ar Getting carbon border taxes right By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 12 Feb 2020 21:41:47 +0000 A time-honored but often problematic practice in basic welfare economics is to separate efficiency considerations from distributional concerns. In an economy with given endowments and a given distribution of them, the argument goes, there exists a set of prices that will guide competitive behavior toward an efficient allocation of resources. If the result is not… Full Article
ar The COVID-19 solidarity test By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 15:13:52 +0000 The COVID-19 crisis represents an unprecedented test of human solidarity. Will the wealthy—or, indeed, all those with stable incomes or savings cushions—embrace measures to support the poor and economically insecure? Will the young, among whom the mortality rate is lower, make sacrifices to protect the old? And will people in rich countries accept resource transfers… Full Article
ar The carbon tax opportunity By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 06 May 2020 19:17:01 +0000 The COVID-19 pandemic has brought economic and social activity around the world to a near standstill. As a result, carbon dioxide emissions have declined sharply, and the skies above some large cities are clean and clear for the first time in decades. But “degrowth” is not a sustainable strategy for averting environmental disaster. Humanity should protect… Full Article
ar Progress in Emerging Markets is Being Put at Risk By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Finance ministers of the Group of Eight leading economies have commissioned a study on the role of financial market speculation in recent oil price rises. In India, the regulator recently suspended trade in futures markets for several commodities, blaming speculators for price rises. The global credit crisis has made the financial sector vulnerable to populist… Full Article
ar Targeted Improvements in Crisis Resolution, Not a New Bretton Woods By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:00:00 +0000 The current crisis reveals two major flaws in the world’s crisis-resolution mechanisms: (i) funds available to launch credible rescue operations are insufficient, and (ii) national crisis responses have negative spillovers. One solution is to emulate the EU’s enhanced cooperation solution at the global level, with the IMF ensuring that the rules are respected. Big global… Full Article
ar Planetary thinking By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 22 Aug 2019 19:11:56 +0000 The Swedish climate truthsayer Greta Thunberg has set sail for the United States in a zero-emissions racing yacht to generate waves in a different part of the world—including at next month’s United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York. She will arrive in America at a time of growing transatlantic awareness of the threat posed by climate change.… Full Article
ar Examining charter schools in America By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 Charter schools, introduced to the U.S. in the 1980s, were conceived as laboratories of experimentation in instruction, integration, and school leadership. Over time, they have become an increasingly popular alternative to traditional public schools. As of this year, charters account for approximately six percent of all public school students, and President Obama’s proposed budget includes… Full Article
ar Saria’s story: Life as a Syrian refugee By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 17 Nov 2017 15:18:01 +0000 The international refugee crisis is one of the defining political issues of our time. Haunting images—a father passing his infant between barbed wire, a stunned and bloodied five-year-old Omran—have offered powerful proof of the human cost of this crisis. As an amateur photographer, Saria Samakie—himself a Syrian refugee—understands the power of such images and of… Full Article
ar DOE’s justification for rescinding Gainful Employment rules distorts research By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 08 Jul 2019 14:09:47 +0000 The Department of Education has rescinded the Gainful Employment regulations developed by the Obama administration. These regulations were designed to cut off federal student aid to postsecondary programs that produce earnings too low to support the debt students incur while earning credentials that promise to lead to good jobs. This action is a significant step… Full Article
ar The CEA training report: Very wide of the mark By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 20 Aug 2019 16:20:46 +0000 Full Article
ar Immigration and the U.S. labor market: A look ahead By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 20 Aug 2019 16:24:34 +0000 Full Article
ar FRANCE - 1 Euro = 1.325 U.S. Dollars: The Surprising Stability of the Euro By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 04 Jun 2012 11:41:00 -0400 Publication: Think Tank 20: New Challenges for the Global Economy, New Uncertainties for the G-20 Full Article
ar Currency Wars: This Time, Is It for Real? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:03:00 -0400 In his presidential campaign in 1928, Herbert Hoover promised to help impoverished farmers by increasing tariffs on agricultural products; after the election, he also asked Congress to reduce tariffs on industrial goods. In April 1929, well before Black Thursday, U.S. Representative Reed Smoot, a Republican from Utah, introduced a bill that passed the House in May. The bill increased agricultural and industrial tariffs at levels that had not been seen for a century. This was a relatively benign beginning of what would become one of the most tragic policy measures of the 1930s. Within a few months of the bill being passed in the Senate as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, other countries in response raised their own trade barriers, which started a vicious circle of contracting world trade flows and economic activity, and rising unemployment from 1930 to 1933. There are three main lessons from the policies mentioned above: “Beggar-my-neighbor” policies are bad. Bad policies can have tragic consequences. Beware of benign measures that can ignite uncontrollable chain reactions. Indeed, these lessons have been in every policymakers’ mind since the Lehmann Brothers failure. In fact, the creation of the G-20 was a spectacular effort by the major economies of the world to cooperatively answer the challenges raised by the most severe financial crisis since the 1930s. The G-20 coordinated the management of strong macroeconomic policies, including huge deficits and easy monetary policies. These were bold decisions but not radical, and those who condemned government intervention have been rebutted by the urgency of these measures. And it is now widely acknowledged that these unconventional measures successfully avoided the transformation of the Great Recession into another Great Depression. In the U.S., the recovery is at best shaky, unemployment is artificially reduced by the growing number of discouraged workers who have stopped looking for work, and the median income is dramatically lagging. Today, there are reasons of hope that have been eloquently described by Roger Altman [1]: it can be argued that in the U.S., and to a lesser degree in Europe, the crisis has inspired significant reforms that have pushed the economy closer to a sound and sustainable growth trajectory. However others rightfull so object that enormous challenges are still facing the populations and their respective governments. The price paid for curing the damages of the global financial crisis is extremely high everywhere. In the U.S., the recovery is at best shaky, unemployment is artificially reduced by the growing number of discouraged workers who have stopped looking for work, and the median income is dramatically lagging. In Europe, austerity is the name of the game in every country except Germany and despair is growing among the populace. Japan has been stuck for two decades in deflation. Many citizens around the world feel that the efforts have gone too far, yet the benefits and retribution have benefitted too few. Electoral frustrations are on the rise as demonstrated in Italy where Mario Monti’s wise policies have been followed by the success of the Five Stars Movement of Beppe Grillo. Italy turning ungovernable is a bad sign for democracies. Could we see a comeback of desperate national policy experiments like the ones that democracies were progressively pushed to adopt after facing insurmountable difficulties in the