INTRODUCTION

Later this month, Egyptians will go to the polls, or attempt to, in order to vote in the country’s parliamentary elections. The elections will unlikely be a democratic affair in the Western sense. In fact, opposition candidates, voters, citizen groups—essentially everyone other than government representatives—are fully expecting the elections to be a violent and rigged episode. For easy reference, one can look to the June elections for the Shura Council, or upper house of Parliament, in which the governing National Democratic Party (NDP) managed to land 80 out of a possible 84 seats. Those elections were marked by violence and allegations of rampant violations.

Elections in Egypt are not generally democratic, they do not necessarily reflect the will of the people, and they will invariably usher in a house in which the NDP has an unshakeable majority. More so, the elected body has very little control over the government and none over the president, who, thanks to some creative constitutional amendments in 2007, can dissolve the Parliament at will. Election results are apparently so preordained that many have questioned the wisdom of participating at all. Opposition groups, among them the National Alliance for Change (NAC), led by former International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head and current political reformer Mohamed ElBaradei, have been calling for a boycott. ElBaradei told reporters at a Ramadan Iftar meeting on September 7 that voting “would go against the national will.” Many political analysts and some members of the opposition have echoed the belief that participation in the elections only gives credence to a fundamentally flawed system and perpetuates the state myth of a democratic nation.

The above argument certainly has its merits, but it misses the point. Elections in Egypt are not about who wins seats—that is usually a foregone conclusion. They are about the “how and the what,” in the sense that they are oases of political activity, demand, and dissension in an otherwise arid climate. In that way, every election fought represents losses and gains for the respective participants in ways that invariably influence the following elections. Also, the ballot boxes can yield surprising results—as in the case of the 2005 elections when the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) gained a jawdropping 88 of 454 seats in the elections for the lower house. This outcome certainly would not have come about if the Brotherhood had not participated. To be sure, there are also significant, detrimental changes that happen as a direct consequence of the elections, among them constitutional amendments designed to hobble the opposition’s ability to field candidates and campaign. Still, for opposition parties and movements, boycotting the elections is the equivalent of throwing away the only political participation they have. It would mean relinquishing any visibility or influence and it would mean admitting to their supporters that they are essentially mere window dressings in the democratic façade. Arguably, this is a reason why these elections have only ever been boycotted once, in 1990. The Egyptian political arena is one where contestants scrabble for the smallest patch of ground. The high moral ground simply does not figure into it.

Downloads

• Download Full Report - English

INTRODUCTION

A year after President Hosni Mubarak’s fall, U.S.-Egypt relations are at an all-time low. Not, as many expected, because of the rise of Islamist parties, but because America’s longtime allies in the Egyptian military have whipped up anti-American sentiment at a feverish pace. It may have started as a political ploy, a way to build support on the street and highlight the army’s nationalist credentials, but the generals soon lost control. In January, the Egyptian government announced that sixteen Americans—including the son of a top U.S. official— would be put on trial, facing up to five years in prison. Their apparent crime was working for American nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, and Freedom House—that offered support, funding, and election monitoring for Egypt’s uneven transition.

On March 1, the Egyptian government lifted the travel ban on seven Americans who were still in Egypt, allowing them to leave the country. A major diplomatic breach was avoided, giving the impression that the crisis had been resolved. This appears to be the interpretation of the Obama administration, which waived congressional conditions on military aid, citing the importance of maintaining a “strategic partnership” with Egypt.2 However, the charges against the Americans remain, and there is no sign that the American NGOs in question will be able to reopen anytime soon. More importantly, the vast majority of affected NGOs—which are Egyptian rather than American—still find themselves on trial and under attack.

The NGO episode, however worrying it is on its own, reflects something larger and more troubling: the slow descent from the national unity of the revolution to a fog of paranoia, distrust, and conspiracy theorizing. Who is with the revolution, and who isn’t? The roots of the problem lie in the uncertainly inherent in Egypt’s muddled transition. Unlike in Tunisia, where the Higher Committee for the Achievement of Revolutionary Objectives (HCARO)—accepted as legitimate by all of the country’s main political forces—was responsible for managing the transition, Egypt has featured various competing actors claiming their own distinct sources of power. The struggle for legitimacy between the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated parliament, and the protest movement has created a fragmented political scene. Everyone wants to lead the transition, but no one wants to take full responsibility for the results.

Downloads

• Download the full paper

According to an August 2015 survey, 72 percent of Americans find drug costs unreasonable, with 83 percent believing that the federal government should be able to negotiate prices for Medicare. Recently, Acting Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Andy Slavitt commented that spending on medicines increased 13 percent in 2014 while health care spending growth overall was only 5 percent, the highest rate of drug spending growth since 2001.

Some of the most expensive drugs are covered under Medicare’s medical benefit, Part B, because they are administered by a physician. They are often administered in hospital outpatient departments and physician offices, and most commonly used to treat conditions like cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and macular degeneration. Between 2005 and 2014, spending on Part B drugs has increased annually by 7.7 percent, with the top 20 drugs by total amount of Medicare payments accounting for 57 percent of total Part B drug costs. While overall Part B drug spending is a small portion of Medicare drug spending, the high growth rate is a concern, especially as new expensive breakthrough cancer drugs enter the market and have a negative effect on consumers’ pockets.

Unlike Part D, the prescription drug benefit, there are fewer incentives built in to Part B for providers to consider lower cost treatments for patients even if the lower cost drug may be clinically equivalent to the more expensive drug, because prior to budget sequestration, providers received 6 percent on top of the Average Sales Price (ASP) of the drug. Larger providers and hospitals often receive discounts on these drugs as well, increasing the amount they receive directly on top of the out-of-pocket cost of the drug.

This leads to more out-of-pocket costs for the consumer, as patients usually pay 20 percent of Part B services. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that in 2013, among new drugs covered under Part B, nearly two-thirds had per beneficiary costs of over $9,000 per year, leading to out-of-pocket costs for consumers of amounts between $1,900 and $107,000 over the year. On top of these high costs, this can lead to problems with medication adherence, even for serious conditions such as cancer.

A New Payment Model

To help change these incentives and control costs, CMS has proposed a new demonstration program, which offers a few different reimbursement methods for Part B drugs. The program includes a geographically stratified design methodology to test and evaluate the different methods. One of the methods garnering a lot of attention is a proposal to lower the administration add-on payment to providers, from current 6 percent of ASP, to 2.5 percent plus a flat fee of $16.80 per administration day.

Policymakers, physician organizations, and patient advocacy organizations have voiced major concerns raising the alarm that this initiative will negatively affect patient access to vital drugs and therefore produce poorer patient outcomes. The sequester will also have a significant impact on the percentage add on, reducing it to closer to an estimated .86 percent plus the flat fee. But we believe the goals of the program and its potential to reduce costs represent an important step in the right direction. We hope the details can be further shaped by the important communities of providers and patients who will deliver and receive medical care.

Geographic Variation

Last year, we wrote a Health Affairs Blog that highlighted some of the uses and limitations of publicly available Part B physician payment data. One major use was to show the geographic variation in practice patterns and drug administration, and we particularly looked at the difference across states in Lucentis v. Avastin usage. As seen in Exhibit 1, variation in administration is wide among states, even though both are drugs used to treat the same condition, age-related macular degeneration, and were proven to have clinically similar outcomes, but the cost of Lucentis was $2,000 per dose, while Avastin was only $50 per dose.

Using the same price estimates from our previous research, which are from 2012, we found that physician reimbursement under the proposed demonstration would potentially change from $120 to $66.80 for Lucentis, and increase from $3 to $18.05 for Avastin. Under the first payment model, providers were receiving 40 times as much to administer Lucentis instead of Avastin, while under the new proposed payment model, they would only receive 3.7 times as much.

While still a formidable gap, this new policy would have decreased financial reimbursement for providers to administer Lucentis, a costly, clinically similar drug to the much cheaper Avastin. As seen in Exhibit 1, a majority of physicians prescribe Avastin, thus this policy will allow for increased reimbursement in those cases, but in states where Lucentis is prescribed in higher proportions, prescribing patterns might start to change as a result of the proposed demonstration.

Source: Author’s estimates using 2012 CMS Cost Data and Sequestration Estimates from DrugAbacus.org

The proposed demonstration program includes much more than the ASP modifications in its second phase, including:

• discounting or eliminating beneficiary copays,
• indication-based pricing that would vary payments based on the clinical effectiveness,
• reference pricing for similar drugs,
• risk-sharing agreements with drug manufacturers based on clinical outcomes of the drug, and
• creating clinical decision tools for providers to help develop best practices.

This is all at the same time that a new model in oncology care (OCM) is being launched, which could help to draw attention to total cost of care. It is important that CMS try to address rising drug costs, but also be sure to consider all relevant considerations during the comment period to fine-tune the proposal to avoid negative effects on beneficiaries’ care.

We believe CMS should consider offering a waiver for organizations already participating in Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) models like the OCM, because financial benchmarks are based on past performance and any savings recognized in the future could be artificial, attributable to this demonstration rather than to better care coordination and some of the other practice requirements that are part of the proposed OCM. Furthermore, because this demonstration sets a new research precedent and because it is mandatory in the selected study areas rather than voluntary, CMS must try to anticipate and avoid unintended consequences related to geographic stratification.

For example, it is possible to imagine organizations with multiple locations directing patients to optimal sites for their business. Also, without a control group, some findings may be unreliable. The proposed rule currently lacks much detail, and there does not seem to be enough time for organizations to evaluate the impact of the proposed rule on their operations. Having said that, it will be important for stakeholders of all types to submit comments to the proposed rule in an effort to improve the final rule prior to implementation.

The critical question for the policymakers and stakeholders is whether this model can align with the multitude of other payment model reforms — unintended consequences could mitigate all the positive outcomes that a CMMI model offers to beneficiaries. Helping beneficiaries is and should be CMS’ ultimate obligation.

