 [Comment From Sally: ] There was a flap this week about Univision airing ads that seek to depress Hispanic voter turnout. How common is that practice?

12:59 Michael McDonald: Voter suppression targeted at minorities has a long and ignoble history in American politics. Generally, I think everyone should vote since democracy works best when its citizens are engaged. This particular episode may ultimately backfire since it may rile up Nevada Latinos in a campaign that has had many racial overtones.

1:00 [Comment From Drew C.: ] What's your evaluation of early vote-by-mail, vs. in-person voting? Are both being done well?

1:00 Michael McDonald: In 2008, approximately 500,000 mail ballots were rejected. These were people who thought they voted by their vote did not count.

1:02 Michael McDonald: Why does this happen? People do not follow the procedures properly -- the return the ballot in the wrong envelope, they do not sign the envelope, etc. I do like California's method of allowing voters to drop their ballots off on election day at their polling places. This allows poll workers to check that the voter followed procedures.

1:03 Michael McDonald: An advantage of in-person early voting is that these problems do not occur, and their is a chance for a voter and election administrators to fix any problems, such as a first time voter forgetting to bring mandatory ID.

1:03 [Comment From Nick, DC: ] Along the lines of what Sally was asking about, we hear a lot about voter suppression, and we also hear a lot about alleged voter fraud. Are either of them really very common? And are voting machines more subject to tampering than the old paper ballots?

1:05 Michael McDonald: Vote fraud -- someone actually intentionally casting an illegal vote -- is extremely rare. When it happens, it tend to happen among mail ballots. Although there are potentially security flaws with electronic machines, there is little evidence of tampering (of course, that may be because there is no way to check!).

1:06 [Comment From Peter G.: ] If you could make one voting reform nationwide to make the system work better, what would it be?

1:08 Michael McDonald: Universal voter registration. There is plenty of evidence that our system of requiring voters to register themselves does not work well. Just about every other advanced democracy registers their own voters. In states with Election Day registration, turnout is much higher (5 to 7 percentage points). So, not only would we increase turnout, but we would get third party organizations like the now-defunct ACORN our of the business of registering voters.

1:09 [Comment From Ben Griffiths: ] You said incumbents fare worse when they spend more. is the same true of challengers? I'm thinking this year of Sharron Angle's $14 million in Nevada. Is it even possible to spend that much in the time left?

1:10 Michael McDonald: The spending in Nevada is tremendous. Despite that likely about half the voters will have already voted by Election Day -- Nevada is a high turnout state -- I think the campaigns will continue spending to the end since the election appears to be going down to the wire.

1:11 Michael McDonald: As for your first question, there is a point where a challenger spends enough money to become viable, which triggers a response in spending from an incumbent.

1:11 [Comment From Rosemarie (NH): ] Is overall turnout higher in states that allow early voting?

1:13 Michael McDonald: I testified to the U.S. Senate that I believe the answer is yes, though the turnout effects are a modest one to two points in presidential elections. There are studies that find big turnout increases in non-presidential elections. Indeed, the very first usage of all-mail ballot elections was in local jurisdictions that needed to meet threshold turnout rates to pass local bond measures.

1:13 [Comment From Nancy: ] Which party gets the early bragging rights?

1:14 Michael McDonald: So far, Democrats have jack rabbited out of the starting line in most states where we have a clue of which party's registrants are voting early. Nevada is an interesting departure, where Democrats have a lead, but it is not as great as 2008.

1:14 [Comment From Carson P.: ] One of your Brookings colleagues - Bill Galston - has proposed the idea of mandatory voting, like they do in Australia. Could that work here? Is it a good idea?

1:15 Michael McDonald: Good luck trying to convince Americans that they will be fined if they do not vote. I do not think this is practical for the U.S., though it obviously increases turnout.

1:15 [Comment From Don: ] What are the prospects for Lisa Murkowski come election day? Do you think she has a realistic shot at beating Joe Miler?

1:16 Michael McDonald: The polls are close. I think it is anyone's game in Alaska. In fact, I wrote an op-ed with my co-author Seth McKee, which was published at Politico today.

1:16 [Comment From Greg Dworkin: ] Thanks for all your hard work on this! How 'institutionalized' do you see the early vote by the parties? are they incorporating early voting as part of GOTV or are they behind in realizing so many people vote early these days?

1:19 Michael McDonald: As I document with another co-author -- Tom Schaller -- the Democrats created a strong early voting GOTV organization in 2008, and Republicans only belatedly tried to mobilize their voters to vote early. We will have to see how well Democrats will roll over this organization to 2010. Eventually, I believe the Republicans will have to build as strong as an organization. Early voting allows a party to mobilize over a longer period of time.

1:19 [Comment From Mary H. Hager, PhD: ] Please clarify polling methodology. Who is reached; who is not. The role of technology (email, telephonic, etc.) in defining the subpopulation for polling data.

1:20 Michael McDonald: That is quite a tall order for a chat :) We discuss many of these issues on Pollster -- which now has a home in the politics section of Huffington Post (I also blog at Pollster).

1:21 [Comment From Don (Ossning, NY): ] Does Christine O'Donnell have a chance in Delaware?

1:21 Michael McDonald: No.

1:21 [Comment From Geoffrey V.: ] Over the years, I've gotten the sense that campaigns are moving faster, that there are more undecided voters and that many voters don't make up their minds until the last minute. Is that supported by the data?

1:23 Michael McDonald: Well, given the tremendous increase of early voting from 20% in 2004 to 30% in 2008, it appears that many voters are making up their minds sooner, not later. Still, in a midterm election, the rule has generally been that people tend to hold their ballots longer because they do not have as much information about the candidates. It appears that this election may break that previous pattern.

1:23 [Comment From Joan: ] Do you think compromise will come back to Congress after the midterms?

1:24 Michael McDonald: No. Historically, we still have a ways to go before we reach the highest levels of polarization in our politics observed in the late 19th century.

1:24 [Comment From Al Amundson, ND: ] It seems sometimes that pollsters are "surprised" by wins. Polling is so scientific these days, and there's so much money behind it -- how often does a real surprise actually occur?

1:25 Michael McDonald: Surprises more often occur in primary elections, where the electorate is difficult to predict and information is fluid. I do not expect we will be greatly surprised by the 2010 election outcomes.

1:25 [Comment From Rosemarie (NH): ] Do you think that even with early voting, people just want to get it over with, go in to vote and make up their minds while they read the ballot?

1:27 Michael McDonald: Want the campaigns to stop bugging you? Vote early if you can. Election officials track who has a mail ballot in hand and who has voted, and they share this information with the campaigns.

1:27 [Comment From Bert C.: ] How is Sharron Angle still holding on in Nevada even after her numerous public gaffes?

1:27 Michael McDonald: The economic crisis has hit Nevada VERY hard (and I don't often write in caps!).

1:28 [Comment From Peggy: ] What role do you think the Tea Party will play in future elections? Is this a one-off movement or something more serious in American politics?

1:30 Michael McDonald: Shameless plug: see my Politico op-ed. A conservative/populist movement is nothing new to American politics. At least in the short run, I expect the tea party to continue to be influential, especially if Republicans take the House -- I do not expect they will take the Senate as of today. Victories will further embolden the activists.

1:31 Michael McDonald: Thanks to everyone for your questions. Sorry I could not answer them all!

1:31 Seung Min Kim: And that's it for today. Thanks for all the great questions as we count down the days until Election Day. And thanks to Michael for his insightful answers!

An academic-industrial partnership published last January in the prestigious journal Nature the results of the development of antibiotic teixobactin. The reported work is still at an early preclinical stage but it is nevertheless good news. Over the last decades the introduction of new antibiotics has slowed down nearly to a halt and over the same period we have seen a dangerous increase in antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Such is the magnitude of the problem that it has attracted the attention of the U.S. government. Accepting several recommendations presented by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) in their comprehensive report, the Obama Administration issued last September an Executive Order establishing an interagency Task Force for combating antibiotic resistant bacteria and directing the Secretary of Human and Health Services (HHS) to establish an Advisory Council on this matter. More recently the White House issued a strategic plan to tackle this problem.

Etiology of antibiotic resistance

Infectious diseases have been a major cause of morbidity and mortality from time immemorial. The early discovery of sulfa drugs in the 1930s and then antibiotics in the 1940s significantly aided the fight against these scourges. Following World War II society experienced extraordinary gains in life expectancy and overall quality of life. During that period, marked by optimism, many people presumed victory over infectious diseases. However, overuse of antibiotics and a slowdown of innovation, allowed bacteria to develop resistance at such a pace that some experts now speak of a post-antibiotic era.

The problem is manifold: overuse of antibiotics, slow innovation, and bacterial evolution.

The overuse of antibiotics in both humans and livestock also facilitated the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Responsibility falls to health care providers who prescribed antibiotics liberally and patients who did not complete their prescribed dosages. Acknowledging this problem, the medical community has been training physicians to avoid pressures to prescribe antibiotics for children (and their parents) with infections that are likely to be viral in origin. Educational efforts are also underway to encourage patients to complete their full course of every prescribed antibiotic and not to halt treatment when symptoms ease. The excessive use of antibiotics in food-producing animals is perhaps less manageable because it affects the bottom line of farm operations. For instance, the FDA reported that even though famers were aware of the risks, antibiotics use in feedstock increased by 16 percent from 2009 to 2012.

The development of antibiotics—perhaps a more adequate term would be anti-bacterial agents—indirectly contributed to the problem by being incremental and by nearly stalling two decades ago. Many revolutionary innovations in antibiotics were introduced in a first period of development that started in the 1940s and lasted about two decades. Building upon scaffolds and mechanisms discovered theretofore, a second period of incremental development followed over three decades, through to 1990s, with roughly three new antibiotics introduced every year. High competition and little differentiations rendered antibiotics less and less profitable and over a third period covering the last 20 years pharmaceutical companies have cut development of new antibiotics down to a trickle.

The misguided overuse and misuse of antibiotics together with the economics of antibiotic innovation compounded the problem taking place in nature: bacteria evolves and adapts rapidly.

Current policy initiatives

The PCAST report recommended federal leadership and investment to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria in three areas: improving surveillance, increasing the longevity of current antibiotics through moderated usage, and picking up the pace of development of new antibiotics and other effective interventions.

To implement this strategy PCAST suggested an oversight structure that includes a Director for National Antibiotic Resistance Policy, an interagency Task Force for Combating Antibiotic Resistance Bacteria, and an Advisory Council to be established by the HHS Secretary. PCAST also recommended increasing federal support from $450 million to $900 million for core activities such as surveillance infrastructure and development of transformative diagnostics and treatments. In addition, it proposed $800 million in funding for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to support public-private partnerships for antibiotics development.

The Obama administration took up many of these recommendations and directed their implementation with the aforementioned Executive Order. More recently, it announced a National Strategy for Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria to implement the recommendations of the PCAST report. The national strategy has five pillars: First, slow the emergence and spread of resistant bacteria by decreasing the abusive usage of antibiotics in health care as well as in farm animals; second, establish national surveillance efforts that build surveillance capability across human and animal environments; third, advance development and usage of rapid and innovative diagnostics to provide more accurate care delivery and data collection; forth, seek to accelerate the invention process for new antibiotics, other therapeutics and vaccines across all stages, including basic and applied research and development; finally, emphasize the importance of international collaboration and endorse the World Health Organization Action Plan to address antimicrobial resistance.

University-Industry partnerships

Therefore, an important cause of our antibiotic woes seems to be driven by economic logic. On one hand, pharmaceutical companies have by and large abandoned investment in antibiotic development; competition and high substitutability have led to low prices and in their financial calculation, pharmaceutical companies cannot justify new developmental efforts. On the other hand, farmers have found the use of antibiotics highly profitable and thus have no financial incentives to halt their use.

There is nevertheless a mirror explanation of a political character.

The federal government allocates about $30 billion for research in medicine and health through the National Institutes of Health. The government does not seek to crowd out private research investment; rather, the goal is to fund research the private sector would not conduct because the financial return of that research is too uncertain. Economic theory prescribes government intervention to address this kind of market failure. However, it is also government policy to privatize patents to discoveries made with public monies in order to facilitate their transfer from public to private organizations. An unanticipated risk of this policy is the rebalancing of the public research portfolio to accommodate the growing demand for the kind of research that feeds into attractive market niches. The risk is that the more aligned public research and private demand become, the less research attention will be directed to medical needs without great market prospects. The development of new antibiotics seems to be just that kind of neglected medical public need. If antibiotics are unattractive to pharmaceutical companies, antibiotic development should be a research priority for the NIH. We know that it is unlikely that Congress will increase public spending for antibiotic R&D in the proportion suggested by PCAST, but the NIH could step in and rebalance its own portfolio to increase antibiotic research. Either increasing NIH funding for antibiotics or NIH rebalancing its own portfolio, are political decisions that are sure to meet organized resistance even stronger than antibiotic resistance.

