Scholars from the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute are collaborating to promote transparency in redistricting. In January 2010, an advisory board of experts and representatives of good government groups was convened in order to articulate principles for transparent redistricting and to identify barriers to the public and communities who wish to create redistricting plans. This document summarizes the principles for transparency in redistricting that were identified during that meeting.

Benefits of a Transparent, Participative Redistricting Process

The drawing of electoral districts is among the most easily manipulated and least transparent systems in democratic governance. All too often, redistricting authorities maintain their monopoly by imposing high barriers to transparency and public participation. Increasing transparency and public participation can be a powerful counterbalance by providing the public with information similar to that which is typically only available to official decision makers, which can lead to different outcomes and better representation.

Increasing transparency can empower the public to shape the representation for their communities, promote public commentary and discussion about redistricting, inform legislators and redistricting authorities which district configurations their constituents and the public support, and educate the public about the electoral process.  

Fostering public participation can enable the public to identify their neighborhoods and communities, promote the creation of alternative maps, and facilitate an exploration of a wide range of representational possibilities. The existence of publicly-drawn maps can provide a measuring stick against which an official plan can be compared, and promote the creation of a “market” for plans that support political fairness and community representational goals.

Transparency Principles

All redistricting plans should include sufficient information so the public can verify, reproduce, and evaluate a plan. Transparency thus requires that:

• Redistricting plans must be available in non-proprietary formats.
• Redistricting plans must be available in a format allowing them to be easily read and analyzed with commonly-used geographic information software.
• The criteria used as a basis for creating plans and individual districts must be clearly documented.

Creating and evaluating redistricting plans and community boundaries requires access to demographic, geographic, community, and electoral data. Transparency thus requires that:

• All data necessary to create legal redistricting plans and define community boundaries must be publicly available, under a license allowing reuse of these data for non-commercial purposes.
• All data must be accompanied by clear documentation stating the original source, the chain of ownership (provenance), and all modifications made to it.

Software systems used to generate or analyze redistricting plans can be complex, impossible to reproduce, or impossible to correctly understand without documentation. Transparency thus requires that:

• Software used to automatically create or improve redistricting plans must be either open-source or provide documentation sufficient for the public to replicate the results using independent software.
• Software used to generate reports that analyze redistricting plans must be accompanied by documentation of data, methods, and procedures sufficient for the reports to be verified by the public.

Services offered to the public to create or evaluate redistricting plans and community boundaries are often opaque and subject to misinterpretation unless adequately documented. Transparency thus requires that:

• Software necessary to replicate the creation or analysis of redistricting plans and community boundaries produced by the service must be publicly available.
• The service must provide the public with the ability to make available all published redistricting plans and community boundaries in non-proprietary formats that are easily read and analyzed with commonly-used geographic information software.
• Services must provide documentation of any organizations providing significant contributions to their operation.

Promoting Public Participation

New technologies provide opportunities to broaden public participation in the redistricting process. These technologies should aim to realize the potential benefits described and be consistent with the articulated transparency principles.

Redistricting is a legally and technically complex process. District creation and analysis software can encourage broad participation by: being widely accessible and easy to use; providing mapping and evaluating tools that help the public to create legal redistricting plans, as well as maps identifying local communities; be accompanied by training materials to assist the public to successfully create and evaluate legal redistricting plans and define community boundaries; have publication capabilities that allow the public to examine maps in situations where there is no access to the software; and promoting social networking and allow the public to compare, exchange and comment on both official and community-produced maps.

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Official Endorsement from Organizations – Americans for Redistricting Reform, Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, Campaign Legal Center, Center for Governmental Studies, Center for Voting and Democracy, Common Cause, Demos, and the League of Women Voters of the United States.

Attending board members – Nancy Bekavac, Director, Scientists and Engineers for America; Derek Cressman, Western Regional Director of State Operations, Common Cause; Anthony Fairfax, President, Census Channel; Representative Mike Fortner (R), Illinois General Assembly; Karin Mac Donald, Director, Statewide Database, Berkeley Law, University of California, Berkeley; Leah Rush, Executive Director, Midwest Democracy Network; Mary Wilson, President, League of Women Voters.

Editors – Micah Altman, Harvard University and the Brookings Institution; Thomas E. Mann, Brookings Institution; Michael P. McDonald, George Mason University and the Brookings Institution; Norman J. Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute.

This project is funded by a grant from the Sloan Foundation to the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute.