early 1930s? Now, a really radical policy experiment is already taking shape in Japan with the introduction of what has been named “Abenomics” after the name of the newly-elected prime minister, Shinzo Abe. It has taken only one election and one nomination at the head of the Bank of Japan to really revolutionize monetary policy. This revolution can be qualified in two ways, one benign, one threatening. There is first reason to rejoice. After two decades of failed policies, it’s finally good to see bold politicians ready to do whatever it takes to extract Japan from its deflationary trap. Should Mr. Abe succeed, he would unclench the domestic brakes to economic growth, which deflation has so lengthily opposed: declining prices in effect are discouraging consumption (goods will be better and cheaper tomorrow, why spend now?) and investment (facing massive excess capacity of production and weak final demand, why invest now?). The new mission of the governor of the Bank of Japan is to raise inflationary expectations to 2 percent, which would make Japan converge with the world average inflationary trend and monetary policy. Demand would restart and Japan would contribute to an improved global economic outlook. This is the view that the IMF chief recently endorsed. As expected, Mr. Kuroda last week unveiled a much more aggressive package of quantitative easing than what we have previously witnessed, with a view to double the monetary base. Japan’s central bank will buy more long-term government bonds, pushing private investors to invest more in risky assets. Since the election, the Nikkei has risen 34 percent. Different polls and surveys suggest that the public is positively reacting to Mr. Abe’s promises. Is success already underway? That would be good news for Japan and for the world. But it is clearly too soon to celebrate because this virtuous circle can simply fail to happen. No central bank until now has ever tried to raise inflationary expectations and no one knows if this can turn to be a practical and manageable reality. Inflationary expectations could also easily turn out of control. Before exercising traction on the economy, they could impose higher interest rates that would have devastating consequences for the Japanese Treasury in the management of a huge public debt (more than twice the size of the GDP). But there is something worse than the risk of Abenomics having poor or adverse domestic consequences. The other side of Abenomics is currency management, a much less propitious theme for a government to communicate in the weeks leading up to the IMF Spring Meetings in Washington. This aspect of the policy is not only bold, it’s actually radical. As a candidate, Mr. Abe made extremely clear that he was willing to help the manufacturing sector by depreciating the yen and that monetary policy would be designed with this goal in mind. Remember that Japan, despite all its woes, remains a formidable exporter with an external surplus close to ¥650 billion in February (approximately $6.5 billion). As my fellow economists at Brookings have recently shown [2], the Japanese bilateral surplus with the U.S., which is $23 billion according to reported trade statistics, would dramatically increase by 60 percent and reach $36 billion if measured in added-value terms. Mr. Abe’s message was well received by investors who quickly after the election started to short the yen. As a result, the yen has slumped 21.5 percent in the past five months— the worst (or the best?) performance among the currencies of the developed economies. Following last week’s announcement that the Bank of Japan was really acting to debase monetary policy, the yen weakened beyond 99 yen per dollar and dropped against 15 major currencies. A weakening yen also poses challenges for China, complicating the China’s strategy to reach its 8 percent target growth for this year; it could also trigger huge capital flows into China destabilizing the delicate control of financial stability This is where Mr. Abe and Mr. Smoot cross ways: both are local politicians inspired by the difficulties facing their countries; both are willing to use every available policy tool to soften these difficulties; neither is willing to shock the global economy, which has never been the case when arguing in favor of protectionism or competitive devaluations. But these measures are nonetheless radical because they have the potential to ignite uncontrollable chain reactions. South Korea for one already declared itself very concerned by this aggressive policy, which is totally understandable. For instance, when Toyota and Sony take some advantage of Abe’s policy, the ones that would likely be first to suffer are Hyundai and Samsung. South Korea has vital interests at stake and, over In the last five months, it has been struggling with a pernicious appreciation of its currency. A weakening yen also poses challenges for China, complicating the China’s strategy to reach its 8 percent target growth for this year; it could also trigger huge capital flows into China destabilizing the delicate control of financial stability; SAFE, the financial institution that manages China’s huge official reserves, last week published its yearly report for 2012. Commenting on the global environment, the report emphasized that “a yen’s depreciation can’t solve Japan’s structural problem, … [but] could turn out of control and trigger a suspicion about its sustainability,… and finally have dangerous spill-over-effects”[3]. Chinese officials at the Boao Forum also expressed similar concerns. We still don’t know the end. Hope is that we could see the positive interpretation of a bold Japanese policy experiment contributing to a better functioning world economy. Experience should nonetheless make us cautious. What the movement by the Bank of Japan does is to increase an already huge excess liquidity, inundating global markets. In addition, the Japanese government has added a dangerous touch of currency manipulation. Both aspects should be alerts for the IMF rather than too quickly fuel the artificial satisfaction of promises regarding higher inflationary expectations and increased domestic demand. In the end, competitive devaluations always prove inefficient and dangerous because they inevitably provoke reactions and retaliations. “Currency wars” have made headlines from time to time in the recent years but these were skirmishes. This time it could be for real, and this should be a major concern for the United States. It is a great thing that Japan recently expressed interest in joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but these are words with long delayed potential results. A more constructive and immediate task is to continue the cooperative global approach of exchange rate policies and to strongly discourage any temptation of national radical policy experiments. This should be a central issue next week during the IMF Spring Meetings in Washington. [1] Roger C. Altman: “The Fall and Rise of the West”, Foreign Affairs, January-February 2013 [2] Kemal Dervis, Joshua Meltzer and Karim Foda: “Value-Added Trade and its Implications for International Trade Policy”, Brookings Opinion, April 2, 2013 [3] http://www.safe.gov.cn/resources/image/076044004f1fb34a9da59ff675a23beb/1365377817854.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&name=2012年中国国际收支报告.pdf Authors Jacques Mistral Image Source: © Issei Kato / Reuters Full Article