The second mirror explanation is that farmers have a well-organized lobby. It is no surprise that the Executive Order gingerly walks over recommendations for the farming sector and avoid any hint at an outright ban of antibiotics use, lest the administration is perceived as heavy-handed. Considering the huge magnitude of the problem, a political solution is warranted. Farmers’ cooperation in addressing this national problem will have to be traded for subsidies and other extra-market incentives that compensate for loss revenues or higher costs. The administration will do well to work out the politics with farmer associations first before they organize in strong opposition to any measure to curb antibiotic use in feedstock.

Addressing this challenge adequately will thus require working out solutions to the economic and political dimensions of this problem. Public-private partnerships, including university-industry collaboration, could prove to be a useful mechanism to balance the two dimensions of the equation. The development of teixobactin mentioned above is a good example of this prescription as it resulted from collaboration between the university of Bonn Germany, Northeastern University, and Novobiotic Pharmaceutical, a start-up in Cambridge Mass.

If the NIH cannot secure an increase in research funding for antibiotics development and cannot rebalance substantially its portfolio, it can at least encourage Cooperative Research and Development Agreements as well as university start-ups devoted to develop new antibiotics. In order to promote public-private and university-industry partnerships, policy coordination is advised. The nascent enterprises will be assisted greatly if the government can help them raise capital connecting them to venture funding networks or implementing a loan guarantees programs specific to antibiotics.  It can also allow for an expedited FDA approval which would lessen the regulatory burden. Likewise, farmers may be convinced to discontinue the risky practice if innovation in animal husbandry can effectively replace antibiotic use. Public-private partnerships, particularly through university extension programs, could provide an adequate framework to test alternative methods, scale them up, and subsidize the transition to new sustainable practices that are not financially painful to farmers.

Yikun Chi contributed to this post

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NASA’s Asteroid Initiative encompasses efforts for the human exploration of asteroids—as well as the Asteroid Grand Challenge—to enhance asteroid detection capabilities and mitigate their threat to Earth. The human space flight portion of the initiative primarily includes the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), which is a proposal to put an asteroid in orbit of the moon and send astronauts to it. The program originally contemplated two alternatives for closer study: capturing a small 10m diameter asteroid versus simply recovering a boulder from a much larger asteroid. Late in March, NASA offered an update of its plans. It has decided to retrieve a boulder from an asteroid near Earth’s orbit—candidates are the asteroids 2008 EV5, Bennu, and Itokawa—and will place the boulder on the moon’s orbit to further study it.

This mission will help NASA develop a host of technical capabilities. For instance, Solar Electric Propulsion uses solar electric power to charge atoms for spacecraft propulsion—in the absence of gravity, even a modicum of force can alter the trajectory of a body in outer space. Another related capability under development is the gravity tractor, which is based on the notion that even the modest mass of a spacecraft can exert sufficient gravitational force over an asteroid to ever so slightly change its orbit. The ARM spacecraft mass could be further increased by its ability to capture a boulder from the asteroid that is steering clear of the Earth, enabling a test of how humans might prevent asteroid threats in the future. Thus, NASA will have a second test of how to deflect near-Earth objects on a hazardous trajectory. The first test, implemented as part of the Deep Impact Mission, is a kinetic impactor; that is, crashing a spacecraft on an approaching object to change its trajectory.

The Asteroid Initiative is a partner of the agency’s Near Earth Object Observation (NEOO) program. The goal of this program is to discover and monitor space objects traveling on a trajectory that could pose the risk of hitting Earth with catastrophic effects. The program also seeks to develop mitigation strategies. The capabilities developed by ARM could also support other programs of NASA, such as the manned exploration of Mars.

NEOO has recently enjoyed an uptick of public support. It used to be funded at about $4 million in the 1990s and in 2010 was allocated a paltry $6 million. But then, a redirection of priorities—linked to the transition from the Bush to the Obama administrations—increased funding for NEOO to about $20 million in 2012 and $40 million in 2014—and NASA is seeking $50 million for 2015. It is clear that NASA officials made a compelling case for the importance of NEOO; in fact, what they are asking seems quite a modest amount if indeed asteroids pose an existential risk to life on earth. At the same time, the instrumental importance of the program and the public funds devoted to it beg the question as to whether taxpayers should have a say in the decisions NASA is making regarding how to proceed with the program.

NASA has done something remarkable to help answer this question.

Last November, NASA partnered with the ECAST network (Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology) to host a citizen forum assessing the Asteroid Initiative. ECAST is a consortium of science policy and advocacy organizations which specializes in citizen deliberations on science policy. The forum consisted of a dialogue with 100 citizens in Phoenix and Boston who learned more about the asteroid initiative and then commented on various aspects of the project.

The participants, who were selected to approximate the demographics of the U.S. population, were asked to assess mitigation strategies to protect against asteroids. They were introduced to four strategies: civil defense, gravity tractor, kinetic impactor, and nuclear blast deflection. As part of the deliberations, they were asked to consider the two aforementioned approaches to perform ARM. A consensus emerged about the boulder retrieval option primarily because citizens thought that option offered better prospects for developing planetary defense technologies.  This preference existed despite the excitement of capturing a full asteroid, which could potentially have additional economic impacts. The participants showed interest in promoting the development of mitigation capabilities at least as much as they wanted to protect traditional NASA goals such as the advancement of science and space flight technology. This is not surprising given that concerns about doomsday should reasonably take precedence over traditional research and exploration concerns.

NASA could have decided to set ARM along the path of boulder retrieval exclusively on technical merits, but having conducted a citizen forum, the agency is now able to claim that this decision is also socially robust, which is to say, is responsive to public values of consensus. In this manner, NASA has shown a promising method by which research mission federal agencies can increase their public accountability.

In the same spirit of responsible research and innovation, a recent Brookings paper I authored with David Guston—who is a co-founder of ECAST—proposes a number of other innovative ways in which the innovation enterprise can be made more responsive to public values and social expectations.

Kudos to NASA for being at the forefront of innovation in space exploration and public accountability.

Editor's Note: TechTakes is a new series that collects the diverse perspectives of scholars around the Brookings Institution on technology policy issues. This first post in the series features contributions from Scott Andes, Susan Hennessey, Adie Tomer, Walter Valdivia, Darrell M. West, and Niam Yaraghi on the Internet of Things.

In the coming years, the number of devices around the world connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) will grow rapidly. Sensors located in buildings, vehicles, appliances, and clothing will create enormous quantities of data for consumers, corporations, and governments to analyze. Maximizing the benefits of IoT will require thoughtful policies. Given that IoT policy cuts across many disciplines and levels of government, who should coordinate the development of new IoT platforms? How will we secure billions of connected devices from cyberattacks? Who will have access to the data created by these devices? Below, Brookings scholars contribute their individual perspectives on the policy challenges and opportunities associated with the Internet of Things.

The Internet of Things will be everywhere

Darrell M. West is vice president and director of Governance Studies and founding director of the Center for Technology Innovation.

Humans are lovable creatures, but prone to inefficiency, ineffectiveness, and distraction. They like to do other things when they are driving such as listening to music, talking on the phone, texting, or checking email. Judging from the frequency of accidents though, many individuals believe they are more effective at multi-tasking than is actually the case.

The reality of these all too human traits is encouraging a movement from communication between computers to communication between machines. Driverless cars soon will appear on the highways in large numbers, and not just as a demonstration project. Remote monitoring devices will transmit vital signs to health providers, who then can let people know if their blood pressure has spiked or heart rhythm has shifted in a dangerous direction. Sensors in appliances will let individuals know when they are running low on milk, bread, or cereal. Thermostats will adjust their energy settings to the times when people actually are in the house, thereby saving substantial amounts of money while also protecting natural resources.

With the coming rise of a 5G network, the Internet of Things will unleash high-speed devices and a fully connected society. Advanced digital devices will enable a wide range of new applications from energy and transportation to home security and healthcare. They will help humans manage the annoyances of daily lives such as traffic jams, not being able to find parking places, or keeping track of physical fitness. The widespread adoption of smart appliances, smart energy grids, resource management tools, and health sensors will improve how people connect with one another and their electronic devices. But they also will raise serious security, privacy, and policy issues.

Implications for surveillance

Susan Hennessey is Fellow in National Security in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. She is the Managing Editor of the Lawfare blog, which is devoted to sober and serious discussion of "Hard National Security Choices.”

As the debate over encryption and diminished law enforcement access to communications enters the public arena, some posit the growing Internet of Things as a solution to “Going Dark.” A recently released Harvard Berkman Center report, “Don’t Panic,” concludes in part that losses of communication content will be offset by the growth of IoT and networked sensors. It argues IoT provides “prime mechanisms for surveillance: alternative vectors for information-gathering that could more than fill many of the gaps left behind by sources that have gone dark – so much so that they raise troubling questions about how exposed to eavesdropping the general public is poised to become.”

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper agrees that IoT has some surveillance potential. He recently testified before Congress that “[i]n the future, intelligence services might use the IoT for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials.”

But intelligence gathering in the Internet age is fundamentally about finding needles in haystacks – IoT is poised to add significantly more hay than needles. Law enforcement and the intelligence community will have to develop new methods to isolate and process the magnitude of information. And Congress and the courts will have to decide how laws should govern this type of access.

For now, the unanswered question remains: How many refrigerators does it take to catch a terrorist?

IoT governance

Scott Andes is a senior policy analyst and associate fellow at the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Initiative on Innovation and Placemaking, a part of the Centennial Scholar Initiative at the Brookings Institution.

As with many new technology platforms, the Internet of Things is often approached as revolutionary, not evolutionary technology. The refrain is that some scientific Rubicon has been crossed and the impact of IoT will come soon regardless of public policy. Instead, the role of policymakers is to ensure this new technology is leveraged within public infrastructure and doesn’t adversely affect national security or aggravate inequality. While these goals are clearly important, they all assume technological advances of IoT are staunchly within the realm of the private sector and do not justify policy intervention. However, as with almost all new technologies that catch the public’s eye—robotics, clean energy, autonomous cars, etc.—hyperbolic news reporting overstates the market readiness of these technologies, further lowering the perceived need of policy support.

The problem with this perspective is twofold. First, greater scientific breakthroughs are still needed. The current rate of improvement in processing power and data storage, miniaturization of devices, and more energy efficient sensors only begin to scratch the surface of IoT’s full potential. Advances within next-generation computational power, autonomous devices, and interoperable systems still require scientific breakthroughs and are nowhere near deployment. Second, even if the necessary technological advancements of IoT have been met, it’s not clear the U.S. economy will be the prime recipient of its economic value. Nations that lead in advanced manufacturing, like Germany, may already be better poised to export IoT-enabled products. Policymakers in the United States should view technological advancements in IoT as a global economic race that can be won through sound science policies. These should include: accelerating basic engineering research; helping that research reach the market; supporting entrepreneurs’ access to capital; and training a science and engineering-ready workforce that can scale up new technologies.

IoT will democratize innovation

Walter D. Valdivia is a fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings.

The Internet of Things could be a wonderful thing, but not in the way we imagine it.

Today, the debate is dominated by cheerleaders or worrywarts. But their perspectives are merely two sides of the same coin: technical questions about reliability of communications and operations, and questions about system security. Our public imagination about the future is being narrowly circumscribed by these questions. However, as the Internet of Things starts to become a thing—or multiples things, or a networked plurality—it is likely to intrude so intensely into our daily lives that alternative imaginations will emerge and will demand a hearing.

A compelling vision of the future is necessary to organize and coordinate the various market and political agents who will integrate IoT into society. Technological success is usually measured in terms set by the purveyor of that vision. Traditionally, this is a small group with a financial stake in technological development: the innovating industry. However, the intrusiveness and pervasiveness of the Internet of Things will prompt ordinary citizens to augment that vision. Citizen participation will deny any group a monopoly on that vision of the future. Such a development would be a true step in the direction of democratizing innovation. It could make IoT a wonderful thing indeed.

Applications of IoT for infrastructure

Adie Tomer is a fellow at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program and a member of the Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative.

The Internet of Things and the built environment are a natural fit. The built environment is essentially just a collection of physical objects—from sidewalks and streets to buildings and water pipes—that all need to be managed in some capacity. Today, we measure our shared use of those objects through antiquated analog or digital systems. Think of the electricity meter on a building, or a person manually counting pedestrians on a busy city street. Digital, Internet-connected sensors promise to modernize measurement, relaying a whole suit of indicators to centralized databases tweaked to make sense of such big data.

But let’s not fool ourselves. Simply outfitting cities and metro areas with more sensors won’t solve any of our pressing urban issues. Without governance frameworks to apply the data towards goals around transportation congestion, more efficient energy use, or reduced water waste, these sensors could be just another public investment that doesn’t lead to public benefit.