       

Every 10 years — unfortunately, sometimes more frequently — legislative district lines are redrawn to balance population for demographic changes revealed by the census. What goes on is much more than a simple technical adjustment of boundaries, with ramifications that largely escape public notice.

Politicians often use redistricting as an opportunity to cut unfavorable constituents and potential challengers out of their districts. Barack Obama, for example, learned the rough and tumble of redistricting politics when Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) carved Obama's Chicago home out of Rush's congressional district after losing a 2000 primary challenge to Obama, then a state senator.

Incumbents can also use redistricting to move favorable constituents into their districts. Obama himself used the state legislative redistricting to extend his predominantly African American district north into a wealthy area of Illinois known as the Gold Coast. This new constituency allowed Obama to hone an effective biracial campaigning style that served him well when he ran for the U.S. Senate and the presidency.

Critically, these decisions are made with little or no public input or accountability. While Arizona and California are among the few states that give the public a chance to see and participate in how the boundaries are set, by using open redistricting commissions, most states gerrymander legislative lines behind closed doors. Figures from both major parties tilt the electoral playing field so much that one party is essentially assured of winning a given district, controlling the state legislature or winning the most seats in the state's congressional delegation. In other words, the democratic process is subverted. In this system, politicians select voters rather than voters electing politicians.

A 2006 Pew survey found that 70 percent of registered voters had no opinion about congressional redistricting. Among the few that expressed an opinion, some mistook the question to be about school districts rather than congressional districts.

For many reasons it has been hard to fault the public. An immense amount of population data must be sifted and then assembled, much like a giant jigsaw puzzle, to ensure that districts satisfy complex federal requirements relating to equal population and the Voting Rights Act, and varying state requirements that may include compactness and respect for existing political boundaries or communities. And access to these data and the software necessary to assemble and analyze them have long been out of public reach.

In the previous round of redistricting, according to a 2002 survey of authorities we conducted with our colleague Karin Mac Donald, most states did not provide any tools, facilities, dedicated assistance or software to support the public in developing redistricting plans. Many states failed to provide even minimal transparency by making data available, providing information about their plans online or accepting publicly submitted plans. Many redistricting authorities have not made firm plans to support transparency or public participation in the current round of redistricting.

In the coming year, however, technological advancements will enable anyone with a Web browser and an interest in how he or she is represented to draw district maps of his or her community and state that meet the same requirements as official submissions. Under the direction of scholars at the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, and with consultation from an array of experts in redistricting issues, we have developed a set of principles for transparency and public participation. These principles have been endorsed by an array of stakeholders, including Common Cause and the League of Women Voters of the United States.

Americans will be able to participate directly in their democracy by offering plans to be compared with the politician-drawn maps. The public and even the courts will no longer have to accept that whatever is devised by politicians in the backroom.

The Wizard of Oz appeared powerful because he hid behind a curtain -- until it was pulled back. The time has come to pull back the curtain on redistricting. A good place to start is by passing Rep. John Tanner's Redistricting Transparency Act, which has 38 co-sponsors from both parties. If Congress will not act, state governments can follow the lead of the few states that provide for meaningful transparency and public participation. Failure to provide for transparency and public participation should be recognized for what it is: an obviously self-serving act, placing the interests of politicians above the public interest.

       

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The drawing of legislative district boundaries is among the most self-interested and least transparent systems in American democratic governance. All too often, formal redistricting authorities maintain their control by imposing high barriers to transparency and to public participation in the process. Reform advocates believe that opening that process to the public could lead to different outcomes and better representation.

On January 20, Brookings hosted a briefing to review how redistricting in the 50 states will unfold in the months ahead and present a number of state-based initiatives designed to increase transparency and public participation in redistricting. Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellows Micah Altman and Michael McDonald unveiled open source mapping software which enables users to create and submit their own plans, based on current census and historical election data, to redistricting authorities and to disseminate them widely. Such alternative public maps could offer viable input to the formal redistricting process.

After each presentation, participants took audience questions.