President Barack Obama's April 17 debut before the hemisphere's main gathering of democratically elected leaders offers an important test of his administration's commitment to longstanding bipartisan support for democracy abroad. So far, the signals are not encouraging.

No doubt, the president inherits an unfortunate legacy on this front. President George W. Bush's over-the-top freedom agenda was seen by many as a veiled attempt, by military means or otherwise, to assert U.S. hegemony. At best, it was an overly ambitious and ham-handed effort to boost prospects for political reform in every corner of the world.

The more pragmatic Mr. Obama will take a different, more muted approach, bending U.S. advocacy on human rights to other concerns. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apparently suggested that in her February visit to Beijing, where she signaled to the Communist Party's leaders that the United States would not let human rights get in the way of other priorities. But how far will this pragmatism go? Are we entering a new era in which the rights of the hundreds of millions of people who still live under authoritarian rule are relegated to third-tier status in the U.S. agenda?

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the good news is that most citizens not only have a secure voice and vote in how they are governed, but live in increasingly free societies. Freedom of the press is robust, civil society is active and independent judiciaries are slowly consolidating. Threats to these critical components of any democratic society emanate less from a restless military and more from heavily armed criminals who create havoc in once safe neighborhoods and target investigative journalists and honest judges with "plata o plomo" - money or lead.

There are, however, a few exceptions to this generally positive trend. Venezuela, under Hugo Chavez's tutelage, has deteriorated badly on several indicators of democratic life and is no longer invited to the Community of Democracies, a global association of governments committed to fundamental practices of democracy and human rights. Not far behind is Nicaragua which, under Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, is reverting to old-style tactics of repressing the opposition and clamping down on dissent. Other states worth watching closely are Ecuador and Bolivia which, as they undertake dramatic reform to incorporate once marginalized groups, are vulnerable to civil conflict.

And then there is Cuba. Raul Castro will not be at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago because Cuba does not adhere to the inter-American system's fundamental principles of democracy and human rights. That is as it should be. But Mr. Obama will face considerable pressure from his colleagues to fudge this bright line by engaging, rather than isolating Cuba, as they and nearly every other country has done. Indeed, the White House has already begun moving in this direction by easing restrictions on family travel and remittances to the island. Much more can and should be done in the coming months to continue this process of rapprochement between Washington and Havana. But lifting Cuba's suspension as a member of the Organization of American States (OAS), as many are advocating, would be a step too far.

The governments of the region, as they emerged from years of military dictatorship in the 1980s, agreed to lock arms and resist any attempt to overthrow civilian constitutional rule. This joint approach has served the region well when such countries as Peru, Paraguay, Guatemala and Haiti faced political turmoil. The commitment to core democratic standards, expressed through the Inter-American Democratic Charter, is central to the region's identity and compares well to the European model of integration based on common democratic values and forms of government.

All this progress is at risk if the region's governments decide to lift Cuba's suspension as a member of the OAS without preconditions. Unless the Castro regime takes serious steps toward meeting the region's basic human rights standards, including rights to free speech, fair elections and due process for political prisoners, it should not be considered for renewed membership. The Obama Administration, which appears determined to open new paths of dialogue with difficult countries like Cuba, Iran and Syria, must be careful not to lower the bar so far that its own neighborhood loses its distinct identity as a community of democratic states.

President Obama, thus, should walk a fine line at the Summit gathering. He needs to lead by example by implementing human rights reforms at home while reminding his colleagues they share a common responsibility to follow and promote universal democratic standards. This must include encouraging the Castro government to adopt genuine political reforms before it can be welcomed back to the OAS, as well as strengthening the region's collective defense of democracy in backsliding states. Anything less would surely set the human rights cause back for the region, and the world.

Volunteerism remains a powerful tool for good around the world. Young people, in particular, are motivated by the prospect of creating real and lasting change, as well as gaining valuable learning experiences that come with volunteering. This energy and optimism among youth can be harnessed and mobilized to help meet challenges facing our world today and accomplish such targets as the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

On June 14, young leaders and development agents from leading non-governmental organizations (NGOs), faith-based organizations, corporations, universities, the Peace Corps, and United Nations Volunteers came together at the Brookings Institution to answer the question on how to achieve impacts on the SDGs through international service.

This was also the 10th anniversary gathering of the Building Bridges Coalition—a multi-stakeholder consortium of development volunteers— and included the announcement of a new Service Year Alliance partnership with the coalition to step up international volunteers and village-based volunteering capacity around the world.

Brookings Senior Fellow Homi Kharas, who served as the lead author supporting the high-level panel advising the U.N. secretary-general on the post-2015 development agenda, noted the imperative of engaging community volunteers to scale up effective initiatives, build political awareness, and generate “partnerships with citizens at every level” to achieve the 2030 goals.  

Kharas’ call was echoed in reports on effective grassroots initiatives, including Omnimed’s mobilization of 1,200 village health workers in Uganda’s Mukono district, a dramatic reduction of malaria through Peace Corps efforts with Senegal village volunteers, and Seed Global Health’s partnership to scale up medical doctors and nurses to address critical health professional shortages in the developing world. 

U.N. Youth Envoy Ahmad Alhendawi of Jordan energized young leaders from Atlas Corps, Global Citizen Year, America Solidaria, International Young Leaders Academy, and universities, citing U.N. Security Council Resolution 2250 on youth, peace, and security as “a turning point when it comes to the way we engage with young people globally… to recognize their role for who they are, as peacebuilders, not troublemakers… and equal partners on the ground.”

Service Year Alliance Chair General Stanley McChrystal, former Joint Special Operations commander, acclaimed, “The big idea… of a culture where the expectation [and] habit of service has provided young people an opportunity to do a year of funded, full-time service.” 

Civic Enterprises President John Bridgeland and Brookings Senior Fellow E.J. Dionne, Jr. led a panel with Seed Global Health’s Vanessa Kerry and Atlas Corps’ Scott Beale on policy ideas for the next administration, including offering Global Service Fellowships in United States Agency for International Development (USAID) programs to grow health service corps, student service year loan forgiveness, and technical support through State Department volunteer exchanges. Former Senator Harris Wofford, Building Bridge Coalition’s senior advisor and a founding Peace Corps architect, shared how the coalition’s new “service quantum leap” furthers the original idea announced by President John F. Kennedy, which called for the Peace Corps and the mobilization of one million global volunteers through NGOs, faith-based groups, and universities.

The multi-stakeholder volunteering model was showcased by Richard Dictus, executive coordinator of U.N. Volunteers; Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet; USAID Counselor Susan Reischle; and Diane Melley, IBM vice president for Global Citizenship. Melley highlighted IBM’s 280,000 skills-based employee volunteers who are building community capacity in 130 countries along with Impact 2030—a consortium of 60 companies collaborating with the U.N.—that is “integrating service into overall citizenship activities” while furthering the SDGs.

The faith and millennial leaders who contributed to the coalition’s action plan included Jim Lindsay of Catholic Volunteer Network; Service Year’s Yasmeen Shaheen-McConnell; C. Eduardo Vargas of USAID’s Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives; and moderator David Eisner of Repair the World, a former CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service. Jesuit Volunteer Corps President Tim Shriver, grandson of the Peace Corps’ founding director, addressed working sessions on engaging faith-based volunteers, which, according to research, account for an estimated 44 percent of nearly one million U.S. global volunteers

The key role of colleges and universities in the coalition’s action plan—including  linking service year with student learning, impact research, and gap year service—was  outlined by Dean Alan Solomont of Tisch College at Tufts University; Marlboro College President Kevin Quigley; and U.N. Volunteers researcher Ben Lough of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

These panel discussion directed us towards the final goal of the event, which was a multi-stakeholder action campaign calling for ongoing collaboration and policy support to enhance the collective impact of international service in achieving the 2030 goals.

This resolution, which remains a working document, highlighted five major priorities:

1. Engage service abroad programs to more effectively address the 2030 SDGs by mobilizing 10,000 additional service year and short-term volunteers annually and partnerships that leverage local capacity and volunteers in host communities.
2. Promote a new generation of global leaders through global service fellowships promoting service and study abroad.
3. Expand cross-sectorial participation and partnerships.
4. Engage more volunteers of all ages in service abroad.
5. Study and foster best practices across international service programs, measure community impact, and ensure the highest quality of volunteer safety, well-being, and confidence.

Participants agreed that it’s through these types of efforts that volunteer service could become a common strategy throughout the world for meeting pressing challenges. Moreover, the cooperation of individuals and organizations will be vital in laying a foundation on which governments and civil society can build a more prosperous, healthy, and peaceful world.

Editor’s note: This week the Democrats gather in Philadelphia to nominate a candidate for president and adopt a party platform. Given that there are no minority reports to the Democratic platform, it is likely that it will be adopted as-is this week. And so we can begin the comparison of the two major party platforms. For those who say there are no differences between the Republican and Democratic parties, just read the platforms side-by-side. In many instances, the differences are—as Donald Trump would say, yuuuge. But in one surprising instance, the two parties actually agree. This piece walks readers through one of the biggest contrasts, while an earlier piece by Elaine Kamarck detailed a striking similarity.

When it comes to Republicans and the environment, black is the new green. In addition to denouncing “radical environmentalists” and calling for dismantling the EPA, the platform adopted in Cleveland yesterday calls coal “abundant, clean, affordable, reliable domestic energy resource” and unequivocally opposes “any” carbon tax.

Meanwhile, Democrats are moving in the opposite direction. By the time the party’s draft 2016 platform emerged from the final regional committee meeting in Orlando, it contained a robust section on environmental issues in general and climate change in particular. One of the many amendments adopted in Orlando contains the following sentence: “Democrats believe that carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases should be priced to reflect their negative externalities, and to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy and help meet our climate goals.” In plain English, there should be what amounts to a tax (whatever it may be called) on the atmospheric emissions principally responsible for climate change, including but not limited to CO2.

