The potential for confrontation between the United States and Iran, stemming from ongoing tensions over Iran’s nuclear program and western covert actions intended to delay or degrade it, remains a pressing concern for U.S. policymakers. The Saban Center for Middle East Policy hosted a one-day crisis simulation in September that explored different scenarios should a confrontation occur.

The Saban Center's new Middle East Memo, A Series of Unfortunate Events: A Crisis Simulation of a U.S.-Iranian Confrontation, authored by senior fellow Kenneth M. Pollack, presents lessons and observations from the exercise.

Key findings include:

• Growing tensions are significantly reducing the “margin of error” between the two sides, increasing the potential for miscalculations to escalate to a conflict between the two countries.

• Should Iran make significant progress in enriching fissile material, both sides would have a powerful incentive to think short-term rather than long-term, in turn reinforcing the propensity for rapid escalation.

• U.S. policymakers must recognize the possibility that Iranian rhetoric about how the Islamic Republic would react in various situations may prove consistent with actual Iranian actions.

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Fee-for-service payments encourage high-volume services rather than high-quality care. Alternative payment models (APMs) aim to realign financing to support high-value services.

The 2 main components of gastroenterologic care, procedures and chronic care management, call for a range of APMs. The first step for gastroenterologists is to identify the most important conditions and opportunities to improve care and reduce waste that do not require financial support.

We describe examples of delivery reforms and emerging APMs to accomplish these care improvements. A bundled payment for an episode of care, in which a provider is given a lump sum payment to cover the cost of services provided during the defined episode, can support better care for a discrete procedure such as a colonoscopy. Improved management of chronic conditions can be supported through a per-member, per-month (PMPM) payment to offer extended services and care coordination.

For complex chronic conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease, in which the gastroenterologist is the principal care coordinator, the PMPM payment could be given to a gastroenterology medical home. For conditions in which the gastroenterologist acts primarily as a consultant for primary care, such as noncomplex gastroesophageal reflux or hepatitis C, a PMPM payment can support effective care coordination in a medical neighborhood delivery model. Each APM can be supplemented with a shared savings component.

Gastroenterologists must engage with and be early leaders of these redesign discussions to be prepared for a time when APMs may be more prevalent and no longer voluntary.

Download "Shifting Away From Fee-For-Service: Alternative Approaches to Payment in Gastroenterology" »

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Introduction

President Obama has proposed expanding the Peace Corps and building a global network of volunteers, “so that Americans work side-by-side with volunteers from other countries.” Achieving this goal will require building on the success of the Peace Corps with a new combination of public and private initiatives designed to expand opportunities for volunteers to address critical global problems such as poverty, contagious diseases, climate change, and conflict.

We examine alternative service models, both domestic and foreign, and offer recommendations to the Obama Administration for harnessing the energy and skills of Americans eager to engage in volunteer work in foreign countries as part of a multilateral mobilization effort and smart power diplomacy.

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International volunteer service is defined as an organized period of engagement and contribution to society by individuals who volunteer across an international border. There is growing interest in the potential of international service to foster international understanding between peoples and nations and to promote global citizenship and intercultural cooperation. Studies suggest that international service develops skills, mindsets, behaviors and networks that prepare volunteers for living and working in a knowledge-based global economy. Many believe that even short-term experiences abroad can begin to prepare participants for longer-term engagement and future international service.

International service may be growing in prevalence worldwide. In the United States, more than one million Americans reported volunteering abroad in 2008. Despite the scale of international service, its impacts are not well understood. Although there is a growing body of descriptive evidence about the various models and intended outcomes of international service, the overwhelming majority of research is based on case and cross-sectional studies, which do not permit conclusions about the impacts of international service. Scholars and practitioners in the field have called for rigorous research that documents impacts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Event Information

On June 23, Global Economy and Development at Brookings and Washington University’s Center for Social Development hosted a forum to examine how international volunteering and service serve as critical tools for meeting global challenges.

The forum framed international service as an integral component of “smart power” diplomacy and as a cost effective way to build cross-cultural bridges. Ambassador Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, special representative for global partnerships at the U.S. Department of State, delivered a keynote address on how the United States can better promote international service and its impact on American diplomacy, national security and global economies.

The research panel released new data on the impact of international service on volunteers, host communities and host country perceptions of volunteers from the United States. Policymakers and sector leaders discussed options for enhancing international service, and provided recommendations for bringing global service to the forefront of American foreign policy initiatives.