Learn more about Michael McDonald's Public Mapping Project »

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• Injecting Transparency into Redistricting
• GOP Could Re-Draw 145 Districts
• Towards a New Political Culture
• Coalitions Pushing for Greater Transparency
• The Public Mapping Project

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• Toward Public Participation in Redistricting
• Toward Public Participation in Redistricting
• Toward Public Participation in Redistricting

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• Download Micah Altman's and Michael McDonald's Presentation (.pdf)
• Download Tim Storey's Presentation (.pdf)
• Download Clare Dyer's Presentation (.pdf)
• Download the Redistricting Authority in the States Factsheet (.pdf)
• Download Micah Altman's and Michael McDonald's Report (.pdf)
• Download the District Builder Summary (.pdf)

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Now that the 2010 Census is concluded, states will begin the process of reapportionment—re-drawing voting district lines to account for population shifts. Nonresident Senior Fellow Michael McDonald says redistricting has been fraught with controversy and corruption since the nation’s early days, when the first “gerrymandered” district was drawn. Two states—Arizona and California—have instituted redistricting commissions intended to insulate the process from political shenanigans, but politicians everywhere will continue to work the system to gain electoral advantage and the best chance of re-election for themselves and their parties.

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Full video archive of this event is also available via C-SPAN here.

The drawing of legislative district boundaries is arguably among the most self-interested and least transparent systems in American democracy. Every ten years redistricting authorities, usually state legislatures, redraw congressional and legislative lines in accordance with Census reapportionment and population shifts within states. Most state redistricting authorities are in the midst of their redistricting process, while others have already finished redrawing their state and congressional boundaries. A number of initiatives—from public mapping competitions to independent shadow commissions—have been launched to open up the process to the public during this round of redrawing district lines.

On July 18, Brookings hosted a panel of experts to review the results coming in from the states and discuss how the rest of the process is likely to unfold. Panelists focused on evidence of partisan or bipartisan gerrymandering, the outcome of transparency and public mapping initiatives, and minority redistricting.

After the panel discussion, participants took audience questions.

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Editors Note: This post is an extended version of a previous post.

Cozzens, Susan and Dhanaraj Thakur (Eds). 2014. Innovation and Inequality: Emerging technologies in an unequal world. Northampton, Massachusetts: Edward Elgar.

Historically, the debate on innovation has focused on the determinants of the pace of innovation—on the premise that innovation is the driver of long-term economic growth. Analysts and policymakers have taken less interest on how innovation-based growth affects income distribution. Less attention even has received the question of how innovation affects other forms of inequality such as economic opportunity, social mobility, access to education, healthcare, and legal representation, or inequalities in exposure to insalubrious environments, be these physical (through exposure to polluted air, water, food or harmful work conditions) or social (neighborhoods ridden with violence and crime). The relation between innovation, equal political representation and the right for people to have a say in the collective decisions that affect their lives can also be added to the list of neglect.

But neglect has not been universal. A small but growing group of analysts have been working for at least three decades to produce a more careful picture of the relationship between innovation and the economy. A distinguished vanguard of this group has recently published a collection of case studies that illuminates our understanding of innovation and inequality—which is the title of the book. The book is edited by Susan Cozzens and Dhanaraj Thakur. Cozzens is a professor in the School of Public Policy and Vice Provost of Academic Affairs at Georgia Tech. She has studied innovation and inequality long before inequality was a hot topic and led the group that collaborated on this book. Thakur is a faculty member of the school College of Public Service and Urban Affairs at Tennessee State University (while writing the book he taught at the University of West Indies in Jamaica). He is an original and sensible voice in the study of social dimensions of communication technologies.

We’d like to highlight here three aspects of the book: the research design, the empirical focus, and the conceptual framework developed from the case studies in the book.

Edited volumes are all too often a collection of disparate papers, but not in this case. This book is patently the product of a research design that probes the evolution of a set of technologies across a wide variety of national settings and, at the same time, it examines the different reactions to new technologies within specific countries. The second part of the book devotes five chapters to study five emerging technologies—recombinant insulin, genetically modified corn, mobile phones, open-source software, and tissue culture—observing the contrasts and similarities of their evolution in different national environments. In turn, part three considers the experience of eight countries, four of high income—Canada, Germany, Malta, and the U.S.—and four of medium or low income—Argentina, Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Mozambique. The stories in part three tell how these countries assimilated these diverse technologies into to their economies and policy environments.

The second aspect to highlight is the deliberate choice of elements for empirical focus. First, the object of inquiry is not all of technology but a discreet set of emerging technologies gaining a specificity that would otherwise be negated if they were to handle the unwieldy concept of “technology” broadly construed. At the same time, this choice reveals the policy orientation of the book because these new entrants have just started to shape the socio-technical spaces they inhabit while the spaces of older technologies have likely ossified. Second, the study offers ample variance in terms of jurisdictions under study, i.e. countries of all income levels; a decision that makes at the same time theory construction more difficult and the test of general premises more robust.[i] We can add that the book avoids sweeping generalizations. Third, they focus on technological projects and their champions, a choice that increases the rigor of the empirical analysis. This choice, naturally, narrows the space of generality but the lessons are more precise and the conjectures are presented with according modesty. The combination of a solid design and clear empirical focus allow the reader to obtain a sense of general insight from the cases taken together that could not be derived from any individual case standing alone.