The real goal for IoT in the urban space, then, is to ensure our built environment supports broader economic, social, and environmental objectives. And that’s not a technology issue—that’s a question around leadership and agenda-setting.

Applications of IoT for health care

Niam Yaraghi is a fellow in the Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation.

Health care is one of the most exciting application areas for IoT. Imagine that your Fitbit could determine if you fall, are seriously hurt, and need to be rushed to hospital. It automatically pings the closest ambulance and sends a brief summary of your medical status to the EMT personnel so that they can prepare for your emergency services even before they reach the scene. On the way, the ambulance will not need to use sirens to make way since the other autonomous vehicles have already received a notification about approaching ambulance and clear the way while the red lights automatically turn green. 

IoT will definitely improve the efficiency of health care services by reducing medical redundancies and errors. This dream will come true sooner than you think. However, if we do not appropriately address the privacy and security issues of healthcare data, then IoT can be our next nightmare. What if terrorist organizations (who are becoming increasingly technology savvy) find a way to hack into Fitbit and send wrong information to an EMT? Who owns our medical data? Can we prevent Fitbit from selling our health data to third parties? Given these concerns, I believe we should design a policy framework that encourages accountability and responsibility with regards to health data. The framework should precisely define who owns data; who can collect, store, mine and use it; and what penalties will be enforced if entities acted outside of this framework.

After a recent talk about my ISIS book, one of the audience members asked, “What can I read to help me not hate Islam?” I don’t think it’s a scholar’s job to persuade others to love or hate any culture. But the question was sincere, so I suggested some books that have helped me better understand Islam. I also put the question to Twitter. Below is some of what I and others came up with.

Two cautions before we dive in: First, the list is obviously not exhaustive and I’ve left out overly apologetic books—in my experience, they only increase the skeptical reader’s suspicion that she’s being suckered. Second, people on Twitter gave me great suggestions but I’ve only included those I’ve read and can vouch for:

Muhammad and the Quran: Two of the best books you’ll ever read about Muhammad and the Quran are also the shortest: The Koran: A Very Short Introduction and Muhammad, both by Michael Cook. He writes with great wit and deep scholarship.

Other scriptures: Most non-Muslims are unaware that Islamic scripture is more than the Quran. It includes a vast collection of words and deeds attributed to Muhammad by later authors. These scriptures are sort of like the Gospels, and Muslim scholars fight over their authenticity like Christian scholars debate about the accuracy of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These extra Islamic scriptures contain most of the teachings that make modern people (Muslims included) uncomfortable about Islam. One of the world’s experts on these scriptures, Jonathan Brown, has written a terrific book about them, Misquoting Muhammad.

Rumi: The medieval mystic’s poems about life and death are beautiful and moving, no matter your belief system. I loved his poems so much as an undergrad that I went on to study Middle Eastern languages just so I could read his work in the original. I’m glad I first viewed Islam through the eyes of Rumi and not a group like ISIS. Neither is solely representative of Islam but both draw heavily on its scriptures and reach such different conclusions.

The Bible: Many people recommended reading the Bible to decrease hate of Islam. The nerd in me leapt to the least obvious conclusion, “Ah, good idea! Reading some of the rough stuff in the Hebrew Bible is a good way to put a kindred ancient religion like Islam in perspective.” But they meant something a little less complicated:

@will_mccants @jenanmoussa Read the bible and learn to love and not to hate. :-)

— Dirk Lont (@Denkkracht1) December 12, 2015

It’s a worthy perspective today no matter your faith.

Editors’ Note: One week after this post was originally published, President Benigno Aquino of the Philippines said that the United States must take action in the South China Sea if China takes steps towards reclaiming the Scarborough Shoal. Michael O’Hanlon updated this post on May 23 with a brief response, below. The original post appears in full after the break.

Predictably, some experts—as well as now the Philippines' leader, President Benigno Aquino—are arguing that the United States should militarily prevent China from seizing the Scarborough Shoal, a disputed but basically worthless land formation in the open waters between the Philippines and China. The formation is admittedly three times closer to the Philippines than to China, but it is not important—and it is definitely not worth fighting China over. Loose talk of red lines and of the supposed need for the United States to "take military action" makes the problem sound far too antiseptic and easily manageable. In fact, any direct use of military power that resulted in the deaths of Chinese (or American) military personnel would raise serious dangers of escalation. 

The United States does need to ensure access to the sea lanes of the South China Sea. And it should help protect the populated areas of any allied country, including the Philippines. It should not recognize Chinese territorial or economic claims to areas surrounding disputed (or reclaimed) land formations, even if China occupies some of these islets and other features. And it should consider proportionate responses in the economic realm to any Chinese aggression over the Scarborough Shoal, as well as the possibility of expanded and permanent U.S. military presence in the area. But it should not shoot at Chinese ships, planes, or troops over this issue. It's just not worth it, and we have more appropriate and measured options for response if needed.

[Original post, from May 12]

President-elect Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, known for his Trump-like rhetoric and supra-legal methods of reducing crime while mayor of Davao City on the island of Mindanao, is already causing consternation in many parts of the world. His previous tolerance for vigilantes as a crime-fighting tool, for example, is cause for concern.

But in other cases, we should relax and keep an open mind. For example, while The Washington Post editorial page has lamented that he appears willing to do a deal with Beijing—accepting Chinese investment in the Philippines while allowing China to enforce its claims to the uninhabited Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea—that particular outcome may actually be good for the United States. 

Provocateurs in Beijing

Let’s situate the Scarborough Shoal issue in broader context. In recent days, the United States sailed a major Navy vessel, the William P. Lawrence, within 12 miles of the Fiery Cross Reef, a land formation in the Spratly Islands of the South China Sea that China has transformed into a 700-acre artificial island. China objected strenuously. Meanwhile, everyone awaits the ruling of an international arbitration panel, expected later this spring, on whether China or the Philippines (or neither) is the rightful claimant to the Scarborough Shoal.

To be sure, the broad problem starts in Beijing; The Washington Post is not wrong on that basic point. Incredulously, invoking fishing histories from many centuries ago, China claims not only most of the shoals and sand bars and small islands of the South China Sea, and not only the surrounding fisheries and seabed resources, but the water itself. Its so-called nine-dash line, which encompasses almost all of the South China Sea—including areas much closer to the Philippines and Indonesia and other key countries than to China’s own territory—can be interpreted as a claim to sovereign ownership. Fears that it will declare an associated air defense identification zone further complicate the picture.

Map of the South China Sea locating China's nine-dash line claim on the South China Sea, and the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). Note: The Spratleys, Parcels, and other islands in the South China Sea are disputed to various degrees by different parties. Photo credit: Reuters.

America’s aims are far less disruptive to the status quo. But of course, for America, the region is also much further away. In Chinese eyes, we already have our Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico—not to mention our extensive east and west seacoasts and other maritime domains. By contrast, China is largely hemmed in by land on three sides and Japan together with the U.S. Navy on the fourth. For Washington to deny China even a modest version of its own special waters strikes many in Beijing as haughty and hegemonic. 

America’s aims are far less disruptive to the status quo.

Choosing our historical analogies wisely

Of course, the United States is making no claims of its own in the region. Nor is Washington trying to dictate outcomes on all disputes. Washington does not take a position on who owns the land features of the South China Sea. Nor does it oppose any plan for joint exploitation of the area’s resources that regional states can agree on. Nor can the United States, or any other country, be expected to let China restrict naval and commercial shipping maneuvers through this region, through which at least one-third of the world’s commerce traverses. Nor should Washington abandon treaty allies—most notably in this case, the Philippines—if they come under fire from Chinese warships (as has happened before). And in fairness to Filipinos, the Scarborough Shoal is much closer to their country than to China, by a distance factor of more than three to one.

Yet there is a problem in Washington’s thinking, too. Given the way rising powers have behaved throughout history, it is unrealistic to think that China wouldn’t seek to translate its greater economic and military strength into some type of strategic benefit. Yet Washington expects China to stop building artificial islands, to abstain from deploying military assets to the region, and to accept adjudication of disputes over territory by an international panel.

... it is unrealistic to think that China wouldn’t seek to translate its greater economic and military strength into some type of strategic benefit.

Many Americans would view any bending of the rules in Beijing’s favor as appeasement and thus an invitation to further imperialistic behavior by China. We have learned the lessons of World War II and the Cold War very well. 

But it is also important to bear in mind the lessons of World War I, when great powers competed over relatively minor issues and wound up in a terrible conflict. Just as Germany had been largely shut out of the colonialism competition prior to 1914, making its leaders anxious to right what they saw as historical wrongs in advancing their own interests once they had the capacity, it is possible that China will refuse to accept the status quo going forward. By this alternative reading of history, our job should be to persuade China to be content with very minor adjustments to the existing global order—and to remind Chinese that they have benefited greatly from that order—rather than to oppose each and every small act of Chinese assertiveness as if it portended the first of many dominoes to fall. The good news in this case is that China is not challenging existing state borders, threatening established population centers, or using lethal force as a default instrument of state power. Its behavior is worrying, to be sure—but not particularly surprising, and by the standards of history, relatively benign to date.

Walk the line

With this perspective in mind, the United States should continue to insist on freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, and sail its ships wherever it wants, including within 12 miles of reclaimed islands. It should punish China for any future, limited use of military violence against a country like the Philippines by shoring up alliances, increasing forward U.S. military deployments, and imposing economic sanctions in concert with allies. But it should not itself use lethal force to directly respond to most small possible Chinese provocations or to evict People’s Liberation Army forces from disputed islands and shoals. It should tolerate some modest degree of expanded Chinese military presence in the area. And it should encourage regional friends to accept deals on joint economic exploitation of the region’s resources in which China would in effect be first among equals—though of course the exact meaning of that phrase would require careful delineation. 

Its behavior is worrying, to be sure—but not particularly surprising, and by the standards of history, relatively benign to date.

Duterte’s willingness to do a deal with China would seem to fit with these criteria, without surrounding any substantial claims to Beijing, and without suggesting any weakening in its ties to the United States either. The Philippines shouldn’t concede meaningful economic resources in the waters and seabeds surrounding the Scarborough Shoal. But ownership and control of the land features themselves are a minor matter about which Manila might well usefully compromise.

The United States and China are likely to be jostling for position in the South China Sea for years. That is probably inevitable. It is also tolerable, if we keep our cool while also maintaining our resolve—and if we patiently look for an ultimate compromise on the issues that currently divide America and its regional friends from Beijing. Ironically, the strongman from Mindanao may help us along with this process.

Event Information

By most metrics, the 1991 Gulf War, also known as Operation Desert Storm, was a huge and rapid success for the United States and its allies. The mission of defeating Iraq's army, which invaded Kuwait the year prior, was done swiftly and decisively. However, the war's impact on soldiers who fought in it was lasting. Over 650,000 American men and women served in the conflict, and many came home with symptoms including insomnia, respiratory disorders, memory issues and others attributed to a variety of exposures – “Gulf War Illness."

On June 16, the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at Brookings and Georgetown University Medical Center co-hosted a discussion on Desert Storm, its veterans, and how they are faring today. Representative Mike Coffman (R-Col.), the only member of Congress to serve in both Gulf wars, delivered an opening address before joining Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow at Brookings, for a moderated discussion. Joel Kupersmith, former head of the Office of Research and Development of the Department of Veterans Affairs, convened a follow-on panel with Carolyn Clancy, deputy under secretary for health for organizational excellence at the Department of Veterans Affairs; Adrian Atizado, deputy national legislative director at Disabled American Veterans; and James Baraniuk, professor of medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center.

Audio

• Desert Storm after 25 years: Confronting the exposures of modern warfare

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160616_desert_storm_transcript

The United States needs to bear down on a comprehensive strategy to defeat ISIS globally in the aftermath of the terrible June 12 tragedy in Orlando, Florida. To be sure, no such effort can reliably prevent all such future attacks. But moments like these require that we reassess and reinvigorate our strategy against a serious, global threat to our nation and our allies.

Some will say that ISIS overachieved here, or that Omar Mateen was more a deranged individual than an ISIS operative, or that recent battlefield progress by the United States and its partners against ISIS in Iraq and Syria will soon lead to the group’s demise. None of these arguments is compelling as a case for complacency. What Mateen did, even if the bloodiest single shooting spree in U.S. history, is entirely repeatable by well-trained individuals with access to weapons like the AR-15. Mateen was perhaps deranged, but he also was apparently pushed over the edge by the allure of joining a broader ISIS-inspired movement that finds legitimacy in doctrines of hate, and takes purpose from creating mass-casualty events in the name of some perverted interpretation of Islam. It could, and probably will, happen again.