View the keynote speech by Ambassador Bagley »

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• Global Development's National Responsibility
• Emphasize Core Competencies in Volunteering
• Shared Global Responses to Shared Global Problems
• Young People Want To Make World Better Place
• Data Are Important to Enhancing Volunteerism

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• International Volunteering and Service
• International Volunteering and Service
• International Volunteering and Service
• International Volunteering and Service

Transcript

• Full Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)
• Welcoming Remarks, Opening Remarks and Keynote - Transcript (.pdf)
• Panel One - Transcript (.pdf)
• Panel Two - Transcript (.pdf)
• Closing Remarks - Transcript (.pdf)

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• 20100623_volunteering
• 20100623_volunteering_intro
• 20100623_volunteering_panel1
• 20100623_volunteering_panel2
• 20100623_volunteering_closing_remarks

David Caprara, a Brookings nonresident fellow and expert on volunteering, says that John F. Kennedy’s call to service a half-century ago led to the founding of dozens of international aid organizations, and leaves a legacy of programs aimed at improving health, nutrition, education, living standards and peaceful cooperation around the globe.

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• International Volunteering

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• @ Brookings Podcast: International Volunteers and the 50th Anniversary of the Peace Corps

Last October, 200 students from Colombia's Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje (SENA) worked the floor of the campus coliseum at Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla. They were among 900 youth volunteer leaders from nearly 40 nations who had traveled the globe to join the second World Summit for Youth Volunteering, convened by Partners of the Americas and the International Association for Volunteer Effort (IAVE) on the 10th anniversary of the United Nations International Year of Volunteers.

As a developing country, Colombia’s increased civil society participation through volunteering is focused on extending poverty-reduction efforts to levels that the government cannot achieve on its own. Volunteers represent a powerful demographic for a new "service generation" by providing a dual benefit. First, volunteering provides critical services in areas such as education and asset development, which are needed to reduce extreme poverty; second, it connects a new generation with like-minded individuals across the world, which provides young people the professional and leadership skills needed to further access to employment opportunities including entrepreneurship.

For SENA, one of the world's largest educational institutions with more than four million students across Colombia, the opportunity was clear: engage talented and often under resourced youth in Colombia — one of the most economically unequal countries in the world– with innovative global volunteer leaders. According to research from Brookings and the Center for Social Development at Washington University, these types of global volunteering connections have the potential to enhance skills development while increasing social capital networks.

Extreme poverty, along with armed conflict, is one of the highest priorities of the Colombian government. Coincidentally, during the same week as the World Summit, the Colombian armed forces eliminated the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) leader Alfonso Cano while President Santos created a new national superagency to combat extreme poverty. The strategic focus on poverty reduction includes a strong role for civil society as a partner with the government in meeting the U.N. Millennium Development Goals and other development commitments. Civil society plays an essential role in overcoming internal conflict. And the youth services generation is among some of the most effective in civil society in working to help their country tackle poverty.

Colombia is certainly not the only country where youth have taken the lead through service to combat poverty. Attendees at the summit heard from Australian humanitarian Hugh Evans, who at 14 began his work to create the Global Poverty Project. In 2006, Evans became one of the pivotal leaders behind the successful Make Poverty History campaign, leading a team across Australia to lobby the country’s government to increase its foreign aid commitment to 0.7 percent of gross national income.

Whether or not SENA’s youth will be able to capitalize on their new connections with global service leaders to combat extreme poverty in Colombia is left to be seen. But the SENA volunteers and their international counterparts are more motivated to do so after gaining access to resources and social capital networks with other inspiring young leaders. That is a cause for celebration as the United Nations releases its State of the World Volunteering report in New York in December at a special session of the U.N. General Assembly.

Event Information

The Building Bridges Coalition was launched at the Brookings Institution in June 2006 to promote the role of volunteer service in achieving development goals and to highlight research and policy issues across the field in the United States and abroad. Among other efforts, the coalition promotes innovation, scaling up, and best practices for international volunteers working in development.

On June 14, the Brookings Institution and the Building Bridges Coalition co-hosted a 10th anniversary forum on the role of volunteers in achieving the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 and on the coalition’s impact research. General Stanley McChrystal was the keynote speaker and discussed initiatives to make a year of civilian service as much a part of growing up in America as going to high school.