Economic and technology historians have tackled the effects of technological advancement, from the steam engine to the Internet, but those lessons are not easily applicable to the present because emerging technologies intimate at a different kind of reconfiguration of economic and social structures. It is still too early to know the long-term effects of new technologies like genetically modified crops or mobile phone cash-transfers, but this book does a good job providing useful concepts that begin to form an analytical framework. In addition, the mix of country case studies subverts the disciplinary separation between the economics of innovation (devoted mostly to high-income countries) and development studies (interested in middle and low income economies). As a consequence of these selections, the reader can draw lessons that are likely to apply to technologies and countries other than the ones discussed in this book.

The third aspect we would like to underscore in this review is the conceptual framework. Cozzens, Thakur and their colleagues have done a service to anyone interested in pursuing the empirical and theoretical analysis of innovation and inequality.

For these authors, income distribution is only one part of the puzzle. They observe that inequalities are also part of social, ethnic, and gender cleavages in society. Frances Stewart, from Oxford University, introduced the notion of horizontal inequalities or inequalities at the social group level (for instance, across ethnic groups or genders). She developed the concept to contrast vertical inequalities or inequalities operating at the individual level (such as household income or wealth). The authors of this book borrow Stewart’s concept and pay attention to horizontal inequalities in the technologies they examine and observe that new technologies enter marketplaces that are already configured under historical forms of exclusion. A dramatic example is the lack of access to recombinant insulin in the U.S., because it is expensive and minorities are less likely to have health insurance (see Table 3.1 in p. 80).[ii] Another example is how innovation opens opportunities for entrepreneurs but closes them for women in cultures that systematically exclude women from entrepreneurial activities.

Another key concept is that of complementary assets. A poignant example is the failure of recombinant insulin to reach poor patients in Mozambique who are sent home with old medicine even though insulin is subsidized by the government. The reason why doctors deny the poor the new treatment is that they don’t have the literacy and household resources (e.g. a refrigerator, a clock) necessary to preserve the shots, inject themselves periodically, and read sugar blood levels. Technologies aimed at fighting poverty require complementary assets to be already in place and in the absence of them, they fail to mitigate suffering and ultimately ameliorate inequality. Another illustration of the importance of complementary assets is given by the case of Open Source Software. This technology has a nominal price of zero; however, only individuals who have computers and the time, disposition, and resources to learn how to use open source operative systems benefit. Likewise, companies without the internal resources to adapt open software will not adopt it and remain economically tied to proprietary software.

These observations lead to two critical concepts elaborated in the book: distributional boundaries and the inequalities across technological transitions. Distributional boundaries refer to the reach of the benefits of new technologies, boundaries that could be geographic (as in urban/suburban or center/periphery) or across social cleavages or incomes levels. Standard models of technological diffusion assume the entire population will gradually adopt a new technology, but in reality the authors observe several factors intervene in limiting the scope of diffusion to certain groups. The most insidious factors are monopolies that exercise sufficient control over markets to levy high prices. In these markets, the price becomes an exclusionary barrier to diffusion. This is quite evident in the case of mobile phones (see table 5.1, p. 128) where monopolies (or oligopolies) have market power to create and maintain a distributional boundary between post-pay and high-quality for middle and high income clients and pre-pay and low-quality for poor customers. This boundary renders pre-pay plans doubly regressive because the per-minute rates are higher than post-pay and phone expenses represent a far larger percentage in poor people’s income. Another example of exclusion happens in GMOs because in some countries subsistence farmers cannot afford the prices for engineering seeds; a disadvantage that compounds to their cost and health problems as they have to use more and stronger pesticides.

A technological transition, as used here, is an inflection point in the adoption of a technology that re-shapes its distributional boundaries. When smart phones were introduced, a new market for second-hand or hand-down phones was created in Maputo; people who could not access the top technology get stuck with a sub-par system. By looking at tissue culture they find that “whether it provides benefits to small farmers as well as large ones depends crucially on public interventions in the lower-income countries in our study” (p. 190). In fact, farmers in Costa Rica enjoy much better protections compare to those in Jamaica and Mozambique because the governmental program created to support banana tissue culture was designed and implemented as an extension program aimed at disseminating know-how among small-farmers and not exclusively to large multinational-owned farms. When introducing the same technology, because of this different policy environment, the distributional boundaries were made much more extensive in Costa Rica.

