President Obama’s emphasis on “smart power” diplomacy has thrust the need for international volunteer service into the global spotlight. On June 23, Global Economy and Development at Brookings and Washington University’s Center for Social Development (CSD) will host a forum examining how international volunteer service can address multiple global challenges simultaneously and build international cooperation. The forum will frame international service as an effective tool for increasing international social capital as well as building sustainable cross-cultural bridges.

This event begins with an address by service champion, Ambassador Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, who leads the Department of State’s Global Partnerships Initiative. Bagley is well poised to foster innovative public-private partnerships, an approach she describes as “Ubuntu Diplomacy: where all sectors belong as partners, where we all participate as stakeholders, and where we all succeed together, not incrementally but exponentially.” The need for multilateral approaches to development has been analyzed by Brookings scholars Jane Nelson and Noam Unger, who explore how the U.S. foreign assistance system works in the new market-oriented and locally-driven global development arena.

This spirit of cross-sector collaboration will carry the June 23^rd forum, beginning with a research panel releasing beneficiary outcome data from a Peace Corps survey completed with over 800 host country nationals, including community members, direct beneficiaries, and collaborators. Peace Corps colleagues, Dr. Susan Jenkins and Janet Kerley, will present preliminary findings from this multi-year study measuring the achievement of “helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women” and “promoting a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served”. Aggregate data about respondents’ views of Americans before and after their interaction with the Peace Corps will be discussed.

This work complements the release of new data on the impact of international service on volunteers, which is supported with funding from the Ford Foundation and a joint Brookings-Washington University academic venture capital fund. Washington University’s CSD has studied international service over the last decade. The current research, first in a series from the quasi-experimental study, compares international volunteers’ perceived outcomes to a matched group who did not volunteer internationally: volunteers are more likely to report increased international awareness, international social capital, and international career intentions.

Building on the demonstrated potential of international service, policymakers and sector leaders will then discuss options for enhancing international service, and provide recommendations for bringing international service to the forefront of American foreign policy initiatives. This policy plenary will introduce and discuss the Service World policy platform: a collaborative movement led by the Building Bridges Coalition, National Peace Corps Association and the International Volunteering Initiative at Brookings. This powerhouse of sector leaders aims to scale international service to the levels of domestic volunteer service with increased impact through smart power policy proposals. What Service Nation did to unite Americans around domestic service as a core ideal and problem-solving strategy in American society, Service World hopes to do on a global scale.

Next week in New York City, the Points of Light Institute and the Corporation for National and Community Service will convene to further spotlight the Service World Platform at the 2010 National Conference on Volunteering and Service. This event will bring together more than 5,000 volunteer service leaders and social entrepreneurs from around the world, including local host Mayor Bloomberg. Michelle Nunn, CEO of Points of Light Institute noted in Huffington Post that “demand, idealism and presidential impact are leading American volunteerism to its…most important stage – the movement of service to a central role in our nation’s priorities.”

Nunn’s statement illustrates the momentum and power that make the voluntary sector a unique instrument in the “smart power” toolbox. According to successive polling from Terror Free Tomorrow, American assistance, particularly medical service, is a leading factor in favorable opinions toward the United States. A 2006 survey conducted in Indonesia and Bangladesh showed a 63 percent favorable response among Indonesian respondents to the humanitarian medical mission of “Mercy,” a United States’ Navel Ship, and a 95 percent favorable response among Bangladeshi respondents.

Personifying the diplomatic potential of medical service abroad is Edward O’Neil’s work with OmniMed. In the Mukono District of Uganda, OmniMed has partnered with the U.S. Peace Corps and the Ugandan Ministry of Health as well as local community-based organizations to implement evidence-based health trainings with local village health workers. Dr. O’Neil is now working with Brookings International Volunteering Initiative and Washington University’s CSD on a new wave of rigorous research: a randomized, prospective clinical trial measuring the direct impact of over 400 trained village health workers on the health of tens of thousands of villagers. 

In the words of Peace Corps architect and former U.S. Senator Harris Wofford, the pairing of new data and policy proposals on June 23^rd will support a “quantum leap” in the scale and impact of international service, advancing bipartisan calls to service from President Kennedy to Bush 41, Bush 43, Clinton and Obama.

      

Volunteer, civil society and governmental delegates from 22 nations gathered in Johannesburg this month for the Southern Africa Conference on Volunteer Action for Development. The conference was co-convened by United Nations Volunteers (UNV) and Volunteer and Service Enquiry Southern Africa (VOSESA), in observance of the 10th anniversary of the United Nations International Year of Volunteers (IYV).

Naheed Haque, deputy executive coordinator for United Nations Volunteers, gave tribute to the late Nobel Laureate Wangari Mathai and her Greenbelt tree planting campaign as the “quintessential volunteer movement.” Haque called for a “new development paradigm that puts voluntarism at the center of community-centered sustainable development.” In this paradigm, human happiness and service to others would be key considerations, in addition to economic indicators and development outcomes including health and climate change.  

The international gathering developed strategies to advance three key priorities for the 15 nations in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC): combating HIV/ AIDS; engaging the social and economic participation of youth; and promoting regional integration and peace. Research data prepared by Civicus provided information on the rise of voluntary service in Africa, as conferees assessed strategies to advance “five pillars” of effective volunteerism: engaging youth, community involvement, international volunteers, corporate leadership and higher education in service.

VOSESA executive director, Helene Perold, noted that despite centuries of migration across the region, the vision for contemporary regional cooperation between southern African countries has largely been in the minds of heads of states with “little currency at the grassroots level.” Furthermore, it has been driven by the imperative of economic integration with a specific focus on trade. Slow progress has now produced critiques within the region that the strategy for integrating southern African countries cannot succeed on the basis of economic cooperation alone. Perold indicated that collective efforts by a wide range of civic, academic, and governmental actors at the Johannesburg conference could inject the importance of social participation within and between countries as a critical component in fostering regional integration and achieving development outcomes. 

This premise of voluntary action’s unique contribution to regional integration was underscored by Emiliana Tembo, director of Gender and Social Affairs for the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). Along with measures promoting free movement of labor and capital to step up trade investment, Tembo stressed the importance of “our interconnectedness as people,” citing Bishop Desmond Tutu’s maxim toward the virtues of “Ubuntu – a person who is open and available to others.”

The 19 nation COMESA block is advancing an African free-trade zone movement from the Cape of South Africa, to Cairo Egypt. The “tripartite” regional groupings of SADC, COMESA and the East Africa Community are at the forefront of this pan-African movement expanding trade and development.

Preliminary research shared at the conference by VOSESA researcher Jacob Mwathi Mati noted the effects of cross border youth volunteer exchange programs in southern and eastern Africa. The research indicates positive outcomes including knowledge, learning and “friendship across borders,” engendered by youth exchange service programs in South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya that were sponsored Canada World Youth and South Africa Trust.   

On the final day of the Johannesburg conference, South Africa service initiatives were assessed in field visits by conferees including loveLife, South Africa’s largest HIV prevention campaign. loveLife utilizes youth volunteer service corps reaching up to 500,000 at risk youths in monthly leadership and peer education programs. “Youth service in South Africa is a channel for the energy of youth, (building) social capital and enabling public innovation,” Programme Director Scott Burnett stated. “Over the years our (service) participants have used their small stipends to climb the social ladder through education and micro-enterprise development.”

Nelly Corbel, senior program coordinator of the John D. Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement at the American University in Cairo, noted that the Egyptian Arab Spring was “the only movement that cleaned-up after the revolution." On February 11^th, the day after the resignation of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, thousands of Egyptian activists  removed debris from Tahrir Square and engaged in a host of other volunteer clean-up and painting projects. In Corbel's words: “Our entire country is like a big flag now,” from the massive display of national voluntarism in clean-up projects, emblematic of the proliferation of youth social innovation aimed at rebuilding a viable civil society.

At the concluding call-to-action session, Johannesburg conferees unanimously adopted a resolution, which was nominated by participating youth leaders from southern Africa states. The declaration, “Creating an Enabling Environment for Volunteer Action in the Region” notes that “volunteering is universal, inclusive and embraces free will, solidarity, dignity and trust… [creating] a powerful basis for unity, common humanity, peace and development.”  The resolution, contains a number of action-oriented recommendations advancing voluntarism as a “powerful means for transformational change and societal development.” Policy recommendations will be advanced by South African nations and other stakeholders at the forthcoming Rio + 20 deliberations and at a special session of the United Nations General Assembly on December 5, the 10^th anniversary of the International Year of the Volunteer.

      

As the world pays its tributes to the critically ailing former South African President Nelson Mandela, youth across Africa are stepping up their own tributes to Madiba in the form of civic service on Mandela Day. The United Nations and the African Union have called on citizens across Africa and the world to volunteer 67 minutes— representing the 67 years of Mandela’s public service—to community projects on his birthday, July 18.

The Africa Peace Service Corps (APSC) has launched volunteering projects in Nairobi, Kenya; Cape Town and rural Limpopo, South Africa; Lusaka, Zambia; Abuja, Nigeria; villages in Uganda and other countries.  Four hundred youths and 35 partners assembled last July at the United Nations conference in Nairobi to launch the Pan-African service project, spurring civic action in health, climate change, youth entrepreneurship and positive peace. 

A 2012 Brookings report, “Volunteering and Civic Service in Three African Regions,” released at the Nairobi conference and co-authored by three African scholars notes the benefits of volunteering (“Ubuntu”) in South, West and East Africa in addressing youth livelihoods, health and peace-building.  The report further documents policy recommendations and strategies linking youth service and entrepreneurship in addressing the daunting task of youth unemployment across the region.  Dr. Manu Chandaria  (Comcraft CEO and Global Peace Foundation Africa chairman) and Les Baillie (chairman of Kenya mobile phone giant Safaricom Foundation, which created Africa’s M-Pesa mobile banking microfinance success) have assembled corporate leaders to back APSC youth social enterprises in tree planting and waste management to generate green jobs and reach Kenya’s goal of ten percent tree coverage.

Nelson Mandela’s life of struggle and triumph, in particular his time and insights during his time unjustly incarcerated on Robben Island, provides a rich textbook for these young social entrepreneurs.  During my recent Harris Wofford Global Service Fellowship with the University of Cape Town Development Policy Research Unit (DPRU) and Cross Cultural Solutions, while teaching an entrepreneurship class in the townships I was able to see the teeming spirit of youth enterprise first-hand alive in the poorest communities.  A South African national assets demonstration has been launched this year to tap the power of service and entrepreneurship in generating savings among township youths from these deliberations with the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, Ford Foundation, University of Johannesburg Center for Social Development and Washington University Center for Social Development and Brookings’ Africa Growth Initiative partner DPRU, among others.

Along with addressing Mandela’s dream of ending poverty, a recent Brookings report, “Impacts of Malaria Interventions and their Potential Additional Humanitarian Benefits in Sub-Saharan Africa,” outlines the potential significant peace-building effects of service in sub-Saharan Africa by highlighting the joint efforts of the Muslim Sultan and Catholic Cardinal of Nigeria in tackling malaria along with those of the Africa Malaria Leaders Alliance with PEPFAR support.  The contributions of volunteering to both peace and development outcomes are further underscored in the draft of a United Nations post-2015 “sustainable development goals” report.