Afterwards, three consecutive panels discussed how to provide a multi-stakeholder platform for the advancement of innovative U.S.-global alliances with nongovernmental organizations, faith-based entities, university consortia, and the private sector in conjunction with the launch of the global track of Service Year Alliance.

For more information on the forum and the Building Bridges Coalition, click here.

Video

• Welcoming remarks and featured speaker
• Panel 1 — Role of volunteer service in achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals
• Panel 2 — Policy perspective: National and international service in the next administration
• Panel 3 — One million Americans in global service: The role of faith-based service

Audio

• International volunteer service and the 2030 development agenda

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160614_volunteering_development_transcript

Dear Members of the Senate,

As you know, the Senate has debated the merits of the filibuster and related procedural rules for over two centuries. Recently, several senators who are advocating changes to Senate Rule XXII have renewed this discussion. We write this letter today to clarify some of the common historical and constitutional misperceptions about the filibuster and Rule XXII that all too often surface during debates about Senate rules.

First, many argue that senators have a constitutional right to extended debate. However, there is no explicit constitutional right to filibuster.^[1] In fact, there is ample evidence that the framers preferred majority rather than supermajority voting rules. The framers knew full well the difficulties posed by supermajority rules, given their experiences in the Confederation Congress under the Articles of Confederation (which required a supermajority vote to pass measures on the most important matters). A common result was stalemate; legislators frequently found themselves unable to muster support from a supermajority of the states for essential matters of governing. In the Constitution, the framers specified that supermajority votes would be necessary in seven, extraordinary situations -which they specifically listed (including overriding a presidential veto, expelling a member of the Senate, and ratifying a treaty). These, of course, are all voting requirements for passing measures, rather than rules for bringing debate to a close.

Second, although historical lore says that the filibuster was part of the original design of the Senate, there is no empirical basis for that view. There is no question that the framers intended the Senate to be a deliberative body. But they sought to achieve that goal through structural features of the chamber intended to facilitate deliberation -such as the Senate's smaller size, longer and staggered terms, and older members. There is no historical evidence that the framers anticipated that the Senate would adopt rules allowing for a filibuster. In fact, the first House and the first Senate had nearly identical rule books, both of which included a motion to move the previous question. The House converted that rule into a simple majority cloture rule early in its history. The Senate did not.

What happened to the Senate's previous question motion? In 1805, as presiding officer of the Senate, Vice President Aaron Burr recommended a pruning of the Senate's rules. He singled out the previous question motion as unnecessary (keeping in mind that the rule had not yet routinely been used in either chamber as a simple majority cloture motion). When senators met in 1806 to re-codify the rules, they deleted the previous question motion from the Senate rulebook. Senators did so not because they sought to create the opportunity to filibuster; they abandoned the motion as a matter of procedural housekeeping. Deletion of the motion took away one of the possible avenues for cutting off debate by majority vote, but did not constitute a deliberate choice to allow obstruction. The first documented filibusters did not occur until the 1830s, and for the next century they were rare (but often effective) occurrences in a chamber in which majorities generally reigned.

Finally, the adoption of Rule XXII in 1917 did not reflect a broad-based Senate preference for a supermajority cloture rule. At that time, a substantial portion of the majority party favored a simple majority rule. But many minority party members preferred a supermajority cloture rule, while others preferred no cloture rule at all. A bargain was struck: Opponents of reform promised not to block the rule change and proponents of reform promised not to push for a simple majority cloture rule. The two-thirds threshold, in other words, was the product of bargaining and compromise with the minority. As has been typical of the Senate's past episodes of procedural change, pragmatic politics largely shaped reform of the Senate's rules.

We hope this historical perspective on the origins of the filibuster and Rule XXII will be helpful to you as matters of reform are raised and debated. Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can provide additional clarification.

Very truly yours,

Sarah Binder
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution
Professor of Political Science, George Washington University

Gregory Koger
Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Miami

Thomas E. Mann
W. Averell Harriman Chair & Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution

Norman Ornstein
Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

Eric Schickler
Jeffrey & Ashley McDermott Endowed Chair & Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley

Barbara Sinclair
Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics Emerita, University of California, Los Angeles

Steven S. Smith
Kate M. Gregg Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences & Professor of Political Science, Washington University

Gregory J. Wawro
Deputy Chair & Associate Professor of Political Science, Columbia University

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"We are now locked in a rolling filibuster on every issue, which is totally gridlocking the U.S. Senate. That is wrong. It is wrong for America."