This is a book devoted to present the complexity of the innovation-inequality link. The authors are generous in their descriptions, punctilious in the analysis of their case studies, and cautious and measured in their conclusions. Readers who seek an overarching theory of inequality, a simple story, or a test of causality, are bound to be disappointed. But those readers may find the highest reward from carefully reading all the case studies presented in this book, not only because of the edifying richness of the detail herein but also because they will be invited to rethink the proper way to understand and address the problem of inequality.[iii]
 

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Editor's Note: The "Scaling up in Agriculture, Rural Development and Nutrition" publication is a series of 20 briefs published by the International Food Policy Research Institute. To read the full publication, click here.

Taking successful development interventions to scale is critical if the world is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and make essential gains in the fight for improved agricultural productivity, rural incomes, and nutrition. How to support scaling up in these three areas, however, is a major challenge. This collection of policy briefs is designed to contribute to a better understanding of the experience to date and the lessons for the future.

Scaling up means expanding, replicating, adapting, and sustaining successful policies, programs, or projects to reach a greater number of people; it is part of a broader process of innovation and learning. A new idea, model, or approach is typically embodied in a pilot project of limited impact; with monitoring and evaluation, the knowledge acquired from the pilot experience can be used to scale up the model to create larger impacts. The process generally occurs in an iterative and interactive cycle, as the experience from scaling up feeds back into new ideas and learning.

The authors of the 20 policy briefs included here explore the experience of scaling up successful interventions in agriculture, rural development, and nutrition under five broad headings: (1) the role of rural community engagement, (2) the importance of value chains, (3) the intricacies of scaling up nutrition interventions, (4) the lessons learned from institutional approaches, and (5) the experience of international aid donors.

There is no blueprint for when and how to take an intervention to scale, but the examples and experiences described in this series of policy briefs offer important insights into how to address the key global issues of agricultural productivity, food insecurity, and rural poverty.

      

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

Only days before her retirement at age 71, Kathleen Elliott Yinug succumbed to a recurrence of cancer, which had been in remission for fifteen years. Over a Brookings career spanning four decades, she not only assisted several members of the Brookings community, but also became their valued friend. A woman of intelligence and liberal values, she elicited, demanded, and merited the respect of all with whom she worked.

After college, she joined the Peace Corps and was sent to the island of Yap. There she met her husband to be and there her son, Falan, was born. The family returned to the United States so that her husband could attend law school. Kathleen came to work at Brookings, helping to support her husband's law school training. When he returned to Yap, Kathleen assumed all parental responsibility. Her son has grown into a man of character, a devoted husband and father of two daughters. He and his wife, Louise, with compassion and generosity, made their home Kathleen's refuge during her final illness. Over extended periods, she held second jobs to supplement her Brookings income.

Her personal warmth, openness, and personal integrity made her a natural confidante of senior fellows, staff assistants, and research assistants, alike. She demanded and received respect from all. Her judgment on those who did not meet her standards was blunt and final; on one occasion, she 'fired'—that is, flatly refused to work with—one senior staff member whose behavior and values she rightly deplored.

With retirement approaching, Kathleen bought a condominium in Maine, a place she had come to love after numerous visits with her long-time friend, Lois Rice. After additional visits, her affection for Maine residents and the community she had chosen deepened. She spoke with intense yearning for the post-retirement time when she could take up life in her new home. That she was denied that time is a cruel caprice of life and only deepens the sense of loss of those who knew and loved her.

       

       

The issue of paid leave is heating up in 2016. At least two presidential candidates — Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) — have proposed new federal policies. Several states and large cities have begun providing paid leave to workers when they are ill or have to care for a newborn child or other family member.

This forward movement on paid-leave policy makes sense. The United States is the only advanced country without a paid-leave policy. While some private and public employers already provide paid leave to their workers, the workers least likely to get paid leave are low-wage and low-income workers who need it most. They also cannot afford to take unpaid leave, which the federal government mandates for larger companies.

Paid leave is good for the health and development of children; it supports work, enabling employees to remain attached to the labor force when they must take leave; and it can lower costly worker turnover for employers. Given the economic and social benefits it provides and given that the private market will not generate as much as needed, public policies should ensure that such leave is available to all.

But it is important to do so efficiently, so as not to burden employers with high costs that could lead them to substantially lower wages or create fewer jobs.

