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As the prevalence of drug-resistant bacteria continues to rise, there is a pressing need for new drugs to combat infections by these organisms. However, research and development in this area has slowed, creating a public health concern that we lack the drugs necessary to treat multi-drug resistant infections. Challenges to promoting antibacterial drug development may be scientific, methodological, regulatory, or economic in nature.

On Wednesday, May 9, 2012, the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform convened an expert workshop, "Facilitating Antibacterial Drug Development,” that explored solutions to methodological and regulatory challenges that could make the development process more efficient. This meeting brought together diverse multi-stakeholder experts—including medical product developers, health care professionals, researchers, patient advocates, representatives of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and other groups—to explore the following issues:

• Existing paradigms for antibacterial drug development;
• Novel approaches to further antibacterial drug development, including use of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, Bayesian methods, innovative clinical trial designs, new data sources, alternate clinical endpoints, and new regulatory tools; and
• Short- and long-term opportunities to advance the antibacterial drug development enterprise through collaboration among stakeholders, improved regulatory science, and other means.

For more information on FDA’s Antibacterial Drug Development Task Force, click here.

Event Materials

• May 9 Event Summary
• Antibacterial Drug Development Participant List
• Facilitating Antibacterial Drug Development Agenda
• Facilitating Antibacterial Drug Development Discussion Guide
• Panel 1 Brad Spellberg Presentation
• Panel 1 George Talbot Presentation
• Panel 1 John Powers Presentation
• Panel 1 Thomas Fleming Presentation
• Panel 2 George Drusano Presentation
• Panel 2 Scott Emerson Presentation
• Panel 3 Daniel Benjamin Presentation
• Panel 3 Edward Cox Presentation
• Panel 3 John Rex examples
• Panel 3 John Rex Presentation
• Panel 4 Helen Boucher Presentation

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• Table of Contents
• Chapter One

• {CD2E3D28-0096-4D03-B2DE-6567EB62AD1E}, 9780815727415, $32.00 Add to Cart
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For the last several years, the US government has been negotiating a free-trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with 11 other countries across the Asia-Pacific and Latin American regions, which could have major impact on the pharmaceutical market.  When finalized it will be the largest free-trade agreement in history, impacting up to one-third of world trade and roughly 40 percent of the global gross domestic product. The deal has attracted a fair share of criticism from a wide range of groups, including concerns over proposed regulations for biologic drugs in participating countries. Specifically, critics are concerned about the length of data exclusivity granted to the companies that hold the patents on these drugs. Below is a primer on biologics and how they are being addressed in the TPP.

Biologic drugs include any therapy derived from a biological source; a group which includes vaccines, anti-toxins, proteins, and monoclonal antibodies. Because they are typically much larger and more structurally complex than traditional ‘small-molecule’ drugs, they are also more difficult—and much more costly—to develop and manufacture. Biologics are also among the most expensive drugs on the market, costing an average of 22 times more than nonbiologic drugs. Avastin, a cancer drug, can cost more than $50,000 a year, while the rheumatoid arthritis drug Remicade can cost up to $2,500 per injection.

Given these high costs, there is substantial interest in encouraging the development of biosimilars, a term used to describe follow-on versions of an original biologic. Estimates of the potential cost savings vary substantially, but some have predicted that competition from biosimilars could reduce US spending on biologics by $44 to $66 billion over the next ten years.  In the European Union, biosimilars have been on the market since 2006, and a 2013 analysis found that, for the 14 biosimilars on the market, the average price discount was about 25 percent. By 2020, the overall cost savings are projected to total $16-$43 billion.

After the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed in 2010, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) developed an accelerated approval pathway for biosimilars, modeled after the pathway used for the approval of small-molecule generics. In order to meet the criteria for biosimilarity, the drug must share the same mechanism of action for the approved condition of use, and there must be no clinically significant differences between the two drugs in terms of purity, safety, or potency. FDA recently approved its first biosimilar, Zarxio, which is a copy of the oncology drug Neupogen.

Under current FDA regulations, biologic drugs are granted 12 years of data exclusivity following approval. During this period of exclusivity, the FDA may not approve a biosimilar application that relies on the data submitted as part of the original biologic application. This form of temporary monopoly is distinct from patent protection, which is granted well before approval and is not related to clinical data.  Data exclusivity does not prevent another company from generating the data independently, but drug companies are unlikely to go to the considerable (and costly) effort of replicating a full course of clinical trials for a drug that is already on the market. (Though biosimilars may need to undergo some additional clinical testing under current FDA regulations, the amount of data required to support approval would certainly be less than what is required for an original biologic approval.)

The 12-year exclusivity period for biologics was established in the ACA following intense debate, and has continued to attract criticism. (By contrast, the period of data exclusivity is just five years for small-molecule drugs.) Supporters argue that given the greater cost and difficulty of bringing a biologic to market a longer period of exclusivity is necessary to incentivize innovation. Others argue that the resulting restrictions on competition keep drug prices unnecessarily high, inevitably putting a strain on the health system and keeping potentially life-saving drugs out of reach for many patients.

For the 11 countries besides the U.S. that are involved in the TPP, current data exclusivity protections range from zero (Brunei) to eight years (Japan). Under the Obama Administration’s current proposal, participating countries would increase those periods to match the US standard of 12 years. Curiously, this proposal directly contradicts the administration’s ongoing domestic efforts to lower the period of data exclusivity. Since the ACA passed, the Obama administration has repeatedly proposed reducing it to seven, arguing that this would save Medicare $4.4 billion over the next decade. Some have noted that, once the 12-year period is enshrined in the TPP, it will become significantly more difficult to change it through the US legislative process. Furthermore, imposing US standards on the 11 member countries would inevitably restrict competition at the global level, and many patient advocacy and international humanitarian organizations have argued that doing so would undermine the efforts of US global health initiatives like the Vaccine Alliance and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which rely on price competition to manage program costs.

It is unclear whether the US will be successful in its efforts. There have been reports that the issue of data exclusivity has become a significant point of contention, and the US delegation may seek to compromise on its demands. It may, for example, negotiate exceptions for the poorer countries involved in the negotiation, as the Washington Post notes. However, the details of the negotiations are largely confidential, which makes it challenging to assess the possibilities, their relative advantages, or how the US Trade Representative (which is leading the US negotiations) is balancing the need to ensure adequate incentives for innovation with the need to control drug costs and facilitate patient access to potentially life-saving therapies.