Amidst inevitable political debates over the Mandela legacy, his generous spirit and legacy of reconciliation rises high above Cape Town’s Table Mountain and across the Pan-African youth landscape.  The challenge of applying his vision and spiritual values in addressing poverty through emerging demonstrations of youth service, assets and entrepreneurship will test the commitment of Africa’s next generation of young freedom pioneers, guided by this humble giant’s profound legacy now spanning the globe.

       

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.

       

On the heels of the U.N.’s adoption in late September of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030, an Asia Pacific volunteering alliance recently convened a forum for hundreds of youth and development partners from northeast Asia at the Korea Council on Foreign Relations in Seoul.

In his keynote address highlighting the role of volunteers in global development, Young-Mok Kim, president of the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), stressed the key role of Peace Corps volunteers and the Saemaul Undong village self-help model in Korea’s 50-year rise from a low-income to a high-income nation.

Since 1970, Korea’s Saemaul Undong (“New Community Movement”) has tested a combination of local self-help cooperative action with national development policy addressing poverty, relying on the spirit of rural communities. Local volunteering teams engaging youth and women have been tapped to guide and implement grassroots development projects and counter rural over-migration to urban areas, engaging in housing, local infrastructure and irrigation, credit unions, and cooperative businesses, among other holistic areas while enhancing an overall community spirit of ownership.

“As the first country to escape poverty and achieve economic and social development as well as democratization, the SDGs present us with an opportunity to expand our footprint and visibility in the development arena and live up to international expectations. In Korea, thanks to Saemaul Undong, the poverty rate was reduced from 34.6 percent to 6 percent and rural households’ income reached parity with that of urban households during the period from 1967 to 1984.” The Saemaul Undong model has been adapted in African and other developing nations and was featured in a special high-level forum on rural development during the recent U.N. General Assembly.

Kim stated: “It is important that we facilitate participatory engagement by harnessing the power of volunteerism to meet the key principle of the SDGs” and he indicated that the World Friends Korea (WFK) volunteer program learned from the nation’s experience with the Peace Corps. WFK has sent more than 50,000 volunteers abroad in service projects and to provide technical training. Kim noted KOICA ranks second in the world with regard to the number of volunteers sent to developing countries, sending 4,500 annually to 50 countries.

KOICA was a founding participant in the Asia Pacific Peace and Development Service Alliance (APPDSA) that was launched at the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) headquarters in Bangkok in October 2014 with the support of FK Norway, the Global Peace Foundation, KOICA, the Peace Corps and other partners. Kim hailed the effort “to form an alliance of upgrading our volunteer program and fostering the force of young people who can play crucial roles in the development cooperation arena.”

The multi-stakeholder platform forged in Southeast Asia is now engaging thousands of volunteers in climate-related projects, including massive river clean-up campaigns in Thailand and Nepal and ongoing “green Asia” tree-planting and eco-camps working to address desertification in Mongolia.   

After the Seoul convening, which launched the Northeast Asia volunteering initiative, I travelled to Kathmandu to assess the progress of the South Asia APPDSA Alliance hub for volunteerism. Convened in Nepal just prior to the April earthquake that took more than 9,000 lives, the Alliance’s South Asia convening provided a ready base of volunteers to implement the Kathmandu Call to Action after the disaster struck and served as a springboard for Rise Nepal, a youth-led relief and rebuilding initiative. To date, more than 1,600 young Nepali volunteers have helped nearly 3,000 households with emergency provisions, including food, and medical and hygiene supplies, and have constructed around 600 transitional homes.    

IBM stepped in to provide IT support, equipping youths with software and other technology to facilitate their efforts to rebuild their nation beyond short-term earthquake relief. Since the recent adoption of Nepal’s new constitution, this support is being broadened to include young leadership training in citizenship and service addressing longer-term goals, including SDGs across the South Asia region.

A recent Gallup article noted the power of the more than 1 billion people around the world who engage in volunteer service and the need to marshal their efforts to help countries meet their SDG targets by 2030. Since the Seoul forum, efforts are underway across the Asia-Pacific region to step-up specific volunteerism initiatives, provide technology that will further empower young volunteers, and document the results of ongoing environmental service projects such as the restoration of the Bagmati River in Nepal and counterpart efforts in Bangkok, Mongolia, and the Philippines.  

The growth of such multi-stakeholder volunteering alliances, coupled with KOICA’s experience in forging volunteerism-based community outcomes measurably addressing poverty, hold great promise in marshaling requisite human capital and innovation to help achieve the next generation development goals.

       

       

       

       

       

Event Information

Northeast Asia has seen significant leadership changes in recent months, with the election of Park Geun-hye as president of South Korea, Xi Jinping as leader of China’s ruling Communist Party, and Shinzo Abe as prime minister of Japan. As leaders of world-leading economies, these key players will no doubt bring about dynamic change in the region’s politics and economy, while balancing relations with the United States and its own newly re-elected president.

On November 28, 2012, the Center for Northeast Asian Studies (CNAPS) at Brookings, the Japan Center for Economic Research, and Nikkei held a one-day conference on “Managing Transitions in Northeast Asia, the Global Economy, and Japan-U.S. Relations.” Three panels, featuring Brookings scholars as well leading experts from across Asia, provided their views on issues of profound importance to the Northeast Asian region including leadership transitions, global economy and trade, global governance, and U.S.-Japan relations in the 21st Century.

Audio

• Part 1: Managing Transitions in Northeast Asia, the Global Economy, and Japan-U.S. Relations
• Part 2: Managing Transitions in Northeast Asia, the Global Economy, and Japan-U.S. Relations

       

Event Information

Around the world today, there are more than 15.5 million refugees and over 28.8 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) uprooted by conflict, in addition to some 32.4 million displaced in 2012 from their homes due to natural disasters. These displacement crises are not simply humanitarian concerns, but fundamental development challenges. Forced migration flows are rooted in development failures, and can undermine the pursuit of development goals at local, national and regional levels.

Linking humanitarian responses to displacement with longer-term development support and planning is not a new concern. Beginning in 1999, for example, the “Brookings Process” – under the leadership of Sadako Ogata and James Wolfensohn – sought to bridge humanitarian relief and development assistance in post-conflict situations. But the challenge remains unresolved, and has acquired new urgency as displacement situations are becoming more protracted, and situations such as the Syrian crisis show no signs of resolution.

The Brookings Global Economy and Development Program and the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement held a roundtable on these issues on May 14, 2013 with Sadako Ogata, former UN High Commissioner for Refugees, former Director of the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, and Distinguished Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Megan Bradley, Fellow with the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement, facilitated the roundtable, which followed Chatham House rules.

The roundtable addressed several key topics including:

• The relevance of the concept of human security to addressing displacement and development challenges
• Displacement as a development challenge in fragile states
• Protracted displacement
• Contrasts in the approaches and processes adopted by humanitarian and development actors

The event report provides a brief overview of the discussion.

Event Materials

• Brookings IDP Roundtable with Sadako Ogata May 14 2013

       

Abstract

Most pollsters base their election projections off questions of voter intentions, which ask “If the election were held today, who would you vote for?” By contrast, we probe the value of questions probing voters’ expectations, which typically ask: “Regardless of who you plan to vote for, who do you think will win the upcoming election?” We demonstrate that polls of voter expectations consistently yield more accurate forecasts than polls of voter intentions. A small-scale structural model reveals that this is because we are polling from a broader information set, and voters respond as if they had polled twenty of their friends. This model also provides a rational interpretation for why respondents’ forecasts are correlated with their expectations. We also show that we can use expectations polls to extract accurate election forecasts even from extremely skewed samples.

I. Introduction

Since the advent of scientific polling in the 1930s, political pollsters have asked people whom they intend to vote for; occasionally, they have also asked who they think will win. Our task in this paper is long overdue: we ask which of these questions yields more accurate forecasts. That is, we evaluate the predictive power of the questions probing voters’ intentions with questions probing their expectations. Judging by the attention paid by pollsters, the press, and campaigns, the conventional wisdom appears to be that polls of voters’ intentions are more accurate than polls of their expectations.

Yet there are good reasons to believe that asking about expectations yields more greater insight. Survey respondents may possess much more information about the upcoming political race than that probed by the voting intention question. At a minimum, they know their own current voting intention, so the information set feeding into their expectations will be at least as rich as that captured by the voting intention question. Beyond this, they may also have information about the current voting intentions—both the preferred candidate and probability of voting—of their friends and family. So too, they have some sense of the likelihood that today’s expressed intention will be changed before it ultimately becomes an election-day vote. Our research is motivated by idea that the richer information embedded in these expectations data may yield more accurate forecasts.

We find robust evidence that polls probing voters’ expectations yield more accurate predictions of election outcomes than the usual questions asking about who they intend to vote for. By comparing the performance of these two questions only when they are asked of the exact same people in exactly the same survey, we effectively difference out the influence of all other factors. Our primary dataset consists of all the state-level electoral presidential college races from 1952 to 2008, where both the intention and expectation question are asked. In the 77 cases in which the intention and expectation question predict different candidates, the expectation question picks the winner 60 times, while the intention question only picked the winner 17 times. That is, 78% of the time that these two approaches disagree, the expectation data was correct. We can also assess the relative accuracy of the two methods by assessing the extent to which each can be informative in forecasting the final vote share; we find that relying on voters’ expectations rather than their intentions yield substantial and statistically significant increases in forecasting accuracy. An optimally-weighted average puts over 90% weight on the expectations-based forecasts. Once one knows the results of a poll of voters expectations, there is very little additional information left in the usual polls of voting intentions. Our findings remain robust to correcting for an array of known biases in voter intentions data.

The better performance of forecasts based on asking voters about their expectations rather than their intentions, varies somewhat, depending on the specific context. The expectations question performs particularly well when: voters are embedded in heterogeneous (and thus, informative) social networks; when they don’t rely too much on common information; when small samples are involved (when the extra information elicited by asking about intentions counters the large sampling error in polls of intentions); and at a point in the electoral cycle when voters are sufficiently engaged as to know what their friends and family are thinking.

Our findings also speak to several existing strands of research within election forecasting. A literature has emerged documenting that prediction markets tend to yield more accurate forecasts than polls (Wolfers and Zitzewitz, 2004; Berg, Nelson and Rietz, 2008). More recently, Rothschild (2009) has updated these findings in light of the 2008 Presidential and Senate races, showing that forecasts based on prediction markets yielded systematically more accurate forecasts of the likelihood of Obama winning each state than did the forecasts based on aggregated intention polls compiled by Nate Silver for the website FiveThirtyEight.com. One hypothesis for this superior performance is that because prediction markets ask traders to bet on outcomes, they effectively ask a different question, eliciting the expectations rather than intentions of participants. If correct, this suggests that much of the accuracy of prediction markets could be obtained simply by polling voters on their expectations, rather than intentions.

These results also speak to the possibility of producing useful forecasts from non-representative samples (Robinson, 1937), an issue of renewed significance in the era of expensive-to-reach cellphones and cheap online survey panels. Surveys of voting intentions depend critically on being able to poll representative cross-sections of the electorate. By contrast, we find that surveys of voter expectations can still be quite accurate, even when drawn from non-representative samples. The logic of this claim comes from the difference between asking about expectations, which may not systematically differ across demographic groups, and asking about intentions, which clearly do. Again, the connection to prediction markets is useful, as Berg and Rietz (2006) show that prediction markets have yielded accurate forecasts, despite drawing from an unrepresentative pool of overwhelmingly white, male, highly educated, high income, self-selected traders.