States and cities that require employers to provide paid sick days mandate just a small number, usually three to seven days. Family or temporary disability leaves that must be longer are usually financed through small increases in payroll taxes paid by workers and employers, rather than by employer mandates or general revenue.

Policy choices could limit costs while expanding benefits. For instance, states should limit eligibility to workers with experience, such as a year, and it might make sense to increase the benefit with years of accrued service to encourage labor force attachment. Some states provide four to six weeks of family leave, though somewhat larger amounts of time may be warranted, especially for the care of newborns, where three months seems reasonable.

Paid leave need not mean full replacement of existing wages. Replacing two-thirds of weekly earnings up to a set limit is reasonable. The caps and partial wage replacement give workers some incentive to limit their use of paid leave without imposing large financial burdens on those who need it most.

While many states and localities have made sensible choices in these areas, some have not. For instance, the D.C. Council has proposed paid-leave legislation for all but federal workers that violates virtually all of these rules. It would require up to 16 weeks of temporary disability leave and up to 16 weeks of paid family leave; almost all workers would be eligible for coverage, without major experience requirements; and the proposed law would require 100 percent replacement of wages up to $1,000 per week, and 50 percent coverage up to $3,000. It would be financed through a progressive payroll tax on employers only, which would increase to 1 percent for higher-paid employees.

Our analysis suggests that this level of leave would be badly underfunded by the proposed tax, perhaps by as much as two-thirds. Economists believe that payroll taxes on employers are mostly paid through lower worker wages, so the higher taxes needed to fully fund such generous leave would burden workers. The costly policy might cause employers to discriminate against women.

The disruptions and burdens of such lengthy leaves could cause employers to hire fewer workers or shift operations elsewhere over time. This is particularly true here, considering that the D.C. Council already has imposed costly burdens on employers, such as high minimum wages (rising to $11.50 per hour this year), paid sick leave (although smaller amounts than now proposed) and restrictions on screening candidates. The minimum wage in Arlington is $7.25 with no other mandates. Employers will be tempted to move operations across the river or to replace workers with technology wherever possible.

Cities, states and the federal government should provide paid sick and family leave for all workers. But it can and should be done in a fiscally responsible manner that does not place undue burdens on the workers themselves or on their employers.

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Editor's note: this piece originally appeared in The Washington Post. 

      

Senior Fellows Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill are the first joint recipients of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize from the American Academy of Political and Social Science (AAPSS). The prize is awarded each year to a leading policymaker, social scientist, or public intellectual whose career focuses on advancing the public good through social science. It was named after the late senator from New York and renowned sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The pair accepted the award May 12 at a ceremony in Washington, DC. 

In their joint lecture delivered at the ceremony, Haskins and Sawhill emphasized the importance of evidence-based public policy, highlighting Sawhill’s latest work in her book, Generation Unbound (Brookings, 2014). Watch their entire speech here:

“Marriage is disappearing and more and more babies are born outside marriage,” Sawhill said during the lecture. “Right now, the proportion born outside of marriage is about 40 percent. It’s higher than that among African Americans and lower than that among the well-educated. But it’s no longer an issue that just affects the poor or minority groups.”

Download Sawhill's slides » | Download Ron Haskins' slides »

The power of evidence-based policy is finally being recognized, Haskins added. “One of the prime motivating factors of the current evidence-based movement,” he said, “is the understanding, now widespread, that most social programs either have not been well evaluated or they don’t work.” Haskins continued:

Perhaps the most important social function of social science is to find and test programs that will reduce the nation’s social problems. The exploding movement of evidence-based policy and the many roots the movement is now planting, offer the best chance of fulfilling this vital mission of social science, of achieving, in other words, exactly the outcomes Moynihan had hoped for.

He pointed toward the executive branch, state governments, and non-profits implementing policies that could make substantial progress against the nation’s social problems.

Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at Brookings and co-director, with Haskins, of the Center on Children and Families (CCF), acknowledged Haskins and Sawhill’s “powerful and unique intellectual partnership” and their world-class work on families, poverty, opportunity, evidence, parenting, work, and education.

Haskins and Sawhill were the first to be awarded jointly by the AAPSS, which recognizes their 15-year collaboration at Brookings and the Center on Children and Families, which they established. In addition to their work at CCF, the two co-wrote Creating an Opportunity Society (Brookings 2009) and serve as co-editors of The Future of Children, a policy journal that tackles issues that have an impact on children and families.

Haskins and Sawhill join the ranks of both current and past Brookings scholars who have received the Moynihan Prize, including Alice Rivlin (recipient of the inaugural prize), Rebecca Blank, and William Julius Wilson along with other distinguished scholars and public servants.