Yes, a combination of Iraqi forces, U.S. and coalition airpower, Kurdish fighters, Sunni tribesmen, and Shiite militias has taken back perhaps 40 percent of Iraqi territory and 20 percent of Syrian territory previously held by ISIS. ISIS may have lost up to half its revenue in those two countries as well. But the cities of Raqqa and Mosul remain firmly in ISIS hands. Over the last year or two, moreover, ISIS has deepened its roots from the Sinai Peninsula to Libya, established tentacles from Azerbaijan to Afghanistan and into Southeast Asia, and gained a powerful affiliate in the form of the Boko Haram movement in Nigeria. It may be down, but it is hardly out. 

[ISIS] may be down, but it is hardly out.

Mapping the threat

Several crucial aspects of the anti-ISIS campaign are lagging. Country by country, an agenda to address them might be summarized as follows:

Iraq. Here, government-led forces are making headway, but the pace is slow, and most worrisome of all, there is little reason to think that Mosul in particular will be well-governed once it is retaken from ISIS. We need to find a way to increase U.S. leverage in Baghdad to create the kinds of “hold” forces that can lead to a stable peace—as much a political problem as a military one. That may require a larger aid and assistance package from the United States—especially relevant given how much Iraq depends on oil revenue and how much oil prices have fallen.

Syria. Here, the political strategy does not really hold water. Peace talks are moribund; Bashar Assad is on the march, with Russian help. We need to lower our political goals—confederation, with protection of minority rights, may be a more appropriate standard for success. But regardless, we need to step up our game at helping not only Kurdish forces, but moderate Arab forces too. Quite likely, we will need to relax modestly our vetting standards on whom we help, and increase several-fold the number of Americans involved in the training and equipping efforts. Certain types of retaliatory measures against Syrian government aircraft that bomb declared no-go zones may be appropriate as well. Only by moving towards solving the civil war can we properly target the ISIS menace there.

Libya. With the unity government perhaps taking shape, the West now needs to be preparing an intensified aid and training program for a Libyan government force that can gain the strength needed to consolidate control, at least in ISIS-occupied areas in the country’s central coastal regions. This will require perhaps hundreds of Western advisors in the country when the moment is right.

Nigeria. With President Muhammadu Buhari making progress against corruption, it is time for an expanded American assistance program that may even, if Nigerians so request, involve deployment of small mentoring teams to the field to help the army in its fight against Boko Haram.

Afghanistan. President Obama should not make any further reductions in U.S. troop levels for the rest of his presidency, and should allow U.S. commanders considerable flexibility in how they employ airpower there against the Taliban.

The Homefront. ISIS is in fact a three-headed monster—with its core in Iraq and Syria, its various provinces and affiliates (or wilayats) around the broader region, and the global network that binds the pieces together. It is against this global network, both domestically and internationally, that we must double down, for it will be this network that will generate the attacks upon our homelands. Encrypted smart phones have complicated this effort when cells of extremists are actively plotting attacks. But the net effect of technology can still probably help us—if we intensify our pressure on the network through vigilance, rigorous investigations that blend law enforcement and intelligence, and disruptive, timely actions against suspects. New York City, London, and increasingly Paris have done this, but the methods are not yet generalized. This requires aggressive and unequivocal American leadership.

It is against this global network, both domestically and internationally, that we must double down.

These efforts would be significant. Yet none would be enormous. The overseas components, taken together, would involve no more than several thousand additional U.S. personnel and several billion dollars a year in additional aid of various types to groups that are doing the real fighting and dying in common cause with us. We must strike all three heads of this horrific creature, simultaneously and relentlessly. The United States and its coalition partners have made a modest amount of progress against ISIS, but now is a moment to intensify the effort before the next, possibly much worse, attack occurs.

The terrible attack in Nice on July 14—Bastille Day—saddened us all. For a country that has done so much historically to promote democracy and human rights at home and abroad, France is paying a terrible and unfair price, even more than most countries. My colleagues Will McCants and Chris Meserole have carefully documented the toll that France, and certain other Francophone countries like Belgium, have suffered in recent years from global terrorism. It is heart wrenching.

From what we know so far, the attack was carried out by a deeply distraught, potentially deranged, and in any case extremely brutal local man from Nice of Tunisian descent and French nationality. Marital problems, the recent loss of his job, and a general sense of personal unhappiness seem to have contributed to the state of mind that led him to commit this heinous atrocity. Perhaps we will soon learn that ISIS, directly or indirectly, inspired the attack in one way or another as well. My colleague Dan Byman has already tapped into his deep expertise about terrorism to remind us that ISIS had in fact encouraged ramming attacks with vehicles before, even if the actual manifestation of such tactics in this case was mostly new. 

This attack will again raise the question: Why France? On this point, I do have a somewhat different take than some of my colleagues. The argument that France has partly brought these tragedies upon itself—perhaps because of its policies of secularism and in particular its limitations on when and where women can wear the veil in France—strikes me as unpersuasive. Its logical policy implications are also potentially disturbing, because if interpreted wrongly, it could lead to a debate on whether France should modify such policies so as to make itself less vulnerable to terrorism. That outcome, even if unintended, could dance very close to the line of encouraging appeasement of heinous acts of violence with policy changes that run counter to much of what French culture and society would otherwise favor. So I feel the need to push back.

Here are some of the arguments, as I see them, against blaming French culture or policy for this recent string of horrible attacks including the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the November 2015 mass shootings in Paris, and the Nice tragedy (as well as recent attacks in Belgium):

• Starting with the simplest point, we still do not know much about the perpetrator of the Nice killings. From what we do surmise so far, personal problems appear to be largely at the root of the violence—different from, but not entirely unlike, the case with the Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen.
• We need to be careful about drawing implications from a small number of major attacks. Since 2000, there have also been major attacks in the Western world by extremist jihadis or takfiris in New York, Washington, Spain, London, San Bernardino, Orlando, and Russia. None of these are Francophone. Even Belgium is itself a mixed country, linguistically and culturally.
• Partly for reasons of geography, as well as history, France does face a larger problem than some other European countries of individuals leaving its country to go to Syria or Iraq to fight for ISIS, and then returning. But it is hardly unique in the scale of this problem.
• Continental Europe has a specific additional problem that is not as widely shared in the United Kingdom or the United States: Its criminal networks largely overlap with its extremist and/or terrorist networks. This point may be irrelevant to the Nice attack, but more widely, extremists in France or Belgium can make use of illicit channels for moving people, money, and weapons that are less available to would-be jihadis in places like the U.K. (where the criminal networks have more of a Caribbean and sub-Saharan African character, meaning they overlap less with extremist networks).
• Of course, the greatest numbers of terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists occur in the broader Muslim world, with Muslims as the primary victims—from Iraq and Syria to Libya and Yemen and Somalia to South Asia. French domestic policies have no bearing on these, of course.

There is no doubt that good work by counterterrorism and intelligence forces is crucial to preventing future attacks. France has done well in this regard—though it surely can do better, and it is surely trying to get better. There is also no doubt that promoting social cohesion in a broad sense is a worthy goal. But I would hesitate, personally, to attribute any apparent trend line in major attacks in the West to a particular policy of a country like France—especially when the latter is in fact doing much to seek to build bridges, as a matter of national policy, with Muslims at home and abroad. 

There is much more to do in promoting social cohesion, to be sure, even here in America (though our own problems probably center more on race than on religion at the moment). But the Nice attacker almost assuredly didn’t attack because his estranged wife couldn’t wear a veil in the manner and/or places she wanted. At a moment like this in particular, I disagree with insinuations to the contrary.

Event Information

The failed coup in Turkey on July 15 to 16, organized by factions within the Turkish military in an attempt to overthrow the government of President Erdoğan, represents both a victory and a new trial for Turkish democracy. Although the Turkish citizenry brought the country back from the brink of anarchy and civil war, many analysts see last week’s events as a consequence of the political instability and discord that has been mounting for years as Erdoğan has consolidated powers, marginalized the opposition, and redefined Turkey’s democracy. How will the president react in the aftermath of the coup? Will the democratic backsliding intensify, or can the thwarted coup offer new opportunity for reconciling the deeply-polarized nation?

The upheaval and political instability in Turkey also holds significant implications for Turkey’s foreign policy and the fate of a neighboring region already in turmoil from the war in Syria and insecurity in Iraq. The West desperately needs a stable, democratic, and predictable partner in its NATO-ally Turkey to address the many challenges besetting the region and to fight the Islamic State (or ISIS). How will recent events affect regional stability and Turkey’s cooperation with the West on security issues, including the resettlement of Syrian refugees? What does the failed coup mean for the coalition against ISIS engagement in Syria?

On July 20, the Foreign Policy program (FP) at Brookings hosted a panel discussion to consider these questions and other domestic and international consequences of the coup attempt in Turkey. Brookings Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on the United States and Europe Fiona Hill introduced and moderated a wide-ranging conversation featuring FP Senior Fellows Shadi Hamid, Kemal Kirişci, Michael O'Hanlon, and Ömer Taşpınar.

After the discussion, the speakers took questions from the audience.

Video

• Turkey coup attempt was a shock
• Institutional collapse of Turkey unprecedented
• Disaster averted in failed Turkey coup
• Incirlik Air Base not irreplaceable
• Turkey after the coup attempt: Implications for Turkish democracy, foreign policy, and the future of the Syrian War

Audio

• Turkey after the coup attempt: Implications for Turkish democracy, foreign policy, and the future of the Syrian War

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160720_turkey_coup_transcript

A key objective of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is to assist its member countries in meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). UNDP pursues this objective in various ways, including through analysis and advice to governments on the progress towards the MDGs (such as support for the preparation and monitoring Poverty Reduction Strategies, or PRSs, in poor countries), assistance for capacity building, and financial and technical support for the preparation and implementation of development programs.

The challenge of achieving the MDGs remains daunting in many countries, including Tajikistan. To do so will require that all development partners, i.e., the government, civil society, private business and donors, make every effort to scale up successful development interventions. Scaling up refers to “expanding, adapting and sustaining successful policies, programs and projects on different places and over time to reach a greater number of people.” Interventions that are successful as pilots but are not scaled up will create localized benefits for a small number of beneficiaries, but they will fail to contribute significantly to close the MDG gap.

This paper aims to assess whether and how well UNDP is supporting scaling up in its development programs in Tajikistan. While the principal purpose of this assessment was to assist the UNDP country program director and his team in Tajikistan in their scaling up efforts, it also contributes to the overall growing body of evidence on the scaling up of development interventions worldwide.

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Leaders will head to the G-20 Summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, among renewed serious concern about the world economy. The turmoil that started with the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis has resulted in now almost five years of ongoing instability. The emerging market economies fared much better than the advanced economies and pulled out of the crisis already in 2009, but the slowdown we are now facing in 2012 is again global, demonstrating the interdependence in the world economy. The emerging market economies have stronger underlying trend growth rates, but they remain vulnerable to a downturn in the advanced economies. The center of concern is now squarely on Europe, with a recession threatening most European countries, even those that had reasonably good performances so far. After an encouraging start in 2012, the U.S. economy, while not close to a recession, is also showing signs of a slowdown rather than the hoped for steady acceleration of growth. And the slowdown is spreading across the globe.

At a time like this it would be desirable and necessary that the G-20 show real initiative and cohesion. The essays in this collection look at the challenge from various angles. There is concern that the G-20 is losing its sense of purpose, that cohesion is decreasing rather than increasing, and that policy initiatives are reactive to events rather than proactive. Let us hope that at this moment of great difficulty, the G-20 will succeed in giving the world economy a new sense of direction and confidence. It is much needed.

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Editor's Note: Johannes Linn discusses the potential of multilateral development banks in the latest G-20 Research Group briefing book on the St. Petersburg G-20 Summit. Read the full collection here.

The origins of the multilateral development banks (MDBs) lie with the creation of the World Bank at Bretton Woods in 1944. Its initial purpose, as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, was the reconstruction of wartorn countries after the Second World War. 

As Europe and Japan recovered in the 1950s, the World Bank turned to providing financial assistance to the developing world. Then came the foundation of the InterAmerican Development Bank (IADB) in 1959, of the African Development Bank (AfDB) in 1964 and of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 1966, each to assist the development of countries in their respective regions. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) was set up in 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, to assist with the transition of countries in the former Soviet sphere. 

The MDBs are thus rooted in two key aspects of the geopolitical reality of the postwar 20th century: the Cold War between capitalist ‘West’ and communist ‘East’, and the division of the world into the industrial ‘North’ and the developing ‘South’. The former aspect was mirrored in the MDBs for many years by the absence of countries from the Eastern Bloc. This was only remedied after the fall of the Bamboo and Iron curtains. The latter aspect remains deeply embedded even today in the mandate, financing pattern and governance structures of the MDBs. 