Editor's note: Elizabeth Richardson, a research associate in the Center for Health Policy, contributed to the research and writing of this post. 

Event Information

The emerging field of precision medicine continues to offer hope for improving patient outcomes and accelerating the development of innovative and effective therapies that are tailored to the unique characteristics of each patient. To date, however, progress in the development of precision medicines has been limited due to a lack of reliable biomarkers for many diseases. Biomarkers include any defined characteristic—ranging from blood pressure to gene mutations—that can be used to measure normal biological processes, disease processes, or responses to an exposure or intervention. They can be extremely powerful tools for guiding decision-making in both drug development and clinical practice, but developing enough scientific evidence to support their use requires substantial time and resources, and there are many scientific, regulatory, and logistical challenges that impede progress in this area.

On October 27th, 2015, the Center for Health Policy at The Brookings Institution convened an expert workshop that included leaders from government, industry, academia, and patient advocacy groups to identify and discuss strategies for addressing these challenges. Discussion focused on several key areas: the development of a universal language for biomarker development, strategies for increasing clarity on the various pathways for biomarker development and regulatory acceptance, and approaches to improving collaboration and alignment among the various groups involved in biomarker development, including strategies for increasing data standardization and sharing. The workshop generated numerous policy recommendations for a more cohesive national plan of action to advance precision medicine.  

Event Materials

• 1027 Brookings biomarkers workshop agenda
• 1027 Biomarkers workshop backgrounderfinal
• 1027 Biomarkers workshop slide deckfinal
• 1027 Biomarkers workshop participant listfinal

In the U.S., the older and younger generations look very different. While older Americans are predominantly white, young Americans, like millennials, have more varied racial backgrounds. These demographic chasms have political implications: white, older Americans tend to favor conservative politics and have overwhelmingly voted for Republican candidates in past elections; younger Americans, regardless of racial identity, tend to lean left and support broadening social support programs.

In a podcast segment, I explore how these racial and political divides between generations will, no doubt, impact this year’s presidential election and races in the future.

Listen to the full podcast here:

France has been struck by an unprecedented three terror attacks in the last 18 months. In what’s called Operation Sentinelle, 13,000 French military personnel now patrol streets and protect key sites across the country, assisting police and other security agencies. “The fact that the armed forces are visible,” said French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian at a Brookings event on July 20, “help to reassure the French people that they are safe both at home and abroad.”

Do the challenges facing France today mean that it should reduce its engagement overseas, focusing instead on security at home? Le Drian doesn’t think so, and I agree. In a new book titled "Who is the Enemy?," he particularly emphasizes the multifaceted ISIS threat. As he said at Brookings: 

"Every war [has] two enemies…[Today’s] war [with ISIS] also sets in place two concepts of the “enemy” that are radically different: From a strategic point of view, we are dealing with a proto-state; at the heart of this entity, there is a terrorist army." 

It only further complicates matters, of course, that France faces ISIS threats on several fronts: in Syria and Iraq, on the one hand, and also on its own territory. This, Le Drian stressed, means “we must seek coherence in our military action.” It also helps explain why France remains one of the most active countries in the fight against the so-called Islamic State, as well as other extremist groups in the Middle East and in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2013 and 2014, France intervened in Mali in order to prevent jihadi groups from taking over the country. The French military also has a presence in Djibouti, Lebanon, Côte d’Ivoire, the Central African Republic, Gabon, Senegal, as well as in the Pacific (in French Polynesia and New Caledonia)—not to mention Syria, where France uses the Mediterranean Sea-based Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier to strike ISIS targets. 

France is not a warmongering country—rather, it is responding to the fact that overseas threats come to it. Although it remains unclear to what extent the Nice attacker had connections with foreign terrorist networks, it has been established that the November 2015 Paris attacks were planned and orchestrated from Syria. This, among other considerations, has prompted France to engage further in Iraq and Syria. The rationale, as Minister Le Drian explained, is: 

“[T]rading our peace by reducing our military involvement doesn’t make sense. The more we let ISIS consolidate its presence on the Middle East, the more it will gather resources, attract fighters, and plan more attacks against us.” 

Team player

French policy isn’t just about ensuring its own security—rather, its many contributions are integrated within global efforts, including U.S.-led ones. As Le Drian said at Brookings: “I am convinced that the French-American relationship is stronger and better than ever.” France is a prominent participant of the 66-member international coalition against ISIS, and in that capacity participated in the first joint meeting of that group’s foreign and defense ministers in Washington this month. 

France remains a key member of the joint military operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq and Syria, which has damaged or destroyed over 26,0000 ISIS-related targets since August 2014. The Charles de Gaulle carrier—with 26 aircrafts on board—has been an essential part of that coalition mission. Following specific instructions from U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter and his counterpart in Paris, Minister Le Drian, French and U.S. intelligence agencies cooperate closely in intelligence-sharing. And just last week, President François Hollande announced that France will soon be supplying artillery to Iraq to support its fight against ISIS. Beyond the Iraq-Syria theater, France is cooperating with the United States and other partners in Libya, another country that is both a victim and source of extremist threats. 

The French Defense Ministry’s efforts to double-down on protecting French citizens within France, therefore, has not reduced its overseas role. Particularly now that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union, France’s military role has never been so important. France—along with Germany, which recently suggested it would raise its defense spending significantly—should continue to play a leading role as one the top defense actors in the West. 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Fragile states present one of the greatest challenges to global development and poverty reduction. Despite much new learning that has emerged from within the development community in recent years, understanding of how to address fragility remains modest. There is growing recognition that donor engagement in fragile states must look beyond the confines of the traditional aid effectiveness agenda if it is to achieve its intended objectives, which include statebuilding, meeting the needs of citizens, and managing risk more effectively. Current approaches are constrained by relying heavily on small-scale interventions, are weakened by poor coordination and volatility, and struggle to promote an appropriate role for the recipient state.

Scaling up (i.e., the expansion, replication, adaption and sustaining of successful policies and programs in space and over time to reach a greater number of people) is highly relevant to fragile settings, both as an objective and as a strategic approach to development. As an objective, it reinforces the logic that the scale of the challenges in fragile states demands interventions that are commensurate in purpose and equal to the task. As a strategy, it encourages donors to identify and leverage successes, and to integrate institutional development more explicitly into projects and programs. In addition, scaling up can assist donors in addressing the priority areas of improved project design and implementation, sustainability and effective risk management.