ar Turkey and Armenia: What's Next? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Sun, 15 Dec 2013 00:00:00 -0500 The issue of Armenia enters the Turkish foreign policy agenda almost exclusively in the context of Western attempts at legislating genocide resolutions. The result is often a reactive nationalist defense. In less than two years, by 2015, Turkey will find itself in a similar dilemma. Once again, it will be external dynamics that will drive the domestic and foreign policy debate, and quite predictably Turkey will react with anger and resentment to Western attempts at commemorating the centennial of the Armenian genocide. In order to avoid such an ordeal, Ankara needs to think about Armenian-Turkish relations now, before Western pressure builds up. The fact that Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu visited Yerevan last week is a step in the right direction and needs to be congratulated. Instead of panicking shortly before 2015, the Turkish government needs to pursue a multidimensional strategy, starting now. The first dimension of the strategy should be the opening of the border and the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. As it is well known, shortly after the signature of the two protocols aiming at achieving these two goals in 2009, Ankara decided to index the ratifications of the protocols to the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Linking the normalization of relations to a “frozen conflict” had the impact of freezing the protocols as well. It also showed that Turkey had no empathy for the Armenian political leadership, which took a lot of heat from the diaspora for dropping genocide recognition as a precondition for the normalization of relations with Ankara. In retrospect, the Turkish decision to establish a precondition for normalization with Armenia was shortsighted because it practically gave Azerbaijan de facto veto power over Turkish-Armenian normalization. Instead, what Turkey should have done was to establish diplomatic and economic relations with Armenia with the hope that such a policy of engagement would in time create positive momentum and leverage in favor of a resolution in Nagorno-Karabakh. It remains unclear whether a breakthrough in this frozen conflict can be achieved in the absence of Turkey gaining more leverage in relations with Armenia. It looks like sequencing is the main problem here. The Turkish side is reportedly ready to open the border, establish diplomatic relations and even provide financial support to Armenia in return for an Armenian withdrawal from two of the seven occupied regions surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh. This proposal looks like the same one Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made a few years ago to his Armenian counterpart at the time, Robert Kocharyan. Kocharyan had refused the Turkish demand on the grounds that there should be no linkage between Nagorno-Karabakh and normalization with Turkey. It is hard to see why today the Armenian reaction to a very similar Turkish proposal would be any different. Therefore, this most recent Turkish attempt at rapprochement with Armenia is also likely to fail in the absence of a unilateral Turkish gesture such as the opening of the border without preconditions. On the other hand, since Turkey is always in some kind of election season, it is almost impossible to see the Justice and Development Party (AKP) invest serious political capital in rapprochement by taking such a courageous step. Under such circumstances, it is not surprising that the Armenian media saw Davutoğlu's Yerevan visit as nothing more than a public relations campaign. If Turkey is really serious about normalizing relations with Armenia, it will have to take some risks in relations with Azerbaijan. The key will be to convince Baku that only the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations will create positive momentum in solving the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute. Turkey needs to open the border first and expect its diplomatic and economic engagement policy with Armenia to pay off in the long run. The alternative is to continue with the current policy. The current Turkish policy has produced no change in Nagorno-Karabakh in the last 20 years. It is time to think more creatively. Authors Ömer Taşpınar Publication: Today's Zaman Image Source: © Umit Bektas / Reuters Full Article
ar New Turkey and Its Paradox (Part One) By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Sun, 13 Apr 2014 00:00:00 -0400 Supporters of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) who often use the term “New Turkey” believe that the 12-year rule of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has opened a new phase in Turkish history. They are partially right. Even those who resent Erdoğan's autocratic discourse need to recognize that the country has come a long way in the last decade in areas such as health-care, infrastructure, fiscal discipline, inflation, municipal services and civil-military relations. The big question that continues to polarize Turkish politics, however, is whether the new Turkey is more democratic than the old one. Again, the supporters of the AKP answer this question with a resounding “yes.” In their eyes, the AKP represents the will of the people and, for the first time in modern Turkish history, the military is unable to exert real influence behind the scenes. The critics of the AKP, however, strongly differ. They believe Erdoğan's understanding of democracy is based on a simplistic and populist notion of winning elections. To them, this is a majoritarian and electoral understanding that comes at the expense of pluralism and liberalism. Such electoral autocracy does not pay attention to freedom of speech, the rule of law and the separation of powers and, thus, condemns Turkey to a second-class category among democracies. For them, this is exactly why the new Turkey of Erdoğan resembles the old one, where the military used to call the shots. In other words, the old type of authoritarianism has been replaced by a new one. It is important to note that the West -- mainly the United States and the European Union -- tend to agree with the critics of Erdoğan. In the wake of recent local elections, it was hard to find a single editorial in Western media praising the "new" Turkey's democratic standards. Instead, the focus was on corruption scandals and the bans imposed on social media like Twitter and YouTube. There is now a general consensus among Westerners that Erdoğan's growing authoritarian style has eroded the positive image of the Turkish model that was praised only a few years ago. Under such circumstances, the question that most Westerners ask is simple: Why is an increasingly authoritarian Erdoğan still winning elections? The answer to this question is equally as simple: “It's the economy, stupid!” The AKP voters come from the largest segments of Turkish society: the urban-rural poor as well as the lower-middle classes aspiring to upper-middle class status. These masses amount to probably 60 to 70 percent of Turkish society. In their eyes, bread and butter problems take precedence over the Twitter ban, political freedoms, the independence of the media, crony capitalism or separation of powers. What really matters for most of these AKP voters are economic services and living standards. The fact that they come from conservative and nationalist backgrounds and share the patriarchal culture of the prime minister is the icing on the cake. As a result, it should not be surprising that Erdoğan will keep winning elections as long as the economy performs reasonably well and adequate socioeconomic services are provided to these large segments of society. This is also why the real paradox of the new Turkey is to be found beyond the economy and elections. The real paradox of the new Turkey is the following: If Erdoğan is indeed becoming increasingly authoritarian, why is he the only hope of Turkey for solving the Kurdish problem? This paradox is even more puzzling, since solving the Kurdish problem requires the opposite of what Erdoğan seems to provide: democracy, freedom of speech, rule of law, separation of powers, liberalism, decentralization of decision-making and less patriarchal governing structures. Can Erdoğan provide all these attributes with his more authoritarian style? If the answer is “no,” why do the Kurds seem ready to support him? To answer this paradox, we need to analyze the pragmatic and Machiavellian side of Erdoğan. We will do so next week. This piece was originally published in Today's Zaman. Authors Ömer Taşpınar Publication: Today's Zaman Image Source: © Umit Bektas / Reuters Full Article