While questions probing voters’ expectations have been virtually ignored by political forecasters, they have received some interest from psychologists. In particular, Granberg and Brent (1983) document wishful thinking, in which people’s expectation about the likely outcome is positively correlated with what they want to happen. Thus, people who intend to vote Republican are also more likely to predict a Republican victory. This same correlation is also consistent with voters preferring the candidate they think will win, as in bandwagon effects, or gaining utility from being optimistic. We re-interpret this correlation through a rational lens, in which the respondents know their own voting intention with certainty and have knowledge about the voting intentions of their friends and family.

Our alternative approach to political forecasting also provides a new narrative of the ebb and flow of campaigns, which should inform ongoing political science research about which events really matter. For instance, through the 2004 campaign, polls of voter intentions suggested a volatile electorate as George W. Bush and John Kerry swapped the lead several times. By contrast, polls of voters’ expectations consistently showed the Bush was expected to win re-election. Likewise in 2008, despite volatility in the polls of voters’ intentions, Obama was expected to win in all of the last 17 expectations polls taken over the final months of the campaign. And in the 2012 Republican primary, polls of voters intentions at different points showed Mitt Romney trailing Donald Trump, then Rick Perry, then Herman Cain, then Newt Gingrich and then Rick Santorum, while polls of expectations showed him consistently as the likely winner.

We believe that our findings provide tantalizing hints that similar methods could be useful in other forecasting domains. Market researchers ask variants of the voter intention question in an array of contexts, asking questions that elicit your preference for one product, over another. Likewise, indices of consumer confidence are partly based on the stated purchasing intentions of consumers, rather than their expectations about the purchase conditions for their community. The same insight that motivated our study—that people also have information on the plans of others—is also likely relevant in these other contexts. Thus, it seems plausible that survey research in many other domains may also benefit from paying greater attention to people’s expectations than to their intentions.

The rest of this paper proceeds as follows, In Section II, we describe our first cut of the data, illustrating the relative success of the two approaches to predicting the winner of elections. In Sections III and IV, we focus on evaluating their respective forecasts of the two-party vote share. Initially, in Section III we provide what we call naïve forecasts, which follow current practice by major pollsters; in Section IV we product statistically efficient forecasts, taking account of the insights of sophisticated modern political scientists. Section V provides out-of-sample forecasts based on the 2008 election. Section VI extends the assessment to a secondary data source which required substantial archival research to compile. In Section VII, we provide a small structural model which helps explain the higher degree of accuracy obtained from surveys of voter expectations. Section VIII characterizes the type of information that is reflected in voters’ expectation, arguing that it is largely idiosyncratic, rather than the sort of common information that might come from the mass media. Section IX assesses why it is that people’s expectations are correlated with their intentions. Section VI uses this model to show how we can obtain surprisingly accurate expectation-based forecasts with non-representative samples. We then conclude. To be clear about the structure of the argument: In the first part of the paper (through section IV) we simply present two alternative forecasting technologies and evaluate them, showing that expectations-based forecasts outperform those based on traditional intentions-based polls. We present these data without taking a strong position on why. But then in later sections we turn to trying to assess what explains this better performance. Because this assessment is model-based, our explanations are necessarily based on auxiliary assumptions (which we spell out).

Right now, we begin with our simplest and most transparent comparison of the forecasting ability of our two competing approaches.

Download the full paper » (PDF)

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• Forecasting Elections: Voter Intentions versus Expectations

      

Many scholars have argued that once “basic needs” have been met, higher income is no longer associated with higher in subjective well-being. We assess the validity of this claim in comparisons of both rich and poor countries, and also of rich and poor people within a country. Analyzing multiple datasets, multiple definitions of “basic needs” and multiple questions about well-being, we find no support for this claim. The relationship between well-being and income is roughly linear-log and does not diminish as incomes rise. If there is a satiation point, we are yet to reach it.

Introduction

In 1974 Richard Easterlin famously posited that increasing average income did not raise average well-being, a claim that became known as the Easterlin Paradox. However, in recent years new and more comprehensive data has allowed for greater testing of Easterlin’s claim. Studies by us and others have pointed to a robust positive relationship between well-being and income across countries and over time (Deaton, 2008; Stevenson and Wolfers, 2008; Sacks, Stevenson, and Wolfers, 2013). Yet, some researchers have argued for a modified version of Easterlin’s hypothesis, acknowledging the existence of a link between income and well-being among those whose basic needs have not been met, but claiming that beyond a certain income threshold, further income is unrelated to well-being.

The existence of such a satiation point is claimed widely, although there has been no formal statistical evidence presented to support this view. For example Diener and Seligman (2004, p. 5) state that “there are only small increases in well-being” above some threshold. While Clark, Frijters and Shields (2008, p. 123) state more starkly that “greater economic prosperity at some point ceases to buy more happiness,” a similar claim is made by Di Tella and MacCulloch (2008, p. 17): “once basic needs have been satisfied, there is full adaptation to further economic growth.” The income level beyond which further income no longer yields greater well-being is typically said to be somewhere between $8,000 and $25,000. Layard (2003, p. 17) argues that “once a country has over $15,000 per head, its level of happiness appears to be independent of its income;” while in subsequent work he argued for a $20,000 threshold (Layard, 2005 p. 32-33). Frey and Stutzer (2002, p. 416) claim that “income provides happiness at low levels of development but once a threshold (around $10,000) is reached, the average income level in a country has little effect on average subjective well-being.”

Many of these claims, of a critical level of GDP beyond which happiness and GDP are no longer linked, come from cursorily examining plots of well-being against the level of per capita GDP. Such graphs show clearly that increasing income yields diminishing marginal gains in subjective well-being. However this relationship need not reach a point of nirvana beyond which further gains in well-being are absent. For instance Deaton (2008) and Stevenson and Wolfers (2008) find that the well-being–income relationship is roughly a linear-log relationship, such that, while each additional dollar of income yields a greater increment to measured happiness for the poor than for the rich, there is no satiation point.

In this paper we provide a sustained examination of whether there is a critical income level beyond which the well-being–income relationship is qualitatively different, a claim referred to as the modified-Easterlin hypothesis. As a statistical claim, we shall test two versions of the hypothesis. The first, a stronger version, is that beyond some level of basic needs, income is uncorrelated with subjective well-being; the second, a weaker version, is that the well-being–income link estimated among the poor differs from that found among the rich.

Claims of satiation have been made for comparisons between rich and poor people within a country, comparisons between rich and poor countries, and comparisons of average well-being in countries over time, as they grow. The time series analysis is complicated by the challenges of compiling comparable data over time and thus we focus in this short paper on the cross-sectional relationships seen within and between countries. Recent work by Sacks, Stevenson, and Wolfers (2013) provide evidence on the time series relationship that is consistent with the findings presented here.

To preview, we find no evidence of a satiation point. The income–well-being link that one finds when examining only the poor, is similar to that found when examining only the rich. We show that this finding is robust across a variety of datasets, for various measures of subjective well-being, at various thresholds, and that it holds in roughly equal measure when making cross-national comparisons between rich and poor countries as when making comparisons between rich and poor people within a country.

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Justin Wolfers, professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Michigan, re-joins Brookings, Vice President and Economic Studies Co-Director Karen Dynan announced today.  Wolfers was a visiting fellow from 2010-2011.

A world-renowned empirical economist, Wolfers will continue in his role as co-editor, along with David Romer of the University of California, of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA), the flagship economic journal of the Institution.  He will continue his focus on labor economics, macroeconomics, political economy, economics of the family, social policy, law and economics, public economics, and behavioral economics. His appointment as senior fellow will last 13 months.

Wolfers is also a research associate with the National Bureau for Economic Research, a research affiliate of the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London, a research fellow of the German Institute for the Study of Labor, and a senior scientist for Gallup, among other affiliations. He is a contributor for Bloomberg View, NPR Marketplace, and the Freakonomics website and was named one of the 13 top young economists to watch by the New York Times.  Wolfers did his undergraduate work at the University of Sydney, Australia and received his Master’s and Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.  He is a dual Australian-U.S. national and was once an apprentice to a bookie which led to his interest in prediction markets. 

“We are pleased to re-welcome Justin back to Economic Studies,” said Dynan. “His work continues to challenge the conventional wisdom, and we look forward to collaborating with him once again.” 

“Justin is outstanding at communicating economic ideas to a wide audience, as evidenced by his regular writings for media as well as his large social media presence,” added Ted Gayer, co-director of Economic Studies.

“I have enormous affection for the Brookings Institution, which provides not only a home for deep scholarly research, but also an unmatched platform for engaging the policy debate,” said Wolfers.  “The Economic Studies program has a rich history of being the go-to place for policymakers, and I look forward to coming back and engaging in debate with my colleagues there.”

       

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Forty years after its initial publication, Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff remains an influential work from one of the most important macroeconomists over the last century, Arthur M. Okun (1928-1980). Okun’s theory on market economies reminds readers of an engaging dual theme: the market needs a place, and the market needs to be kept in its place. Articulated in a way that remains relevant even during today’s discussions on broadening gaps in income inequality, Okun emphasized that institutions in a capitalist democracy prod us to get ahead of our neighbors economically after telling us to stay in line socially.

On May 4, The Brookings Institution Press re-released Okun’s classic work with a new foreword from Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, in addition to “Further Thoughts on Equality and Efficiency,” a paper published by Okun in 1977. The event included opening remarks from Brookings Senior Fellow George Perry, with a keynote address from Larry Summers. Following these remarks, David Wessel moderated a panel discussion with former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Greg Mankiw, Economic Studies’ Melissa Kearney and Justin Wolfers, and Washington Center for Equitable Growth's Heather Boushey regarding the history and impact of Okun’s work.

Download a copy of Lawrence Summers' opening remarks.

Ted Gayer, Vice President and Director of Economic Studies and Joseph Pechman Senior Fellow, reads Lawrence Summers's opening remarks.

David Wessel (right), Director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, moderates a panel discussion with N. Gregory Mankiw, Melissa Kearney, and Heather Boushey.

Janet Yellen, Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, listens to the discussion from the audience. To Yellen's right is former Congressional Budget Office director, Doug Elmendorf.

 

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• 40 years later- The relevance of Okun’s "Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff"

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• 40 years later- The relevance of Okun’s "Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff"

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• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

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• 20150504_okun_equality_efficiency_transcript
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On March 26, the Center for Universal Education at Brookings hosted an expert consultation on the development of the World Bank Group's new Education Strategy. The consultative meeting brought together a small group of experts from diverse fields. The purpose of the discussion was to gather input and suggestions aimed at strengthening the World Bank Group's work in the education sector.

Elizabeth King, Director of Education in the Human Development Network at the World Bank, opened the event by providing an overview of the Bank’s current approach to education, and how it has evolved over the last several decades. She described the Bank’s priorities as reconnecting education to the broader development agenda, supporting more equitable access, ensuring better learning, and strengthening education systems. The Bank’s main operating principals are taking a whole-sector approach, building the evidence base in education, and measuring the results and impact. Beginning with this extensive consultation process, the Bank is demonstrating its willingness to work with others in the development community to build a larger and more robust evidence base from which to draw lessons to improve the quality of limited staff to maximize the impact of Bank activities, to underscore its commitment to partnerships with other organizations and civil society groups, and to move toward improving the measurement of results so as to be able to further improve the Bank’s education programs around the world.