As Brookings’ Adele Morris pointed out in a recent paper, this proposal raises a host of design issues, including determining initial price levels, payers, recipients, and uses of revenues raised. It would have to be squared with existing federal tax, climate, and energy policies as well as with climate initiatives at the state level.

But these devilish details should not obstruct the broader view: To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that the platform of a major American political party has advocated taxing greenhouse gas emissions. Many economists, including some with a conservative orientation, will applaud this proposal. Many supporters and producers of fossils fuels will be dismayed.

It remains to be seen how the American people will respond. In a survey conducted in 2015 by Resources for the Future in partnership with Stanford University and the New York Times, 67 percent of the respondents endorsed requiring companies “to pay a tax to the government for every ton of greenhouse gases [they] put out,” with the proviso that all the revenue would be devoted to reducing the amount of income taxes that individuals pay. Previous surveys found similar sentiments: public support increases sharply when the greenhouse gas tax is explicitly revenue-neutral and declines sharply if it threatens an overall increase in individual taxes.

Once this plank of the Democratic platform becomes widely known, Republicans are likely to attack it as yet another example of Democrats’ propensity to raise taxes. The platform’s silence on the question of revenue-neutrality may add some credibility to this charge. Much will depend on the ability of the Democratic Party and its presidential nominee to clarify its proposal and to link it to goals the public endorses.

Volunteerism remains a powerful tool for good around the world. Young people, in particular, are motivated by the prospect of creating real and lasting change, as well as gaining valuable learning experiences that come with volunteering. This energy and optimism among youth can be harnessed and mobilized to help meet challenges facing our world today and accomplish such targets as the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

On June 14, young leaders and development agents from leading non-governmental organizations (NGOs), faith-based organizations, corporations, universities, the Peace Corps, and United Nations Volunteers came together at the Brookings Institution to answer the question on how to achieve impacts on the SDGs through international service.

This was also the 10th anniversary gathering of the Building Bridges Coalition—a multi-stakeholder consortium of development volunteers— and included the announcement of a new Service Year Alliance partnership with the coalition to step up international volunteers and village-based volunteering capacity around the world.

Brookings Senior Fellow Homi Kharas, who served as the lead author supporting the high-level panel advising the U.N. secretary-general on the post-2015 development agenda, noted the imperative of engaging community volunteers to scale up effective initiatives, build political awareness, and generate “partnerships with citizens at every level” to achieve the 2030 goals.  

Kharas’ call was echoed in reports on effective grassroots initiatives, including Omnimed’s mobilization of 1,200 village health workers in Uganda’s Mukono district, a dramatic reduction of malaria through Peace Corps efforts with Senegal village volunteers, and Seed Global Health’s partnership to scale up medical doctors and nurses to address critical health professional shortages in the developing world. 

U.N. Youth Envoy Ahmad Alhendawi of Jordan energized young leaders from Atlas Corps, Global Citizen Year, America Solidaria, International Young Leaders Academy, and universities, citing U.N. Security Council Resolution 2250 on youth, peace, and security as “a turning point when it comes to the way we engage with young people globally… to recognize their role for who they are, as peacebuilders, not troublemakers… and equal partners on the ground.”

Service Year Alliance Chair General Stanley McChrystal, former Joint Special Operations commander, acclaimed, “The big idea… of a culture where the expectation [and] habit of service has provided young people an opportunity to do a year of funded, full-time service.” 

Civic Enterprises President John Bridgeland and Brookings Senior Fellow E.J. Dionne, Jr. led a panel with Seed Global Health’s Vanessa Kerry and Atlas Corps’ Scott Beale on policy ideas for the next administration, including offering Global Service Fellowships in United States Agency for International Development (USAID) programs to grow health service corps, student service year loan forgiveness, and technical support through State Department volunteer exchanges. Former Senator Harris Wofford, Building Bridge Coalition’s senior advisor and a founding Peace Corps architect, shared how the coalition’s new “service quantum leap” furthers the original idea announced by President John F. Kennedy, which called for the Peace Corps and the mobilization of one million global volunteers through NGOs, faith-based groups, and universities.

The multi-stakeholder volunteering model was showcased by Richard Dictus, executive coordinator of U.N. Volunteers; Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet; USAID Counselor Susan Reischle; and Diane Melley, IBM vice president for Global Citizenship. Melley highlighted IBM’s 280,000 skills-based employee volunteers who are building community capacity in 130 countries along with Impact 2030—a consortium of 60 companies collaborating with the U.N.—that is “integrating service into overall citizenship activities” while furthering the SDGs.

The faith and millennial leaders who contributed to the coalition’s action plan included Jim Lindsay of Catholic Volunteer Network; Service Year’s Yasmeen Shaheen-McConnell; C. Eduardo Vargas of USAID’s Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives; and moderator David Eisner of Repair the World, a former CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service. Jesuit Volunteer Corps President Tim Shriver, grandson of the Peace Corps’ founding director, addressed working sessions on engaging faith-based volunteers, which, according to research, account for an estimated 44 percent of nearly one million U.S. global volunteers

The key role of colleges and universities in the coalition’s action plan—including  linking service year with student learning, impact research, and gap year service—was  outlined by Dean Alan Solomont of Tisch College at Tufts University; Marlboro College President Kevin Quigley; and U.N. Volunteers researcher Ben Lough of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

These panel discussion directed us towards the final goal of the event, which was a multi-stakeholder action campaign calling for ongoing collaboration and policy support to enhance the collective impact of international service in achieving the 2030 goals.

This resolution, which remains a working document, highlighted five major priorities:

1. Engage service abroad programs to more effectively address the 2030 SDGs by mobilizing 10,000 additional service year and short-term volunteers annually and partnerships that leverage local capacity and volunteers in host communities.
2. Promote a new generation of global leaders through global service fellowships promoting service and study abroad.
3. Expand cross-sectorial participation and partnerships.
4. Engage more volunteers of all ages in service abroad.
5. Study and foster best practices across international service programs, measure community impact, and ensure the highest quality of volunteer safety, well-being, and confidence.

Participants agreed that it’s through these types of efforts that volunteer service could become a common strategy throughout the world for meeting pressing challenges. Moreover, the cooperation of individuals and organizations will be vital in laying a foundation on which governments and civil society can build a more prosperous, healthy, and peaceful world.

In this presentation Robert Puentes provides a deeper understanding of trends that are impacting metropolitan America and how those trends may impact the demand for multi-family housing in the coming decades. The presentation stresses several key points including dramatic changes in household formation, the plight of older, inner-ring "first" suburbs, and the increasing diversity reflected in both cities and suburban areas.

Downloads

• Download

Often considered among the most self-interested and least transparent systems in American democracy, the decennial process to redraw legislative district boundaries is now in full swing. On Monday, experts will review the results coming in from the states and discuss initiatives—from public mapping to independent commissions—to open up redistricting. Thomas Mann explains how this round may be a start toward transparency.

The videos showing an unruly scene in and around Brookings last Thursday during the visit of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan make for distressing viewing. The incongruity of what occurred—think Trump security meets Turkish nationalism—invites introspection about how scholarly institutions manage appearances by controversial leaders.

There are legitimate criticisms to be made of the Turkish government in general and of Thursday’s security detail in particular. But lost in the melee—and in the past year of terrorism, arrests, and media closures—is the message that Erdoğan most needed to convey.

Dramatic changes in the geopolitical neighborhood now present the most serious challenge to Turkish territorial integrity since the founding of the Republic. With the aid of Western intervention, the wars in Iraq and Syria accomplished more for the Kurdish cause than decades of terrorism and negotiation. Since the addition of a second stronghold in Syria to the de facto Kurdish territory in northern Iraq, Turkey is paying a price for conflicts not wholly of its own making.

It is not quite a century since European armies last seized Ottoman territories or supported national Kurdish independence from Istanbul. Whether or not now is the moment an autonomous Kurdish state takes legal form, the model is being proven nearby under Western protection. It does not make things easier that this time it is not Western countries’ intention to hurt Turkey’s national interests. Adding insult to Erdoğan’s injury, in 2015 the Kurdish cause met unprecedented support among urban elites around Turkey—and the United States and Europe—for a political party (HDP) that spoiled Erdoğan’s institutional ambitions by denying him a supermajority in parliament.

The Turkish president is criticized for allowing feelings of personal betrayal to color his strategic relationships—for example with Israel and Syria—yet many in the U.S. foreign policy community also now react to him emotionally. Because their high hopes were dashed after Gezi Park and the Gülen scandals, he can do no good again. This fuels Erdoğan’s outrage: Turkey gets no respect for its current role absorbing waves of refugees or for “taking the fight to terrorists.”

Erdoğan alienated Western allies with a take-no-prisoners approach in domestic politics and bears some responsibility for the government’s disastrous relationship with the country’s two major dissident groups—one ethnic (Kurdish) and one spiritual (Gülenist). But that should not relax similarly robust democratic expectations of these groups’ own political behavior, and the impression of such a double standard is at the root of the Turkish president’s annoyance. The suicide bombs and illegal wiretaps his country endured have failed to capture the American imagination. Instead, he perceives friends who would tie his hands as he defends the rule of law against terror and treason.

The Turkish government should be discouraged from abusing executive power, squelching dissent, or other acts of overzealous majoritarianism and break the cycle of retaliation against political opponents. But it is bizarre to equate the Turkish president with former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez or Russian President Vladimir Putin: Turkish democracy is battered but not yet sunk, and its government is still not a strategic opponent—it remains a NATO member in accession talks with the EU.