ar New Turkey and Its Paradox (Part Two) By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 00:00:00 -0400 As I tried to explain in this column last week, there is a glaring paradox about the so-called “new Turkey.” I will remind readers and clarify what the concept of “new” means exactly, but one needs to have some basic familiarity with how the Justice and Development (AKP) and its supporters define the “old” Turkey. The old Turkey, in their eyes, was a place where the economy was in shambles -- with high inflation, chronic public deficits, poor municipal services and systemic corruption. Most importantly, the military, the guardians of the system, called the shots by toppling or pressuring civilian governments. And as far as foreign policy was concerned, they believed Turkey used to punch below its weight and had almost no regional soft power in the Middle East as a model of Muslim democracy. Those who don't buy the rosy picture of today rightly point out that the current state of Turkish democracy in this so-called new Turkey leaves a lot to be desired. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's understanding of democracy is indeed based on a simplistic and populist notion of winning elections. His majoritarian and electoral understanding comes at the expense of individual rights and liberties, an independent media and the freedoms of expression and association. The absence of rule of law as well as problems with the separation of the executive, legislative and judicial powers still condemns Turkey to a second-class category among democracies. This is why, under the populist and hegemonic style of Erdoğan, the old type of Turkish authoritarianism (dominated by the military) has been replaced by a “new” one based on the tyranny of the majority and the hegemony of Erdoğan. What about the economic achievements of the new Turkey? Although it is hard to argue against the fact that the country is a more prosperous place compared to the 1990s, the latest corruption scandals clearly revealed that political networks of tender-fixing, influence-peddling, patronage and cronyism still plagues the Turkish system. Corruption is indeed still systemic in the new Turkey. It is also important to remember that the structural reforms that changed the “old” Turkey, dominated by state-owned enterprises under import substitution, came not with the AKP but thanks to the visionary leadership of Turgut Özal in the second half of the 1980s. However, those who don't buy the rosy picture of the new Turkey face an important dilemma. Why is an autocratic Erdoğan still the only hope for solving the Kurdish problem? Everyone agrees that the Kurdish problem is the most daunting challenge facing Turkish democracy. As argued last week, solving the Kurdish problem requires the opposite of what Erdoğan seems to provide: democracy, freedom of speech, rule of law, separation of powers, liberalism, decentralization of decision making and less patriarchal governing structures. The fact that Erdoğan is the best hope of fulfilling such a promise -- by negotiating a peace process with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) -- is indeed a glaring paradox that requires explanation. Some argue that the peace process with the Kurds is cosmetic, tactical and hollow. They believe Erdoğan calculated in a Machiavellian way that he needs the support of Kurds to get elected to the presidency and to change the system into a presidential one after the AKP wins the next parliamentary elections. But this is a highly risky strategy since winning the Kurdish vote also means losing a significant amount of support from Turkish nationalists -- an important segment of the AKP base. Another way to analyze the paradox is to actually believe that Erdoğan is genuine in his willingness to solve the Kurdish problem by adopting a more Ottoman system of multiculturalism and decentralization, where the sultan delegates power to regions. One should also not underestimate the fact that Erdoğan manages to identify with the victim narrative of the Kurds. He, after all, has a similar narrative of victimhood based on being a pious Muslim under secular Kemalist hegemony. What we may be witnessing in the new Turkey is a coalition of pious Muslims and Kurds taking their revenge on Kemalism. In that sense, the best way to analyze the new Turkey is to remain skeptical of the rosy picture and focus on what post-Kemalism will bring to the country in terms of solving the Kurdish question. The "newness" of Turkey can only be confirmed when a more democratic and multicultural Turkey does emerge and peacefully solves the Kurdish problem in a post-Kemalist context. This piece was originally published in Today's Zaman. Authors Ömer Taşpınar Publication: Today's Zaman Image Source: © Umit Bektas / Reuters Full Article
ar My Armenian journey By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Sun, 19 Apr 2015 00:00:00 -0400 I have been writing for years about the Armenian Genocide. The issue is of great emotional as much as ethical and historical significance to me. But for reasons I will explain for the first time, 1915 is also a very personal matter for me. No, not because I suddenly discovered I am of Armenian descent, but mainly because 1915 is the main reason my career took a turn toward academia rather than diplomacy. I did not join the Foreign Service because I was detained almost 20 years ago, when I was a 25-year-old tour guide. The reason? I dared to answer a couple of questions about 1915 from a group of American tourists visiting the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara. That day changed my life. I'm not naïve; I knew answering their question in public would be risky. And I would have probably refrained from doing so had they not asked me first whether there is freedom of speech in Turkey. Trying to make light of it, I quipped: "Yes, there is freedom of speech, but freedom after speech can get tricky." I did not know my joke would turn into self-fulfilling prophecy. Shortly after explaining to my group why the term “genocide” is problematic for Turkish officialdom, I was arrested by guards in the museum, taken to a police station and interrogated for five hours. This unexpected encounter with Turkish law enforcement convinced me about a couple of things. First, I realized how difficult life in Turkey would be if I were of Armenian descent. "Are you Armenian?" was the first question I was asked in the police station. When I said "No," the police officer laughed and said I was not the first Turkish traitor they had interrogated. To this day, I wonder how life in Turkey would be if my name was Onik instead of Ömer. Second, I was also convinced that I no longer wanted to become a diplomat. As a diplomat, I knew you turn into a defense attorney for your country. I also knew that in the larger scheme of things, what happened to me that day was not tragic or even very consequential. But the idea of defending a country that arrests a tour guide for speaking about what happened 100 years ago turned me off intellectually and emotionally. All of a sudden, Turkey's predicament had gained a disturbingly personal dimension in my eyes and thoughts. I remember having a conversation the night I was arrested with my father, a Turkish diplomat himself and in disbelief about my lack of situational awareness. "Do you think you think you live in Sweden?" he asked me with sarcasm and some anger. Anyway, the case was closed for me. I now had a police detention record. And this was enough to disqualify me from the Foreign Ministry exam. Since the Turkish Foreign Service had now lost a brilliant (!) future diplomat, I turned my gaze to academia and decided to continue my seditious activities in the United States by writing a dissertation on Turkey's identity problem. My focus was on the interplay between Kemalism, the official ideology of the republic and the Kurdish question and political Islam. Ever since I started working in academia and think-tanks, I made an involuntary reputation for myself as a public intellectual with pro-Kurdish, pro-Islamic, pro-Armenian tendencies. I guess that's a small price to pay for trying to be a liberal in today's Turkey. The alternative would have been a life in Turkish diplomacy talking about the "so-called Armenian Genocide,” the separatist-terrorist organization called the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and various "coup" attempts against the sacred Turkish state during the Gezi protests and the corruption investigations. At the end of day, my arrest 20 years ago was a blessing in disguise. I'm happy my Armenian journey took me where I am. This article was originally published in Today's Zaman. Authors Ömer Taşpınar Publication: Today's Zaman Image Source: © David Mdzinarishvili / Reuter Full Article