Successful scaling up in fragile states almost certainly occurs less often than is possible and does not always involve a systematic approach. Donors should therefore look to more systematically pursue scaling up in fragile states and evaluate their performance with specific reference to this objective. This can be done by incorporating relevant elements of a scaling up framework into operational policies, from strategy development through to program design and monitoring.

Contrary to expectations, there are compelling examples of successful scaling up in fragile states. While the conditions prevailing in fragile states create serious obstacles in terms of “drivers” (the forces that push the scaling up process forward) and “spaces” (the opportunities that need to be created, or potential obstacles that need to be removed for interventions to grow), and in terms of the operational modalities of donors, these can be overcome through the careful design and delivery of programs with a clear focus on creating scaling up pathways, and through close partnership and sustained engagement of governments, communities and foreign partners.

Case study evidence suggests that the pathways taken to reach scale in fragile states demand different approaches by donors. Donors need to adopt greater selectivity in determining which areas or sectors for scaling up are justified—a strategy that has also assisted some donors in managing risk. More investment and time are required in upfront analysis and building the evidence for successful scaling up pathways. In some cases, donors require longer time horizons to achieve scale, although demand from government or beneficiaries has sometimes forced donors to move immediately to scale, allowing little or no time for piloting. Regardless of the pace of scaling up, donors that were most successful were engaged early and then remained engaged, often far beyond the replication phase of scaling up, to increase the likelihood of interventions being sustained. Other common characteristics of successful scaling up were simple project design and a focus on the institutional aspects of the scaling up pathway.

Case studies also point to the crucial role of drivers in moving the scaling up process forward in fragile states. Proven ideas and practical models have often been picked up in fragile states, contrary to the expectation that actors may be less responsive to recognizing and acting on the utility of promising results. Leaders undoubtedly have a role to play in supporting scaling up, although there are clear dangers that must be avoided, including avoiding the perception that donors are picking (political) winners by nominating leaders, and tying the survival of projects too closely to the fortunes of a leader’s political career. Incentives were found to be one of the most important drivers in fragile states, and there is a good case to be made for donors introducing new inducements, greater transparency or similar reforms to strengthen the role incentives play. Finally, and in contrast to the standard scaling up framework, community demand was found to be an important driver in many fragile states, both in demanding the expansion of small-scale projects and by facilitating the community’s own resources to support the scaling up process.

The greatest challenge to scaling up in fragile states is the limited spaces these environments provide. This is especially the case in respect to those spaces which concern aspects of governance: political, institutional and policy spaces. When working in fragile states, donors must recognize that spaces for scaling up are almost always more constrained, but look for ways to expand upon them. Some of the most successful examples of scaling up used creative approaches to build space quickly or used existing capacity to the fullest possible extent. Also relevant are the lessons of robust analysis, greater realism and cost control. The case studies confirm the importance of two additional spaces in fragile states. For example, security space often imposed horizontal obstacles to scaling up which could not realistically be overcome while ownership space served as a good indication of the perceived legitimacy of the scaling up process and the likelihood that interventions would be sustained longer term.

Case studies also affirm the importance of emphasizing robust project design and implementation, and the close linkages between the scaling up agenda and the role of risk management and sustainability in fragile states. While sustainability presented a significant problem for many of the projects and programs reviewed, a more focused approach around scaling up may assist donors in addressing sustainability concerns. This would entail adopting a longer-term perspective beyond the immediate confines of any individual project, looking for available drivers and supportive spaces, and focusing on effective implementation and consistent monitoring and evaluation (M&E). Any intervention introduced on a small scale that scores well in sustainability serves as a possible candidate for scaling up.

Similarly, many of the methods used by donors for managing risk—an emphasis on analysis, scenario planning, realism and making use of specialized aid instruments—are equally relevant for supporting scaling up in fragile countries. A persuasive argument can be made that the adoption of a more explicit scaling up approach by donors can form part of a risk management strategy in fragile states. Scaling up can enable donors to more ambitiously tackle development risks without allowing institutional and project risks to grow unchecked. Ultimately, a donor approach that combines good risk management and scaling up requires strong leadership and well-aligned incentives.

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• Download the full paper

The Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute hosted a forum with Ted Piccone and Ambassadors Hardeep Singh Puri and Antonio de Aguiar Patriota as they discussed his new book, Five Rising Democracies and the Fate of the International Liberal Order.

While the spread of democracy over the last three decades has inspired hope for an international liberal order, recent shifting power balances and democratic backsliding are shaking this foundation. In his new book, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Ted Piccone discusses how five pivotal countries—India, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, and Indonesia—could play a critical role as examples and supporters of liberal ideas and practices. 

Mr. Piccone, Hardeep Singh Puri, former Ambassador of India to the U.N. and Secretary General of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism, and Antonio de Aguiar Patriota, Ambassador of Brazil to the U.N. and former Minister of External Relations, discuss the ways in which these countries stand out for their embrace of globalization and liberal norms on their own terms—and how, in a multipolar world, they may impact our shared future.

In 2013, China surpassed the European Union to become the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region’s largest trading partner, and Chinese oil imports from the region rival those of the United States. Do China’s growing interests in the Middle East imply a greater commitment to the region’s security? How can China and regional governments reinforce these ties through greater diplomatic engagement?

In a new Policy Briefing, Chaoling Feng addresses the key choices facing Chinese and Middle East policymakers. She finds that China’s continued reliance on a framework of “non-intervention” is being challenged by the region’s divisive conflicts. Indeed, China’s economic interests face mounting risks when even maintaining “neutrality” can be perceived as taking a side. Furthermore, China’s case-by-case, bilateral engagement with MENA countries has hindered efforts to develop a broader diplomatic approach to the region.

Read "Embracing Interdependence: The Dynamics of China and the Middle East"

Feng argues that China and particularly the GCC states must work to further institutionalize their growing economic interdependence. China, drawing on its experiences in Africa and Latin America, should take a more holistic approach to engagement with the MENA region, while enhancing Chinese institutions for energy trading. GCC countries, for their part, should aim to facilitate bilateral investments in energy production and support China’s plans for Central and West Asian infrastructure development projects.