Changing global financial architecture 

From the 1950s to the 1990s, the international financial architecture consisted of only three pillars: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the MDBs represented the multilateral official pillar; the aid agencies of the industrial countries represented bilateral official pillar; and the commercial banks and investors from industrial countries made up the private pillar. 

Today, the picture is dramatically different. Private commercial flows vastly exceed official flows, except during global financial crises. New channels of development assistance have multiplied, as foundations and religious and non-governmental organisations rival the official assistance flows in size. 

The multilateral assistance architecture, previously dominated by the MDBs, is now a maze of multilateral development agencies, with a slew of sub-regional development banks, some exceeding the traditional MDBs in size. For example, the European Investment Bank lends more than the World Bank, and the Caja Andina de Fomento (CAF, the Latin American Development Bank) more than the IADB. There are also a number of large ‘vertical funds’ for specific purposes, such as the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. There are  specialized trust funds, attached to MDBs, but often with their own governance structures.

End of the North-South divide 

Finally, the traditional North-South divide is breaking down, as emerging markets have started to close the development gap, as global poverty has dropped and as many developing countries have large domestic capacities. This means that the new power houses in the South need little financial and technical assistance and are now providing official financial and technical support to their less fortunate neighbors. China’s assistance to Africa outstrips that of the World Bank.

The future for MDBs 

In this changed environment is there a future for MDBs? Three options might be considered: 

1. Do away with the MDBs as a relic of the past. Some more radical market ideologues might argue that, if there ever was a justification for the MDBs, that time is now well past. In 2000, a US congressional commission recommended the less radical solution of shifting the World Bank’s loan business to the regional MDBs. Even if shutting down MDBs were the right option, it is highly unlikely to happen. No multilateral financial institution created after the Second World War has ever been closed. Indeed, recently the Nordic Development Fund was to be shut down, but its owners reversed their decision and it will carry on, albeit with a focus on climate change. 

2. Carry on with business as usual. Currently, MDBs are on a track that, if continued, would mean a weakened mandate, loss of clients, hollowed-out financial strength and diluted technical capacity. Given their tight focus on the fight against poverty, the MDBs will work themselves out of a job as global poverty, according to traditional metrics, is on a dramatic downward trend. 

Many middle-income country borrowers are drifting away from the MDBs, since they find other sources of finance and technical advice more attractive. These include the sub-regional development banks, which are more nimble in disbursing their loans and whose governance is not dominated by the industrial countries. These countries, now facing major long-term budget constraints, will be unable to continue supporting the growth of the MDBs’ capital base. But they are also unwilling to let the emerging market economies provide relatively more funding and acquire a greater voice in these institutions.

Finally, while the MDBs retain professional staff that represents a valuable global asset, their technical strength relative to other sources of advice – and by some measures, even their absolute strength – has been waning. 

If left unattended, this would mean that MDBs 10 years from now, while still limping along, are likely to have lost their ability to provide effective financial and technical services on a scale and with a quality that matter globally or regionally. 

3. Give the MDBs a new mandate, new governance and new financing. If one starts from the proposition that a globalised 21st-century world needs capable global institutions that can provide long-term finance to meet critical physical and social infrastructure needs regionally and globally, and that can serve as critical knowledge hubs in an increasingly interconnected world, then it would be folly to let the currently still considerable institutional and financial strengths of the MDBs wither away.

• The mandate of the MDBs should be adapted to move beyond preoccupation with poverty eradication to focus explicitly on global and regional public goods as a way to help sustain global economic growth and human welfare. Moreover, the MDBs should be able to provide assistance to all their members, not only developing country members. 

• The governance of the MDBs should be changed to give the South a voice commensurate with the greater global role it now plays in economic and political terms. MDB leaders should be selected on merit without consideration of nationality. 

• The financing structure should be matched to give more space to capital contributions from the South and to significantly expand the MDBs’ capital resources in the face of the current severe capital constraints.

In addition, MDB management should be guided by banks’ membership to streamline their operational practices in line with those widely used by sub-regional development banks, and they should be supported in preserving and, where possible, strengthening their professional capacity so that they can serve as international knowledge hubs. 

A new MDB agenda for the G20 

The G20 has taken on a vast development agenda. This is fine, but it risks getting bogged down in the minutiae of development policy design and implementation that go far beyond what global leaders can and should deal with. What is missing is a serious preoccupation of the G20 with that issue on which it is uniquely well equipped to lead: reform of the global financial institutional architecture. 

What better place than to start with than the MDBs? The G20 should review the trends, strengths and weaknesses of MDBs in recent decades and endeavour to create new mandates, governance and financing structures that make them serve as effective pillars of the global institutional system in the 21st century. If done correctly, this would also mean no more need for new institutions, such as the BRICS development bank currently being created by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. It would be far better to fix the existing institutions than to create new ones that mostly add to the already overwhelming fragmentation of the global institutional system.

Visiting Astana, the modernistic capital of Kazakhstan, last week, I couldn't help feeling that I was at, or at least close to, the center of the universe. 

Consider this:  On September 7, the president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, having just returned from attending the G-20 Summit in St. Petersburg at the invitation of President Putin of Russia, welcomed President Xi Jinping of China for an official visit in Astana. President Xi gave a speech that day at Nazarbayev University, in which he unabashedly borrowed a turn of phrase from former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton  by proposing a “New Silk Road” to serve as an “economic belt” of Eurasia, connecting “3 million people from the Pacific to the Baltic Sea” with Kazakhstan as a key partner along the way. 

On September 10, President Nazarbayev opened the Eurasian Emerging Markets Forum in Astana, at which he addressed some 800 participants, including high-level dignitaries and representatives from 87 countries.  In his keynote speech, he laid out his plans to catapult Kazakhstan into the ranks of the top 30 developed countries in the world by 2050.  The rest of the forum was devoted to exploring the ways in which this ambitious vision could be achieved and how economic integration of the Eurasian supercontinent—i.e., Europe plus Asia, with Kazakhstan at its center—would be a driver of regional and global prosperity. 

Finally, on September 13, President Nazarbayev joined the leaders of China, Russia and the five Central Asian republics in Bishkek for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which was also attended by a number of other regional leaders with observer status, including from Afghanistan, India, Iran and Pakistan.  Besides the usual pledges of good neighborly relations within the group, the leaders weighed in with a chorus of statements about current geopolitical trouble spots, including Afghanistan, Iran and Syria, many of them directed critically at the United States.

While the president and people of Kazakhstan might have felt at the center of global action this week, there is little doubt that China and Russia are the key external actors on the Central Asian stage.  Europe and the United States are far away and hardly visible, and everybody expects that, with the imminent end of NATO’s engagement in Afghanistan, their attention to Central Asia will slip even further.  In contrast, the leaders of China and Russia are clearly focused on this region.  

Central Asian leaders, while perhaps privately worried about the long-term consequences of too tight an embrace by China, welcome the low-key approach of their big neighbor...

If there had been any doubt, President Xi’s speech in Astana showed that China is now concerned with Central Asia at the highest level.  While China faces its neighbors in the Pacific region in an assertive pose designed to counter what it sees as encirclement by unfriendly countries led by the U.S., it evidently feels no threat in Central Asia and projects an image of itself as benevolent and modest senior partner.  No doubt sensing opportunities to create a stable backyard, to secure access to energy resources and to build a land bridge to European and Middle Eastern markets while also gently wresting influence away from Russia, China has a strong incentive to push westward.  The substantial energy supply deals  that President Xi signed in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan this past week and the stress Xi placed in his Astana speech on measures to open up transport links throughout Eurasia reflect China’s growing engagement in this region.  Central Asian leaders, while perhaps privately worried about the long-term consequences of too tight an embrace by China, welcome the low-key approach of their big neighbor, which promises to strengthen their own hand economically and politically at least in the short term.

At the same time, there is also a new dynamic between Central Asia and Russia.  Since Mr. Putin resumed the Russian presidency in 2012, Russia has breathed new life into a long-dormant regional grouping, the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC), by pushing hard to create a customs union  (and eventually an economic union) that, in Russia’s view, would encompass most of the republics of the former Soviet Union. Although only a fraction of the geographic space of continental Eurasia (Europe + Asia), the reference to “Eurasia” harks back to a long-standing Russian ideological vision.  Under this vision, Russia and its former Soviet neighbors are endowed with a unique combination of European and Asian values and, led by Russia, with a mission to dominate the land bridge between Europe and Asia. 

In the pursuit of establishing a unified economic “Eurasian” space, Russia has not only successfully pushed for the full implementation of the current customs union between Russia, Kazakhstan and Belorussia, but is also vigorously pursuing the expansion of the union in Ukraine, Central Asia (specifically targeting the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan) and Armenia in the South Caucasus.  In the case of Armenia and Ukraine, this pursuit has taken on a decidedly anti-European Union tone, as Russia seems to spare no effort to ensure that these countries will join its own economic orbit, rather than associating with the EU.  In Central Asia, the Russian campaign of expanding the customs union has been more low key, but nonetheless persistent with the quiet support of Kazakhstan.  Interestingly, this effort to create a unified economic space has not been cast by Russia as a move to counteract the growing influence of China in Central Asia, even though it is undoubtedly one of the underlying long-term motives for Russian diplomacy in the region.  

Much more important for China will be whether the “Eurasian” economic union can create safe, low-cost and high-speed transit routes to China’s key trading partners in Europe, South Asia and the Middle East.

Indeed, for Central Asia in general and for Kazakhstan in particular, the important questions for the future will be how China and Russia shape their mutual relations overall and how they will seek to accommodate their overlapping interests in the region.  For the moment, a common geopolitical front vis-à-vis the U.S., evident in their joint positions at the U.N. Security Council and at the SCO summit last week, is an overarching priority for China and Russia.  Moreover, they share the common interest of establishing a stable and prosperous political and economic sphere in Central Asia.  For now and the foreseeable future, China’s thirst for energy is large enough to allow both Russia and Central Asian countries to pursue opportunities for major oil and gas supply deals with China without undue competition. Finally, whatever protectionist effects an expansion of the Russian-led customs union may have in limiting trade between China and Central Asia will likely be temporary and will hardly be noticed in China’s huge overall trade account.  Much more important for China will be whether the “Eurasian” economic union can create safe, low-cost and high-speed transit routes to China’s key trading partners in Europe, South Asia and the Middle East. This priority strongly resonated in President Xi’s speech, in which he not only staked out an interest in Eurasian economic integration, but also promised greater cooperation between the SCO and EurAsEC.

What does all of this mean in practical terms for Central Asia and for Kazakhstan?  As President Nazarbayev indicated in his speech at the Eurasian Emerging Markets Forum, he sees Kazakhstan as playing a key role in supporting the economic integration of larger Eurasia.  This presumably should mean: investing in regional infrastructure, such as the major East-West Highway through Kazakhstan as a link from China to Europe; assuring that the customs union pursues open, rather than protectionist, policies; and convincing the other Central Asian countries, including Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, to participate in an effort to increase the region’s connectivity both internally and with the rest of the world. 

In addition, there are a number of institutional options for promoting these goals and for turning China’s and Russia’s engagement in Central Asia into a pragmatic partnership.  One option would be to have China join the Eurasian Development Bank (EADB), the financial arm of EurAsEC.  Another would be for Russia to join the Central Asian Regional Economic Cooperation Program (CAREC), in which China has teamed up with Central Asian countries (now also including Afghanistan, Mongolia and Pakistan) and with six international financial organizations (including the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank) with the goal of improving regional cooperation and investment in trade, transport and energy.  Either or both of these two options could then offer SCO a financial and technical institutional platform to pursue economic integration between China, Russia and Central Asia (and, ultimately, even South Asia), a goal that has eluded SCO up until now. 

Kazakhstan is a member of EurAsEc, EADB, CAREC and SCO, and is therefore in a unique position to promote institutional changes along some or all of these lines.  One place to start would be the next ministerial conference of CAREC, to be held in Astana on October 24-25.  Of course, it is by no means clear that China and Russia will see it in their interest to dilute their lead roles in EADB and CAREC, the regional organizations that they now respectively dominate.  However, establishing a strong and meaningful institutional capacity that would support the economic integration process in Central Asia and in the larger Eurasia would be of great benefit for Kazakhstan, since it would help turn the country from being “land-locked” to being “land-linked” with the world’s largest and most dynamic economies.

Event Information

The year 2015 will be a milestone year, with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the post-2015 development agenda by world leaders in September; the Addis Ababa Accord on financing for development in July; and the conclusion of climate negotiations at COP21 in Paris in December. The draft Addis Ababa Accord, which focuses on the actions needed to attain the SDGs, highlights the key role envisaged for the multilateral development banks (MDBs) in the post-2015 agenda. Paragraph 65 of the draft accord notes: “We call on the international finance institutions to establish a process to examine the role, scale, and functioning of the multilateral and regional development finance institutions to make them more responsive to the sustainable development agenda.”          