Want to learn more about the award’s namesake? Read Governance Studies Senior Fellow and historian Steve Hess’s account of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s time in the Nixon White House in his book The Professor and the President (Brookings, 2014).

       

       

       

       

In advance of President Obama’s historic trip to Cuba and Argentina, three Brookings scholars participated in a media roundtable to offer context and outline their expectations for the outcomes of the trip. Richard Feinberg and Ted Piccone discussed Cuba–including developments in the U.S.-Cuba relationship, the Cuban economy, and human rights on the island–and Harold Trinkunas offered insight on Argentina, inter-American relations, and the timing of the visit.

Read the transcript (PDF) »

Richard Feinberg:

The idea is to promote a gradual incremental transition to a more open, pluralistic and prosperous Cuba integrated into global markets of goods, capital, and ideas. It is a long-term strategy. It cannot be measured by quarterly reports.

Ted Piccone:

...the key [is] to unlock a whole set of future changes that I think will be net positive for the United States, but it is going to take time, and it is not going to happen overnight.

Harold Trinkunas:

Cuba is really about moving, among other things, a stumbling block to better relations with Latin America, and Argentina is about restoring a positive relationship with a key swing state in the region that was once one of our most important allies in the region.

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Editors' Note: Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Richard Feinberg reports from Havana on President Obama's historic visit to the island.

Walking the streets of Havana during Obama’s two full-day visit here, the face of every Cuban I spoke with lit up brightly upon the mere mention of Obama’s name. “Brilliant,” “well-spoken,” “well-prepared,” “humanitarian,” “a true friend of Cuba,” were common refrains.

These Cubans did not need to add that their own aging, distant leaders compare unfavorably to the elegant, accessible Obama. And the U.S. president’s mixed ethnicity is a powerful visual that does not need to be verbally underscored to a multi-racial Cuban population. But this skeptical question remained: “Would the visit make a lasting difference?” Would the government of Cuba permit some of the changes that Obama was so forcefully advocating?

In his joint press conference with President Raúl Castro, and in his speech in a concert hall that was televised live to an intensely interested Cuban public, Obama spoke with remarkable directness about human rights and democratic freedoms, sparking more than one overhead conversation among Cubans about their own lack thereof.

With eloquent dexterity, Obama delivered his subversive message carefully wrapped in assurances about his respect for Cuba’s national sovereignty. “Cubans will make their own destiny,” he reassured a proudly nationalist audience.

“The President of the world”—as average Cubans are wont to refer to the U.S. president—emphasized that just as the United States no longer perceives Cuba as a threat, neither should Cuba fear the United States. Offering an outstretched hand, Obama sought to deprive the Cuban authorities of the external threat that they have used so effectively to justify their authoritarian rule and to excuse their poor economic performance.

On Cuban state television, commentators were clearly thrown on the defensive, seeking to return the conversation to the remaining economic sanctions—“the blockade”—to the U.S. occupation of the Guantanamo Naval Base and to past U.S. aggressions. Their national security paradigm requires such an external imminent danger.

Obama sought to strengthen the favorable trends on the island, by meeting with independent civil society leaders and young private entrepreneurs. One owner of an event planning business confided to me, “I cried during our meeting with Obama—and I rarely cry—because here was the leader of the most powerful nation on earth meeting with us, and listening to us with sophisticated understanding, when our own leaders never ever do.”

Obama assured the Cubans he would continue to ask Congress to lift the remaining economic sanctions—but he added that the Cuban government could help. It could allow U.S. firms to trade with the Cuban private sector and cooperatives, and now with some state-owned enterprises “if such exchanges would benefit the Cuban people.” So far, the government has permitted very few such transactions—ironically, an auto-embargo. And the Cuban government could engage the United States in an effective human rights dialogue and prioritize settlement of outstanding claims.

Certainly, the administration needs Cuba’s help in broadening constituencies in the United States for its policy of positive engagement with Cuba. Some U.S. firms—Verizon; AT&T; AirBnB; now Starwood Hotels and Resorts; shortly, various U.S. commercial airlines and ferry services—are signing deals. And the surge of U.S. travelers visiting the island typically return home as advocates for deepening normalization. Obama’s entourage included nearly 40 members of the Congress, the largest of his presidency, he said.