ar Armenians and the legacies of World War I By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 13 May 2015 09:45:00 -0400 Event Information May 13, 20159:45 AM - 5:30 PM EDTFalk AuditoriumBrookings Institution1775 Massachusetts Avenue NWWashington, DC 20036 Register for the EventThis year marks the centenary of the atrocities perpetrated against the Armenian people of the Ottoman Empire during World War I by the governing Committee of Union and Progress. Most scholars and many governments consider these horrific events––in which more than one million people were systematically massacred or marched to their deaths––to constitute the first modern European genocide. Turkish society has begun to open up and confront the issue over the last decade. Turkish authorities, however, continue to reject the use of the term genocide, contest the number of deaths, and highlight the fact that many other minority groups, Muslims, and Turks were killed in the same period as the war-ravaged empire unraveled. For descendants of the survivors, Turkey’s official refusal to reckon fully with this painful chapter of its past is a source of deep distress and concern and undermines societal efforts toward understanding and reconciliation. Armenians have also raised the question of reparations, further adding to the problem. On May 13, the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings (CUSE), together with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for International Studies, the Hrant Dink Memorial Human Rights and Justice Lectureship at MIT, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace held a conference with several leading scholars of the Armenian genocide and other international experts. Speakers considered the historical record and circumstances of the genocide amid the disorder of World War I; how Turkey, Armenia, and other key actors have dealt with the legacy of 1915; and how this legacy continues to reverberate in the region today, with protracted conflicts in the Caucasus and where religious and ethnic minority groups have been deliberately targeted for expulsion and death amid the upheavals in Iraq, Syria, and other states that emerged from the rubble of the Ottoman Empire. Join the conversation on Twitter using #Armenia1915 Video 1915 and the unmaking of peoples: Deportations, massacres, and genocideThe making of an “almost intractable conflict” and attempts at its resolution2015 and its horrors : A century after 1915 Audio Armenians and the legacies of World War I Transcript Transcript (.pdf) Event Materials 20150513_armenia_transcript Full Article
ar Why the Turkish election results are not all bad news (just mostly) By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 03 Nov 2015 10:05:00 -0500 This weekend’s election results in Turkey were a surprise to the vast majority of Turkish pollsters and pundits, myself included. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) won nearly 50 percent of the popular vote. The party can now form a single-party government, even if it doesn’t have the supermajority necessary to remake the Turkish constitution. What happened? Now I see clearly As with much in life, the result does make sense in hindsight. Prior to the June 7 election, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the AKP leadership had supported a Kurdish peace process, in part in the hope of gaining Kurdish votes. In that election, however, not only did the AKP fail to win new Kurdish votes, but support for the Nationalist Action Party (MHP)—a far-right Turkish nationalist party—swelled, apparently out of frustration among nationalist Turks with the AKP-led peace process with the Kurds. In other words, the AKP had the worst of both worlds. Erdoğan and the AKP leadership, recognizing the political problem this posed for them, allowed the peace process to collapse amid mounting instability driven by the Syrian civil war. This, combined with disillusionment with the MHP leadership due to their perceived unwillingness to form a coalition government, drove about two million MHP voters to the AKP this weekend. The exodus shows, in a sense, what close substitutes the two parties can be among a more nationalist voting bloc. The controlled chaos that resulted from the collapse of the peace process—combined with the escalating refugee crisis, the fear of ISIS attacks, and the struggling economy—helped the government politically. Voters evidently recalled that it had been the AKP that brought the country out of the very tough times of the 1990s. In contrast, the opposition parties seem to lack leadership and appear to promise only internal squabbles and indecisiveness. Craving security and stability, voters have now turned to the one party that appears to have the strength to provide it. In that sense, Erdoğan’s nationalist gambit—which was actually a well-conceived series of political maneuvers—worked. Even some one million conservative Kurdish voters returned to the AKP. These voters perhaps did not notice the irony that the government had also engineered the instability they feared. In part, this success derives from government’s control over the media. These elections may have been free, in the sense that Turkish voters can cast a ballot for the candidates they want. But they were not fair. The state maintained tight control over traditional and social media alike. Freedom House and the Committee to Protect Journalists, among others, have cast doubt on Turkey’s press freedom credentials. Real opposition voices are difficult for media publish or voters to see on television. Thus, for example, Selahattin Demirtaş, the leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and the most charismatic opposition politician in Turkey, had essentially no air time during the campaign. Not all bad news There are some important upsides to the election results. For one, HDP again passed the 10 percent threshold to remain in parliament. That will help mitigate—though hardly erase—the polarization that grips the country, and will hopefully make government reconsider its abandonment of the Kurdish peace process. More significantly, the AKP does not have what it needs to convert Turkey’s government structure into a presidential system, which would be a bad move for the country. The election results will undoubtedly revitalize Erdoğan’s push for a presidential regime in Turkey. But that requires changing the constitution, and the AKP did not achieve the supermajority that it would need to do that on its own. Critically, changing to a presidential system will require some support from the opposition and even more importantly popular support via a referendum. As political strategists around the world have learned, people tend not to vote on the actual referendum item, per se, but based on more general opinions of their leadership. So to win a referendum on the presidential system, Erdoğan and his AKP colleagues would need to show improvements in the economy, in the security situation, on the Kurdish issue, on Syrian refugees, and on national stability more generally. Instability in Turkey, particularly the renewal of violence in the Kurdish region, will deter investment and deepen the economic slump throughout the country. With its new majority, AKP leaders are now in a position of strength to negotiate with the HDP over Kurdish issues. The refugee crisis also means the government also has more leverage with the EU. If it chooses to use its strength to reach positive agreements on those fronts, the outcomes could be very good for the Turkish people. To actually win a referendum on the presidential system, Erdoğan would have to work to depolarize his country. While the presidential system itself would not be good for Turkey, the process of getting there might be. Authors Ömer Taşpınar Full Article
ar Physician Social Networks and Geographic Variation in Medical Care By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 CSED Working Paper No. 33: Physician Social Networks and Geographic Variation in Medical Care Full Article
ar Webinar: Reopening the coronavirus-closed economy — Principles and tradeoffs By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 28 Apr 2020 13:55:02 +0000 In an extraordinary response to an extraordinary public health challenge, the U.S. government has forced much of the economy to shut down. We now face the challenge of deciding when and how to reopen it. This is both vital and complicated. Wait too long—maintain the lockdown until we have a vaccine, for instance—and we’ll have another Great Depression. Move too soon, and we… Full Article
ar Hutchins Roundup: Consumer spending, salary history bans, and more. By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 30 Apr 2020 15:42:07 +0000 Studies in this week’s Hutchins Roundup find that consumer spending has fallen sharply because of COVID-19, salary history bans have increased women’s earnings relative to men’s, and more. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday. Consumer spending falls sharply because of COVID-19… Full Article
ar How did COVID-19 disrupt the market for U.S. Treasury debt? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 01 May 2020 12:41:44 +0000 The COVID-19 pandemic—in addition to posing a severe threat to public health—has disrupted the economy and financial markets, and prompted a strong desire among investors for safe and liquid securities. In that environment, one might expect U.S. Treasury securities to be the investment of choice, but for a while in March, the $18 trillion market… Full Article