Downloads

• English PDF
• Arabic PDF

Millions of Egyptians took to the streets in January 2011 chanting “‘ish, hurriyya, ‘adalah ijtima‘iyya,” or bread, freedom, and social justice. This simple chant captured protestors’ desire for a new Egypt defined by economic, political, and social change. Five years later, however, the attainment of those demands seems more elusive than ever. In the economic sphere, Egypt still faces the major challenge of high unemployment, particularly among educated youth. Why do so many of Egypt’s young university graduates struggle to find employment?

Read "Educated but unemployed: The challenge facing Egypt’s youth"

In this policy briefing, Adel Abdel Ghafar analyzes the roots of Egypt’s youth unemployment crisis, starting with the structural issues plaguing the country’s educational system. He then examines other contributing factors including neoliberal economic reforms, gender inequality, and the lack of entrepreneurship. Abdel Ghafar warns that failing to address the unemployment issue will increase the likelihood of another uprising.

Abdel Ghafar thus argues that the Egyptian government must urgently undertake reforms and devote extensive resources to dealing with youth unemployment. Specifically, he recommends ways in which Egypt can revamp public university funding, promote vocational training, stimulate entrepreneurship, and increase the participation of women in the workforce.

Downloads

• English PDF
• Arabic PDF

What makes the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) consequential?

Since the onset of the 21st century, countries from every corner of the world have vigorously negotiated free trade agreements (FTAs) based on the principle of preferential market access (as opposed to the most-favored nation obligation of the WTO). This has resulted in a veritable avalanche of such trade deals, with close to 400 FTAs notified to the WTO in the past 20 years. If the negotiation of preferential trade agreements is now the dominant trend in the trading regime, and almost no country has escaped contagion from the FTA syndrome, why does one agreement in particular—the TPP—remain the focal point of policy debates on trade?

Chart 1. Multilateral trade regimes and FTA proliferation

The TPP generates most attention because it has spurred the emergence of mega trade agreements (as compared to the mostly small bilateral trade deals that had characterized the FTA wave), and has offered a new platform to advance the trade agenda as negotiations on the Doha Round continue gridlocked. The TPP has come a long way from its humble beginnings as a trade grouping of four small open economies (Brunei, New Zealand, Chile, and Singapore). Today, it comprises 12 nations, covers 26 percent of world trade, and is expected to generate global income gains in the neighborhood of $492 billion by 2030.

Chart 2. From humble beginnings to mega trade deal

But the significance of the TPP is not to be grasped by numbers alone. Consider the following defining traits of this trade agreement:

1. Its high level of ambition for tariff liberalization vowing to disallow sectoral carve-outs. While it is true that sensitive sectors asserted their political weight by deferring or limiting tariff elimination (e.g., autos for the United States and five agricultural commodities for Japan), the commitment of TPP countries to eventually eliminate 99-100 percent of tariff rates is indeed impressive. Japan does stand out for a lower level of committed tariff elimination (95 percent); but again this is the highest level of liberalization that Japan has ever committed to in any trade negotiation.
2. Its comprehensive set of rules to target non-tariff barriers by introducing disciplines on issues such as regulatory coherence, state-owned enterprises, competitiveness, supply chains, etc. With 30 chapters and over 5,000 pages of text, grasping the reach of TPP rules will certainly take time. However, a quick glance does reveal novel, and needed, disciplines in important areas of the economy. For example, the e-commerce chapter establishes a binding obligation for governments to allow free data flows, disallows forced localization of data servers (except for the financial sector), and mandates that all countries must provide a legal framework to protect personal information. Another important innovation is the TPP provision that governments cannot require the transfer of source code from private companies operating in their market.
3. Its expansive vision as an Asia-Pacific platform with aspirations to set global standards. Its open architecture with a docking mechanism to encourage further member expansion and its explicit aim to establish a trans-regional platform that bridges Asia and North and South America are strong selling points for the TPP. It undercuts the oft-mentioned fear of using preferential trade agreements to create closed-off regions, and it gives its rules and standards the opportunity to disseminate far and wide.
4. Last but not least, the TPP has emerged as a central policy priority for both the U.S. and Japan to hone their international economic competitiveness and achieve broader foreign policy goals. In the area of foreign economic policy, the TPP is one of the most compelling frameworks to encourage China to deepen its market reforms and sign on to more ambitious liberalization commitments. The TPP, therefore, has emerged as a central arena for the interaction of the three giants of the world economy.

The United States as a Pacific power

The U.S. expects to reap important economic benefits from the TPP. It is a trade agreement that taps into the areas of competitive strength of the American economy: agricultural exports, trade in services, the digital economy, to name a few. Econometric studies put the expected income gains of the TPP for the U.S. in the order of $131 billion per year, and to the extent that the TPP becomes a global standard, these gains will grow. Indeed, the TPP is the centerpiece of the American trade agenda. Its success is required for continued momentum in the on-going trans-Atlantic trade negotiations, but it could also influence other important trade initiatives. For example, TPP disciplines on services and state-owned enterprises are expected to influence deliberations on the Trade in Services Agreement, a plurilateral trade negotiation carried out under the aegis of the WTO.

From the point of view of global governance, the TPP is a litmus test of the U.S. ability to provide leadership at a time of great complexity in the world economic order: one where supply chains have emerged as a main driver of production and trade, where emerging economies are increasingly vocal in the management of the global economy, and where the test of updating Bretton Woods institutions looms large. Through the TPP, the U.S. can display its convening power to negotiate novel trade rules, to devise new institutional forms that complement and spur on the multilateral regime, and to be proactive and not just reactive to initiatives from rising economic powers.

But the TPP is also a pillar of U.S. Asia policy, one that solidifies the U.S. commitment to remain an engaged Pacific power. This trade agreement increases the appeal of the rebalancing policy by defining it not just as a reorientation of military resources toward a region undergoing a significant power transition; but also as the pursuit of a common endeavor: furthering economic interdependence with rules that match the realities of the 21st century economy, and potentially establishing a bridge toward China with the prospect of TPP membership.