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INTRODUCTION—

Achieving universal education is a twofold challenge: to get children and youth into school and then to teach them something meaningful while they are there. While important progress has been made on the first challenge, there is a crisis unfolding in relation to learning. Around the world, there have been major gains in primary school enrollment partly due to the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals and the abolition of school fees by many national governments. However in many countries, students are spending years in school without learning core competencies, such as reading and writing. To address this learning crisis, the global community and national governments need to place a much greater focus on the ultimate objective of education—to acquire knowledge and develop skills.

This shift in focus away from just enrollment to enrollment plus quality learning requires measuring learning outcomes. However, the global education community is not yet systematically using effective instruments for measuring primary school learning in low- and middle-income countries. This policy brief reviews the global efforts among the primary donors to support the measurement of learning outcomes. It then suggests steps needed to transition global education policy into a new paradigm of enrollment plus quality learning, which includes: scaling up the implementation of national education accounts and national assessment systems; increasing attention to monitoring early learning during child development to improve readiness for school; and expanding the systematic use of simple assessments of basic cognitive functions in the early grades to help teachers improve their practice.

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Financial Data as Driving Force Behind Improved Learning

During the past decade, school enrollments have increased dramatically, mostly thanks to UNESCO’s Education for All (EFA) movement and the UN Millennium Development Goals. From 1999 to 2008, an additional 52 million children around the world enrolled in primary schools, and the number of out-of-school children fell by 39 million. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, enrollment rates rose by one-third during that time, even with large population increases in school-age children.

Yet enrollment is not the only indicator of success in education, and does not necessarily translate into learning. Even with these impressive gains in enrollment, many parts of the world, and particularly the poorest areas, now face a severe learning crisis. The latest data in the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011 reveal poor literacy and numeracy skills for millions of students around the world. In Malawi and Zambia, more than one-third of sixth-grade students had not achieved the most basic literacy skills. In El Salvador, just 13 percent of third-grade students passed an international mathematics exam. Even in middle-income countries such as South Africa and Morocco, the majority of students had not acquired basic reading skills after four years of primary education. Although the focus on children out of school is fully justified, given that they certainly lack learning opportunities, the failure to focus on learning also does a disservice to the more than 600 million children in the developing world who are already in school but fail to learn very basic skills.

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Editor’s note: In a presentation to the 2011 International Conference on Early Childhood Development in Beijing, China, Jacques van der Gaag makes the economic case for investing in young children. He references the seminal works by several Nobel laureates in economics to demonstrate how development hinges on investments in early childhood, including health, nutrition, and education.

Thank you for inviting me to the 2011 International Conference on Early Childhood Development. I am very grateful to the organizers from the China Development Research Foundation for giving me a chance to make the economic case for investing in young children. While I have been giving these types of presentations for more than two decades in over a dozen countries worldwide, I prefer to have some back-up from a number of serious economists who, over time, have made major contributions to a key finding in development economics: countries prosper if they invest in their people, and the well-being of all people improves in a prosperous country that values equality.

To begin with, I would like to introduce my fellow countryman Jan Tinbergen, who received the first Nobel Prize in Economics, in 1969, for his work on economic development. Being a physicist by training, he pioneered the use of mathematical models to mimic the working of a country’s economy. The equations he used to formulate these models will probably look very foreign to you, but the important point I want to make is that these early models already included people, in the form of labor. People were seen as an input in the production process. Since there was an abundance of people in the developing world, and a shortage of capital, the development process, it was argued, could be sped up by providing more capital to low income countries to invest in infrastructure, factories, and other forms of physical capital. And to invest in human capital -- people. The economy needs all forms of human capital, from unskilled labor to highly skilled labor, and therefore investment in people, through education, was considered an integrated part of the development process.

Another well-known economist (Theodore W. Schulz, Nobel prize 1979) emphasized an important difference between physical capital and human capital: people respond to incentives. Thus, when food prices are being kept artificially low (to allow wages in the cities to stay low), farmers may decide that it is no longer worth their while to produce food, and they may migrate to the cities to work in the new factories. In other words, it is important to invest in human capital to stimulate the economy, but the broad preferences of the (working) population should not be overlooked.
 
Robert W. Fogel (Nobel laureate in 1993) underscored the role of workers in the production process by emphasizing the importance of health and nutrition to enhance productivity. Indeed, he calculated that about half of the speedy growth of the British economy during the Industrial Revolution was the result of better health and nutrition conditions of the working population. In turn, of course, the economic growth made the improvements in sanitation and the increased availability of (better) food possible.

A major breakthrough in the thinking about development (note that I am no longer saying “economic development”) came with the work of Amartya Sen (Nobel prize winner in 1998). His work has led to a re-definition of the development process from one that focuses solely on economic growth to one in which the fruits of economic growth benefits the population in terms of higher literacy rates and education levels, better health and nutrition, higher levels of social cohesion and social skills, and more equality. These four broad dimensions of well-being, together with economic growth, are now the building blocks of the Human Development Index. Indeed, human development, as currently understood, has been further specified in the Millennium Development Goals that drive today’s development discussion and policies in every corner of the world.

Before I finish my very brief (and very selective) history of development economics, allow me to mention the work of one more Nobel laureate in economics: Jim Heckman (2000). Heckman understands, of course, the importance of investing in people to increase a country’s human capital. But he also understands both the economics of early childhood development (ECD) and its scientific underpinnings. In recent work, he has extensively referred to the scientific basis that shows the causal link between deprivations early in life and education, social and health outcomes later in life. His economic work on ECD confirms what others have been saying for decades: The highest economic returns to investments in people come from the investments that occur in the early years of life.  

In sum, with an increased understanding of the basic development process, in which people are both the driving force for development and its main beneficiaries, the importance of investing in very young children is now seen as a key factor in the broad human development process of a country.
Taking care of very young children has long been on the development agenda. Immunization programs have been pushed to improve the health status of young children, nutrition programs have been implemented to prevent malnutrition and hunger, schooling has been emphasized as important for prosperity later in life, and as a possible “equalizer” of society. What the recent literature on brain development, on the interaction of genes and the environment, on the importance of cognitive and non-cognitive skill development (“social skills”), and on the link between early deprivations and a variety of problems later in life (from health problems to increased delinquency) has added to these efforts, is a better understanding of the long-term economic implications of these interventions.
 
Simply stated, economists look at investments in human capital as a means to increase lifelong “productivity”. The easiest way to measure differences in productivity is by comparing differences in wage rates (in well functioning labor markets) among workers with different levels of education (skills). Higher levels of education (more and better skills) lead to higher productivity, and this advantage can be maintained during one’s entire (working) life. Of course, not everyone works for wages, but similar results (more educated workers are more productive) have been found in agriculture and other forms of self-employment. Indeed, even the productivity of people who do not work in the labor market can be improved by education. Case in point: women who finished secondary education are much better equipped to address the health and nutrition needs of their children than illiterate mothers (and they have fewer children and make sure that these children go to school).

When economist do the numbers, solely based on increased productivity in the labor market, the economic returns to ECD are impressive (see slides 21 and 22). Integrated ECD programs reduce infant and child mortality, increase children’s nutritional and health status, increase on-time school enrollment, decrease drop-out and repetition rates, and increase progression to higher levels of education. All this leads to a more productive labor force. The economic returns from these ECD benefits alone are estimated to be in the 7 percent to 12 percent range, with some estimates being much higher. When ECD interventions are properly seen as investments in the human development of a country, the benefits are very large indeed.
 
Chances are that you were a little surprised to get a lecture on the “the history of development economics” at a conference about early childhood development. But the organizers asked me to make the economic case for investing in young children. I decided that I could do this as forcefully as possible by invoking the help of no fewer than five Nobel laureates in economics. Development is now understood as a process by people for people. All the evidence shows that investment in the health, in nutrition, and in cognitive and non-cognitive skill development is crucial for a prosperous and equal society. Of all the investments in people one can make, investments in the very young have the highest economic returns.

I congratulate our organizers from the China Development Research Foundation for their work on ECD to benefit the children of poor minorities in western China, providing them with a chance to benefit from China’s impressive growth record. And I thank you again for the opportunity to address this distinguished audience on such an important topic.

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Editor's Note: This article was originally published in Pediatrics, a subscription-only journal. To obtain a subscription or log in to access the full article, click here.

ABSTRACT

Building a strong foundation for healthy development in the early years of life is a prerequisite for individual well-being, economic productivity, and harmonious societies around the world. Growing scientific evidence also demonstrates that social and physical environments that threaten human development (because of scarcity, stress, or instability) can lead to short-term physiologic and psychological adjustments that are necessary for immediate survival and adaptation, but which may come at a significant cost to long-term outcomes in learning, behavior, health, and longevity. Generally speaking, ministries of health prioritize child survival and physical well-being, ministries of education focus on schooling, ministries of finance promote economic development, and ministries of welfare address breakdowns across multiple domains of function. Advances in the biological and social sciences offer a unifying framework for generating significant societal benefits by catalyzing greater synergy across these policy sectors. This synergy could inform more effective and efficient investments both to increase the survival of children born under adverse circumstances and to improve life outcomes for those who live beyond the early childhood period yet face high risks for diminished life prospects.

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The Chinese government has recently made early childhood development a national priority, recognizing the social and economic dividends that quality early learning opportunities reap for its human capital in the long term. As the country with the largest population in the world, 100 million children under the age of six in China stand to benefit from increased access to high quality early childhood education.

The quality of education in a country is indicative of its overall development prospects. Over the past two decades – building on the momentum generated by the Education for All and Millennium Development Goals – there have been significant increases in the number of children enrolled in school. Now, with discussions heating up around what the next set of development goals will look like in 2015, it is critical that learning across the education spectrum – from early childhood through adolescence and beyond – is included as a global priority. Starting early helps children enter primary school prepared to learn. High-quality early childhood development opportunities can have long-term impacts on a child’s later success in school.

Last month, the Chinese Ministry of Education, in partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund, launched its first national early childhood advocacy month to promote early learning for all children. The campaign, which includes national television public service announcements on the benefits of investing early in education, builds on a commitment made by the government in 2010 to increase funding for early childhood education over the next decade. The Chinese government pledged to build new preschool facilities, enhance and scale up teacher training, provide subsidies for rural families for access to early learning opportunities, and increase support for private early childhood education centers.

A new policy guide by the Center for Universal Education outlines recommendations that education stakeholders, including national governments, can take to ensure that all children are in school and learning. These steps include establishing equity-based learning targets for all children, systematically collecting data for tracking progress against these targets, and allocating sufficient resources to education beginning in early childhood. The policy guide, based on a report calling for a Global Compact on Learning, is available in Mandarin, as well as Spanish, Portuguese, French and, soon, Arabic.

The success of China’s productivity and growth over the last few decades is attributable in part to its commitment to building a robust education system. As international attention mounts around the post-2015 education and development agendas, the priorities of national governments must be a central organizing principle. When national governments take bold steps to prioritize early childhood development, the global community should take its cue and integrate early childhood development into the broader push toward access plus learning. There is an opportunity for the global education community to push toward reaching the Education for All and Millennium Development Goals while ensuring that the post-2015 agendas include a focus on the quality of education, learning and skills development, beginning with the youngest citizens.