But Obama still does not have the votes to lift the embargo. He told the Cubans he has “aggressively” used executive authority to carve out exceptions to the embargo, such that the list of things he can do administratively is growing shorter. In effect, he tossed the ball into the Cuban government’s court. Only if Cuba opens to U.S. commerce, only if it shows a disposition to improve its human rights practices, might the U.S. Congress be moved to fully normalize economic relations.

If Cubans were so impressed by Obama, why do I only reward him a triple? Fundamentally, because his White House staff failed to secure a schedule that would have exposed him more directly to the welcoming Cuban people. There were rumors he was to throw out the first pitch at an exhibition game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team (won 4-1 by the U.S. squad), but that opportunity was denied. Nor was he permitted to make his main speech before an outdoor Cuban public. As he walked around Havana’s colonial center, the authorities allowed only small crowds. Michelle and accompanying daughters, Malia and Sasha—potentially powerful symbols in a family-oriented country—kept subdued schedules. Overall, the Cubans managed to hem Obama in, and to hand-select most of the audiences from among their loyal followers, audiences that were predictably polite but restrained. Fortunately, the meeting with opposition activists went forward as planned.

Further, while Obama’s remarks were well received, his texts were not as well woven together by coherent narratives as they might have been. And many Cubans would have liked to hear more about specific measures to build a more prosperous economy.

When asked whether Castro and Obama had “chemistry” by a reporter, a senior Cuban diplomat preferred to refer to “mutual respect.” But the two leaders did seem to develop a real rapport. During the baseball game, they spent a full hour sitting next to each other, seemingly in relaxed conversation. And during a brief question-and-answer period at the end of their joint press conference, when a U.S. reporter peppered Castro with hostile questions, Obama jumped in to fill time while Castro—not at all accustomed to press conferences—struggled to compose his response.

Cubans will long remember this visit by the sort of charismatic leader that they once had, in a youthful Fidel Castro, and that they would long to find once again. In the meantime, the Obama administration will do what it can to reintroduce Cuba to U.S. goods and services, U.S. citizen-diplomats, musical concerts, sports stars—Shaquille O’Neal, among others—and other cultural, educational, and scientific exchanges. And it will also spread ideas, about how to improve the sluggish Cuban economy and gradually integrate it into global commerce, and in the longer run, to help give average Cubans a greater voice in determining their own national destiny.

       

The confrontation between Israel and Hamas during the summer of 2014 deepened tensions between Israel and Turkey. Now, in the fall of 2014, U.S.-Turkish relations are strained over Turkey’s role in the fight against ISIS, while gaps between the United States and Israel over policies on Iran and Palestine serve as points of friction in the relationship. Clearly the U.S.-Turkey-Israel triangle has suffered many setbacks in recent years on all sides, but the Turkish-Israeli relationship has suffered the most, as it has been in a state of semi-paralysis for the last four years.

The watershed moment in this gradual process of deterioration between Ankara and Jerusalem is the Mavi Marmara incident of May 31, 2010, when Israeli commandos boarded a Turkish flotilla consisting of six vessels, among them the MV Mavi Marmara, headed from Turkish ports to Gaza to break the Israeli naval blockade. When activists resisted, using knives and metal bars, the commandos opened fire. Eight Turks and one Turkish-American were killed. 

Relations between Israel and Turkey were already sorely strained, but bilateral relations mostly collapsed following the incident, with a total disconnect and absence of a dialogue at the very senior levels.

This new paper, "The U.S.-Turkey-Israel Triangle," looks at the diplomatic ties among all three countries before, during and after this period. Dan Arbell suggests two closely intertwined conclusions: first, that good Turkish-Israeli relations are essential to the security and stability of the Middle East; and second, that U.S. leadership has come to play a central role in shaping–and often mediating–the Turkish-Israeli relationship. 

Other highlights from this paper include:

• The history of the relations between Turkey and Israel, developing gradually during the “early years” (1948-1992) and moving towards the “golden years” (1992-2008), during which a strategic partnership was forged between Turkey and Israel.
• The lessons learned and policy implications for the United States. 
• What diplomatic steps by the United States led to an apology from Prime Minister Netanyahu to Prime Minister (recently elected President) Erdoğan for the incident. 
• The key drivers in the Turkish-Israeli relationship, focusing on domestic and regional interests that inform geostrategic alliances in the region, including the Islamic Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• How the two countries’ economic ties held together the Turkish-Israeli relationship, when political and diplomatic ties came practically to a standstill.
• Why it is important to consider a set of regional challenges, on which the two countries almost see eye to eye, that may provide the necessary glue for a future Israeli-Turkish normalization process.

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• The U.S.-Turkey-Israel Triangle