Japan is an essential partner for the U.S. to achieve these important goals. Japan came late to the TPP negotiations (in the summer of 2013), but it transformed the economic and political significance of this deal. Japan’s participation allowed the TPP to qualify as a mega trade agreement. For the U.S. alone, the projected economic gains with Japan on board tripled. This is not surprising given the size of the Japanese market and the fact that the U.S. and Japan do not have a bilateral trade agreement; nor has Japan ever accepted these levels of liberalization. Moreover, prior to Japan joining the TPP there were doubts as to whether this could indeed become an Asia-Pacific platform of economic integration since no major Asian economy was participating. Japan’s entry put those objections to rest.

Japan as a reviving power

For Japan as well, the TPP negotiations have had salutary effects on its trade diplomacy and on the pursuit of central domestic and foreign policy priorities. Prior to joining the TPP, Japan’s trade strategy had achieved modest results: it lagged behind its peer competitors in negotiating an FTA network that covered a substantial share of its trade, it had faced difficulty in persuading Southeast Asian countries to adopt many WTO+ rules, it had received the cold shoulder from the U.S. and Europe as it proposed the negotiation of trade agreements, and remained deadlocked with China over the membership configuration of an East Asian trade grouping. The TPP altered the parameters of Japanese trade policy. It allowed the country to negotiate preferential access to main markets of destination, to disseminate next frontier trade rules, and to undertake concurrent mega trade negotiations. As a reaction to Japan’s courting of TPP membership, China recalibrated its trade policy to speed up the launch of trilateral trade negotiations in Northeast Asia and was now amenable to a 16-member trade grouping upholding the principle of ASEAN centrality (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or RCEP), and the Europeans also came to the negotiation table.

As a full participant in the mega FTA movement, Japan can aim high in order to pursue signature objectives such as:

• Negotiate deep integration FTAs that enhance the international competitiveness of Japanese global supply chains. An assessment of Japan’s core competencies in the 21st century should start with the recognition that a significant share of industrial capacity has been relocated overseas. On-shoring of manufacturing operations is not a viable goal given projected demographic trends. Rather, the aim should be to sustain and strengthen Japan’s role in global supply chains (the leading force of international production and trade today). Japan’s international diplomacy has a role to play here by negotiating deep FTAs that meet the needs of fragmented production chains. Additionally, deep FTA commitments will also help Japan address its own domestic inefficiencies such as the modest liberalization of the services sector.
• Lock-in structural reforms. One of the main benefits of linking the domestic structural reform agenda to international trade commitments is that it will be harder to roll back the reforms if and when political circumstances change (this is indeed a major lesson of the failure to institutionalize Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s reforms). Importantly, the TPP negotiations do not conform to the old-style gaiatsu pattern where a reluctant Japan would deflect U.S. pressure for it to change its ways. This time Japan has eagerly sought to be at the TPP table and has—of its own accord—identified the synergies between the new trade commitments and its own efforts to reform the domestic economy.
• Manage the transition from “regime-taker” to “regime-maker.” With the stagnation of the WTO, we have moved to a system of decentralized competition whereby different clusters of countries seek to define the standards for economic integration. The costs of a passive trade policy are much higher today than in a most favored nation (MFN) world where preferential trade agreements were the exception and not the rule. The expectation of steady liberalization benefits through successive multilateral trade rounds has been sharply revised. Therefore, countries that want to avoid the discriminatory effects of existing preferential trade deals and to improve access to important markets through additional elimination of tariffs and the adoption of rules that address behind-the-border barriers have resorted to an active FTA diplomacy. More broadly, Japan has much to win from displaying leadership in international economic governance, in a manner that resonates with the goals of the Abe administration to play a proactive role in world affairs.

For all the shared interests between the U.S. and Japan in the TPP project, negotiations over long divisive market access terms proved difficult and frustratingly long. Of course, a host of other issues also kept the larger TPP membership apart. Biologics especially was the last topic to close in the final TPP ministerial held in Atlanta in October 2015, and negotiations went to the wire. Despite all these difficulties, the ability to strike a TPP deal last fall represents a big win for the trade regime which has not seen a success of this magnitude in two decades. Since its creation, the WTO has not updated the rules of international trade and investment, and the Doha Round lingers on life support. Many were skeptical that a major trade negotiation tackling front and center the complex and unwieldy behind-the-border agenda could succeed. This is the most powerful message coming from Atlanta: it can be done.

With a TPP deal in hand there is greater hope that we can manage the tectonic changes in international trade governance. The transformation of the trade agenda (increasingly about regulatory matters) and the limitations of the WTO as a negotiation forum, have called into question the pure multilateral ideal—one set of binding rules for 150+ countries. Instead, the center of action is now on what we call “variable geometry” arrangements where subsets of countries negotiate next-frontier rules: the plurilaterals in the WTO and the preferentials through mega trade agreements. The emerging system for trade governance is not risk-free, and much effort will be required to forestall potential dangers: fragmentation (if TPP-like standards do not disseminate widely) and exclusion (if less developed countries are bypassed by the FTA wave).

Moreover, the TPP deal opens a new and promising chapter in U.S.-Japan relations. It is certainly more than a U.S.-Japan trade agreement—it represents the ability of 12 countries at varying levels of development and with very different regulatory regimes to agree on the most substantive trade liberalization to date. But it is also true that at the core of the TPP, the U.S. and Japan as the largest and most developed economies have acted as an engine of negotiations. The TPP marks a milestone in U.S.-Japan relations, as an effective instance of cooperation to upgrade the international economic architecture. In the TPP, the U.S. and Japan are on close alignment on the rules area of the talks and were able to reach an agreement on market access issues that in the past had proven intractable.

Ratification, reform, and reach

None of these effects will be long lasting nor will they reach their full potential, if TPP countries (and the U.S. and Japan in particular) do not double down on the next crucial steps. For simplicity sake, these can be dubbed the three “Rs” of ratification, reform, and reach.

Ratification

Ratification rules in the TPP require that six countries representing 85 percent of combined GDP approve the agreement before it enters into force. Therefore, to meet this numerical requirement both the U.S. and Japan must ratify. However, for the U.S., TPP ratification will represent a steep political battle in the midst of an American presidential election year. Despite public opinion polls showing that most Americans see in international trade an opportunity, the politics of trade agreements are fractious. Long-standing opposition by environmental groups and unions to trade agreements has resulted in their active mobilization against the TPP. And the debate on the merits of trade agreements has only become more heated as critics suggest that trade globalization is to be blamed for growing income inequality and the erosion of state regulatory powers.