Against this backdrop, on April 18, 2015, the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings held a private roundtable with the leaders of the MDBs and other key stakeholders to discuss the role of the MDBs in supporting the post-2015 development agenda.

The meeting focused on four questions:

1. What does the post-2015 development agenda and the ambitions of the Addis and Paris conferences imply for the MDBs?


Given the ability of the MDBs to leverage shareholder resources, they can be efficient and effective mechanisms for scaling up development cooperation, particularly with respect to the agenda on investing in people and to the financing of sustainable infrastructure. New roles, instruments and partnerships might be needed.

2. How can MDBs best take advantage of the political attention that is being paid to the various conferences in 2015?   


The World Bank and selected regional development banks have launched a series of initiatives to optimize their balance sheets, address other constraints and enhance their catalytic role in crowding in private finance. And new institutions and mechanisms are coming to the fore. But the responses are not coordinated to best take advantage of each MDB’s comparative advantage.

3. What are the key impediments to scaling up the role and engagement of the MDBs?


Views on constraints are likely to differ but discussions should cover policy dialogue, capacity building, capital, leverage, shareholder backing on volume, instruments on leverage and risk mitigation, safeguards, and governance. 

4. How should the MDBs respond to the proposal to establish a process to examine the role, scale and functioning of the multilateral and regional development finance institutions to make them more responsive to the sustainable development agenda?   


A proactive response and engagement on the part of the MDBs would facilitate a better understanding of the contribution that the MDBs can make and greater support among shareholders for a coherent and stepped-up role.

Event Materials

• Participant List
• MDB PostEvent Summary

The replenishment process for concessional resources of the multilateral development banks is broken. We have come to this conclusion after a review of the experience with recent replenishments of multilateral development funds. We also base it on first-hand observation, since one of us was responsible for the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) replenishment consultations 20 years ago and recently served as the external chair for the last two replenishment consultations of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which closely follow the common multilateral development bank (MDB) practice. As many of the banks and their donors are preparing for midterm reviews as a first step toward the next round of replenishment consultations, this is a good time to take stock and consider what needs to be done to fix the replenishment process.

So what’s the problem?

Most of all, the replenishment process does not serve its key intended function of setting overall operational strategy for the development funds and holding the institutions accountable for effectively implementing the strategy. Instead, the replenishment consultations have turned into a time-consuming and costly process in which donor representatives from their capitals get bogged down in the minutiae of institutional management that are better left to the boards of directors and the managements of the MDBs. There are other problems, including lack of adequate engagement of recipient countries in donors’ deliberations, the lack of full participation of the donors’ representatives on the boards of the institutions in the process, and inflexible governance structures that serve as a disincentive for non-traditional donors (from emerging countries and from private foundations) to contribute.

But let’s focus on the consultation process. What does it look like? Typically, donor representatives from capitals assemble every three years (or four, in the case of the Asian Development Bank) for a year-long consultation round, consisting of four two-day meetings (including the meeting devoted to the midterm review of the ongoing replenishment and to setting the agenda for the next consultation process). For these meetings, MDB staff prepare, per consultation round, some 20 substantive documents that are intended to delve into operational and institutional performance in great detail. Each consultation round produces a long list of specific commitments (around 40 commitments is not uncommon), which management is required to implement and monitor, and report on in the midterm review. In effect, however, this review covers only half the replenishment cycle, which leads to the reporting, monitoring, and accountability being limited to the delivery of committed outputs (e.g., a specific sector strategy) with little attention paid to implementation, let alone outcomes.

The process is eerily reminiscent of the much maligned “Christmas tree” approach of the World Bank’s structural adjustment loans in the 1980s and 1990s, with their detailed matrixes of conditionality; lack of strategic selectivity and country ownership; focus on inputs rather than outcomes; and lack of consideration of the borrowers’ capacity and costs of implementing the Bank-imposed measures. Ironically, the donors successfully pushed the MDBs to give up on such conditionality (without ownership of the recipient countries) in their loans, but they impose the same kind of conditionality (without full ownership of the recipient countries and institutions) on the MDBs themselves—replenishment after replenishment.

Aside from lack of selectivity, strategic focus, and ownership of the commitments, the consultation process is also burdensome and costly in terms of the MDBs’ senior management and staff time as well as time spent by ministerial staff in donor capitals, with literally thousands of management and staff hours spent on producing and reviewing documentation. And the recent innovation of having donor representatives meet between consultation rounds as working groups dealing with long-term strategic issues, while welcome in principle, has imposed further costs on the MDBs and capitals in terms of preparing documentation and meetings.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Twenty years ago the process was much simpler and less costly. Even today, recent MDB capital increases, which mobilized resources for the non-concessional windows of the MDBs, were achieved with much simpler processes, and the replenishment consultations for special purpose funds, such as the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria and for the GAVI Alliance, are more streamlined than those of the MDBs.

So what’s to be done?

We recommend the following measures to fix the replenishment consultation process:

1. Focus on a few strategic issues and reduce the number of commitments with an explicit consideration of the costs and capacity requirements they imply. Shift the balance of monitoring and accountability from delivery of outputs to implementation and outcomes.
2. Prepare no more than five documents for the consultation process: (i) a midterm review on the implementation of the previous replenishment and key issues for the future; (ii) a corporate strategy or strategy update; (iii) the substantive report on how the replenishment resources will contribute to achieve the strategy; (iv) a financial outlook and strategy document; and (v) the legal document of the replenishment resolution.
3. Reduce the number of meetings for each replenishment round to no more than three and lengthen the replenishment period from three to four years or more.
4. Use the newly established working group meetings between replenishment consultation rounds to focus on one or two long-term, strategic issues, including how to fix the replenishment process.

The initiative for such changes lies with the donor representatives in the capitals, and from our interviews with donor representatives we understand that many of them broadly share our concerns. So this is a good time—indeed it is high time!—for them to act.

In 2015 the international community agreed on a set of ambitious sustainable development goals (SDGs) for the global society, to be achieved by 2030. One of the lessons that the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG s) has highlighted is the importance of a systematic approach to identify and sequence development interventions—policies, programs, and projects—to achieve such goals at a meaningful scale. The Chinese approach to development, which consists of identifying a problem and long-term goal, testing alternative solutions, and then implementing those that are promising in a sustained manner, learning and adapting as one proceeds—Deng Xiaoping’s “crossing the river by feeling the stones”—is an approach that holds promise for successful achievement of the SDGs.

Having observed the Chinese way, then World Bank Group President James Wolfensohn in 2004, together with the Chinese government, convened a major international conference in Shanghai on scaling up successful development interventions, and in 2005 the World Bank Group (WBG ) published the results of the conference, including an assessment of the Chinese approach. (Moreno-Dodson 2005). Some ten years later, the WBG once again is addressing the question of how to support scaling up of successful development interventions, at a time when the challenge and opportunity of scaling up have become a widely recognized issue for many development institutions and experts.

Since traditional private and public service providers frequently do not reach the poorest people in developing countries, social enterprises can play an important role in providing key services to those at the “base of the pyramid.”

In parallel with the recognition that scaling up matters, the development community is now also focusing on social enterprises (SEs), a new set of actors falling between the traditionally recognized public and private sectors. We adopt here the World Bank’s definition of “social enterprises” as a social-mission-led organization that provides sustainable services to Base of the Pyramid (BoP) populations. This is broadly in line with other existing definitions for the sector and reflects the World Bank’s primary interest in social enterprises as a mechanism for supporting service delivery for the poor. Although social enterprises can adopt various organizational forms—business, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and community-based organizations are all forms commonly adopted by social enterprises—they differ from private providers principally by combining three features: operating with a social purpose, adhering to business principles, and aiming for financial sustainability. Since traditional private and public service providers frequently do not reach the poorest people in developing countries, social enterprises can play an important role in providing key services to those at the “base of the pyramid.” (Figure 1)

Figure 1. Role of SE sector in public service provision

Social enterprises often start at the initiative of a visionary entrepreneur who sees a significant social need, whether in education, health, sanitation, or microfinance, and who responds by developing an innovative way to address the perceived need, usually by setting up an NGO, or a for-profit enterprise. Social enterprises and their innovations generally start small. When successful, they face an important challenge: how to expand their operations and innovations to meet the social need at a larger scale. 

Development partner organizations—donors, for short—have recognized the contribution that social enterprises can make to find and implement innovative ways to meet the social service needs of people at the base of the pyramid, and they have started to explore how they can support social enterprises in responding to these needs at a meaningful scale. 

The purpose of this paper is to present a menu of approaches for addressing the challenge of scaling up social enterprise innovations, based on a review of the literature on scaling up and on social enterprises. The paper does not aim to offer specific recommendations for entrepreneurs or blueprints and guidelines for the development agencies. The range of settings, problems, and solutions is too wide to permit that. Rather, the paper provides an overview of ways to think about and approach the scaling up of social enterprise innovations. Where possible, the paper also refers to specific tools that can be helpful in implementing the proposed approaches. 

Note that we talk about scaling up social enterprise innovations, not about social enterprises. This is because it is the innovations and how they are scaled up that matter. An innovation may be scaled up by the social enterprise where it originated, by handoff to a public agency for implementation at a larger scale, or by other private enterprises, small or large. 

This paper is structured in three parts: Part I presents a general approach to scaling up development interventions. This helps establish basic definitions and concepts. Part II considers approaches for the scaling up of social enterprise innovations. Part III provides a summary of the main conclusions and lessons from experience. A postscript draws out implications for external aid donors. Examples from actual practice are used to exemplify the approaches and are summarized in Annex boxes.

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Last Thursday was finance minister day at Brookings, with three separate visits from European finance ministers who were in town for the IMF meetings. Here in Governance Studies, we were delighted to have the opportunity to host Czech Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Andrej Babis for a wide-ranging conversation with our scholars, including Darrell West, Bill Galston, John Hudak, and myself, as well as Bill Drozdiak of Brookings' Center on the United States and Europe and Jeff Gedmin of Georgetown University. Brookings has a long tradition of welcoming distinguished European visitors, and so contributing to the strengthening of transatlantic ties. That is particularly important now, as Europe confronts the destabilizing effects of Russia's aggression in Ukraine, the Greek debt crisis, be continuing after effects of the great recession, and multiple other challenges. We were honored to host Minister Babis and we look forward to many more visits here from leaders of our close U.S. ally, the Czech Republic.

(Photo credit: Embassy of the Czech Republic)

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This program was aired live on CSPAN.org » 

With the demand for its services constantly evolving, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) faces complex challenges in providing accessible care to America’s veterans. Amidst a history of long patient wait times, cost overruns, and management concerns, the VA recently conducted a sweeping internal review of its operations.  The result was the new MyVA program.

How will MyVA improve the VA’s care of veterans? What will it do restore public confidence in its efforts? What changes is the VA undergoing to address both internal concerns and modern challenges in veteran care? 

On June 20, Governance Studies at Brookings hosted VA Secretary Robert McDonald. Secretary McDonald described the VA’s transformation strategy and explained how the reforms within MyVA will impact veterans, taxpayers and other stakeholders. He addressed lessons learned not just for the VA but for all government agencies that strive to achieve transformation and improve service delivery.

This event was broadcast live on C-SPAN.

Join the conversation on Twitter at #VASec and @BrookingsGov

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Editor's Note: The introduction to the 2015 Brown Center Report on American Education appears below. Use the Table of Contents to navigate through the report online, or download a PDF of the full report.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part I: Girls, Boys, and Reading

Part II: Measuring Effects of the Common Core

Part III: Student Engagement

INTRODUCTION

The 2015 Brown Center Report (BCR) represents the 14^th edition of the series since the first issue was published in 2000.  It includes three studies.  Like all previous BCRs, the studies explore independent topics but share two characteristics: they are empirical and based on the best evidence available.  The studies in this edition are on the gender gap in reading, the impact of the Common Core State Standards -- English Language Arts on reading achievement, and student engagement.

Part one examines the gender gap in reading.  Girls outscore boys on practically every reading test given to a large population.  And they have for a long time.  A 1942 Iowa study found girls performing better than boys on tests of reading comprehension, vocabulary, and basic language skills.  Girls have outscored boys on every reading test ever given by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—the first long term trend test was administered in 1971—at ages nine, 13, and 17.  The gap is not confined to the U.S.  Reading tests administered as part of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) reveal that the gender gap is a worldwide phenomenon.  In more than sixty countries participating in the two assessments, girls are better readers than boys. 

Perhaps the most surprising finding is that Finland, celebrated for its extraordinary performance on PISA for over a decade, can take pride in its high standing on the PISA reading test solely because of the performance of that nation’s young women.  With its 62 point gap, Finland has the largest gender gap of any PISA participant, with girls scoring 556 and boys scoring 494 points (the OECD average is 496, with a standard deviation of 94).   If Finland were only a nation of young men, its PISA ranking would be mediocre.