The Brookings incident is said to have exposed the regime’s true colors and thin skin, and to emblematize how polarized and undemocratic Turkey has become in the last decade. But a lopsided and illiberal democracy also preceded AKP rule: a quarter century of single party rule followed by four military coups in as many decades, with strict limits on free speech and religious exercise. American enthusiasm for democratization in the region must include a commitment to remain constructively engaged when the spring recoils and conservative parties win power—including those who appear to abuse that power—through exactly this kind of visit.

Because last week’s scene unfolded in the same auditorium where a younger Erdoğan appeared as a promising democratic leader years ago, it is fair to ask which was the real one. He who walked down the aisle with files on 57 imprisoned journalists in March 2016? Or the Erdoğan who arrived in government with dossiers on negotiations with PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, opened talks with the Alevi religious minority, and established a ministry for European Union affairs?

Critics now say that was all just a show and diversionary tactic that have finally given way to his true attitudes towards the proverbial “tram of democracy.” But with friends who are deaf to some of Turkey’s legitimate concerns it is fair to ask what may now be an academic question: Is President Erdoğan an ex-liberal who simply got off the tram, or was he mugged by reality while on board?

Bruce Katz presented a speech on demographic shifts in the country's largest 100 metropolitan areas and how various leaders, including those in Seattle, will meet the policy challenges of a changing nation.

Introduction:
Today, I would like to present our findings from a major research initiative at the Metropolitan Policy Program, which is accompanied by an interactive website: the State of Metropolitan America. Our report examines the demographic trends that have affected the top 100 metropolitan areas so far this decade, covering the year 2000 through the year 2008. We find a nation in demographic transformation along five dimensions of change.

Watch video of the speech on the Seattle Channel »

We are a growing nation.  Our population exceeded 300 million back in 2006 and we are now on our way to hit 350 million around 2025.

We are diversifying.  An incredible 83 percent of our growth this decade was driven by racial and ethnic minorities. 

We are aging.  The number of seniors and boomers exceeded 100 million this decade.

We are selectively educating. Whites and Asians are now more than twice as likely to hold a bachelors degree as blacks and Hispanics.

We are a nation divided by income. Low-wage workers saw hourly earnings decline by 8 percent this decade; high wage workers saw an increase of 3 percent.  

With this background, I will make three main points today.

First, America’s top 100 metropolitan areas are on the front lines of our nation’s demographic transformation.  The trends I’ve identified—growth, diversity, aging, educational disparities, income inequities—are happening at a faster pace, a greater scale and a higher level of intensity in our major metropolitan areas.  

Second, the shape and scale of demographic transformation is profoundly uneven across metropolitan America.  This variation only partially reflects the traditional division of our country into regions like New England or the Middle Atlantic or the Mountain West. Rather a new “Metro Map” of the nation is emerging that unites far flung communities by their demographic realities rather than their physical proximity. 

Finally, demographic transformation requires action at both the macro and metro scale.  The federal government and the states need to lead where they must to address the super-sized challenges wrought by fast change.  Metropolitan areas must innovate where they should in ways that are tailored to their distinct challenges and opportunities.  And the geography of transformation at the metro scale requires new institutions and ways of governing.

These policy and institutional changes will not be easy.

But let’s remember one thing.  In the global context, the United States is a demographically blessed nation.  Established competitors like Japan, Britain and Germany are either growing slowly or actually declining; rising nations like China remain relatively homogenous. 

In a fiercely competitive world, our growth and diversity may be America’s ace in the hole.

Downloads

• Full Speech

Midway through Hong Kong’s second public consultation on the method of electing the next chief executive (CE), both pro-democracy “pan-democrat” legislators and the Hong Kong government and Chinese Central government are still holding their cards close. Following the current public consultation, members of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (LegCo) will cast an historic vote on political reform. Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, states that “the ultimate aim is the selection of the CE by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures” (Basic Law Art. 45). Pan-democrat LegCo members currently plan to vote against the eventual resolution on political reform, given their dissatisfaction with the reform process to date. Observers predict that passage of a resolution will happen only if the Hong Kong and Central governments can swing a few pan-democrats over to their side in the final hour.

The problem is a prickly one: Is it possible to design an electoral system that is sufficiently open and democratic in the eyes of the Hong Kong people and, at the same time, that guarantees to the Central Government that the elected leader of this special administrative region accepts the supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party? Even as politicians on each side reiterate the near “impossibility” of changing their positions (see e.g., RTHK Backchat discussion with Justice Secretary Rimsky Yuen at 4:25), thought-leaders from Hong Kong’s universities are inventing creative proposals with the potential to break the deadlock.

The Ground Rules

A 2004 decision of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), China’s national legislature, interpreted the Basic Law to require a “Five-Step Process” in order to amend the selection method for the CE. Hong Kong is now between Steps 2 and 3.

• Step 1: The current CE must submit a report to the NPCSC on the need to amend the electoral system. That submission took place on July 15, 2014 after a five-month initial public consultation process. The CE’s report faced heavy criticism in Hong Kong for not accurately reflecting public opinion.
• Step 2: The NPCSC must issue a decision affirming the need for the amendment. The NPCSC announced that decision on August 31, 2014. It endorsed a system by which citizens may directly vote for the CE but imposed restrictive conditions on the nomination procedure of eligible candidates. The decision triggered 79 days of protest and civil disobedience – what activists and the media have referred to as the “Umbrella Movement.”
• Step 3: The Hong Kong government must introduce the political reform bill in LegCo, and two-thirds of legislators must endorse it. The vote in LegCo is scheduled to take place during the first half of 2015, although a precise date has not been set. The purpose of the second-round public consultation is to forge consensus behind political reform within the parameters set out in the August 31 NPCSC decision.
• Steps 4 and 5: In the event that LegCo endorses the bill, the CE must provide his consent and report the amendment to the NPCSC for its final approval.

If the bill does not receive two-thirds endorsement of LegCo (or if it does, but the NPCSC does not approve) then political reform would fail. Hong Kong would be left with the status quo, and Hong Kong people would lose the opportunity to vote for their chief executive for at least the next seven years.

Limited Room for Negotiation

The terms set out by the August 31 NPCSC decision limit the range of possible political reform options. For that reason, one of the core demands of the Umbrella Movement was to scrap the decision and re-start the Five-Step Process; that didn’t happen, however. In January 2015, the Hong Kong government issued a public consultation document framing the discussion in the lead up to the vote in LegCo. The consultation document hews closely to the NPCSC decision:

• The Nominating Committee (NC) will resemble the previous committee that elected the CE with the same number of members (1,200) belonging to the same limited number of subsectors (38). The Wall Street Journal recently described that committee as “a hodgepodge of special interests.” During the consultation, citizens may discuss adding new subsectors to make the committee more inclusive and representative (such as adding new subsectors to represent the interests of women or young voters), but restructuring will necessarily mean disrupting and eliminating the positions of existing subsectors or committee members. Therefore, the consultation document suggests these changes are unlikely to be achieved (Consultation Document, Chapter 3, Sec. 3.08 p. 10).
• The NC will nominate two to three candidates, and each candidate will require endorsement from at least half of the NC membership. (Given the difficulty of restructuring the subsectors or their electoral bases, these terms would effectively exclude any pan-democrats from nomination.) In order to make this more palatable, the consultation document proposes that citizens discuss a two-stage nomination process. In the first stage, a quorum of 100-150 committee members would “recommend” individuals for nomination. The committee would then elect the nominees from this recommended group (Consultation Document, Chapter 4, Sec. 4.09 p. 14). In theory, the meetings when recommendation and nomination votes take place could be staggered in order to allow campaigning and public debate. The idea is that NC members would take public opinion into consideration before casting their second vote.
• On the voting arrangements, citizens may discuss a “first-past-the-post” arrangement with either a single-round, two-round, or instant runoff vote systems (Consultation Document, Chapter 5, Sec. 5.06 p. 17-19).

Both sides in this negotiation have fired shots across the bow. At the launch of the second public consultation on January 7, Chief Secretary Carrie Lam remarked, “there is no room for any concessions or promises to be made in order to win over support from the pan-democratic members.” For their part, the pan-democrats vowed to boycott the public consultation and veto a resolution that conforms to these terms. They argue that the proposed method of electing the chief executive does not improve upon the status quo.

Most pan-democrat legislators are directly elected from geographical constituencies, and public opinion could provide legitimate grounds for shifting their position. According to polling by the Hong Kong University Public Opinion Programme last month, a plurality of respondents view the Hong Kong government’s proposal as neither a step forward nor a step backward for democracy. If the government were to commit to making the electoral system more democratic in the next CE election in 2022, a clear majority of respondents would then support the government’s plan.

Inventing Options and Finding Common Ground

The two-stage nomination mechanism in the government’s proposal is an acknowledgement that the NC ought to be responsive to public opinion. But without additional tinkering, this procedure does not materially change the incentives of NC members. What if the public had the power to reject the slate of candidates nominated by the committee?

Since the first public consultation, a few academics, including Simon Young at Hong Kong University (HKU), have considered at least two ways this could happen. An “active” approach would allow Hong Kong voters to cast blank votes and require a minimum percentage of affirmative votes for the winning candidate. A “passive” approach would require a minimum voter turnout rate for a valid election. NC members might then have to take public opinion into account.

Early last month, Albert Chen, also a professor at HKU and a legal advisor of the NPCSC, began to advocate publicly for a proposal that employs a ballot with a none-of-these-candidates option (see RTHK Jan. 13 edition of The Pulse). Under his proposal, if a majority of people vote for “none-of-these-candidates,” the slate of candidates put forward by the NC will be voided. When the public votes down the candidates, the NC could revert back to an election committee and choose a provisional CE. Alternatively, the Chief Secretary could assume CE duties during a six-month interim period prior to a new election (drawing upon Basic Law Art. 53). Chen argues that his proposal would give the Hong Kong people—not pan-democrat politicians—decision-making power to accept the new NC and its slate of candidates or to revert back to the status quo.