ar Artificial intelligence and bias: Four key challenges By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 03 Jan 2019 19:00:04 +0000 It is not news that, for all its promised benefits, artificial intelligence has a bias problem. Concerns regarding racial or gender bias in AI have arisen in applications as varied as hiring, policing, judicial sentencing, and financial services. If this extraordinary technology is going to reach its full potential, addressing bias will need to be… Full Article
ar Artificial intelligence, deepfakes, and the uncertain future of truth By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 14 Feb 2019 16:03:36 +0000 Deepfakes are videos that have been constructed to make a person appear to say or do something that they never said or did. With artificial intelligence-based methods for creating deepfakes becoming increasingly sophisticated and accessible, deepfakes are raising a set of challenging policy, technology, and legal issues. Deepfakes can be used in ways that are… Full Article
ar Products liability law as a way to address AI harms By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 31 Oct 2019 04:03:44 +0000 Artificial intelligence (AI) is a transformative technology that will have a profound impact on manufacturing, robotics, transportation, agriculture, modeling and forecasting, education, cybersecurity, and many other applications. The positive benefits of AI are enormous. For example, AI-based systems can lead to improved safety by reducing the risks of injuries arising from human error. AI-based systems… Full Article
ar Ways to mitigate artificial intelligence problems By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:34:57 +0000 The world is experiencing extraordinary advances in artificial intelligence, with applications being deployed in finance, health care, education, e-commerce, criminal justice, and national defense, among other areas. As AI technology advances across industries and into everyday use around the world, important questions must be addressed regarding transparency, fairness, privacy, ethics, and human safety. What are… Full Article
ar Artificial intelligence, geopolitics, and information integrity By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 30 Jan 2020 05:01:06 +0000 Much has been written, and rightly so, about the potential that artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to create and promote misinformation. But there is a less well-recognized but equally important application for AI in helping to detect misinformation and limit its spread. This dual role will be particularly important in geopolitics, which is closely… Full Article
ar Toward a Containment Strategy for Smallpox Bioterror: An Individual-Based Computational Approach By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Sun, 01 Dec 2002 00:00:00 -0500 Abstract An individual-based computational model of smallpox epidemics in a two-town county is presented and used to develop strategies for bioterror containment. A powerful and feasible combination of preemptive and reactive vaccination and isolation strategies is developed which achieves epidemic quenching while minimizing risks of adverse side effects. Calibration of the model to historical data is described. Various model extensions and applications to other public health problems are noted. Downloads Download Authors Derek CummingsDonald S. BurkeJoshua M. EpsteinRamesh M. SingaShubha Chakravarty Full Article
ar Toward a Containment Strategy for Smallpox Bioterror : An Individual-Based Computational Approach By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 01 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0400 Brookings Institution Press 2004 55pp. In the United States, routine smallpox vaccination ended in 1972. The level of immunity remaining in the U.S. population is uncertain, but is generally assumed to be quite low. Smallpox is a deadly and infectious pathogen with a fatality rate of 30 percent. If smallpox were successfully deployed as an agent of bioterrorism today, the public health and economic consequences could be devastating. Toward a Containment Strategy for Smallpox Bioterror describes the scientific results and policy implications of a simulation of a smallpox epidemic in a two-town county. The model was developed by an interdisicplinary team from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Brookings Institution Center on Social and Economic Dynamics, employing agent-based and other advanced computational techniques. Such models are playing a critical role in the crafting of a national strategy for the containment of smallpox by providing public health policymakers with a variety of novel and feasible approaches to vaccination and isolation under different circumstances. The extension of these techniques to the containment of emerging pathogens, such as SARS, is discussed. About the Authors: Joshua M. Epstein and Shubha Chakravarty are with the Brookings Institution. Derek A. T. Cummings, Ramesh M. Singha, and Donald S. Burke are with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Derek Cummings Donald S. Burke Joshua M. Epstein Ramesh M. Singa Shubha Chakravarty Downloads Sample Chapter Ordering Information: {9ABF977A-E4A6-41C8-B030-0FD655E07DBF}, 978-0-8157-2455-1, $19.95 Add to Cart Full Article
ar Coupled Contagion Dynamics of Fear and Disease: Mathematical and Computational Explorations By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:46:20 -0500 Published version of the CSED October 2007 Working Paper ABSTRACT Background In classical mathematical epidemiology, individuals do not adapt their contact behavior during epidemics. They do not endogenously engage, for example, in social distancing based on fear. Yet, adaptive behavior is well-documented in true epidemics. We explore the effect of including such behavior in models of epidemic dynamics. Methodology/Principal Findings Using both nonlinear dynamical systems and agent-based computation, we model two interacting contagion processes: one of disease and one of fear of the disease. Individuals can “contract” fear through contact with individuals who are infected with the disease (the sick), infected with fear only (the scared), and infected with both fear and disease (the sick and scared). Scared individuals–whether sick or not–may remove themselves from circulation with some probability, which affects the contact dynamic, and thus the disease epidemic proper. If we allow individuals to recover from fear and return to circulation, the coupled dynamics become quite rich, and can include multiple waves of infection. We also study flight as a behavioral response. Conclusions/Significance In a spatially extended setting, even relatively small levels of fear-inspired flight can have a dramatic impact on spatio-temporal epidemic dynamics. Self-isolation and spatial flight are only two of many possible actions that fear-infected individuals may take. Our main point is that behavioral adaptation of some sort must be considered.”View full paper » View factsheet » Downloads Download Authors Derek CummingsJoshua M. EpsteinRoss A. HammondJon Parker, Center on Social and Economic Dynamics Publication: PLoS One Journal Full Article
ar Made in Africa: Toward an industrialization strategy for the continent By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 Since 1995, Africa’s explosive economic growth has taken place without the changes in economic structure that normally occur as incomes per person rise. In particular, Africa’s experience with industrialization has been disappointing, especially as, historically, industry has been a driving force behind structural change. The East Asian “Miracle” is a manufacturing success story, but sub-Saharan… Full Article
ar Africa’s industrialization in the era of the 2030 Agenda: From political declarations to action on the ground By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 15 Sep 2016 13:17:27 +0000 Although African countries enjoyed fast economic growth based on high commodity prices over the past decade, this growth has not translated into the economic transformation the continent needs to eradicate extreme poverty and enjoy economic prosperity. Now, more than ever, the necessity for Africa to industrialize is being stressed at various international forums, ranging from… Full Article