       

In the developing world, more than 200 million children under the age of five years are at risk of not reaching their full development potential because they suffer from the negative consequences of poverty, nutritional deficiencies and inadequate learning opportunities. Overall, 165 million children (one in four) are stunted, and 90 percent of these children live in Africa and Asia. And though some progress has been made globally, child malnutrition remains a serious public health problem with enormous human and economic costs. Worldwide, only about 50 percent of children are enrolled in preprimary education, and in low-income countries a mere 17 percent. And though more and more children are going to school, millions have little to show for it. By some accounts, 250 million children of primary school age cannot read even part of a sentence. Some of these children have never been to school (58 million); but more often, they perform poorly despite having spent several years in school, which reflects not only the poor quality of many schools but also the multiple disadvantages that characterize their early life.

Ensuring that all children—regardless of their place of birth and parental income or education level—have access to opportunities that will allow them to reach their full potential requires investing early in their development. To develop their cognitive, linguistic, socioemotional and physical skills and abilities, children need good nutrition and health, opportunities for play, nurture and learning with caregivers, early stimulation and protection from violence and neglect.

The Case for Early Interventions 

The arguments for investing in children early are simple and convincing. Early investment makes sense scientifically. The brain is almost fully developed by age three, providing a prime opportunity to achieve high gains. We know that the rapid rate of development of the brain’s neural pathways is responsible for an individual’s cognitive, social and emotional development, and there is solid evidence that nutrition and stimulation during the first 1,000 days of life are linked to brain development. 

Early investment makes sense in terms of equity. The playing field has the highest chances of being leveled early on, and we know that programs have a higher impact for young children from poorer families. In the United States, for example, increasing preschool enrollment to 100 percent for low-income children would reduce disparities in school readiness by 24 percent between black and white children and by 35 percent between Hispanic and white children. We also know that equalizing initial endowments through early childhood development (ECD) programs is far more cost-effective than compensating for differences in outcomes later in life. 

Early investment makes sense economically. Investing early prevents higher costs down the road, and interventions yield a high return on investment. There is evidence of the benefits for the individual and for society more broadly. For instance, at the level of the individual, in Jamaica children participating in an early childhood stimulation program were found to have 25 percent higher earnings 20 years later compared with children who did not participate. At the economy-wide level, eliminating malnutrition is estimated to increase gross domestic product by 1 to 2 percentage points annually, while countries with school systems that have a 10-percentage-point advantage in the proportion of students

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In the developing world, more than 200 million children under the age of five years are at risk of not reaching their full human potential because they suffer from the negative consequences of poverty, nutritional deficiencies and inadequate learning opportunities. Given these risks, there is a strong case for early childhood development (ECD) interventions in nutrition, health, education and social protection, which can produce long-lasting benefits throughout the life cycle. The results from the 2012 round of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)—an international, large-scale assessment that measures 15-year-olds’ performance in mathematics, reading and science literacy—demonstrate the benefits of ECD: Students in the countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) who had the benefit of being enrolled for more than one year in preprimary school scored 53 points higher in mathematics (the equivalent of more than one year of schooling), compared with students who had not attended preprimary school. Although there is much evidence that ECD programs have a great impact and are less costly than educational interventions later in life, very few ECD initiatives are being scaled up in developing countries. For example, in 2010, only 15 percent of children in low-income countries—compared with 48 percent worldwide—were enrolled in preprimary education programs. Furthermore, even though the literature points to larger beneficial effects of ECD for poorer children, within developing countries, disadvantaged families are even less likely to be among those enrolled in ECD programs. For instance, in Ghana, children from wealthy families are four times more likely than children from poor households to be enrolled in preschool programs.

One of the major barriers to scaling up ECD interventions is financing. In order to address financing issues, both policymakers and practitioners need a better understanding of what is currently being spent on ECD interventions, what high-quality interventions cost, and what outcomes these interventions can produce. If stakeholder groups are made more aware of the costs of ECD interventions, they may be able to support decisionmaking on investments in ECD, to better estimate gaps in financing, and to work toward securing stable funding for scaling up service provision and for quality enhancement. One of the weakest areas of ECD policy planning is in the realm of financial planning.6 Good data are scarce on ECD spending and the costs of ECD interventions that are useful for program budgeting and planning; but these data are valuable for a number of reasons, including the fact that they support analyses of what different inputs cost and thus can facilitate considering various alternative modalities for service delivery. In this paper, we focus on what data are available to gain a clearer picture of what is being spent on ECD and what it costs to deliver basic ECD interventions in developing countries.

ECD interventions come in many varieties, and therefore we first define the package of ECD interventions that have been deemed essential. Then we outline a framework for better understanding ECD financing, which combines a top-down approach analyzing expenditures and a bottom-up approach analyzing the costs of delivering individual interventions. We comment on the general methodological issues stemming from these approaches and the limitations of the data that have been produced. Next, we delve into the available data and discuss the different funding sources and financing mechanisms that countries utilize to deliver ECD services and what patterns exist in spending. We provide a brief overview of how many public and private resources in both developed and developing countries are invested in young children, and in which specific subsectors. Although these data on spending illustrate the flows and help us understand how much is being allocated and by whom, the data are limited, and this top-down approach still leaves us with many unanswered questions. Therefore, we turn our attention to the actual costs of individual ECD interventions, which help us further understand what ECD spending can “buy” in different countries. We identify some trends in the actual costs of delivering these services, although there are a number of methodological issues vis-à-vis costing and the services delivered, which lead to wide variations between and within countries and make it difficult to compare programs over time.

Finally, we look at a number of initiatives that are currently under way to collect better data on ECD costs and expenditures, which will be useful for countries in planning programs and identifying funding sources. These initiatives are sponsored by organizations such as UNICEF, Save the Children, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. Given the gaps in the available data that we identify and the interventions currently under way, we conclude with recommendations for increasing the knowledge base in this area for use in policymaking and planning.

       

      

      

      

       

       

       

       

       

       

Event Information

On December 4 to 6, the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings hosted its 12th annual Saban Forum, titled “Israel and the United States: Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.” The 2015 Saban Forum included webcasts featuring remarks by Israel’s Minister of Defense Moshe Ya’alon, Chairman of the Yesh Atid Party Yair Lapid, National Security Adviser to President George W. Bush Stephen Hadley, Secretary of State John Kerry, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (via video), and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The forum’s webcast sessions focused on the future for Israelis and Palestinians, Iran’s role in the Middle East, spillover from the war in Syria, and the global threat posed by the Islamic State and other violent jihadi groups.

Over the past twelve years, the Saban Forum has become the premier platform for frank dialogue between American and Israeli leaders from government, civil society, business, and the media. As a result, the Saban Forum is a seminal event, generating new ideas and helping shape the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #Saban15

Video

• A conversation with Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s minister of defense
• How to restore order in the Middle East
• Keynote address: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
• Address by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (via video)
• Keynote address: Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton

Audio

• Saturday, December 5, 8:00pm - How to preserve Israel as a Jewish and Democratic state

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript--Keynote address: Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (.pdf)
• Uncorrected Transcript--Address by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (.pdf)
• Uncorrected Transcript--How to preserve Israel as a Jewish and Democratic state (.pdf)
• U.S. Department of State Release--Remarks by Secretary of State John Kerry (.pdf)
• Uncorrected Transcript--How to restore order in the Middle East (.pdf)
• Uncorrected Transcript--A conversation with Moshe Ya'alon, Israel's minister of defense (.pdf)

Event Materials

• Uncorrected TranscriptKeynote addressFormer Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
• Uncorrected TranscriptAddress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
• Uncorrected TranscriptHow to preserve Israel as a Jewish and Democratic state
• US Department of State ReleaseRemarks by Secretary of State John Kerry
• Uncorrected TranscriptHow to restore order in the Middle East 2
• Uncorrected TranscriptA conversation with Moshe Yaalon Israels minister of defense

      

Editors' Note: U.S.-Israeli relations have taken a hit in recent years as the United States has become increasingly frustrated with the Netanyahu government's lack of initiative on advancing a peace process with the Palestinians. Tamara Wittes examines the domestic Israeli and American trends poised to further strain relations if the countries' leaders do not address these challenges head on. This article originally appeared in Haaretz on December 3, 2015—before the annual Saban Forum.

The past year brought unprecedented tensions in the U.S.-Israeli relationship, with many arguments and counterarguments about who is to blame. Beyond the tactical debates—about personality clashes, or the propriety of Israel parachuting into arguments between Congress and the U.S. president—are deeper challenges facing these two close allies. Last weekend, the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings convened the Saban Forum in Washington to address these issues and to understand the future trajectory of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

The first question that needs to be asked is why a bilateral relationship that for so long was kept above politics has now become a subject of bitter partisanship—in Israel, as well as in the United States. How did distasteful personal rhetoric become politically acceptable in a relationship that used to be carefully protected? Why did politicians lose their self-restraint about using the U.S.-Israel relationship as a wedge issue against their opponents? Why were opponents of the Iran nuclear deal, in Israel and in the United States, prepared to drag the American Jewish community and Democratic friends of Israel into the fray and force them to choose between supporting Israel and supporting their president?

Some argue that these trends result from differing levels of public support for Israel among Democratic and Republican voters. Polls show that Democratic voters are less supportive of the current Israeli government’s policies than Republican voters. If voters in the United States are splitting on partisan lines, the theory goes, then their elected representatives should follow. But polls that ask simplistic questions produce crude results.

A more detailed survey by my colleague Shibley Telhami shows us something deeper: the lenses Americans use to evaluate Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians have changed over time. Today, Americans increasingly look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of human rights—and this is especially true for younger Americans, African Americans and Hispanic Americans. This makes them sensitive to the suffering of Palestinian civilians, and to heavy handed Israeli counter-terrorism policies. These groups form a larger proportion of the voting public than they have in past, and a growing proportion of the Democratic Party’s core constituency. Likewise, American Evangelical Christians look at Israel through a lens of prophetic fulfillment, which combined with their conservative political preferences puts them squarely on the side of more hawkish Israeli policies. And Evangelicals are a core constituency for the Republican Party. These underlying changes in attitudes have shifted the calculus for American politicians. But that doesn’t mean a partisan split on “support for Israel” is inevitable. It does point to specific aspects of Israeli policy that affect how Israel is viewed. As American society becomes “majority-minority,” where no group, including Americans of European origin, constitutes a majority of the population, Israelis should keep these underlying lenses in mind.

[T]he lenses Americans use to evaluate Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians have changed over time.

A second issue to examine is Israelis’ combination of vulnerability and national pride. Even in a post-9/11 era, Americans have a hard time appreciating the sense of vulnerability and fear that Israelis face from ongoing terrorism and rocket fire. The Gaza War last year brought this vulnerability into sharp focus—the war went on longer than any in Israel’s history other than War of Independence, and the rocket threat affected most of the country’s civilian population. The large numbers of Palestinians killed and wounded led some in America to question Israeli tactics.  U.S.-Israeli cooperation on Iron Dome produced impressive results and was trumpeted in the American media—but when you are walking outside and an air raid siren goes off, your faith in Iron Dome does not erase your sharp sense of fear.

Israelis’ sense of vulnerability is compounded by the asymmetric nature of the threats Israel is facing, and by the sense among many Israelis that their effort to reach a resolution of their conflict with the Palestinians has reached a dead end. The fear of another war and a sense that the neighborhood has turned deeply hostile, weigh heavily, in a way Americans have trouble understanding. Israelis become all the more anxious when they sense that their most important international ally might not see their security threats the same way they do.