More recently, Johannes Chan, HKU professor and human rights advocate, floated a competing proposal that would provide voters with the option for negative voting. A 20 percent “no” vote for an otherwise leading candidate would trigger a re-vote. Between the first and second elections, the candidates would have additional time to campaign. If after the second election, still 20 percent of voters oppose the leading candidate, the candidate would be disqualified, and the NC would nominate new candidates. Given Hong Kong’s governance problems and increasing public polarization, the 20 percent veto ensures that no CE will be saddled with a substantial block of Hong Kong society affirmatively opposed to him or her from day one.

Albert Chen’s proposal received a tepid if supportive response in pro-Beijing quarters. Jasper Tsang, the Speaker of LegCo and member of the largest pro-establishment political party, and Rita Fan, a member of the NPCSC, affirmed their view that the none-of-these-candidates mechanism does not violate the Basic Law. While the government’s consultation document does not expressly mention the none-of-these-candidates concept, Hong Kong’s Justice Secretary indicated that the proposal should be considered. Starry Lee, another leader of the biggest pro-establishment party in LegCo, countered that technical difficulties and limited time for discussion would pose obstacles to the none-of-these-candidates ballot proposal.

Pan-democrats so far have tended to rebuff government overtures to engage on the topic. A few legislators, such as the Civic Party’s Ronny Tong, have been willing to engage (with Albert Chen on the Jan. 13 edition of The Pulse) but have reservations about what happens after a voided election, and feel that the threshold for public veto is too high. Law Chi-kwong, a founding member of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party and also a member of the HKU faculty, suggested that the winning candidate ought to receive an absolute majority of votes with blank votes counted. (E.g., when one candidate receives 45 percent, another receives 35 percent, and none-of-these-candidates receives 20 percent, that would lead to a void election.) However, other scholars associated with the Democratic Party have distanced themselves from the blank vote debate and Law’s statements.

The Merits of Blank Voting

The debate over blank and negative voting in Hong Kong unfolds in a global context where none-of-these-candidates has become an increasingly common political choice. Several democracies have institutionalized the practice. Proponents cite instrumental rationales, such as improved accountability and transparency. However, these benefits are not necessarily guaranteed. More broadly, people recognize the inherent value of the “no” vote as a form of political expression.

In the U.S. state of Nevada, for example, a none-of-these-candidates option has appeared on the ballot for all statewide and national elections since 1975. During the 2012 presidential cycle, the Secretary of State of Nevada argued that removing a none-of-these-candidates option would harm Nevada voters by taking away a “legitimate and meaningful ballot choice.” There is precedent for none-of-these-candidates winning a plurality of votes in a congressional primary; in that case, Republican Walden Earnhart finished behind the none-of-these-candidates option but still “won” the primary and got the nomination. More typically, the ballot option plays a “spoiler role.” In the 1998 Senate race, for example, 8,125 votes for none-of-these-candidates dwarfed the 395-vote margin between Harry Reid and John Ensign. This allowed Reid, the incumbent, to be re-elected.

It is hard to find examples where none-of-these-candidates has won a majority of the popular vote. Hong Kong’s pan-democrats may be right to question whether this possibility would meaningfully affect the calculus of the NC. Colombia is one of the few jurisdictions where blank votes can have institutional consequences. The right of citizens to cast a blank vote was established by the Colombian Constitution in 1991, and later codified in political reform statutes in 2003 and 2009. Similar to Albert Chen’s proposal in Hong Kong, if the number of blank votes equals a majority of the total number of votes cast, the election must be repeated. The original candidates cannot participate in the second election.

The Colombian experience suggests that the blank vote is more consequential in races with fewer candidates. Colombian voters have never nullified a slate of candidates at the national-level, where the field is crowded. In the city of Bello, however, the blank vote won the mayoral election in 2011. In that case, the electoral authority disqualified the one opposition candidate. This led to a one-man race and united all opposition forces around the blank vote in order to reject the establishment Conservative Party candidate. In the second round election, the replacement Conservative Party candidate (Carlos Alirio Muñoz López) won 59 percent of the vote. In the end, his party benefited with a resounding popular mandate. By this logic, the blank vote could matter in the two- to three-candidate race contemplated for Hong Kong.

Empirical evidence also suggests that local conditions in Hong Kong could support a relatively high turnout for none-of-these-candidates. Based on data from Spain and Italy, Chiara Superti at Harvard finds that blank voting is a sophisticated political choice, more likely to take place in municipalities with highly educated and politically engaged electorates. Hong Kong would qualify.

Beyond candidate selection, voting is a highly expressive act. A citizen’s vote is an expression of identity as well as a channel for protest. Echoing this view, the Supreme Court of India recently held that the country’s constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and expression confer on Indian citizens a right to reject all candidates and to exercise their right to affirmatively vote for none-of-these-candidates in secrecy. As a people who define themselves by “core values,” including freedom of expression, this resonates with Hongkongers. More fundamentally, the ballot serves a powerful safety-valve function. At the time universal suffrage was introduced in England and France, the vote was presented as a way to channel political turmoil into more moderate political expression—and this, too, resonates in Hong Kong today.

Views expressed in the article are the author's personal views.

In last night’s Pennsylvania primary, Hillary Clinton won a sweeping if not quite overwhelming victory, receiving 55 percent of the vote and reducing Barack Obama’s overall popular vote edge by more than 200,000. Because of the Democratic party’s system of proportional representation, she netted fewer than 15 pledged delegates. These results have quieted calls for her to leave the race and will probably slow the steady flow of superdelegates to Obama. Nonetheless, her path to the nomination remains steep.

The demographics of the Pennsylvania vote followed a now-familiar pattern. Obama won among voters younger than 40, while Clinton prevailed among older voters. Obama won in big cities and some inner suburbs; Clinton carried suburbs overall while winning more than 60 percent of the small town and rural vote. Clinton did 9 points worse among men than among women, who constituted 59 percent of last night’s voters. She received 62 percent of the vote from gun-owning households and almost three-fifths of the vote from union households. Obama carried voters from families making less than $15,000 and more than $150,000; Clinton carried everyone in between. She received 64 percent of the vote from high school graduates but only 48 percent from college graduates. Obama won 55 percent of the vote among those who consider themselves “very liberal,” while Clinton got 60 percent of the vote among self-described moderates. Clinton took 56 percent among long-time Democrats, while Obama took 62 percent of new Democratic primary voters—principally Republicans and Independents who registered as Democrats to participate, but also the 4 percent of the primary electorate that previously been unregistered.

There is evidence that religion, gender and race all figured in the results. Clinton received 58 percent of the white Protestant vote and a stunning 71 percent of white Catholics. Obama got 64 percent of those who profess no religion and 56 percent of those who never attend church. Clinton did 22 points better among those who said gender was important than among those who did not. (Intriguingly, men who said it mattered were also more likely to support Clinton.) By contrast, race appears to have been a negative for Obama: whites who said it mattered gave 75 percent of their votes to Clinton, versus only 58 percent for those who said it did not. While nearly half the whites for whom race mattered refused to say that they would be willing to support Obama in the general election, their sentiments may well soften in coming months as differences between the parties come to the fore.

The long campaign mattered, and it left some bruises. 68 percent of the voters said that Clinton had attacked unfairly; 50 percent thought Obama had. Nearly a quarter of the electorate thought that Clinton was solely responsible for unfair attacks, versus only 6 percent who thought Obama was. Only 57 percent of the electorate thought that Clinton was honest and trustworthy, versus 67 percent for Obama. Only 40 percent said they would be satisfied if either candidate won; 32 percent wanted only Clinton, and 23 percent only Obama. But however negative the contest may have turned, it appears to have worked to Clinton’s advantage: she received 57 percent among voters who decided during the last week before the primary, 5 points better than she did among those who decided earlier.

The results also confirmed the surge in concern about the economy. Fifty-five percent of the voters regarded the economy as the top issue, versus only 27 percent for the war in Iraq and a modest 14 percent for health care. Obama prevailed only among voters who gave top priority to Iraq, while Clinton received 54 percent of the health care voters and 58 percent of the economy voters.

Attention now shifts to the May 6 primaries in North Carolina and Indiana. Obama is expected to prevail in North Carolina, but Indiana offers a level playing field. A split decision would be likely to prolong the race, while an Obama sweep might well induce many undecided superdelegates to declare for him and bring this protracted contest to an end. In addition, Obama’s fundraising edge is becoming increasingly important. Not long into her victory speech, Clinton made an urgent pitch for new contributions. Facing a mounting debt and dwindling cash on hand, her ability to continue on until the end of the primary and caucus season in early June may well depend on the size and speed of her supporters’ response.

La monnaie électronique a émergé dans les pays de l'Union Economique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine, à la faveur de l'adoption, en 2006, d'une Instruction de la Banque Centrale, instaurant un cadre réglementaire souple et incitatif pour l’exercice de cette activité. L'implication des opérateurs de télécommunications dans l'offre de services financiers basés sur la téléphonie mobile a donné,  dès 2009, une nouvelle dimension à cette activité par l'accroissement du nombre des utilisateurs et des volumes de transactions.

Une activité en expansion

A fin septembre 2015, 22 millions de personnes, soit près d'un quart de la population de l'Union, ont souscrit à des services financiers via la téléphonie mobile. Environ 30% de ces abonnés réalisent au moins une opération sur une période de 90 jours.

Près de 500 millions de transactions ont été aussi réalisées au cours des neuf premiers mois de l'année 2015. La valeur cumulée des transactions atteint 5000 milliards de FCFA (8,5 milliards USD) à fin septembre 2015. De septembre 2013 à septembre 2014, cette valeur est passée de 1000 milliards à 2068 milliards de F CFA, soit une hausse de 107%.

Le réseau de distribution des services financiers via la téléphonie mobile suit également cette tendance haussière, en passant de 93 621 points de services en 2014 à plus de 132 658 points de services à fin septembre 2015.