For both national parties, the TPP is a divisive issue. While President Barack Obama has made TPP negotiation and ratification a central priority of his administration, Democrats in Congress have not backed his trade initiative in large numbers, in part due to the opposition of the party’s traditional base, labor unions. The internal dynamics of the Republican Party have shifted dramatically, complicating the odds for the TPP. The Republican Party has become less cohesive with the emergence of the Tea Party wing determined to deny Obama a legacy-making trade agreement. The support of key Republican figures in the Senate has also waned due to dissatisfaction over the tobacco carve-out from investor-state dispute settlement and the exclusivity period for biologics. And the business community has also criticized these provisions, offering only qualified support for the TPP deal.

The U.S. has yet to fail in ratifying a negotiated trade agreement. And a vote down on the TPP would be singularly costly for the credibility of U.S. foreign policy and the evolution of the international trade regime.

Reform

One of the most powerful benefits of trade agreements is the ability of governments to use them as commitment devices to implement needed economic changes. Reform is in fact the crucial issue for Japan as it tries to leave behind stagnant growth. Economic revitalization certainly goes beyond agricultural reform, to encompass the host of productivity-enhancing measures across all areas of the economy, the internationalization of services, the promotion of inward direct investment, and the further upgrading of regional and trans-regional production networks.

Yet, farming countermeasures adopted in the wake of the TPP deal have raised doubts about the government’s resolve to transform its agricultural sector. Japan’s TPP market access commitments do include a 56,000-ton import rice quota (to grow eventually to 78,400 tons). But the government promptly announced an increase in stockpiling purchases to match the TPP quota, effectively preventing a drop in the price of rice and market adjustment. This artificial support preempts the modernization of the agricultural sector since it enables part-time farmers to continue operating in tiny plots, hindering the emergence of commercial farming. The government also submitted a generous 2016 supplementary budget with 312 billion yen earmarked for agricultural TPP countermeasures. But informed experts question its impact in boosting farming competitiveness since public works allocations still loom large (30 percent of outlays will go to land reclamation projects).

Just as the electoral cycle has not facilitated TPP ratification in the U.S., the looming Japanese Upper House election in July is not conducive to moving past prior trade compensation practices.

Reach

The release of the TPP text has clarified a very important point: membership can be extended not only to APEC economies but also to other countries that are willing to meet TPP disciplines. Enlargement will be critical to avoid the above-mentioned risks of fragmentation and exclusion by helping disseminate TPP standards. In the short and medium term, the conclusion of the TPP talks is expected to have two main effects: increase the list of potential applicants, and encourage a higher level of ambition among on-going trade negotiations.

The number of economies expressing an interest in joining the TPP has grown to include South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Colombia, and Costa Rica, among others. Regarding the second wave of accession the key issue will be readiness to undertake the ambitious liberalization commitments of the TPP, and the list of prospective applicants shows wide variation on this score. The conclusion of TPP talks also creates an incentive for the updating of existing FTAs and/or scaling up the level of ambition in ongoing trade negotiations, as countries outside the TPP want to secure export markets, attract foreign direct investment, and embed their companies in global supply chains.

In the long run, the key challenge will be to devise an effective strategy to engage emerging economies, such as China, India, and Brazil. This is still the gaping hole in the U.S. plans to develop trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic trade groupings. Certainly, putting in place the TPP and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is the first step in such strategy since it changes the incentive structure for these countries to entertain further market liberalization. But at the end of the day, these emerging economies must reach the determination that it is in their national interest to abide by these economic standards, and find the political will to tackle vested interests. This is a tall order indeed.

The most pressing question may well be how China will position itself vis-à-vis the TPP. Can we expect it to act on past precedent and seek TPP accession just as in the past it used WTO membership to advance economic reforms? Or will it choose instead to champion the negotiation of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) after both the TPP and RCEP materialize, in order to play a more proactive role in the international economic architecture—more in conformance with the recent launch of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank?

The recently struck TPP agreement underscores the potential of furthering U.S.-Japan cooperation to supply needed international economic governance. However, the overview of remaining challenges also shows that clinching a TPP deal is just the first step.

This article originally appeared in the March/April 2016 issue of Economy, Culture & History Japan SPOTLIGHT Bimonthly.

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• The high stakes of TPP ratification: Implications for Asia-Pacific and beyond

Editor’s Note: This blog post is one in a series of posts in which guest bloggers respond to the Brookings paper, “The potential and limitations of impact bonds: Lessons from the first five years of experience worldwide."

In 2014, clause 5 (1) of the County Early Childhood Education Bill 2014 declared free and compulsory early childhood education a right for all children in Kenya. Early childhood education (ECE) in Kenya has historically been located outside of the realm of government and placed under the purview of the community, religious institutions, and the private sector. The disparate and unstructured nature of ECE in the country has led to a proliferation of unregistered informal schools particularly in underprivileged communities. Most of these schools still charge relatively high fees and ancillary costs yet largely offer poor quality of education. Children from these preschools have poor cognitive development and inadequate school readiness upon entry into primary school.

The Kenyan constitution places the responsibility and mandate of providing free, compulsory, and quality ECE on the county governments. It is an onerous challenge for these sub-national governments in taking on a large-scale critical function that has until now principally existed outside of government.

In Nairobi City County, out of over 250,000 ECE eligible children, only about 12,000 attend public preschools. Except for one or two notable public preschools, most have a poor reputation with parents. Due to limited access and demand for quality, the majority of Nairobi’s preschool eligible children are enrolled in private and informal schools. A recent study of the Mukuru slum of Nairobi shows that over 80 percent of 4- and 5-year-olds in this large slum area are enrolled in preschool, with 94 percent of them attending informal private schools.

In early 2015, the Governor of Nairobi City County, Dr. Evans Kidero, commissioned a taskforce to look into factors affecting access, equity, and quality of education in the county. The taskforce identified significant constraints including human capital and capacity gaps, material and infrastructure deficiencies, management and systemic inefficiencies that have led to a steady deterioration of education in the city to a point where the county consistently underperforms relative to other less resourced counties. 

Nairobi City County now faces the challenge of designing and implementing a scalable model that will ensure access to quality early childhood education for all eligible children in the city by 2030. The sub-national government’s resources and implementation capacity are woefully inadequate to attain universal access in the near term, nor by the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) deadline of 2030. However, there are potential opportunities to leverage emerging mechanisms for development financing to provide requisite resource additionality, private sector rigor, and performance management that will enable Nairobi to significantly advance the objective of ensuring ECE is available to all children in the county.