ar Overcoming barriers: Sustainable development, productive cities, and structural transformation in Africa By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 15 Sep 2016 13:19:27 +0000 Against a background of protracted decline in global commodity prices and renewed focus on the Africa rising narrative, Africa is proving resilient, underpinned by strong economic performance in non-commodity exporting countries. The rise of African cities contains the potential for new engines for the continent’s structural transformation, if harnessed properly. However, the susceptibility of Africa’s… Full Article
ar Are certain countries doomed to remain emerging? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 05 Oct 2016 19:52:58 +0000 1.1 What's the issue? Incomes in developed and developing countries have been converging, especially since the turn of the century, but the unevenness of that trajectory merits further examination. Beginning in the early the 2000s, the average per capita income of developing countries (adjusted for purchasing power parity) has increased substantially relative to the average… Full Article
ar Italy’s hazardous new experiment: Genetically modified populism By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 01 Jun 2018 16:48:25 +0000 Finally, three months after its elections, Italy has produced a new creature in the political biosphere: a “populist but technocratic” government. What we will be watching is not really the result of a Frankenstein experiment, rather something closer to a genetically modified organism. Such a pairing is probably something unheard of in history: Into a… Full Article
ar Trans-Atlantic Scorecard – January 2019 By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 18 Jan 2019 17:00:33 +0000 Welcome to the second edition of the Trans-Atlantic Scorecard, a quarterly evaluation of U.S.-European relations produced by Brookings’s Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE), as part of the Brookings – Robert Bosch Foundation Transatlantic Initiative. To produce the Scorecard, we poll Brookings scholars and other experts on the present state of U.S. relations… Full Article
ar Trans-Atlantic Scorecard – April 2019 By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 19 Apr 2019 15:37:02 +0000 Welcome to the third edition of the Trans-Atlantic Scorecard, a quarterly evaluation of U.S.-European relations produced by Brookings’s Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE), as part of the Brookings – Robert Bosch Foundation Transatlantic Initiative. To produce the Scorecard, we poll Brookings scholars and other experts on the present state of U.S. relations… Full Article
ar Secular divergence: Explaining nationalism in Europe By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 16 May 2019 17:23:25 +0000 Executive summary The doctrine of nationalism will continue eroding Europe’s integration until its hidden cause is recognized and addressed. In order to do so, Europe’s policymakers must acknowledge a new, powerful, and pervasive factor of social and political change: divergence within countries, sectors, jobs, or local communities. The popularity of the nationalist rhetoric should not… Full Article
ar Italy’s political turmoil shows that parliaments can confront populists By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 09 Sep 2019 13:44:02 +0000 Italy has a certain experience in changes of government, having seen 68 different governments in 73 years. However, even by Italian standards, what happened this summer to the first populist government in an advanced economy is unusual, to say the least. It is also instructive for other countries, showing the key roles of parliaments and… Full Article
ar Trans-Atlantic Scorecard – October 2019 By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 23 Oct 2019 14:38:07 +0000 Welcome to the fifth edition of the Trans-Atlantic Scorecard, a quarterly evaluation of U.S.-European relations produced by Brookings’s Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE), as part of the Brookings – Robert Bosch Foundation Transatlantic Initiative. To produce the Scorecard, we poll Brookings scholars and other experts on the present state of U.S. relations… Full Article
ar Trans-Atlantic Scorecard – January 2020 By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Welcome to the sixth edition of the Trans-Atlantic Scorecard, a quarterly evaluation of U.S.-European relations produced by Brookings’s Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE), as part of the Brookings – Robert Bosch Foundation Transatlantic Initiative. To produce the Scorecard, we poll Brookings scholars and other experts on the present state of U.S. relations… Full Article
ar In the Wake of BCRA: An Early Report on Campaign Finance in the 2004 Elections By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 15 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0400 ABSTRACT: Early experience with federal campaign finance reform suggests that the new law is fulfilling its primary objective of severing links between policymakers and large donors, and thus reducing the potential for corruption in the political process. Instead of languishing or seeking to circumvent the law, the national political parties have responded to the ban on soft money by increasing their hard money resources. While outside groups appear active, particularly on the Democratic side, their soft money financing should remain a small fraction of what candidates and parties will raise and spend in the 2004 Elections.To read the full article, please visit The Forum's website Authors Anthony CorradoThomas E. Mann Publication: The Forum Full Article
ar Candidates, Parties Fine-Tune Spending Strategies By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0400 There's a little more than a week to go before the Democratic National Convention begins in Boston. Senator John Kerry is both raising and spending money at a furious pace. The Kerry campaign raised about $182 million from March through June. Senator Kerry also outspent President George Bush in advertising throughout most of the summer. But the president still has more cash on hand, reportedly $63 million at the end of May. That's the latest figure available. The president also has more time to spend that money before accepting his Republican nomination on September 2. Anthony Corrado is an expert on campaign finance. Listen to the entire interview Authors Anthony Corrado Publication: NPR's Weekend Edition Full Article
ar Party Fundraising Success Continues Through Mid-Year By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0400 With only a few months remaining before the 2004 elections, national party committees continue to demonstrate financial strength and noteworthy success in adapting to the more stringent fundraising rules imposed by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA). A number of factors, including the deep partisan divide in the electorate, the expectations of a close presidential race, and the growing competition in key Senate and House races, have combined with recent party investments in new technology and the emergence of the Internet as a major fundraising tool to produce what one party chairman has described as a "perfect storm" for party fundraising.1 Consequently, both national parties have exceeded the mid-year fundraising totals achieved in 2000, and both approach the general election with substantial amounts of money in the bank.After eighteen months of experience under the new rules, the national parties are still outpacing their fundraising efforts of four years ago. As of June 30, the national parties have raised $611.1 million in federally regulated hard money alone, as compared to $535.6 million in hard and soft money combined at a similar point in the 2000 election cycle. The Republicans lead the way, taking in more than $381 million as compared to about $309 million in hard and soft money by the end of June in 2000. The Democrats have also raised more, bringing in $230 million as compared to about $227 million in hard and soft money four years ago. Furthermore, with six months remaining in the election cycle, both national parties have already raised more hard money than they did in the 2000 election cycle.2 In fact, by the end of June, every one of the Democratic and Republican national party committees had already exceeded its hard money total for the entire 2000 campaign.3 This surge in hard money fundraising has allowed the national party committees to replace a substantial portion of the revenues they previously received through unlimited soft money contributions. Through June, these committees have already taken in enough additional hard money to compensate for the $254 million of soft money that they had garnered by this point in 2000, which represented a little more than half of their $495 million in total soft money receipts in the 2000 election cycle.View the accompanying data tables (PDF - 11.4 KB) 1Terrence McAuliffe, Democratic National Committee Chairman, quoted in Paul Fahri, "Small Donors Grow Into Big Political Force," Washington Post, May 3, 2004, p. A11.2In 2000, the Republican national party committees raised $361.6 million in hard money, while the Democratic national committees raised $212.9 million. These figures are based on unadjusted data and do not take into account any transfers of funds that may have taken place among the national party committees.3The election cycle totals for 2000 can be found in Federal Election Commission, "FEC Reports Increase in Party Fundraising for 2000," press release, May 15, 2001. Available at http://www.fec.gov/press/press2001/051501partyfund/051501partyfund.html (viewed July 28, 2004). Downloads DownloadData Tables Authors Anthony Corrado Full Article