Who said that? Democrat Harry Reid, majority leader of the Senate? Guess again. Try former Republican leader Trent Lott, bemoaning the troubled state of the Senate in the late 1990s.

No recent majority leader of either party has been saved the headache of trying to lead a Senate in which minorities can exploit the rules and stymie the chamber. This is not a new problem. Harry Reid may face a particularly unrestrained minority. But generations of Senate leaders from Henry Clay to Bill Frist have felt compelled to seek changes in Senate rules to make the chamber a more governable place.

Some things never change.

Twice this week, the Senate has opened debate with its party leaders engaged in a caustic battle over Reid's plans to seek changes to Senate rules in January.

Read the full piece at CNN.com »

As the clock runs out on the dysfunctional 112th Congress, few have been impressed by its paltry record and balky performance. But pardon my glee: December has been a great month for students of Congress. First, the House leadership was handed a blistering defeat on its “Plan B” to resolve the fiscal cliff. Next, while their leaders were meeting to negotiate an 11th hour of the 12th month fiscal cliff deal, eight senators unveiled a bipartisan proposal to head off a Democratic threat to change the rules by majority vote. When it rains, it pours!

The reform package—addressing “talking filibusters” and filibusters on procedural motions – deserves a bit more attention. And it deserves an appropriate historical illustration: To the right, a 1928 Chicago Tribune cartoon that features not the talking filibuster…but a sleeping one. Seems that talking filibusters might have been few and far between even back then.

Ezra Klein and Jon Bernstein have detailed the proposed changes and weighed in here and here, as has Steve Smith by tweet here and here. Since then, a coalition of nearly fifty liberal groups has rejected the proposal out of hand as watered down reform. To these several perspectives on the McCain-Levin plan, I would add the following thoughts:

First, these are at best incremental reforms. The majority leader would essentially gain the right to set the Senate’s agenda by majority vote, as a four-hour debate limit would be imposed on the motion to proceed. But the majority leader would pay a price for that new power: He would lose his power to block amendments (by “filling the tree”) and the minority bill manager and leader would be newly guaranteed an amendment each upon consideration of a legislative measure. (The majority leader, it seems, might still be able to fill the tree after the guaranteed amendments are dispensed with.) This change leaves untouched the sixty-vote threshold for invoking cloture on the measure or other amendments, similar to the plans of Democratic reformers. In short, the change tries to address the grievances of both the majority (by circumventing filibusters of the motion to proceed) and the minority (by creating and guaranteeing amendment opportunities).

Second, the incremental nature of the reforms is not accidental. Ezra has a point when he argues that this is “filibuster reform for people who don’t want to reform the filibuster.” Still, the incremental nature of the proposal strikes me as the price of negotiating procedural change in a legislative body whose rules already advantage the minority party: The majority gets a little only by giving a little. The barrier to reform is entrenched in the Senate’s cloture rule, given the supermajority required for ending filibusters of proposals that curtail minority rights. A Senate majority could circumvent that barrier by going nuclear with 51 votes, but that strategy is not cost-free. To be sure, reformers claim to have 51 votes for a reform-by-ruling move. But it’s not clear to me yet that the majority would be willing to pay the accompanying costs of weathering the minority’s response to going nuclear.

Third, the rules address leaders’ interests more so than those of the rank and file. Some of the proposed changes are aimed at time management. For example, with the consent of the majority and minority leaders and a bipartisan handful of senators , the cloture process is sped up markedly. Similarly, the three debatable steps required to get to conference are condensed to a single motion (albeit one still subject to sixty votes if the minority objects). Other proposed changes alleviate the minority leader from objecting on his colleagues’ behalf, undermining individual senators’ ability to threaten to filibuster without actually showing up. Then again, there’s no enforcement mechanism in the proposal: Senators would be counting on the minority leader to play by the new rules and to abandon his practice of lodging objections on behalf of his absent colleagues. It’s fair to be skeptical that such informal reforms would ever stick.