Source: BCEAO

Le contexte socioéconomique de l'Union explique pour une large part, le succès des services de paiement via la téléphonie mobile. En effet, ce mode de prestation des services de transfert ou de paiement se révèle particulièrement adapté pour les personnes n'ayant pas accès au système bancaire classique, tout en offrant l'opportunité à des institutions non bancaires, en contrepartie de dépôt d'espèces, de mettre à la disposition des usagers une monnaie autre que fiduciaire, dont l'encours leur permet d'effectuer des transactions financières diverses.

L'implication croissante des opérateurs de télécommunications

Les partenariats entre les banques et les opérateurs de télécommunications occupent une place dominante sur le marché. En fin 2015, sur les 33 émetteurs de monnaie électronique sous licence, 25 appartenaient aux dits partenariats.

Au titre du modèle non bancaire, sept acteurs non bancaires ont été agréés pour émettre la monnaie électronique en qualité d'Etablissement de Monnaie Electronique (EME).[1]

Source: BCEAO

Un cadre réglementaire rénové

A la faveur de l'expansion des services financiers via la téléphonie mobile et de l'implication croissante des opérateurs de télécommunication, la Banque Centrale a rénové son cadre réglementaire afin de renforcer la sécurité et la qualité des services de paiement adossés à la monnaie électronique. Les principaux axes d'amélioration portent sur:

• une responsabilisation accrue des émetteurs en clarifiant leurs rôles dans les partenariats avec des prestataires techniques. Ainsi, les activités de prestataire technique sont limitées, sous la responsabilité de l'émetteur, au traitement technique de la monnaie électronique ou à sa distribution. De même, les émetteurs demeurent responsables, de l’intégrité, de la fiabilité, de la sécurité, de la confidentialité et de la traçabilité des transactions réalisées par chacun de leurs distributeurs;


• une stimulation de la concurrence par la transparence de la tarification avec l'obligation faite aux émetteurs de publier leurs tarifs;


• la formulation d'exigences spécifiques en matière de gouvernance et de contrôles interne et externe pour les établissements de monnaie électronique, en exigeant l'honorabilité des dirigeants, le respect du secret professionnel et des audits réguliers des infrastructures;


• une protection accrue des détenteurs de monnaie électronique avec d'une part, le cantonnement des fonds dans  des comptes dédiés, et l'exigence d'une équivalence continue entre l'encours de monnaie électronique et les soldes des comptes de cantonnement et d'autre part, l'obligation de la mise en place d'un mécanisme de recueil et de traitement des réclamations des porteurs de monnaie électronique;


• le renforcement du dispositif de supervision, par la réduction des délais de reporting des activités des émetteurs à la Banque Centrale, et l'adoption de sanctions pour les infractions aux dispositions réglementaires.

L'offre de services financiers via la téléphonie mobile

L'offre de services financiers via la téléphonie mobile comprend trois catégories de services. Il s'agit des services qui impliquent l'usage des espèces (monnaie fiduciaire), de ceux qui sont effectués en monnaie électronique et des services dits de « deuxième génération ».

Le premier type de services concerne essentiellement les dépôts d'espèces ou rechargements de porte-monnaies électroniques, ainsi que les retraits. Ils représentent 24% des transactions effectuées par les utilisateurs. Les dépôts d'espèces sont prédominants et permettent aux clients d'approvisionner leurs comptes de monnaie électronique.

La monnaie électronique rechargée est utilisée à hauteur de 76%, prioritairement pour les achats de crédit téléphonique, les paiements de factures, l'exécution de transferts de personne à personne, de personne à entreprise et aux Administrations publiques. Les principaux services de paiement dans l'UEMOA sont liés au règlement des factures relatives à la consommation d'eau, d'électricité, l'abonnement à des chaînes de télévision satellitaires, l'achat de marchandises dans les grandes surfaces ou de carburant dans les stations-service.

Des paiements d'impôts et taxes auprès des Administrations publiques et le remboursement des échéances de microcrédit sont également effectués, mais de façon très marginale.

Dans l'UEMOA les services dits de « deuxième génération », à savoir la micro-assurance, la micro-épargne et le micro-crédit, font leur apparition. Leur développement pourrait constituer une opportunité de bancarisation des utilisateurs de ces services.

Enfin, un début d'interopérabilité est mis en œuvre sur la base de conventions bilatérales entre les acteurs, notamment en vue d’offrir des services de paiement transfrontaliers entre les Etats membres de l'Union.

Les défis à relever

L'examen de l’évolution des services financiers via la téléphonie mobile dans l'UEMOA fait ressortir quelques obstacles à un développement plus rapide de ces services financiers au sein de l'UEMOA. Il s'agit de:

• la faiblesse du taux d'utilisateurs actifs, en raison du coût élevé des services;
• la méconnaissance des services, du fait d'une éducation financière insuffisante;
• la faible digitalisation des circuits de paiement des Administrations publiques;
• l'insuffisance des partenariats entre les émetteurs bancaires et non-bancaires pour le développement d'une offre de services plus inclusifs, dits de « seconde génération »

En collaboration avec toutes les parties prenantes, la Banque Centrale a développé une stratégie d’inclusion financière visant à améliorer l’accès et l’utilisation de divers services financiers personnalisés et aux prix abordables. La mise en place de ces actions, comme décrite dans la stratégie d’inclusion financière conçue par la BCEAO, devrait résoudre les défis mentionnés ci-dessus.

Lire en anglais »

[1] EME: toute personne morale, autre que les banques, les établissements financiers de paiement, les systèmes financiers décentralisés, habilitée à émettre des moyens de paiement sous forme de monnaie électronique et dont les activités se limitent à l'émission et la distribution de monnaie électronique.

Event Information

Since the conflicts over Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the early 1990s, violence has erupted several times in Georgia, most notably in August 2008. Large-scale human rights violations characterized the August 2008 war, including the displacement of almost 150,000 people. By the time the fighting ended, Georgia had lost the last areas it controlled in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and Russia subsequently recognized the independence of both. While most of those displaced in the August 2008 war have returned, over 200,000 people from earlier conflicts remain displaced.

On November 19, the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement will host a discussion of current issues around human rights, democracy and displacement in Georgia. The event will feature a presentation by Tinatin Khidasheli, international secretary of the Republican Party of Georgia, and Giorgi Chkheidze, executive director of the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association. Following their remarks, Sam Patten, senior program manager for Eurasia at Freedom House, and Nadine Walicki, country analyst for the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, will join the discussion.

Senior Fellow Elizabeth Ferris, co-director of the Brookings-Bern Project, will provide introductory remarks and moderate the discussion. After the program, panelists will take audience questions.

Audio

• Human Rights, Democracy and Displacement in Georgia

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20101119_georgia_human_rights

Event Information

On April 30, 2007, the Brookings Center on the United States and Europe held its fourth annual conference. As in previous years, the annual conference brought together scholars, officials, and policymakers from both sides of the Atlantic to examine the evolving roles of the United States and Europe in the global arena. Panel discussions covered some critical issues about Europe and the U.S.-Europe relationship: "The French Elections", "NATO and Afghanistan" and "Islam in Europe". Panelists included, among others, Lt. General Karl Eikenberry, Deputy Chairman of the NATO Military Committee; Ashraf Ghani, former Finance Minister of Afghanistan; Tufyal Choudhury of Durham University; Philip Gordon of the Brookings Institution; and Corine Lesnes from Le Monde.

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20070430

This year shone a bleak light on the deep racial divides of the U.S. The flash-points of Ferguson, Baltimore and Chicago gave new impetus to movements to reform the criminal justice system and policing. But behind the headlines, the evidence for wide, stubborn race gaps on economic and social indicators is perhaps more troubling still. 

Especially for black Americans, race gaps in family formation, employment, household income, wealth, educational quality, and neighborhood segregation have shown little­—if any—sign of improvement in recent years. The very first Social Mobility Memos was about the barriers to black upward mobility, and in recent months, we have been focusing increasingly on issues of race, place, and opportunity, and here, to close 2015, we recap 15 of our pieces on the subject, including pieces from our colleague Jonathan Rothwell on college, drugs and neighborhoods, and the first Brookings piece from our new nonresident scholar, William Julius Wilson. 

Our hope is that 2016 will see a much greater focus on race and opportunity in America. 

1. Five Bleak Facts on Black Opportunity, Richard V. Reeves and Edward Rodrigue

What would Martin Luther King Jr. think of America in 2015 if he’d lived to see his eighty-sixth birthday? No doubt, he’d be pleased by the legal and political advances of black Americans, crowned by the election and re-election of President Obama.

2. Four charts that show the opportunity gap isn’t going away, Richard V. Reeves

Child poverty rates are coming down slowly, according to figures from the Pew Research Center, except among one racial group: African Americans. This is the latest reminder that the economic gap between black and white Americans is not closing over time. Indeed, on some dimensions, it is widening.

3. Obama’s Post-Presidency? Tackling the Social Mobility Challenge for Black Men, Richard V. Reeves

President Obama’s initiative to boost opportunities for young black men—My Brother’s Keeper—looks to be a post-presidential plan, as much as presidential one. Valerie Jarrett, his closest aide, said that it was a vocation the president and first lady Michelle Obama will undertake “for the rest of their lives…That’s a moral, social responsibility that they feel will transcend the time that he’s president.”

4. School readiness gaps are improving, except for black kids, Richard V. Reeves

Between 1998 and 2010, inequality in school readiness—in terms of math, reading, and behavior—declined quite significantly, according to Reardon and Portilla’s analysis of ECLS data, being presented today at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Annual Conference. This positive trend can be seen for gaps in both income and race (or at least, for Hispanic-white differences).