ar Campaign Reform in the Networked Age: Fostering Participation through Small Donors and Volunteers By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:30:00 -0500 Event Information January 14, 201010:30 AM - 12:00 PM ESTFalk AuditoriumThe Brookings Institution1775 Massachusetts Ave., NWWashington, DC Register for the EventThe 2008 elections showcased the power of the Internet to generate voter enthusiasm, mobilize volunteers and increase small-donor contributions. After the political world has been arguing about campaign finance policy for decades, the digital revolution has altered the calculus of participation.On January 14, a joint project of the Campaign Finance Institute, American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution unveiled a new report that seeks to change the ongoing national dialogue about money in politics. At this event, the four authors of the report will detail their findings and recommendations. Relying on lessons from the record-shattering 2008 elections and the rise of Internet campaigning, experts will present a new vision of how campaign finance and communications policy can help further democracy through broader participation. Video Thomas MannMichael MalbinAnthony CorradoNorm Ornstein Audio Campaign Reform in the Networked Age: Fostering Participation through Small Donors and Volunteers Transcript Transcript (.pdf) Event Materials 20090114_campaign_finance Full Article
ar Party Polarization and Campaign Finance By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 00:00:00 -0400 There is a lively debate today over whether or not campaign finance reforms have weakened the role of political parties in campaigns. This seems an odd argument in an era of historically high levels of party loyalty — on roll calls in Congress and voting in the electorate. Are parties too strong and unified or too weak and fragmented? Have they been marginalized in the financing of elections or is their role at least as strong as it has ever been? Does the party role in campaign finance (weak or strong) materially shape the capacity to govern? In addition, the increasing involvement in presidential and congressional campaigns of large donors – especially through Super PACs and politically-active nonprofit organizations – has raised serious concerns about whether the super-wealthy are buying American democracy. Ideologically-based outside groups financed by wealthy donors appear to be sharpening partisan differences and resisting efforts to forge agreement across parties. Many reformers have advocated steps to increase the number of small donors to balance the influence of the wealthy. But some scholars have found evidence suggesting that small donors are more polarizing than large donors. Can that be true? If so, are there channels other than the ideological positioning of the parties through which small donors might play a more constructive role in our democracy? In this paper, Thomas Mann and Anthony Corrado attempt to shed light on both of these disputed features of our campaign finance system and then assess whether campaign finance reform offers promise for reducing polarization and strengthening American democracy. They conclude that not only is campaign finance reform a weak tool for depolarizing American political parties, but some break in the party wars is probably a prerequisite to any serious pushback to the broader deregulation of campaign finance now underway. Downloads Download the paper Authors Thomas E. MannAnthony Corrado Image Source: © Gary Cameron / Reuters Full Article
ar New Paper: Party Polarization and Campaign Finance By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 11:00:00 -0400 The Supreme Court’s recent McCutcheon decision has reinvigorated the discussion on how campaign finance affects American democracy. Seeking to dissect the complex relationship between political parties, partisan polarization, and campaign finance, Tom Mann and Anthony Corrado’s new paper on Party Polarization and Campaign Finance reviews the landscape of hard and soft money in federal elections and asks whether campaign finance reform can abate polarization and strengthen governing capacity in the United States. The paper tackles two popular contentions within the campaign finance debate: First, has campaign finance reform altered the role of political parties as election financiers and therefore undermined deal making and pragmatism? Second, would a change in the composition of small and large individual donors decrease polarization in the parties? The Role of Political Parties in Campaign Finance Political parties have witnessed a number of shifts in their campaign finance role, including McCain-Feingold’s ban on party soft money in 2002. This has led many to ask if the breakdown in compromise and governance and the rise of polarization has come about because parties have lost the power to finance elections. To assess that claim, the authors track the amount of money crossing national and state party books as an indicator of party strength. The empirical evidence shows no significant decrease in party strength post 2002 and holds that “both parties have compensated for the loss of soft money with hard money receipts.” In fact, the parties have upped their spending on congressional candidates more than six-fold since 1980. Despite the ban on soft money, the parties remain major players in federal elections. Large and Small Donors in National Campaigns Mann and Corrado turn to non-party money and survey the universe of individual donors to evaluate “whether small, large or mega-donors are most likely to fuel or diminish the polarization that increasingly defines the political landscape.” The authors map the size and shape of individual giving and confront the concern that Super PACs, politically active nonprofits, and the super-wealthy are buying out American democracy. They ask: would a healthier mix of small and large donors reduce radicalization and balance out asymmetric polarization between the parties? The evidence suggests that increasing the role of small donors would have little effect on partisan polarization in either direction because small donors tend to be highly polarized. Although Mann and Corrado note that a healthier mix would champion democratic ideals like civic participation and equality of voice. Taking both points together, Mann and Corrado find that campaign finance reform is insufficient for depolarizing the parties and improving governing capacity. They argue forcefully that polarization emerges from a broader political and partisan problem. Ultimately, they assert that, “some break in the party wars is probably a prerequisite to any serious pushback to the broader deregulation of campaign finance now underway.” Click to read Mann and Corrado’s full paper, Party Polarization and Campaign Finance. Authors Ashley Gabriele Image Source: © Gary Cameron / Reuters Full Article
ar Artificial Intelligence Won’t Save Us From Coronavirus By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Sun, 26 Apr 2020 20:58:02 +0000 Full Article
ar Webinar: Telehealth before and after COVID-19 By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 27 Apr 2020 14:35:44 +0000 The coronavirus outbreak has generated an immediate need for telehealth services to prevent further infections in the delivery of health care. Before the global pandemic, federal and state regulations around reimbursement and licensure requirements limited the use of telehealth. Private insurance programs and Medicaid have historically excluded telehealth from their coverage, and state parity laws… Full Article