Fourth, I think there’s promise in the proposal’s directive to the presiding officer to put questions to a (majority) vote when opponents no longer seek to debate a bill. I share skeptics’ views that majorities might rarely want to hold the minority’s feet to the fire to wear down the opposition and that minorities might at times relish the spotlight while holding the floor. But the proposal strikes me as a potentially valuable chance to see if the change would make a difference. If approved, the McCain-Levin proposal would be adopted as a standing order of the Senate for just the upcoming Congress, providing a testing ground for this version of the talking filibuster. (Standing orders are typically approved opening day by unanimous consent; would there be such consent for McCain-Levin or another negotiated proposal?)

Finally, it may be that incremental procedural change is all that a polarized Senate can agree on—especially if some Democrats are skittish about changing the rules by majority vote. Granted, majority senators won’t agree to the plan if it’s perceived as empowering the minority, not the majority, as Senator Harkin has suggested. Nor should they. In that case, an incremental package may be more than a polarized Senate can agree on—leaving the nuclear option as the only avenue for Democrats seeking to rein in the excesses of the Senate minority’s parliamentary rights.

Today could have been the day when Senate Democrats went nuclear – reining in minority party abuse of the filibuster with a simple majority vote.  That would have been my Super Bowl.  Instead, the Senate is poised to adopt a bipartisan set of modest (many say, meager) changes to the Senate’s cloture rule.   More like the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, I say.

As many have noted (for starters, Ezra Klein here and Jonathan Bernstein here), the proposed changes to the Senate’s Rule 22 fall far short of what reformers had hoped for.  Much blame has been heaped on Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, and on a few senior Democrats, highlighting their resistance to abandoning the Senate’s sixty-vote threshold for bringing the chamber to a vote.  The reforms are modest, largely finding ways of speeding up the Senate once both parties have agreed on the matter at hand (for instance on the way to advancing a measure to the floor or after cutting off debate on a nomination).  Even if the changes may seem to many like small potatoes, I think there’s more to be gleaned from the Senate’s brush with reform.

First, take a little, give a little.  Today’s rule changes remind us that there is no free lunch when it comes to Senate reform.  That hurdle is built into Rule 22, given its requirement that 67 senators consent to a vote on efforts to reform Rule 22.  In the absence of majority willing to bear the costs of asserting the majority’s right to change its rules, Senate reform is necessarily bipartisan and incremental.  Reforms must secure the consent of the minority, or be packaged with changes judged equally important to the opposition.  (Recall that even when reformers reduced cloture to 60 votes in 1975, they paid a price: 67 votes would still be required to end debate on changing Rule 22.)  Today’s reforms allow a majority to circumvent filibusters of motions to proceed to legislative measures.  In return, the majority pays a price each time: The minority is guaranteed votes on two amendments, whereas previously recent leaders might have precluded all amendments by immediately “filling the tree.”  To be sure, this potentially dilutes the value of the rule change for the majority.   But concessions are dictated by the Senate’s inherited rules.  (And, of course, nothing is that simple when it comes to Senate rules; the majority may yet fill the tree, at least after the disposition of the minority’s amendments.)

Second, I suspect we might be underestimating the importance of a non-debatable motion to proceed for the majority party in a period of partisan polarization.  Judging from the increase in filibusters on the motions to proceed in recent years, minority parties have fought hard to keep bills off the floor that they oppose on policy or political grounds.   So long as the motion to proceed could be filibustered, majority and minority parties shared agenda-setting powers.  Today’s change grants the majority a slightly stronger hand in choosing the chamber agenda.  To be sure, the minority can still filibuster the bill and amendments beyond those newly guaranteed, but the reform undermines the minority’s ability to throw the majority off course.  Take immigration policy, for example.  Filibusters of the motion to proceed have kept the DREAM Act off the Senate floor in recent years.  Minority influence over the Senate’s agenda is diminished with today’s reform.

Third, these are leader-driven reforms, shaped by the unique burdens carried by the majority and (sometimes) minority leaders.  For example, the reforms speed up post-cloture debate on some judicial and executive branch nominations, and allow the chamber to hurry onto cloture votes on motions to proceed to legislative business when the minority offers a modicum of support.  No surprise that these housekeeping changes elicit little enthusiasm.   These changes don’t make it any easier for a majority to break sizable minority opposition.  And they potentially make it harder for rank and file senators to exploit the rules in pursuit of their own policy goals.  But from leaders’ perspectives, the reforms rein in the excesses of rank and file dissent when a bipartisan group is ready to move ahead.  As one Senate Democrat aide confided, “that’s all Reid ever really wanted.”