Part two is about reading achievement, too. More specifically, it’s about reading and the English Language Arts standards of the Common Core (CCSS-ELA).  It’s also about an important decision that policy analysts must make when evaluating public policies—the determination of when a policy begins. How can CCSS be properly evaluated? 

Two different indexes of CCSS-ELA implementation are presented, one based on 2011 data and the other on data collected in 2013.  In both years, state education officials were surveyed about their Common Core implementation efforts.  Because forty-six states originally signed on to the CCSS-ELA—and with at least forty still on track for full implementation by 2016—little variability exists among the states in terms of standards policy.  Of course, the four states that never adopted CCSS-ELA can serve as a small control group.  But variation is also found in how the states are implementing CCSS.  Some states are pursuing an array of activities and aiming for full implementation earlier rather than later.  Others have a narrow, targeted implementation strategy and are proceeding more slowly. 

The analysis investigates whether CCSS-ELA implementation is related to 2009-2013 gains on the fourth grade NAEP reading test.  The analysis cannot verify causal relationships between the two variables, only correlations.  States that have aggressively implemented CCSS-ELA (referred to as “strong” implementers in the study) evidence a one to one and one-half point larger gain on the NAEP scale compared to non-adopters of the standards.  This association is similar in magnitude to an advantage found in a study of eighth grade math achievement in last year’s BCR.  Although positive, these effects are quite small.  When the 2015 NAEP results are released this winter, it will be important for the fate of the Common Core project to see if strong implementers of the CCSS-ELA can maintain their momentum.

Part three is on student engagement.  PISA tests fifteen-year-olds on three subjects—reading, math, and science—every three years.  It also collects a wealth of background information from students, including their attitudes toward school and learning.  When the 2012 PISA results were released, PISA analysts published an accompanying volume, Ready to Learn: Students’ Engagement, Drive, and Self-Beliefs, exploring topics related to student engagement.

Part three provides secondary analysis of several dimensions of engagement found in the PISA report.  Intrinsic motivation, the internal rewards that encourage students to learn, is an important component of student engagement.  National scores on PISA’s index of intrinsic motivation to learn mathematics are compared to national PISA math scores.  Surprisingly, the relationship is negative.  Countries with highly motivated kids tend to score lower on the math test; conversely, higher-scoring nations tend to have less-motivated kids. 

The same is true for responses to the statements, “I do mathematics because I enjoy it,” and “I look forward to my mathematics lessons.”  Countries with students who say that they enjoy math or look forward to their math lessons tend to score lower on the PISA math test compared to countries where students respond negatively to the statements.  These counterintuitive finding may be influenced by how terms such as “enjoy” and “looking forward” are interpreted in different cultures.  Within-country analyses address that problem.  The correlation coefficients for within-country, student-level associations of achievement and other components of engagement run in the anticipated direction—they are positive.  But they are also modest in size, with correlation coefficients of 0.20 or less. 

Policymakers are interested in questions requiring analysis of aggregated data—at the national level, that means between-country data.  When countries increase their students’ intrinsic motivation to learn math, is there a concomitant increase in PISA math scores?  Data from 2003 to 2012 are examined.  Seventeen countries managed to increase student motivation, but their PISA math scores fell an average of 3.7 scale score points.  Fourteen countries showed no change on the index of intrinsic motivation—and their PISA scores also evidenced little change.  Eight countries witnessed a decline in intrinsic motivation.  Inexplicably, their PISA math scores increased by an average of 10.3 scale score points.  Motivation down, achievement up.

Correlation is not causation.  Moreover, the absence of a positive correlation—or in this case, the presence of a negative correlation—is not refutation of a possible positive relationship.  The lesson here is not that policymakers should adopt the most effective way of stamping out student motivation.  The lesson is that the level of analysis matters when analyzing achievement data.  Policy reports must be read warily—especially those freely offering policy recommendations.  Beware of analyses that exclusively rely on within- or between-country test data without making any attempt to reconcile discrepancies at other levels of analysis.  Those analysts could be cherry-picking the data.  Also, consumers of education research should grant more credence to approaches modeling change over time (as in difference in difference models) than to cross-sectional analyses that only explore statistical relationships at a single point in time. 

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Earlier this month, the College Board released SAT scores for the high school graduating class of 2015. Both math and reading scores declined from 2014, continuing a steady downward trend that has been in place for the past decade. Pundits of contrasting political stripes seized on the scores to bolster their political agendas. Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Foundation argued that falling SAT scores show that high schools need more reform, presumably those his organization supports, in particular, charter schools and accountability.* For Carol Burris of the Network for Public Education, the declining scores were evidence of the failure of polices her organization opposes, namely, Common Core, No Child Left Behind, and accountability.

Petrilli and Burris are both misusing SAT scores. The SAT is not designed to measure national achievement; the score losses from 2014 were miniscule; and most of the declines are probably the result of demographic changes in the SAT population. Let’s examine each of these points in greater detail.

It never was. The SAT was originally meant to measure a student’s aptitude for college independent of that student’s exposure to a particular curriculum. The test’s founders believed that gauging aptitude, rather than achievement, would serve the cause of fairness. A bright student from a high school in rural Nebraska or the mountains of West Virginia, they held, should have the same shot at attending elite universities as a student from an Eastern prep school, despite not having been exposed to the great literature and higher mathematics taught at prep schools. The SAT would measure reasoning and analytical skills, not the mastery of any particular body of knowledge. Its scores would level the playing field in terms of curricular exposure while providing a reasonable estimate of an individual’s probability of success in college.

Note that even in this capacity, the scores never suffice alone; they are only used to make admissions decisions by colleges and universities, including such luminaries as Harvard and Stanford, in combination with a lot of other information—grade point averages, curricular resumes, essays, reference letters, extra-curricular activities—all of which constitute a student’s complete application.

Today’s SAT has moved towards being a content-oriented test, but not entirely. Next year, the College Board will introduce a revised SAT to more closely reflect high school curricula. Even then, SAT scores should not be used to make judgements about U.S. high school performance, whether it’s a single high school, a state’s high schools, or all of the high schools in the country. The SAT sample is self-selected. In 2015, it only included about one-half of the nation’s high school graduates: 1.7 million out of approximately 3.3 million total. And that’s about one-ninth of approximately 16 million high school students.  Generalizing SAT scores to these larger populations violates a basic rule of social science. The College Board issues a warning when it releases SAT scores: “Since the population of test takers is self-selected, using aggregate SAT scores to compare or evaluate teachers, schools, districts, states, or other educational units is not valid, and the College Board strongly discourages such uses.”  

TIME’s coverage of the SAT release included a statement by Andrew Ho of Harvard University, who succinctly makes the point: “I think SAT and ACT are tests with important purposes, but measuring overall national educational progress is not one of them.”

SAT scores changed very little from 2014 to 2015. Reading scores dropped from 497 to 495. Math scores also fell two points, from 513 to 511. Both declines are equal to about 0.017 standard deviations (SD).^[i] To illustrate how small these changes truly are, let’s examine a metric I have used previously in discussing test scores. The average American male is 5’10” in height with a SD of about 3 inches. A 0.017 SD change in height is equal to about 1/20 of an inch (0.051). Do you really think you’d notice a difference in the height of two men standing next to each other if they only differed by 1/20^th of an inch? You wouldn’t. Similarly, the change in SAT scores from 2014 to 2015 is trivial.^[ii]

A more serious concern is the SAT trend over the past decade. Since 2005, reading scores are down 13 points, from 508 to 495, and math scores are down nine points, from 520 to 511. These are equivalent to declines of 0.12 SD for reading and 0.08 SD for math.^[iii] Representing changes that have accumulated over a decade, these losses are still quite small. In the Washington Post, Michael Petrilli asked “why is education reform hitting a brick wall in high school?” He also stated that “you see this in all kinds of evidence.”

You do not see a decline in the best evidence, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Contrary to the SAT, NAEP is designed to monitor national achievement. Its test scores are based on a random sampling design, meaning that the scores can be construed as representative of U.S. students. NAEP administers two different tests to high school age students, the long term trend (LTT NAEP), given to 17-year-olds, and the main NAEP, given to twelfth graders.

Table 1 compares the past ten years’ change in test scores of the SAT with changes in NAEP.^[iv] The long term trend NAEP was not administered in 2005 or 2015, so the closest years it was given are shown. The NAEP tests show high school students making small gains over the past decade. They do not confirm the losses on the SAT.

Table 1. Comparison of changes in SAT, Main NAEP (12^th grade), and LTT NAEP (17-year-olds) scores. Changes expressed as SD units of base year.

 *p<.05

Petrilli raised another concern related to NAEP scores by examining cohort trends in NAEP scores. The trend for the 17-year-old cohort of 2012, for example, can be constructed by using the scores of 13-year-olds in 2008 and 9-year-olds in 2004. By tracking NAEP changes over time in this manner, one can get a rough idea of a particular cohort’s achievement as students grow older and proceed through the school system. Examining three cohorts, Fordham’s analysis shows that the gains between ages 13 and 17 are about half as large as those registered between ages nine and 13. Kids gain more on NAEP when they are younger than when they are older.

There is nothing new here. NAEP scholars have been aware of this phenomenon for a long time. Fordham points to particular elements of education reform that it favors—charter schools, vouchers, and accountability—as the probable cause. It is true that those reforms more likely target elementary and middle schools than high schools. But the research literature on age discrepancies in NAEP gains (which is not cited in the Fordham analysis) renders doubtful the thesis that education policies are responsible for the phenomenon.^[v]

Whether high school age students try as hard as they could on NAEP has been pointed to as one explanation. A 1996 analysis of NAEP answer sheets found that 25-to-30 percent of twelfth graders displayed off-task test behaviors—doodling, leaving items blank—compared to 13 percent of eighth graders and six percent of fourth graders. A 2004 national commission on the twelfth grade NAEP recommended incentives (scholarships, certificates, letters of recognition from the President) to boost high school students’ motivation to do well on NAEP. Why would high school seniors or juniors take NAEP seriously when this low stakes test is taken in the midst of taking SAT or ACT tests for college admission, end of course exams that affect high school GPA, AP tests that can affect placement in college courses, state accountability tests that can lead to their schools being deemed a success or failure, and high school exit exams that must be passed to graduate?^[vi]

Other possible explanations for the phenomenon are: 1) differences in the scales between the ages tested on LTT NAEP (in other words, a one-point gain on the scale between ages nine and 13 may not represent the same amount of learning as a one-point gain between ages 13 and 17); 2) different rates of participation in NAEP among elementary, middle, and high schools;^[vii] and 3) social trends that affect all high school students, not just those in public schools. The third possibility can be explored by analyzing trends for students attending private schools. If Fordham had disaggregated the NAEP data by public and private schools (the scores of Catholic school students are available), it would have found that the pattern among private school students is similar—younger students gain more than older students on NAEP. That similarity casts doubt on the notion that policies governing public schools are responsible for the smaller gains among older students.^[viii]

Writing in the Washington Post, Carol Burris addresses the question of whether demographic changes have influenced the decline in SAT scores. She concludes that they have not, and in particular, she concludes that the growing proportion of students receiving exam fee waivers has probably not affected scores. She bases that conclusion on an analysis of SAT participation disaggregated by level of family income. Burris notes that the percentage of SAT takers has been stable across income groups in recent years. That criterion is not trustworthy. About 39 percent of students in 2015 declined to provide information on family income. The 61 percent that answered the family income question are probably skewed against low-income students who are on fee waivers (the assumption being that they may feel uncomfortable answering a question about family income).^[ix] Don’t forget that the SAT population as a whole is a self-selected sample. A self-selected subsample from a self-selected sample tells us even less than the original sample, which told us almost nothing.

The fee waiver share of SAT takers increased from 21 percent in 2011 to 25 percent in 2015. The simple fact that fee waivers serve low-income families, whose children tend to be lower-scoring SAT takers, is important, but not the whole story here. Students from disadvantaged families have always taken the SAT. But they paid for it themselves. If an additional increment of disadvantaged families take the SAT because they don’t have to pay for it, it is important to consider whether the new entrants to the pool of SAT test takers possess unmeasured characteristics that correlate with achievement—beyond the effect already attributed to socioeconomic status.

Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall University, calculated the effect on national SAT scores of just three jurisdictions (Washington, DC, Delaware, and Idaho) adopting policies of mandatory SAT testing paid for by the state. He estimated that these policies explain about 21 percent of the nationwide decline in test scores between 2011 and 2015. He also notes that a more thorough analysis, incorporating fee waivers of other states and districts, would surely boost that figure. Fee waivers in two dozen Texas school districts, for example, are granted to all juniors and seniors in high school. And all students in those districts (including Dallas and Fort Worth) are required to take the SAT beginning in the junior year. Such universal testing policies can increase access and serve the cause of equity, but they will also, at least for a while, lead to a decline in SAT scores.