5. Rich Neighborhood, Poor Neighborhood: How Segregation Threatens Social Mobility, Patrick Sharkey

Racial segregation in American cities has declined slowly, but steadily over the past four decades. This is good news. Over the same timeframe, however, the level of economic segregation has been rising. Compared to 1970, the rich are now much more likely to live in different communities than the poor.

6. Segregation and concentrated poverty in the nation’s capital, Stuart M. Butler and Jonathan Grabinsky

The social mobility gap between black and white Americans has barely narrowed in the last decades, and sharp differences in access to opportunity persist. This racial opportunity gap can, in part, be traced back to the neighborhoods where whites and blacks grow up: research from urban sociologists like Patrick Sharkey and Robert Sampson shows the damaging effects racial segregation and concentrated neighborhood poverty can have on children’s life chances. Washington, D.C. is a case in point.

7. The other side of Black Lives Matter, William Julius Wilson

Several decades ago I spoke with a grieving mother living in one of the poorest inner-city neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side. A stray bullet from a gang fight had killed her son, who was not a gang member. She lamented that his death was not reported in any of the Chicago newspapers or in the Chicago electronic media.

8. Guns and race: The different worlds of black and white Americans, Richard V. Reeves and Sarah Holmes

“The nation’s consciousness has been raised by the repeated acts of police brutality against blacks. But the problem of public space violence—seen in the extraordinary distress, trauma and pain many poor inner-city families experience following the killing of a family member or close relative—also deserves our special attention.”

9. Measuring the Racial Opportunity Gap, Richard V. Reeves and Quentin Karpilow

The U.S. is sharply divided by race, not least in terms of the opportunities for children—a point that a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation vividly shows. At every life stage, there are gaps between kids of different colors.

10. How the War on Drugs Damages Black Social Mobility, Jonathan Rothwell

The social mobility of black Americans has suffered collateral damage from the “War on Drugs.” Being convicted of a crime has devastating effects on the employment prospects and incomes of ex-felons and their children, as my Brookings colleagues and other scholars have found. These findings are often used to motivate efforts to reduce criminal behavior. They should also motivate changes in our criminal justice system, which unfairly punishes black Americans—often for victimless crimes that whites are at least as likely to commit.

11. Black Students at Top Colleges: Exceptions, Not the Rule, Jonathan Rothwell

A generation has been lost in the journey towards race equality in terms of income. The income gap between blacks and whites has been stuck since 1980. Why? Dozens of factors count, of course, but one in particular is worth further exploration: the underrepresentation of black students in elite colleges. As I noted in a previous blog, this could help to explain why blacks earn less than whites, even in the same occupation and with the same level of education.

12. The stubborn race and class gaps in college quality, Jonathan Rothwell

Increasing the number of low-income adults going to—and through—college is an important step towards greater social mobility and reduced income inequality. College is also an important tool for tackling race gaps. But the challenge is not just about quantity: college quality counts for a good deal, too.

13. Single black female BA seeks educated husband: Race, assortative mating and inequality, Edward Rodrigue and Richard V. Reeves

There is a growing trend in the United States towards assortative mating—a clunky phrase that refers to people’s tendency to choose spouses with similar educational attainment. Rising numbers of college-educated women play a key role in this change. It is much easier for college graduates to find and marry each other when there are more equal numbers of each gender within an educational bracket.

14. Sociology’s revenge: Moving to Opportunity (MTO) revisited, Jonathan Rothwell

Neighborhoods remain the crucible of social life, even in the internet age. Children do not stream lectures—they go to school. They play together in parks and homes, not over Skype. Crime and fear of crime are experienced locally, as is the police response to it.

15. Space, place, race: Six policies to improve social mobility, Richard V. Reeves and Allegra Pocinki

Campaign finance is a key issue for the quality of democracy. As we noted in a recently-published book of which we are co-authors, and which we had the honor to present in the Hall of Former Presidents of the Legislative Assembly last February 11 (El costo de la Democracia: Ensayos sobre el financiamiento político en América Latina, UNAM, Mexico City, 2015), it is important because of an inescapable fact: While democracy has no price, it does have an operating cost. The use of economic resources is an essential element for democratic competition. More than a pathology of democracy, political financing, when well-regulated, is a normal part of democratic life.

Yet it is undeniable that money is capable of introducing distortions in the democratic process. Its unequal distribution impacts, first, on the real possibilities enjoyed by the parties and the candidates to take their message to the voters. Second, having money gives individuals and social groups a differentiated possibility of participating in elections and exercizing their influence over the candidates through their contributions. This is vital for democracy. When political power is simply a reflection of economic power, the principle of “one person, one vote” loses meaning. Third, fundraising efforts offer obvious opportunities for the articulation of exchanges between donors and those who make decisions on public affairs, or at least for the continual appearance of conflicts of interest. This can be very problematic in the case of Latin America, where there is a risk of money from organized crime penetrating the campaigns.

And so it is not surprising that the issue is on the political agenda in many countries of the region, just as it has been for a long time in Costa Rica. Costa Rica introduced public financing for political parties in 1956, making it the second country in the world to do so, after Uruguay. Nonetheless, the generosity of the government contribution did not avoid a long succession of scandals associated with the issue, a history that includes figures ranging from Robert Vesco and Manuel Antonio Noriega to Carlos Hank González and the illegal donations from the government of Taiwan. 

The wounds left by each of these episodes gave way to worthy yet incomplete regulatory efforts. Most important has been the reform of the Electoral Code approved in 2009, which among many necessary changes prohibited corporate contributions to the political parties. And not only legislative action has made a difference. The Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court has also made a difference by lifting bank secrecy on financing, a very important decision that has been pointed to internationally.

Each of these steps has been moving the country in the right direction. This is worth underscoring: At a time when it is so easy to revile the Costa Rican political system, it should be recognized that in terms of political financing the country is, in general, better situated than it was 20 or 30 years ago. All the evidence we have indicates that private contributions today are less important in our campaigns than one generation ago. We can state with great certainty that our parties are financing more than 80% of the cost of their campaigns with the state contribution. That is good news.

However, the current regulatory framework presents problems such as:

a) It continues to be a regulatory system that is somehow upside down: It meticulously keeps tabs on the use of the state contribution by the parties, which does not give rise to conflicts of interest, while it is much less effective when it comes to verifying the truth of the information the parties provide about their private sources of financing, which do have the potential to compromise the autonomy of the political system. Correcting this imbalance, getting the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to prioritize monitoring private financing and to devote more resources to it, would not only be a way to straighten out its priorities, but frankly, all the parties would also breathe a sigh of relief.

b) The system of advances on the state contribution continues to be very limited (only 15% of the subsidy is disbursed before the presidential election and nothing in the case of municipal elections). It is time to admit that eliminating the system whereby the contributions were distributed in advance payments, which existed from 1971 to 1991 (when 50% was disbursed in advances), caused grave prejudice to the political system. The weakness of the advanced disbursement has ended up leaving the parties at the mercy of banks and lenders during the campaigns. Worse still, today the possibility of a party receiving loans during the campaign against its electoral expectations depends entirely on the fickle behavior of the opinion polls. This is unfair and risky, as the OAS electoral observation missions have noted.

c) The legal framework does little to limit parties’ spending on advertising, one of the most effective ways to reduce outlays during campaigns and to bring about fairness in electoral competition, which is one of the most important objectives in improving the current system. One must evaluate the advisability of adopting a system of advertising slots (provided free of charge by those holding concessions for the radio spectrum or purchased by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and then made available to the parties) as has been done, with a positive outcome, by other democracies in the region such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Mexico.

d) The current regulatory framework has serious vulnerabilities at the local level. Requiring the parties to file a single financial report with the contribution they receive nationwide (the same system that exists for the presidential election) is insufficient when in practice there are 81 local elections in which each candidate raises and spends money autonomously. Let’s be clear: Relatively little is known about who finances the campaigns at the local level in Costa Rica. This would not matter much except that the experience of other countries – from Mexico to Colombia – shows that local campaigns are the preferred point of entry for organized crime to penetrate the electoral structures. Reinforcing the financial controls on municipal elections is one of the country’s most urgent tasks in relation to campaign finance.

Costa Rica has made major strides in regulating political financing. Yet there is an urgent need to address the weaknesses in the current regulatory framework. There are bills in the legislative pipeline, such as No. 18,739, introduced by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal in April 2013, that incorporate almost all the reforms suggested here and that provide an excellent basis for moving this inevitable discussion forward. 

We will have to address the problems in the current regulatory framework sooner or later. The question is whether we will do so before or after the next scandal. Let’s hope that, for once, we act on time.

This piece was originally published by International IDEA. 

Downloads

• Table of Contents
• Chapter One

• {CD2E3D28-0096-4D03-B2DE-6567EB62AD1E}, 9780815727415, $32.00 Add to Cart
• {9ABF977A-E4A6-41C8-B030-0FD655E07DBF}, 9780815725794, $26.00 Add to Cart

Editors’ Note: According to a new Pew poll, half of Israeli Jews have come to seek not only a Jewish majority but even Jewish exclusivity in Israel. That doesn’t bode well for Arab-Jewish coexistence in Israel, writes Shibley Telhami—even aside from what happens in the West Bank and Gaza. This post originally appeared on the Monkey Cage blog.

When U.S. leaders and commentators warn that the absence of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will make it impossible for Israel to be both a Jewish and democratic state, they generally mean that a Jewish democracy requires a Jewish majority; if Israel encompasses the West Bank and Gaza, Arabs will become a majority. What they may not have realized is that, in the meantime, half of Israeli Jews have come to seek not only a Jewish majority but even Jewish exclusivity.

That is one of the most troubling findings of a new Pew poll in Israel. And it doesn’t bode well for Arab-Jewish coexistence in Israel—even aside from what happens in the West Bank and Gaza.