Paradoxically, though, this sense of vulnerability coexists for Israelis with a sense of greater self-confidence about Israel’s military strength, its economic dynamism, and its wider relationships with the world. Particularly on the Israeli political right, there is today a stronger strain of nationalism and national pride (as evidenced in the “No Apologies” slogan of the Jewish Home Party in the last elections). In many countries around the world, including U.S. allies, the rise of right-wing nationalism is marked in part by politicians thumbing their nose at the global superpower: the United States. Israel, it appears, is no longer an exception to that rule.

Israelis become all the more anxious when they sense that their most important international ally might not see their security threats the same way they do.

These issues—Americans’ perceptions of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, and Israelis’ combination of fear and self-confidence—go beyond the personalities of leaders or the choices of politicians. To bridge these gaps, the U.S.-Israel dialogue must reach beyond government meetings and Israel-Diaspora engagement— instead, Israelis and Americans must commit to understanding one another’s societies better than we do today.

Finally, and unavoidably, there is a policy problem driving U.S.-Israeli tensions—but it’s not what you might think. The Israeli and American governments are both struggling to deal with the disintegration of a twenty-year-old framework for settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After the Oslo Declaration was signed in September, 1993, Americans, Israelis and Palestinians shared an approach to settling the conflict: direct bilateral negotiations mediated by the United States. But after the failure of the Kerry talks last spring, the two leaders in Jerusalem and Ramallah have no inclination to return to direct bilateral talks, and each of them in their own way emerged from the latest effort with questions about the role of the United States.

In the international community and the region, meanwhile, the loss of faith in the U.S.-led bilateral process has led to experiments with other modes of shaping the conflict, from economic pressure on Israel to new proposals for action by the UN Security Council. Netanyahu’s controversial words before Election Day last spring— that there would be no Palestinian state under his watch—were less of a unilateral declaration than a recognition of reality. The White House now more-or-less agrees, with Obama aides telling reporters that they did not expect peace on Obama’s watch. The longstanding, bilateral negotiating process was Washington’s main leverage in pushing back against other international efforts—and now that the negotiating process has ended, these efforts will inevitably escalate. Without U.S.-Israeli agreement on a way forward, further policy gaps are likely.

The Israeli and American governments are both struggling to deal with the disintegration of a twenty-year-old framework for settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This begs a question many American officials and analysts are asking: If there is no prospect for renewed bilateral talks toward a two-state solution, what is Israel’s Plan B? Does the Israeli government have a clear vision for its future relationship with the Palestinians? Israel expects American understanding as it takes steps it deems necessary to protect its citizens and ensure their future security. But American patience with Israel’s control over the West Bank is predicated on that control being temporary. There is impatience in Washington that Israel’s leadership has not tried to articulate a path forward beyond the immediate crisis—indeed, my colleague Natan Sachs argues that the current Israeli leadership has embraced “anti-solutionism” as a strategy. That's a very difficult position for any American administration to support.

If their modern history is any guide, Israelis will not remain passive before the forces now reshaping the Middle East; instead, they will insist on charting their own path into the future. When Israelis finally do develop a clear view of their chosen road, their first stop to explain it and seek support will inevitably be Washington. But Washington may not wait forever—especially as the stalemate is generating sustained violence. The time is now to lay the foundations for that crucial policy discussion, by updating American and Israeli understandings of one another’s dynamic societies, and by building on the Saban Forum and similar platforms to enrich our bilateral dialogue.

      

Event Information

An Alan and Jane Batkin International Leaders Forum

Israeli society is diverse, dynamic, vibrant, and challenged. Israel’s long-held social solidarity faces new pressure from growing internal fissures and from the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians.

In bold and candid remarks earlier this year, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin identified four “tribes” in Israeli society, representing different worldviews, and called for a new effort to find common ground among secular, national-religious and ultra-Orthodox Jewish Israelis, and Arab citizens of Israel. How might Israel’s diverse society coalesce in the coming years? How will the future of Israeli society affect its democracy, its relations with its neighbors and with the United States?

On December 10, the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings hosted President Reuven Rivlin to discuss his vision for the future of Israeli society and the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Bruce Jones, vice president and director of Foreign Policy at Brookings, gave welcoming remarks, and Tamara Cofman Wittes, senior fellow and director of the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, introduced President Rivlin.

Following President Rivlin’s remarks, Natan Sachs, fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, engaged the president in conversation.

Join the conversation on Twitter at #IsraelsFuture.

Video

• The new Israeli society: From melting pot to partnership

Audio

• The new Israeli society: From melting pot to partnership

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20151210_israel_rivlin_transcript

      

What a way to start the new year. Decades of Saudi-Iranian tensions reached a new high this past week. The cycle of reactions to Riyadh’s execution of prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr on January 2 is a reminder of how the Saudis, and their Iranian rivals, have viewed and used sectarianism throughout the tumultuous period since 2011.

Al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 and subsequently sentenced to death for allegedly "seeking ‘foreign meddling’ in Saudi Arabia, ‘disobeying’ its rulers and taking up arms against the security forces." The arrest was meant not merely as a signal to Tehran, but at least as much to Saudi Arabia’s own Shiite minority. Shiites comprise as much as 20 percent of the Saudi population, and are concentrated in the oil-rich Eastern Province—and the community has regularly erupted in protests against its economic and political marginalization. In 2011, amid the Arab Spring uprisings in majority-Shiite Bahrain, Saudi Shiites also demonstrated for the release of long-held prisoners, and Saudi forces shot and killed several Shia in the streets.

Riyadh’s decision to carry out the death sentence was greeted with demonstrations in Iran and attacks on Saudi diplomatic facilities. This Iranian reaction must have been calculated, as al-Nimr has been on “death row” for a very long time. In response, Saudi Arabia quickly cut ties with its longtime geopolitical foe and urged fellow Sunni governments to follow suit. So far, Bahrain and Sudan have also cut off relations, and both Qatar and the UAE have downgraded them. 

Governments on both sides of the Sunni-Shiite divide found a sectarian narrative useful in rallying their populations and in justifying their actions in response to the 2011 Arab uprisings. The sectarian narrative has helped the parties in this larger regional power struggle mobilize support by playing up the sectarian dimension of protests in Bahrain, the Assad regime’s crackdown in Syria, and the breakdown of inclusive politics in Iraq. Likewise, many Sunni-led countries have found sectarian rhetoric an effective way to rally Sunni citizens, intimidate their own Shiite populations, and to justify crackdowns on dissent. 

Governments on both sides of the Sunni-Shiite divide found a sectarian narrative useful in rallying their populations and in justifying their actions in response to the 2011 Arab uprisings.

Last April, I wrote that Iran was likely to escalate its asymmetric efforts to destabilize Arab politics by exploiting the cracks within Arab societies. They have done so, and it is a form of escalation the Saudis are ill-equipped to match. Last summer, I suggested that the Sunni Arab states could defend best against this Iranian subversion by tamping down sectarian tensions and working to heal the rifts within their own societies through inclusive political and economic policies. So far, I have not seen much effort from the Arab Gulf states in that direction—instead, they have doubled down on divisive sectarianism in Yemen and elsewhere. As this escalatory spiral advances, civilians will pay the price. 

Some are portraying the decision to execute al-Nimr as a negative Saudi response to Iranian efforts at rapprochement over the last few weeks. I do not necessarily see it that way, because the Iranians have done as much as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states to provoke and exploit tensions between the two in recent times. That notwithstanding, there is no question this execution will inflame sectarian tensions in the Gulf and Iraq, as well as present the Islamic State with new opportunities. 

It has been clear for some time that the U.S. focus on the threat from the so-called Islamic State is simply not matched by the Saudis, who are far more concerned about Iran and Shiite expansionism than by this violent extremist Sunni group in their neighborhood. As such, the execution and ensuing crisis brings the clash of U.S. and Saudi interests into sharp relief and has the potential to become an inflection point in regional affairs – not necessarily because of the way the Saudi and Iranian governments choose to play, but because of how others might react.

For example, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi quickly and publicly condemned the execution. The execution—and the inevitable crackdown on Shiite protests in Qatif—might increase pressure on Abadi from Shiites in Iraq (and from Iran) to demonstrate sectarian preferences in his rhetoric and policy. That could prevent him from moving forward on steps Washington has been pushing to bring Iraqi Sunnis back into the political fold. This easily could threaten the anti-Islamic State campaign in Iraq, since it relies on Sunnis in Ramadi, Mosul, and elsewhere turning away from Islamic State and back toward the Iraqi state. Iraqi counterterrorism forces have taken much of Ramadi, but they cannot hold it without local Sunni support.

Increased Islamic State influence in the Arabian Peninsula would certainly challenge the Saudi government and prompt a renewed securitization of domestic policy.

The Islamic State worked hard to stoke sectarian tensions within the Gulf states over the past year, carrying out attacks on Shiite mosques in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The GCC leaders were not drawn in at that stage, instead expressing solidarity with their Shiite compatriots. But this time, a Sunni Gulf government is taking steps that exacerbate sectarian tensions—and that could very easily push the Islamic State to take up the issue again by attempting more such attacks. Increased Islamic State influence in the Arabian Peninsula would certainly challenge the Saudi government and prompt a renewed securitization of domestic policy. It would be an ironic outcome of a Saudi move—47 executions, mostly of Sunni extremists—that was intended to deter ISIS sympathizers. At a moment when low oil prices and a tightened financial future constrain their capacity to coopt a large, underemployed, youthful populace, this is not a recipe for stability.

The possibility that ISIS will gain from this crisis illustrates the problem with governments self-interestedly wielding that sectarian narrative is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it actually increases the incentive on both sides of the sectarian divide to escalate their real power competition, both directly and through proxies. Today, that narrative of sectarian conflict is far more than rhetoric in Iraq and Syria, where a true intercommunal conflict is underway. 

More immediately, the ripple effects of al-Nimr’s execution spotlight American policy dilemmas in the region. The escalation in sectarian conflict threatens the nascent Syrian peace process. It increases the Islamic State’s scope for action there, threatens the political dimension of the anti-Islamic State strategy in Iraq, and incentivizes Sunni extremism in the Arabian Peninsula. It pushes the Yemen war further from resolution as well, leaving al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) with room to grow and plan attacks against the American homeland. And it puts the United States into a very tight spot as it continues diplomatic dialogue with Iran in the wake of the nuclear agreement. Given this beginning, 2016 looks to be an even tougher year for the United States in the Middle East than 2015.

      

Editors’ Note: On March 23, the Working Group on Egypt sent a letter to President Obama urging him to publicly and privately object to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi’s accelerating crackdown on human rights and civil society organizations. Brookings senior fellow and director of the Center for Middle East Policy Tamara Wittes was among the letter’s signers, and she explains her decision to do so. The letter was originally published by the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED).

Tamara Wittes: In a disordered Middle East, America needs anchors of stability and reliable partners to help it achieve its goals. Both are in sadly short supply. 

For more than thirty years, Egypt was an anchor of stability and a reliable American partner in regional security. From the time Sadat expelled Soviet advisers and broached peace with Israel, ties with Egypt have been a core pillar of American Middle East policy. But, as my colleague Steven Cook presciently noted way back in February 2012, Egypt’s revolution accelerated the launch of what he calls a “long goodbye” between these two formerly indispensable partners. He argued back then that shifting from a “special relationship” to something more transaction would have four concrete benefits for Washington:

First, Washington will no longer be in the unseemly position of providing taxpayer largesse—however small in the grand scheme of things—to a government that resents the United States and clearly does not share its values. Second, it will provide an opportunity for a much-needed change in military-to-military relations in which the United States merely pays for the services it needs like expedited transit through the Suez Canal. Third, it is consistent with this moment of empowerment and dignity for Egyptians many of whom do not want U.S. assistance either because they believe it actually stands in the way of a democratic transition or accept Aboul Naga’s argument along with those who couldn’t care less about U.S. assistance because it doesn’t touch their lives. Finally, it will free up funds for the United States to help others who actually might want Washington’s help, perhaps the Tunisians, Moroccans, or some sub-Saharan African countries would be grateful for development assistance.