Social impact bonds (SIBs) are one form of innovative financing mechanism that have been used in developed countries to tap external resources to facilitate early childhood initiatives. This mechanism seeks to harness private finance to enable and support the implementation of social services. Government repays the investor contingent on the attainment of targeted outcomes. Where a donor agency is the outcomes funder instead of government, the mechanism is referred to as a development impact bond (DIB).

The recent Brookings study highlights some of the potential and limitations of impact bonds by researching in-depth the 38 impact bonds that had been contracted globally as of March, 2015. On the upside, the study shows that impact bonds have been successful in achieving a shift of government and service providers to outcomes. In addition, impact bonds have been able to foster collaboration among stakeholders including across levels of government, government agencies, and between the public and private sector. Another strength of impact bonds is their ability to build systems of monitoring and evaluation and establish processes of adaptive learning, both critical to achieving desirable ECD outcomes. On the downside, the report highlights some particular challenges and limitations of the impact bonds to date. These include the cost and complexity of putting the deals together, the need for appropriate legal and political environments and impact bonds’ inability thus far to demonstrate a large dent in the ever present challenge of achieving scale.

In the Kenyan context, especially at the sub-national level, there are two key challenges in implementing impact bonds.

To begin with, in the Kenyan context, the use of a SIB would invoke public-private partnership legislation, which prescribes highly stringent measures and extensive pre-qualification processes that are administered by the National Treasury and not at the county level. The complexity arises from the fact that SIBs constitute an inherent contingent liability to government as they expose it to fiscal risk resulting from a potential future public payment obligation to the private party in the project.

Another key challenge in a SIB is the fact that Government must pay for outcomes achieved and for often significant transaction costs, yet the SIB does not explicitly encompass financial additionality. Since government pays for outcomes in the end, the transaction costs and obligation to pay for outcomes could reduce interest from key decision-makers in government.

The above challenges notwithstanding, a combined approach of results-based financing and impact investing has high potential to mobilize both requisite resources and efficient capacity to deliver quality ECE in Nairobi City County. To establish an enabling foundation for the future inclusion of impact investing whilst beginning to address the immediate ECE challenge, Nairobi City County has designed and is in the process of rolling out a modified DIB. In this model, a pool of donor funds for education will be leveraged through the new Nairobi City County Education Trust (NCCET).

The model seeks to apply the basic principles of results-based financing, but in a structure adjusted to address aforementioned constraints. Whereas in the classical SIB and DIB mechanisms investors provide upfront capital and government and donors respectively repay the investment with a return for attained outcomes, the modified structure will incorporate only grant funding with no possibility for return of principal. Private service providers will be engaged to operate ECE centers, financed by the donor-funded NCCET. The operators will receive pre-set funding from the NCCET, but the county government will progressively absorb their costs as they achieve targeted outcomes, including salaries for top-performing teachers. As a result, high-performing providers will be able to make a small profit. The system is designed to incentivize teachers and progressively provide greater income for effective school operators, while enabling an ordered handover of funding responsibilities to government, thus providing for program sustainability.

Nairobi City County plans to build 97 new ECE centers, all of which are to be located in the slum areas. NCCET will complement this undertaking by structuring and implementing the new funding model to operationalize the schools. The structure aims to coordinate the actors involved in the program—donors, service providers, evaluators—whilst sensitizing and preparing government to engage the private sector in the provision of social services and the payment of outcomes thereof.

In late October at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP) headquarters in Bangkok, a multi-stakeholder coalition was launched to promote the role of youth and civil society in advancing post-2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The youth initiatives, fostering regional integration and youth service impact in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and counterpart regions of Northeast and South Asia, will be furthered through a new Asia-Pacific Peace Service Alliance. The alliance is comprised of youth leaders, foundations, civil society entities, multilateral partners and U.N. agencies. Together, their initiatives illustrate the potential of youth and multi-stakeholder coalitions to scale impacts to meet SDG development targets through youth service and social media campaigns, and partnerships with multilateral agencies, nongovernmental organizations, corporations and research institutes.

The “Asia-Pacific Forum on Youth Volunteerism to Promote Participation in Development and Peace” at UN ESCAP featured a new joint partnership of the U.S. Peace Corps and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) as well as USAID support for the ASEAN Youth Volunteering Program. With key leadership from ASEAN youth entitles, sponsor FK Norway, Youth Corps Singapore and Peace Corps’ innovative program in Thailand, the forum also furthered President Obama’s goal of Americans serving “side by side” with other nations’ volunteers. The multi-stakeholder Asia-Pacific alliance will be powered by creative youth action and a broad array of private and public partners from Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, Australia, Korea, China, Mongolia, Japan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, the U.S. and other nations.

During the event, Dr. Shamshad Akhtar, ESCAP executive secretary, pointed out that “tapping youth potential is critical to shape our shared destiny, as they are a source of new ideas, talent and inspiration. For ESCAP and the United Nations, a dynamic youth agenda is vital to ensure the success of post-2015 sustainable development.”

Dr. Surin Pitsuwan, former ASEAN secretary-general, called for a new Asia-wide multilateralism engaging youth and civil society.  In his remarks, he drew from his experience in mobilizing Asian relief and recovery efforts after Cyclone Nargis devastated the delta region of Myanmar in May 2008. Surin, honorary Alliance chairman and this year’s recipient of the Harris Wofford Global Citizenship Award, also noted the necessity of a “spiritual evolution” to a common sense of well-being to redress the “present course of possible extinction” caused by global conflicts and climate challenges. He summoned Asia-Pacific youth, representing 60 percent of the world’s young population, to “be the change you want to see” and to “commit our youth to a useful cause for humanity.”

The potential for similar upscaled service efforts in Africa, weaving regional integration and youth volunteering impact, has been assessed in Brookings research and policy recommendations being implemented in the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). Recommendations, many of which COMESA and ASEAN are undertaking, include enabling youth entrepreneurship and service contributions to livelihoods in regional economic integration schemes, and commissioning third-party support for impact evidence research.