This major study was conducted from October 14, 2014, to May 21, 2015, among 5,601 Israeli adults ages 18 and older. (Disclosure: I served as an adviser to the project). It found that 48 percent of all Israeli Jews agree with the statement “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel,” while 46 percent disagreed. Even more troubling, the majority of every non-secular Jewish group, including 71 percent of Datim (modern orthodox Jews) agreed with the statement.

While age is not much of a factor when it comes to attitudes toward expelling Arabs from Israel, younger Israelis are slightly more likely to agree with the statement that Arabs should be expelled than older Israelis.

These attitudes are anchored in a broader view of identity and of the nature of the Israeli state. Overall, only about a third of Israeli Jews say their Israeli identity takes precedence over their Jewish identity, with the overwhelming majority of every group, except for secular Jews, saying their Jewishness comes first.

This view has consequences for citizen rights. Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of all Jewish Israelis (98 percent) feel that Jews around the world have a birthright to make aliya (immigration to Israel with automatic Israeli citizenship). But what is striking is that 79 percent of all Jews, including 69 percent of Hilonim (secular Jews) say that Jews deserve “preferential treatment” in Israel—so much for the notion of democracy with full equal rights for all citizens.

These attitudes spell trouble for Arab citizens of Israel who constitute 20 percent of Israel’s citizens. It’s true that attitudes are dynamic; they are partly a function of Jewish-Arab relations within Israel itself, but also outside, especially within the broader Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Like their Jewish counterparts, Arab citizens of Israel (mostly Muslim, but also including Christians and Druze), identify themselves with their ethnicity (Palestinian or Arab) or religion above their Israeli citizenship. And these ethnic/religious identities intensify when conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza intensifies. There is no way to fully divorce the broader Palestinian-Israeli conflict from Arab-Jewish relations within Israel.

In recent years, this latter linkage has become central for two reasons: loss of hope for a two-state solution, and the rise of social media that has displayed extremist attitudes that used to be limited to private space. In the era of Facebook and Twitter, Arab and Jewish citizens post attitudes that deeply offend the other: An Arab expresses joy at the death of Israeli soldiers killed by Palestinians, while a Jew posts a sign reading “death to Arabs.” Hardly the stuff of co-existence. Leave it to opportunist politicians, extremists and incitement to do the rest.

But there is also an American responsibility—not so much with regard to failure of diplomatic efforts, but with the very positing of the nature of the conflict itself, and the nature of the state of Israel. As President Obama considers steps he could undertake on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before leaving office, he may contemplate addressing what has become a distorting and detrimental discourse that serves to give a pass to non-democratic attitudes, and diversion of attention from core problems.

First, there is something wrong with positing the possibility of Arabs as constituting a demographic problem for Israel. It legitimizes the privileging of Jewishness over democracy. It also distorts the reason why Israel is obligated to end occupation of the West Bank and Gaza; it has nothing to do with the character of Israel as such, but with international law and United Nations resolutions.

Second, while states can define themselves as they wish (and are accepted by the international community accordingly), the American embrace of the “Jewishness” of Israel, cannot be decoupled from the Palestinian-Israeli context, or from the overarching American demand that all states must be for all their citizens equally.

In part, this is based on the notion that the UN General Assembly (Resolution 181) recommended in 1947 dividing mandatory Palestine into an “Arab” and a “Jewish” State. In part, it’s based on the notion that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a political conflict that can be resolved through two states, one manifesting the self-determination of Jews as a people, and one manifesting the right of self-determination of Palestinians as a people. The two were bound together. An embrace of a Jewish state that excludes a Palestinian state defeats the principle.

If two states become impossible, America chooses democracy over Jewishness. In fact, this has been consistently reflected in American public attitudes across the political spectrum, most recently in this November 2015poll; in the absence of a two-state solution, 72 percent of Americans would want a democratic Israel, even if it meant that Israel ceases to be a Jewish state with a Jewish majority.

More centrally, even with two states—one manifesting Jewish self determination and one Palestinian self-determination—an overarching, principled American position takes precedence: If Israel is a state of the Jewish people, it must also be above all a state of all its citizens equally; (and if Palestine is to be a state of the Palestinian people, it must also be a state of all its citizens equally). This democratic principle, highlighted front and center in a reformulated American position, can help avoid legitimizing undemocratic attitudes in the name of Jewish identity.

Event Information

Myanmar/Burma is in the fourth year of a historic transition out of military rule that began after the junta dissolved itself in March 2011, replaced by an elected parliament and the government led by President Thein Sein. New elections are expected in November for its second government under the 2008 constitution. While expressing commitment to holding a free and fair election, the Thein Sein government has left in place a constitutional obstacle to allowing Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), from becoming the country’s next president. The NLD seems likely to emerge from the new elections with the most seats in the legislature, but may fall short of its landslide victory in the 1990 election, which was not accepted by the ruling military junta.

On July 14, the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at Brookings hosted a discussion of Myanmar’s progress over the past four years and the prospects for strengthening democratic rule under the next government. Delphine Schrank, a former reporter with The Washington Post, spent four years among dissidents in Myanmar/Burma and has written a narrative nonfiction account about their epic multi-generational fight for democracy. Her book “The Rebel of Rangoon; A Tale of Defiance and Deliverance” (Nation Books, 2015) will set the stage for the discussion. Panelists included Brookings Senior Fellow Ted Piccone, Nonresident Senior Fellow Lex Rieffel, and Priscilla Clapp, former chief-of-mission to the U.S. Embassy in Burma (1999-2002). Richard Bush, senior fellow and director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies, offered opening remarks and moderated the discussion.

Audio

• The struggle for democracy in Myanmar/Burma

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20150714_democracy_burma_transcript

In the recently-released Democracy Index of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Latin America’s performance is worrisome. Just one country, Uruguay, is classified as a “full democracy.” Costa Rica falls into the category of “flawed democracy,” which also includes Mexico and Brazil, both of which fell in the ranking. The assessment could be even more discrediting were it not for the good results of several Latin American countries on the indicator for quality of electoral justice. Brazil’s score is auspicious: 9.58. Only five countries in the world score better.

Like other attempts to gauge democracy based on a given set of variables, the EIU’s assessment is susceptible to criticism. Yet it has the merit of reflecting a reading shared by observers of the current moment in Latin American politics. We agree that the region has continued to leave crucial questions regarding the future of its democratic experiences unanswered. How can one update the models of representation, reinforcing their social resonance and the legitimacy of public action? What can be done to ensure that the state is more efficient and responsive to society at large? What are the paths to advancing the democratization of the political parties, recovering their role as mediators between society and government authority, a function they share today with new mechanisms and new collective actors? Is it feasible to bring a halt to the sequestration of politics by economic power, looking out for the preeminence of the public interest?

In some quarters, the discourse of democratic renewal took on a regressive tone in recent years. A supposed antinomy was preached between social change and representative democracy in the name of seeking less oligarchic and more inclusive models. New institutional arrangements were postulated, with a plebiscitary bias, while principles such as the independence of the branches of government and respect for fundamental freedoms and guarantees were neglected.

While the backward-looking discourse appears to be receding with the victory of the opposition in the Venezuelan elections and the fall of like-minded forces such as kirchnerismo, there are problems that are growing more intense that affect the region from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego. They fall into two main groups.

The first has to do with the impact of the economic crisis on patterns of social cohesion. With the end of the expansionist cycle driven by the high commodities prices, the means for sustaining the widely disseminated programs for income transfers and easy credit were becoming scarce. The emerging sectors lost the immediate prospect of their continued social ascent. More than a few analysts considered the dissatisfaction of those groups to be the fuse that led to the multitudinous demonstrations that took place in Brazil and other Latin American countries in 2013.

True, demonstrators in Sao Paulo held up banners that echoed the “networks of indignation and hope” (as put by Manuel Castells) that proliferated after the “occupy” movement with the disenchantment of traditional politics. Yet their main demand, for better living conditions, will continue to go unaddressed in Brazil and elsewhere as long as the state’s fiscal crisis continues.

The agenda of Latin American societies goes beyond vindicating quality infrastructure services. It includes calls for a genuine updating of the institutions. They want public security, repression of organized crime, transparency in the conduct of public affairs, effective oversight mechanisms, careful accountability by public agents, the end of patrimonialism, an end to practices that harm the national treasury, anti-corruption efforts, and an end to impunity – in summary, a series of positions that cannot be addressed without a coordinated action by the state and citizens. It is that institutional deficit that justifies negative assessments such as the EIU’s.

Yet the exception pointed out by the Democracy Index should be highlighted. After more than 20 years heading up the regional office of the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), I am happy to confirm that Latin America’s electoral justice system, except for topical cases such as Venezuela, is going against the current. The electoral courts have effectively advocated the adoption of good practices and rules, from the use of new technologies at the service of greater transparency in elections to the endeavor to assure equity in electoral contests. Suffice it to turn to the Brazilian case, which became a reference worldwide in turning to electronic voting. How can one not testify in favor of a model which, in the first round of the 2014 elections, made it possible for 93.9% of the votes to be counted one hour after the polls closed without any evidence of fraud? How can one not welcome the gains in biometric identification, which will eliminate the risk of a repeated vote and make it possible to establish a single national registry? Not to mention the judicious regulation of access by parties and candidates to the media by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

Brazil’s electoral justice system has also highlighted the magnitude of the challenge of regulating campaign finance. The figures made available to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal on the weight of financing by companies reveal contributions of more than tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars in a single election campaign. It is an unparalleled phenomenon in the regional context, and perhaps internationally. The anomaly is sufficiently eloquent to justify a correction in direction, such as that adopted by the Federal Supreme Court, at the request of the Brazilian Bar Association (Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil), restricting private financing to natural persons. The adjustment in the party slates for the municipal elections next October will not be simple. Yet what is most important is that an important step was taken to affirm the autonomy of politics. And it happened, as it should, through the joint action of the state and society.

This piece was originally published in Estadão in Portuguese.