Here, I offer my own back of the envelope calculation of the relationship of demographic changes with SAT scores. The College Board reports test scores and participation rates for nine racial and ethnic groups.^[x] These data are preferable to family income because a) almost all students answer the race/ethnicity question (only four percent are non-responses versus 39 percent for family income), and b) it seems a safe assumption that students are more likely to know their race or ethnicity compared to their family’s income.

The question tackled in Table 2 is this: how much would the national SAT scores have changed from 2005 to 2015 if the scores of each racial/ethnic group stayed exactly the same as in 2005, but each group’s proportion of the total population were allowed to vary? In other words, the scores are fixed at the 2005 level for each group—no change. The SAT national scores are then recalculated using the 2015 proportions that each group represented in the national population.

Table 2. SAT Scores and Demographic Changes in the SAT Population (2005-2015)

The data suggest that two-thirds to three-quarters of the SAT score decline from 2005 to 2015 is associated with demographic changes in the test-taking population. The analysis is admittedly crude. The relationships are correlational, not causal. The race/ethnicity categories are surely serving as proxies for a bundle of other characteristics affecting SAT scores, some unobserved and others (e.g., family income, parental education, language status, class rank) that are included in the SAT questionnaire but produce data difficult to interpret.

Using an annual decline in SAT scores to indict high schools is bogus. The SAT should not be used to measure national achievement. SAT changes from 2014-2015 are tiny. The downward trend over the past decade represents a larger decline in SAT scores, but one that is still small in magnitude and correlated with changes in the SAT test-taking population.

In contrast to SAT scores, NAEP scores, which are designed to monitor national achievement, report slight gains for 17-year-olds over the past ten years. It is true that LTT NAEP gains are larger among students from ages nine to 13 than from ages 13 to 17, but research has uncovered several plausible explanations for why that occurs. The public should exercise great caution in accepting the findings of test score analyses. Test scores are often misinterpreted to promote political agendas, and much of the alarmist rhetoric provoked by small declines in scores is unjustified.

The first stanza of William Butler Yeats much quoted poem, The Second Coming, contains the words:

‘Things fall apart, the center cannot hold....
The best lack all conviction,
While the worst are full of passionate intensity.’

It is unclear whether these words, penned in 1919 referred only to the Irish war of independence or somehow expressed a prescient vision of what Yeats called ‘the blood-dimmed tide’ that would soon engulf Europe. But there can be little doubt that these words eerily convey the tone and content of much that passes today for political speech in the United States.

Why are things falling apart? Why are so many Americans rejecting those in both parties whom they have trusted in the past to lead them? Why are they turning to rebels and outsiders so disturbingly full of passionate intensity? I believe that the answer resides in three identifiable strands in recent history, largely separate but temporally linked. One is a belief that traditional elites whom the public has long trusted to lead them lack the will and the capacity to act in the nation’s best interest. The second is a series of economic developments that have fallen with particular severity on those Americans with less-than-college education. The third is a shift in values and norms of behavior that have liberated many but that threaten others and are at war with deeply held convictions of many. Chasm-like differences in values separate people with shared economic interests.

Ordinarily, blunders by those in power cause voters to switch allegiance from one set of leadership elites to another with a more appealing agenda. Successful candidates have long run against Washington, often from state governorships, but never in rebellion against the core ideas of their parties. The debate in both parties is different this year. The insurgent in the Democratic primaries, a long-serving Senator, is tapping into anger among many Democrats who believe that party leaders have been too willing to compromise on ideas to which the party faithful are devoted but that party leaders regard as dubious policy (protectionism), impracticable (single-payer health reform), or both (highly progressive taxes).

The debates among the Republican candidates are redolent with something more visceral—fear, anger, and sadness that, as they see it, the fundamentals that define American life are in mortal jeopardy. Republican primary voters have turned to candidates who promise an end to compromise with and even civility toward those whose policies and values they reject.

The decline of trust in elected officials is stunning and crosses party lines. In 1964, 77 percent of Americans trusted the federal government to do what is right always or most of the time. And with good reason. The administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt had struggled mightily, with mixed results to be sure but always with irrepressible confidence, to restore prosperity after the Great Depression. The federal government—the president and Congress acting jointly—had organized the nation to fight and win the largest and bloodiest war in world history. A quarter century of rapid economic growth followed the war. Incomes of all economic groups increased. Success fostered trust.

The two major parties differed, of course, often bitterly, exemplified by the Red Scare and McCarthyism of the 1940s and 1950s. But the range of views within each party far exceeded the average difference between them. Conservative, segregationist, and anti-union Democrats of the South had little other than a party label in common with liberal, intergrationist, and pro-union Democrats of the North and West. A gap only slightly narrower separated the internationalist, ‘modern’ Republicans led by Dwight Eisenhower, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Arthur Vandenberg from the conservative, isolationist Republicans represented by Robert Taft and John Bricker. The Republican party encompassed similarly wide differences as recently as the administration of Ronald Reagan, seen incorrectly by many as ideologically unified. In order to succeed, aspirants for party leadership had to master the art of compromise. Party standard-bearers for whom intra-party political bargaining and compromise were second nature, found it natural to apply those same skills in inter-party dealings.

In the glow of post-World War II America, few recognized how unusual it was for Americans to have confidence in the efficacy of the federal government. The founding fathers deeply distrusted centralized power. They divided authority among three branches of government expressly to frustrate the exercise of such power. They reserved to the states all powers other than those the Constitution explicitly granted to the central government. The first decades in the life of the new nation saw repeated and sometimes violent resistance to actions of the national government, culminating in the Civil War, the bloodiest war in our history.

Erosion of the post-World War II interlude began in earnest with the Vietnam War and Watergate. Then the economy turned sour, buffeted by the first OPEC ‘oil shock’ and the recession that followed. Growth of productivity slowed. So did growth of per worker earnings. Inequality, which had fallen for more than four decades, began to increase. Faith in the federal government rebounded during the Reagan administration in part and paradoxically because he appealed to the abiding distrust of Washington. It fell again toward the end of the eighties, but recovered briefly in the 1990s following the well-managed, ‘good war’ against Iraq and the only decade since the 1960s during which incomes grew across the entire income distribution. Trust in government reached a high of 60 percent in October 2001, one month after 9/11.

Then, based on inaccurate information or downright lies about weapons of mass destruction by its leaders, the United States invaded Iraq. Thousands of soldiers died, tens of thousands were wounded, and trillions of dollars were spent. When America withdrew, chaos ensued. It is not hard to understand why voters would bitterly blame elites for the self-inflicted wounds from a misbegotten war.

On the home front, blinkered or feckless elites were blind to the emerging real-estate bubble, to rampant financial mismanagement, and to plain fraud, practiced not only by get-rich financial scammers by also by their complicit customers. In 2007 and 2008, the financial system teetered and nearly collapsed. Economic chaos ensued. Elites suffered sharp losses, but regained most of those losses during a recovery in which the top few percent of the income and wealth distribution enjoyed most of the gains. Public policy shored up financial system, a move that doubtless saved Main Street as well. It also supported incomes of the middle class through such government programs as Unemployment Insurance and food assistance. But relief for the financial sector struck those suffering unemployment, foreclosures, and vanishing home-equity as evidence of cozy collusion between policy-makers of both parties and the plutocrats who caused mass suffering and epidemic insecurity.

The U.S. economy has since recovered better than those of most other developed nations. It has done so despite prematurely restrictive fiscal policy, adopted before recovery was well advanced, out of a bizarre belief that imagined future problems from future budget deficits posed a greater threat to the nation than did current mass unemployment. Average earnings, stagnant for four decades, remained flat. Earnings of workers with less than college education actually fell. Expansion of such government programs as the earned income tax credit and Medicaid offset such losses to a degree. But they are a poor substitute for the across-the-board income growth of the post-World-War-II decades. And they have done little or nothing to offset forces, including the decline of unions and competition from low-wage workers abroad, that have hammered earnings of low-skilled workers.

Can one be surprised that by 2015 the fraction of Americans who said that the federal government will do the right thing always or most of the time had fallen to 26 percent among Democrats and to a dismal 11 percent among Republicans?

A dispassionate outsider might point out that the United States remains an island of stability to which millions around the world flock for refuge and opportunity and that the U.S. economy is still stronger than that of any other developed nation. But that same dispassionate observer could also note that social and economic mobility, never as great as popular myth supposed, had fallen well below that in other nations and that U.S. economic inequality surpassed that of any other developed nation. With a cold eye, that observer might well conclude that the dyspeptic majorities in both parties have reason to reject leaders who failed them so often and so catastrophically.

Although anger at the objective failures of leadership elites has a solid rational basis, rational anger cannot fully explain the emotional intensity of alienation among large swaths of the American population. To understand that depth of feeling, it is necessary recognize that shifts in values, sex roles, and civil rights—changes that have enhanced lives of most Americans—have also eroded the objective condition and subjective sense of security, status, and well-being of many of our fellow citizens.

Women, summoned from domesticity to factory and office jobs during World War II, returned to birth the Baby Boom. When that was done, they began an inexorable march back to paid work. At first they were confined to such ‘appropriate’ occupations as teachers, secretaries, and nurses—career ghettos with short job ladders and low ceilings. A succession of rebellions against such limits became a massive civil rights revolution, spawning exhilarating opportunities for half of the population. The flood of women into the labor force and into occupations from which they had largely been excluded was a boon not just for them but also and for U.S. economic capacity. It was, however, a decidedly mixed blessing for many men—for those working men who lost monopoly possession of many occupations, for married men threatened more by the erosion of economic dominance within the family than appreciative of added income from empowered economic partners, and for single men who found themselves devalued as potential ‘husband-providers.’

For African Americans, the Emancipation Proclamation ended legal slavery, but not repression. Official policy—federal, state, and local—and private collusion perpetuated subjugation well into the 20th century. Litigation and direct political action eventually curbed those practices, albeit slowly, painfully, and incompletely. Here too, there were gains and losses...gains for African-Americans and other people of color, whose rights to live and work where they wanted expanded, and gains for the nation as a whole, which benefitted from an expanded pool of talent and from the first steps in expiating opprobrious behavior toward fellow citizens.

Again, not everyone gained. Some have had to confront new economic competition. Some, rightly or wrongly, have seen affirmative action as depriving them of access to services once exclusively theirs. Others react against favoritism even toward groups long egregiously disfavored. And still other whites, lacking wealth or status, lost the unpriced yet priceless satisfaction of feeling superior to others.

As women and people of color entered occupations from which they had long been excluded, technical change and competition from abroad eroded the base of well-paid jobs for those with comparatively little education. Unionized jobs disappeared, as did the extra earnings and fringe benefits that unions extracted from resistant employers. White men without college degrees and the women who were their partners no longer could count on rising wages and the improved status that comes with seniority in career jobs. The toll was not only economic but physical. While life-expectancies of middle and upper income men and women rose sharply, life-expectancies of lower-income women fell and of lower-income men barely increased because of drug use, depression, and other self-destructive personal behaviors

An upheaval in social norms and values accompanied these market-place developments. The contraceptive revolution weakened the link of sex to marriage. Cohabitation, once known as ‘living in sin,’ became a normal precursor or alternative to marriage—the ‘first union’ for 70 percent of women with less-than-college education. Women increasingly came to bear children as single mothers and to do so without shame, or with much less of it than in the past. Homosexuality, formerly regarded as abnormal at best and criminal at worst, emerged from the shadows to become generally, if not universally, accepted. Whites males, once economically, culturally, and politically dominant, saw one area of ascendancy after another slipping from their control, as women achieved economic and sexual independence and as people with skins darker than theirs emerged from the social and economic shadows. Demographers heralded the imminent emergence of a majority-minority nation. The idea of white ascendancy, if not superiority, morphed from accepted truth into anachronistic myth.

These three forces—bald failures of leadership, changes in the relative standing of races and sexes, and upheavals in accepted values—explain the moods within each political party. The weights attached to each of these forces varies across the political spectrum. Bernie Sanders cites growing economic inequality, favoritism toward the rich, and past foreign policy blunders. Donald Trump exploits resentment, particularly that of white males with little education, with scattershot attacks on virtually every other group he can find and indicts leaders for what he sees as current as well as past foreign policy mistakes. Ted Cruz, unabashedly asks voters in a nation founded on religious tolerance to allow immigration only of Christians-at least for now.

The electorate will choose a new president and new legislators a few months hence. That election will determine who is president and who serves in the House and Senate. But it will not remove the forces that have caused so many to scorn leaders they once trusted. The center may hold once again. But if it does, it will do so tenuously, and it will be on probation.

Editor's note: This piece originally appeared in The Huffington Post.