A good example of successful voluntary service contributions from which regional economic communities like ASEAN can learn a lot is the current Omnimed pilot research intervention in Uganda. In eastern Ugandan villages, 1,200 village health workers supported by volunteer medical doctors, Uganda’s Health Ministry, Peace Corps volunteers and Global Peace Women are addressing lifesaving maternal and child health outcomes furthering UNICEF’s campaign on “integrated health” addressing malaria, diarrheal disease and indoor cooking pollution. The effort has included construction of 15 secure water sources and 1,200 clean cook stoves along with randomized controlled trials.

Last week, the young leaders from more than 40 nations produced a “Bangkok Statement” outlining their policy guidance and practical steps to guide volunteering work plans for the new Asia-Pacific alliance. Youth service initiatives undertaken in “collective impact” clusters will focus on the environment (including clean water and solar villages), health service, entrepreneurship, youth roles in disaster preparedness and positive peace. The forum was co-convened by ESCAP, UNESCO, the Global Peace Foundation and the Global Young Leaders Academy.

Abstract

Progress in closing differences in many objective outcomes for blacks relative to whites has slowed, and even worsened, over the past three decades. However, over this period the racial gap in wellbeing has shrunk. In the early 1970s data revealed much lower levels of subjective well-being among blacks relative to whites. Investigating various measures of well-being, we find that the well-being of blacks has increased both absolutely and relative to that of whites. While a racial gap in well-being remains, two-fifths of the gap has closed and these gains have occurred despite little progress in closing other racial gaps such as those in income, employment, and education. Much of the current racial gap in well-being can be explained by differences in the objective conditions of the lives of black and white Americans. Thus making further progress will likely require progress in closing racial gaps in objective circumstances.

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• Subjective and Objective Indicators of Racial Progress

After being made aware of their racial biases in referee calls through widespread media exposure, individual National Basketball Association referees became unbiased, suggesting that raising awareness of even subtle forms of racism can bring about meaningful change.

The authors examined a real-world setting—professional sports referees who had big incentives to make unbiased decisions but were still exhibiting significant amounts of racial bias—and found that after learning of their bias via media coverage of a major academic study, their behaviors changed.

The original study, authored by Price and Wolfers and in 2007, looked at nearly two decades of NBA data (1991-2002) and found that personal fouls are more likely to be called against basketball players when they are officiated by an opposite-race refereeing crew than when officiated by an own-race refereeing crew. The results received widespread media attention at the time, with a front-page piece in the New York Times and many other newspapers, extensive coverage on the major news networks, ESPN, talk radio and in the sports media including comments from star players at the time such as LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Charles Barkley, to then-NBA Commissioner David Stern.

The new paper compares the next time period after the first study (2003-2006) to the timeframe immediately after the study was publicized (2007-2010). The authors found the bias continued in the first 3-year period after the study but that no bias was apparent after the widespread publicity of the first study’s findings. The researchers found that the media exposure alone was apparently enough to bring about the attitude change: the NBA reported that it not take any specific action to eliminate referee discrimination, and in fact never spoke to the referees about the study, nor change referee incentives or training.

Abstract

Can raising awareness of racial bias subsequently reduce that bias? We address this question by exploiting the widespread media attention highlighting racial bias among professional basketball referees that occurred in May 2007 following the release of an academic study. Using new data, we confirm that racial bias persisted in the years after the study's original sample, but prior to the media coverage. Subsequent to the media coverage though, the bias completely disappeared. We examine potential mechanisms that may have produced this result and find that the most likely explanation is that upon becoming aware of their biases, individual referees changed their decision-making process. These results suggest that raising awareness of even subtle forms of bias can bring about meaningful change.

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• Download the full paper

Event Information

This year marks the centenary of the atrocities perpetrated against the Armenian people of the Ottoman Empire during World War I by the governing Committee of Union and Progress. Most scholars and many governments consider these horrific events––in which more than one million people were systematically massacred or marched to their deaths––to constitute the first modern European genocide. Turkish society has begun to open up and confront the issue over the last decade. Turkish authorities, however, continue to reject the use of the term genocide, contest the number of deaths, and highlight the fact that many other minority groups, Muslims, and Turks were killed in the same period as the war-ravaged empire unraveled. For descendants of the survivors, Turkey’s official refusal to reckon fully with this painful chapter of its past is a source of deep distress and concern and undermines societal efforts toward understanding and reconciliation. Armenians have also raised the question of reparations, further adding to the problem.

On May 13, the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings (CUSE), together with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for International Studies, the Hrant Dink Memorial Human Rights and Justice Lectureship at MIT, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace held a conference with several leading scholars of the Armenian genocide and other international experts. Speakers considered the historical record and circumstances of the genocide amid the disorder of World War I; how Turkey, Armenia, and other key actors have dealt with the legacy of 1915; and how this legacy continues to reverberate in the region today, with protracted conflicts in the Caucasus and where religious and ethnic minority groups have been deliberately targeted for expulsion and death amid the upheavals in Iraq, Syria, and other states that emerged from the rubble of the Ottoman Empire.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #Armenia1915

Video

• 1915 and the unmaking of peoples: Deportations, massacres, and genocide
• The making of an “almost intractable conflict” and attempts at its resolution
• 2015 and its horrors : A century after 1915

Audio

• Armenians and the legacies of World War I

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20150513_armenia_transcript

Event Information

Ukraine faces critical challenges on a range of questions: shaping foreign and national security policies appropriate for a medium-sized country located between Europe and Russia; developing a strategy and policies to promote energy security and contribute to sustainable economic growth; and designing educational and cultural policies suitable for advancing the country’s European aspirations and its own national identity. The Ukraine 2020 Policy Dialogue—an initiative of the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation supported by the Democracy Grants Program of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv—convened four U.S.-Ukrainian task forces earlier this year to discuss these questions and develop policy recommendations for the Ukrainian and U.S. governments.

On September 28, the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings (CUSE) hosted a discussion of the recommendations developed by the Policy Dialogue. Panelists included four co-chairs of the Dialogue’s working groups: Edward Chow of the Center for Strategic and International Studies; William Miller of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Robert Nurick of the Atlantic Council; and Brookings Senior Fellow Steven Pifer. Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Angela Stent moderated the discussion. Copies of the Policy Dialogue recommendations were available. 

Audio

• Ukraine: Facing Critical Challenges

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• ukraine_2020_recommendations
• 20120928_ukraine