Finally, this episode highlights the limitation of the Constitutional option and other “reform-by-ruling” strategies.  There appears to have been a majority or near-majority support for securing only very limited reform of Rule 22.  Senators seem unwilling to use the tactic for a major overhaul of the Senate’s cloture rule—in part because of the fear of minority retaliation, in part because the filibuster rule likely serves as the foundation of senators’ power.   To be sure, Harry Reid aggressively used reform-by-ruling in the fall of 2011 to secure smaller changes to Rule 22 (as did Robert Byrd in the 1980s).  But we have to reach back nearly forty years to the 1975 reforms to find a Senate majority willing to go nuclear to impose major changes to Rule 22.  (Even then, reformers proceeded without the support of the majority leader, Mike Mansfield.)  Perhaps senators see the consequences of weakening Rule 22 in a different light when the parties polarize over policy problems and solutions, with senators nervous about curtailing extended debate when the tables turn on their majority.  Regardless, so long as majorities will only form to impose  minor reform by majority vote, those majorities will be forced to live under supermajority rules that daily frustrate their policy and political agendas.

And in the Senate’s world, those frustrating days can last for weeks!

It seems the Senate could have a really hot summer. Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has reportedly threatened to “go nuclear” this July—meaning that Senate Democrats would move by majority vote to ban filibusters of executive and judicial branch nominees. According to these reports, if Senate Republicans block three key nominations (Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Thomas Perez at Labor, and Gina McCarthy at EPA), Reid will call on the Democrats to invoke the nuclear option as a means of eliminating filibusters over nominees.

Jon Bernstein offered a thoughtful reaction to Reid’s gambit, noting that Reid’s challenge is to “find a way to ratchet up the threat of reform in order to push Republicans as far away from that line as possible.” Jon’s emphasis on Reid’s threat is important (and is worth reading in full).  Still, I think it’s helpful to dig a little deeper on the role of both majority and minority party threats that arise over the nuclear option.

Before getting to Reid’s threat, two brief detours. First, a parliamentary detour to make plain two reasons why Reid’s procedural gambit is deemed “nuclear.” First, Democrats envision using a set of parliamentary moves that would allow the Senate to cut off debate on nominations by majority vote (rather than by sixty votes). Republicans (at least when they are in the minority) call this “changing the rules by breaking the rules,” because Senate rules formally require a 2/3rds vote to break a filibuster of a measure to change Senate rules. The nuclear option would avoid the formal process of securing a 2/3rds vote to cut off debate; instead, the Senate would set a new precedent by simple majority vote to exempt nominations from the reach of Rule 22. If Democrats circumvent formal rules, Republicans would deem the move nuclear. Second, Reid’s potential gambit would be considered nuclear because of the anticipated GOP reaction: As Sen. Schumer argued in 2005 when the GOP tried to go nuclear over judges, minority party senators would “blow up every bridge in sight.” The nuclear option is so-called on account of the minority’s anticipated parliamentary reaction (which would ramp up obstruction on everything else).

A second detour notes simply that the exact procedural steps that would have to be taken to set a new precedent to exempt nominations from Rule 22 have not yet been precisely spelled out.  Over the years, several scenarios have been floated that give us a general outline of how the Senate could reform its cloture rule by majority vote. But a CRS report written in the heat of the failed GOP effort to go nuclear in 2005 points to the complications and uncertainties entailed in using a reform-by-ruling strategy to empower simple majorities to cut off debate on nominations. My sense is that using a nuclear option to restrict the reach of Rule 22 might not be as straight forward as many assume.

That gets us to the place of threats in reform-by-ruling strategies. The coverage of Reid’s intentions last week emphasized the importance of Reid’s threat to Republicans: Dare to cross the line by filibustering three particular executive branch nominees, and Democrats will go nuclear. But for Reid’s threat to be effective in convincing GOP senators to back down on these nominees, Republicans have to deem Reid’s threat credible. Republicans know that Reid refused by go nuclear last winter (and previously in January 2009), not least because a set of longer-serving Democrats opposed the strategy earlier this year. It would be reasonable for the GOP today to question whether Reid has 51 Democrats willing to ban judicial and executive branch nomination filibusters. If Republicans doubt Reid’s ability to detonate a nuclear device, then the threat won’t be much help in getting the GOP to back down. Of course, if Republicans don’t block all three nominees, observers will likely interpret the GOP’s behavior as a rational response to Reid’s threat. Eric Schickler and Greg Wawro in Filibuster suggest that the absence of reform on such occasions demonstrates that the nuclear option can “tame the minority.”  Reid’s threat would have done the trick.