Since that blog post went up, Egypt has had three different governments and lost its place as a diplomatic and security leader in the region; while the United States has withdrawn from Iraq and begun to do the same in Afghanistan, while emphasizing burden-sharing in its new fight against ISIS. All of these shifts strengthen the argument for a more distant and transactional U.S.-Egyptian relationship. 

Moreover, since his accession to power (first in a military coup in July 2013 and then in a highly constrained election in 2014), President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has made decisions that are undermining both Egypt’s domestic stability and key American policy goals in the region. 

• Sisi’s failure to move forward on economic reforms (recommended by leading Egyptian voices, regional supporters, and international donors) has left his country in a spiral of shrinking cash reserves, capital flight and currency devaluation that together threaten the government’s ability to import needed food and medicine and to carry out core government functions. 
• Sisi’s counterterrorism campaign in the Sinai has succeeded in “making the sand jump,” as one regional security official told me, but it seems to have stoked more than tamped down the fire of violent extremism threatening both Egypt and Israel; meanwhile, its alleged military abuses have sparked a Senate request for investigation.
• The intense political polarization and relentless repression of post-coup Egypt are producing other destabilizing effects, which are detailed in the Egypt Working Group’s newest letter to President Obama posted below (I am a member of the Working Group). 

To top it all off, the Egyptian government continues to throw obstacles in the road of U.S.-Egyptian cooperation. Its military resists learning from the hard-won American experience in effective counterinsurgency. Its leadership has resolutely refused to allow core bilateral aid programs, like those supporting higher education, to move forward. And at the same time, the Egyptian government continues to promote conspiracy theories about the United States to its public through media smears and show trials, and now, apparently, to its newly elected parliamentarians. 

It’s long past time for the United States to undertake a strategic review of its approach to the Middle East, one focused on building anchors of stability and sustaining reliable partners in pursuit of American priorities. Egypt, as I told The New York Times, no longer qualifies as either one. That doesn’t mean the two countries can’t continue to work together in those narrow areas where they agree on interests, priorities, and approaches. 

But Secretary of State Kerry’s public embrace last week of Egyptian Foreign Minister Shoukry cannot hide the facts—there is no “back to business” option for the U.S.-Egyptian relationship, and it seems increasingly clear that even direct White House engagement would not shift Egypt’s leadership off of its self-destructive trajectory. Egypt's looming instability demands that the United States take steps now to safeguard itself from reliance on a country we cannot rescue, not least from its own leaders' worst impulses. 

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March 23, 2016

Dear Mr. President,

We are writing to urge you to speak directly with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and to express both publicly and privately your objection to his accelerating crackdown on human rights, including recent moves to prosecute civil society organizations. You were correct to declare in September 2014 that “America’s support for civil society is a matter of national security,” and nowhere is that more true than in Egypt today.

President el-Sissi’s campaign against civil society takes place against the backdrop of unprecedented abuses by Egyptian security forces, including extrajudicial killings, the detention of tens of thousands of political prisoners, the widespread documented use of torture, and the forced disappearances of hundreds of Egyptians. The killing of Italian student Giulio Regeni, whose tortured body appeared on a roadside near Cairo a week after his abduction in late January, has come to international attention, but many Egyptians have shared his fate since President el-Sissi came to power.

On March 24, an Egyptian court will hear a request to freeze the bank accounts and other assets of two internationally-respected human rights defenders, Hossam Bahgat and Gamal Eid, along with members of Eid’s family. Mr. Bahgat and Mr. Eid and other activists may soon be indicted and face trial for illegally accepting foreign funding—a criminal charge that violates their right to free association and could carry a sentence of up to 25 years in prison.

The imminent proceedings are a major step in Egyptian authorities’ campaign to crush the last remnants of Egypt’s independent civil society and human rights community. Egypt’s media has recently reported that dozens of organizations are under criminal investigation, essentially for their peaceful work to monitor abuses and to hold Egypt’s government accountable to its own constitution and international human rights commitments. In recent weeks, Egyptian authorities have ordered the closure of a prominent anti-torture organization, the Nadeem Center; summoned staff from several human rights organizations for interrogation; banned prominent rights activists and advocates from traveling outside Egypt in violation of the Egyptian constitution; and harassed and threatened human rights activists with arrest and violence. The media regularly propagate vitriol against human rights defenders, portraying them as traitors and security threats.

If this crackdown is allowed to reach its conclusion, it will silence an indigenous human rights community that has survived more than 30 years of authoritarian rule, leaving few if any Egyptians free to investigate mounting abuses by the state.

The current attacks on Egypt’s rights advocates are a continuation of the same criminal prosecution of American and German NGO workers in Egypt that began in 2011. That prosecution, driven by senior members of the Egyptian government still in high office today, resulted in the June 2013 criminal convictions, in a deeply flawed trial, of 43 Egyptian and international NGO staff, including 17 American citizens. President el-Sissi, who was the head of military intelligence in 2011 when Egypt’s military government launched the investigation, has refused repeated requests to overturn the convictions.

While the current crackdown is primarily targeting domestic organizations, there are indications that international NGOs may also face increased pressure, including some that currently do not even have offices or staff working in Egypt. On March 20, the newspaper Al Masry Al Youm published the names of more than 150 individuals and civil society organizations reportedly under investigation for receiving foreign funding, including prominent American and European organizations such as the Center for International Private Enterprise, the Solidarity Center, Transparency International, Save the Children, Catholic Relief Services, CARE, AMIDEAST, the National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute.

Mr. President, in your September 2014 Presidential Memorandum on Civil Society, you pledged that the United States government—including you personally—would stand firmly with those in civil society facing pressure or harassment from their governments. While the past five years have been tumultuous and challenging for U.S. policy toward Egypt, this is another defining moment for the United States, a moment that tests your pledge to “stand with civil society.” Secretary Kerry’s March 18 statement of concern was welcome, but further action is urgently needed. Past practice demonstrates that when the United States government speaks clearly, in one voice, and consistently on NGO freedom and human rights in Egypt, the government in Cairo listens.

It is essential that you act to stand up for human rights, freedom of association, and the rights of both Egyptian and international civil society organizations to work together on behalf of common goals. You must make crystal clear to President el-Sissi that continued assaults on civil society, including harassment of U.S. organizations, will make it difficult for the administration to cooperate across a range of issues, including your administration’s efforts to promote American investment in Egypt and to provide financial assistance to the Egyptian government and military. If Egypt’s government continues down a path to destroy its own civil society, American support and assistance will become, in both principled and practical terms, impossible.

Sincerely,

The Working Group on Egypt

       

Editor's note: Tamara Cofman Wittes testifies before both the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade and the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa for a joint session on threats to Israel in the region and on the world stage. Read her full testimony below.

Members of the Committee, thank you for the invitation to appear before you today. I am delighted to offer my views. I must emphasize, as always, that I represent only myself before you today; the Brookings Institution does not take any institutional positions on policy issues.

About a year ago, I appeared before this committee to discuss the likely impact on the region of a nuclear deal with Iran. On the afternoon following a day Israelis began with the discovery of yet another Hamas tunnel from Gaza into Israel, and that ended with the bombing of a bus, it seems like a very pat, and a very sobering opportunity to give you some thoughts on the threats facing Israel from terrorism and the impact of regional disorder. I’ve had the chance to discuss these concerns with a range of Israeli officials and experts in the last several months, and I’ll share my impressions with you.

Let me begin with Iran, the government whose policies and proxies lie behind some of the worst threats Israel faces today. When I appeared before you last year, I said that “Whether there’s a nuclear deal or not, I predict we will see a more aggressive approach by Iran in a host of arenas around the region, where the upheaval has given them greater opportunities than before.” And indeed that’s what we’ve seen — Iran, helped in Syria by Russia, has pushed forward assertively to advance its influence and strengthen its allies around the region. The Iranian threat — not primarily the threat of nuclear capabilities but rather these other dimensions of Iranian behavior destabilizing the region — has led Israel and the Sunni Arab states of the region to find more common ground in the past year than perhaps ever before.

That said, I want to emphasize that in my view this escalation of Iran’s attempts at subversion around the region was inevitable with or without a nuclear agreement. While sanctions relief will, over time, give the Iranian government more resources, the Islamic Republic has been committed to this path since 1979. Ever since this revolutionary regime was established, it has sought to exploit the cracks within societies across the region to expand its own influence. Iran never lacked motivation for its assertions of power. Iran’s sanctions-induced economic hardship did not prevent them from giving Hezbollah hundreds of millions of dollars a year, or prevent them from spending billions of dollars and their own soldiers’ lives keeping Bashar al-Assad in power. The Arab uprisings of 2011, the civil wars that emerged in their wake, and the sectarian narratives employed by Iran and its Arab adversaries have all given Iran unprecedented opportunities to expand its activities, and it has exploited those opportunities very successfully. So yes, Iranian interference across the region is likely to continue in the wake of the Iran deal — and it was getting worse with or without the deal. The main driver of instability and threat in the Middle East today is the civil violence in Syria, Yemen, Libya, and increasingly in Iraq. Ending those civil wars should be a top priority for the United States and others concerned with regional stability.

In a major speech in January outlining Israel’s strategic environment, IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot noted that the P5+1 nuclear agreement with Iran is a turning point for Israel, because the nuclear threat from Iran used to be the biggest threat Israel faced. While Israel does not assume that Iran will fully comply with the deal, Eisenkot recognized that the dismantling of centrifuges and the Arak reactor, and the shipment of uranium out of the country, have concretely rolled back Iran’s nuclear capabilities. He also noted that the IDF does believe that Iran will work hard over the coming five years to gain the advantages they will get by complying with the terms of the agreement. Indeed, Eisenkot said that he did not anticipate Israel facing major nonconventional weapons threats in the near future, because the nuclear deal has rolled back Iran’s nuclear capabilities and put them under tighter controls, and because of the removal of chemical weapons from Syria. That gives the IDF important breathing space in which to focus on building up capabilities to address other threats and opportunities. Let me address now some of these other threats.

Syria

For the first several years of the war in Syria, Israel took a fairly hands-off approach: concerned over the emergence of jihadi groups, but wary of Hezbollah and Iranian involvement backing Assad. Israelis used to see the Syrian government as a stable and predictable adversary, and even sometimes as a check on Iran and Hezbollah. But today Israeli military officials judge that it’s unlikely Bashar will again control all of Syrian territory, and they see him as dependent and subservient within the Syrian-Iranian alliance.

As a result, it’s clear today that the scenario that most concerns Israel in Syria is one in which Assad remains in power in Damascus, and remains dependent on Iran for survival — leaving Iran with stronger influence on Israel’s northern border than it had before the war. Iran is determined to sustain Assad in power because Syria is the strategic depth and channel of support to Hezbollah, Iran’s most effective regional ally, and is also a good entry point for Iran to the Arab-Israeli arena. According to a new BBC investigation and other sources, Iran has reportedly bolstered its IRGC forces in Syria with militias made up of Iraqi Shia and of Hazara refugees from Afghanistan, who are picked up in Iran and given minimal training before being sent to Syria to fight. The level of Iranian investment in Assad’s survival is impressive, and should increase our skepticism that the diplomatic talks including Iran will yield a constructive outcome. Israeli officials also worry that continued chaos in Syria, should the war continue unabated or escalate, could allow jihadi groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State to launch attacks into Israel from the Golan. Israel will be looking to the United States, and to some extent the Sunni Arab states who share its concern over Assad and Iran, to advance its interests in the diplomatic talks.

Hezbollah

Of even greater concern to Israel is the impact of the Syrian war on Hezbollah. That concern has several dimensions.

First, Hezbollah’s investment in saving Assad has altered the political equation in Lebanon in ways that could destabilize the country. Hezbollah fighters have been operating in Syria, perhaps about 5000 at a time in rotation, and they have lost about a thousand fighters there. This emphasizes very clearly for all to see (including the Lebanese people) that the organization is not so focused, as it claims, in defending Lebanon, but rather on increasing its own power and influence and securing Shia and Iranian influence in the Arab world.  In addition, the Syrian civil war has spilled over into Lebanon already, reigniting sectarian tensions and generating an influx of one million Syrian refugees – that’s adding 25% to Lebanon’s population. The tensions in Lebanon are evident in its politics – the sect-based political factions have been unable to agree on a president for the past year and a half. Hezbollah has been boycotting parliament as well, exercising its effective veto over the political system, and preventing any progress on basic governance in the country. If sectarian tension in Lebanon increases, and particularly if Sunni extremist groups fired up by the Syrian war carry out more violent attacks in Lebanon, Hezbollah could easily choose to try and win political points domestically by attacking Israel. Thus far, Hezbollah has not chosen this path, perhaps because of Israel’s deterrent power, perhaps because it worries about overstretch fighting on two fronts; but one cannot assume that reticence will last forever, and unintended escalation is also a possibility.

Second, the prospect of an outcome from the Syrian war that leaves Assad in power and Iran in effective control of the country presages further transfers of weapons and technology from Iran to Hezbollah through Damascus. Iran has already enabled Hezbollah to expand its rocket and missile arsenal to nearly 100,000, some with advanced guidance and some with range that would enable them to target infrastructure and to reach all of Israel’s population centers. This prospect makes leaving Assad in control of Damascus a deeply concerning outcome for Israel’s security. Israel has acted to try and prevent the transfer of advanced technology to Hezbollah through Damascus several times over the course of the Syrian conflict — but 100% success would be a miracle.

Third, the Syrian war has given Hezbollah fighters extensive experience in conventional warfare, increasing their battle hardiness and thus their capabilities in the event of another war with Israel. Should Hezbollah embark on a campaign of rocket attacks on Israeli territory, the scope of the threat would likely lead Israel to move quickly toward a ground offensive in southern Lebanon designed to reduce or eliminate the attacks.  But as Eisenkot noted in January, Hezbollah has scattered its presence across 240 villages in southern Lebanon; each has a defense system; and each, of course, also has a civilian population. In the event of a new confrontation, Israel will be facing a more entrenched, more experienced enemy and the IDF will face real dilemmas in ground operations in southern Lebanon.

Hamas in Gaza

Iran continues to seek to provide funding and weapons to Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad in Gaza. While Hamas has reportedly rebuilt some of its tunnel and rocket capabilities since the 2014 conflict, it has not so far sought a new confrontation with Israel. Rather, the rocket attacks from Gaza in 2015 were launched by salafi groups in the Strip that are seeking to compete with and displace Hamas; and Hamas has dealt with them harshly. Recent reports suggest that, under pressure from Cairo, Hamas is also trying to sever links to Sinai militants and prevent its own operatives from going into Sinai. In other words, current events indicate that Hamas seems more interested right now in survival in power, than in confrontation with Israel.

Should Hamas provoke another round with Israel, there is no question that the IDF would face many of the same challenges militarily that it faced in 2014 — in terms of the threat from tunnels, and in terms of the way Hamas embedded both fighters and weapons within the civilian population. Indeed, fighting terrorism in a heavily populated environment is a long-term challenge for the IDF, whether in Gaza or potentially in southern Lebanon or the West Bank. Building up new tactics and capabilities against this challenge is a key task for Israel’s military in the coming years.

The West Bank and the “Knife Intifada"

The wave of violence that began in September last year has comprised hundreds of attacks, and claimed the lives of several dozen Israelis, over two hundred Palestinians, and several Americans. According to public comments by officials, the IDF and security services understand this violence to be of a different nature than past terrorism by Palestinians. The attacks do not, for the most part, appear to be directed by any organization, and the individuals who carry out these attacks often do not seem to have planned the attacks in advance in any meaningful way. The lack of organization or direction means that there is little tactical warning that Israel’s security forces can use to prevent these attacks; they can only react.

According to the briefings I received in January, the incitement that was evident in the Palestinian media and in politicians’ statements in the early months has been significantly reduced, and the IDF was expecting a reduction in the overall number of attacks due to increased efforts both by Israel and by the Palestinian Authority. This past month has seen a dramatic drop in the number of attacks. Two weeks ago, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas gave a notable interview to Ilana Dayan of Israel's Channel Two in which he condemned the violence in robust terms and called on Palestinians to stop these attacks. He acknowledged the problem of incitement in the Palestinian media, and spoke powerfully about his security forces' coordination with Israel to prevent attacks. He also reiterated that he sees Netanyahu as a peace partner and is prepared to meet with him at any time.

Overall, Israeli security sources say clearly that the drivers for those who carry out these attacks include despair at the lack of any political horizon in the conflict with Israel. This points to the fact that the stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict carries a continuing cost for both societies, and that cost may be increasing over time. The status quo in this conflict is deteriorating, not static, and reminds us that a negotiated resolution of the conflict remains Israel’s best option for long-term security.

The Israeli government has sought to avoid responding to the attacks in ways that severely constrain the wider Palestinian population. For example, throughout this wave of attacks, 120,000 Palestinians have continued to work inside Israel and in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The Israeli government has also sought to bolster the Palestinian economy in other ways. These steps are directed toward stabilizing a shaky Palestinian Authority which is a crucial bulwark for Israel against instability and inroads by radical groups into the West Bank.

Palestinian politics are not immune from the governance challenges faced by other Arab societies. There is a wide and growing gap between the Palestinian leadership and the public, particularly young people who see little prospect for economic, diplomatic, or political progress in their current circumstances. Continued uncertainty about leadership succession in the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian national movement more generally also raises concern over a potential weakening or collapse of PA security forces. Israeli officials I spoke to expressed concern that the anger and violence currently directed against Israel would, if it continues, inevitably turn against the Palestinian Authority as well; and that could provoke a collapse of the PA or an end to Israel-PA security cooperation. This could leave the IDF feeling pressured to reenter Palestinian population centers in an ongoing way, and could make the West Bank vulnerable to inroads by ISIS and other radical groups.

Sinai and ISIS’s Egyptian Affiliate

The ISIS affiliate in Sinai has continued to attack Egyptian targets nearly every day. The most recent statistics from the Tahrir Institute, which tracks terrorism in Egypt, recorded 74 attacks in the last quarter of 2015. These included the downing of a Russian passenger plane on October 31st, which has devastated what was left of Egypt’s tourist economy. ISIS has also claimed assassination attempts against government officials and individuals accused of supporting the government, IEDs, and armed assaults on various military and civilian facilities.

Egypt’s counterterrorism campaign in Sinai has been of limited impact in reducing attacks; one Israeli source told me that the Egyptian campaign was mostly good as “making the sand jump.” There are concerns among some observers both in Israel and here in Washington that the Egyptian military’s tactics may even be counterproductive. Egypt has, for example, razed homes along the Sinai border with Israel, destroying farmland and displacing thousands of Sinai residents. Such tactics may be alienating Sinai residents and giving ISIS more room to operate. Similarly, Egypt’s overcrowded jails are reportedly hotbeds for extremist recruitment.

The Obama Administration, as you know, is redirecting US military assistance to Egypt away from long-term commitments to major weapons systems, and toward effective counterterror and border security capabilities. This effort deserves the robust support of Congress. The United States also has both legal and moral obligations to ensure that its support for Egyptian counterterror efforts does not contribute to human rights abuses, which have vastly escalating in the last two years in Egypt. I know this is an issue your committee is watching closely.

Conclusions

It’s clear that the changes in the region have shifted the nature of the threats facing Israel — from state-centered and nonconventional threats to non-state, terrorist and insurgent threats. Israel has long relied on deterrence and superior military capabilities as the backbone of its defense. But the new threat profile challenges that approach. As General Eisenkot has asked, how does one deter terrorist organizations that are not accountable to anyone? Likewise, overwhelming conventional military capabilities are better suited for a major land war than for a campaign against a terrorist group that is embedded within a civilian population.

From a broader perspective, there is in fact a sort of “threat trough” for Israel at the present moment, which presents important strategic opportunities. Iran is pre-occupied with its geopolitical competition with the Sunni Arab states, and its nuclear program has been rolled back in concrete terms, taking that threat off the table for a period of years. Some of Israel’s worst enemies in previous years – Syria, Iraq, and Libya – are consumed by civil war themselves. Hamas has less Iranian support than in the past, and is contained and reticent after its 2014 confrontation with Israel; and Hezbollah is for now wholly committed in Syria.

Two opportunities emerge for Israel from this changed threat environment: first, time and space to undertake longer-term planning for the structure, size, and capabilities of the Israel Defense Forces to meet the challenges ahead, especially from non-state actors. Second and perhaps more importantly, to seize the moment to determine what it wants in its future relationship with the Palestinians, and to push forward with steps to advance the two-state solution that Israel’s leader continues to avow is in his country’s best interests. This unique moment should not be wasted.

As the United and Israel continue discussions on a new ten-year memorandum of understanding on defense assistance, it will be important to evaluate this fundamental shift in Israel’s threat environment and help Israel prepare accordingly. Enshrining US-Israel defense cooperation in a new MOU will help address emerging threats, and will give the IDF needed predictability in funding to implement its new long-term plans. Most of all, a new MOU will send a clear signal to adversaries and friends alike about the depth and breadth of the US-Israel defense partnership. In other words, the significance of the MOU goes well beyond a dollar amount, a specific capability, or a specific source of threat. I hope it will be concluded soon.

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With the violence in the Middle East continuing, and further attacks on American soil in the name of Islam, the election campaigns have paid significant attention to policy issues related to the Middle East. But as both Republicans and Democrats prepare for their national conventions, how do Americans prioritize Middle East issues compared with other global priorities? Have public attitudes shifted in light of recent ISIS-inspired attacks overseas and at home and in response to heated campaign rhetoric? If so, in what direction?

On July 11, Brookings launched two new public opinion surveys focusing on American attitudes towards the Middle East, conducted by Nonresident Senior Fellow Shibley Telhami: One was conducted just two weeks before the Orlando shooting, the other taken two weeks after—thus providing an opportunity to evaluate any shift in public attitudes. In addition, some of the same questions were asked in Telhami’s polls the previous two years, thus providing a further opportunity to evaluate trends. One of the polls also includes a significant oversample of millennials (18-34) for further demographic analysis.

Telhami was joined in discussion by William Galston, the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies at Brookings. Tamara Cofman Wittes, senior fellow and director of the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion.

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