As a potentially nuclear Senate summer approaches, I would keep handy an alternative interpretation.  Reid isn’t the only actor with a threat: given Republicans’ aggressive use of Rule 22, Republicans can credibly threaten to retaliate procedurally if the Democrats go nuclear.  And that might be a far more credible threat than Reid’s. We know from the report on Reid’s nuclear thinking that “senior Democratic Senators have privately expressed worry to the Majority Leader that revisiting the rules could imperil the immigration push, and have asked him to delay it until after immigration reform is done (or is killed).” That tidbit suggests that Democrats consider the GOP threat to retaliate as a near certainty. In other words, if Republicans decide not to block all three nominees and Democrats don’t go nuclear, we might reasonably conclude that the minority’s threat to retaliate was pivotal to the outcome. As Steve Smith, Tony Madonna and I argued some time ago, the nuclear option might be technically feasible but not necessarily politically feasible.

To be sure, it’s hard to arbitrate between these two competing mechanisms that might underlie Senate politics this summer.  In either scenario—the majority tames the minority or the minority scares the bejeezus out of the majority—the same outcome ensues: Nothing. Still, I think it’s important to keep these alternative interpretations at hand as Democrats call up these and other nominations this spring. The Senate is a tough nut to crack, not least when challenges to supermajority rule are in play.

UPDATE 4: Sarah Binder explores the questions, "Why did the Senate go nuclear now, and what will be the consequences for future majorities eager to further curtail the filibuster?"

UPDATE 2: Sarah Binder writes that "this is big" in another new post on Monkey Cage blog, "Boom! What the Senate will be like when the nuclear dust settles." 

UPDATE: Sarah Binder has a new post on Monkey Cage blog, in which she explains why GOP targeting of the D.C. circuit may not be as unprecedented as some think and why it would be difficult to parse out "acceptable" filibusters from those that aren't. "We'll learn soon enough," Binder writes, "if Democrats have the guts to go [nuclear] and, if so, whether that compels any Republicans to stand down."

Over the past few weeks, Senate Republicans have filibustered President Obama's three nominees to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, claiming alternatively that Obama was trying to pack the court and characterizing the court's caseload as lighter than other circuits. News reports now say that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is considering changing the filibuster rule for some executive and judicial nominees, the so-called "nuclear option.

In 2010, Brookings Senior Fellow Sarah Binder, an expert on Congress and congressional history, testified to the Senate that "the filibuster was created by mistake."

We have many received wisdoms about the filibuster. However, most of them are not true. The most persistent myth is that the filibuster was part of the founding fathers’ constitutional vision for the Senate: It is said that the upper chamber was designed to be a slow-moving, deliberative body that cherished minority rights. In this version of history, the filibuster was a critical part of the framers’ Senate.

However, when we dig into the history of Congress, it seems that the filibuster was created by mistake. Let me explain.

The House and Senate rulebooks in 1789 were nearly identical. Both rulebooks included what is known as the “previous question” motion. The House kept their motion, and today it empowers a simple majority to cut off debate. The Senate no longer has that rule on its books.

What happened to the Senate’s rule? In 1805, Vice President Aaron Burr was presiding over the Senate (freshly indicted for the murder of Alexander Hamilton), and he offered this advice. He said something like this. You are a great deliberative body. But a truly great Senate would have a cleaner rule book. Yours is a mess. You have lots of rules that do the same thing. And he singles out the previous question motion. Now, today, we know that a simple majority in the House can use the rule to cut off debate. But in 1805, neither chamber used the rule that way. Majorities were still experimenting with it. And so when Aaron Burr said, get rid of the previous question motion, the Senate didn’t think twice. When they met in 1806, they dropped the motion from the Senate rule book.

Why? Not because senators in 1806 sought to protect minority rights and extended debate. They got rid of the rule by mistake: Because Aaron Burr told them to.

Once the rule was gone, senators still did not filibuster. Deletion of the rule made possible the filibuster because the Senate no longer had a rule that could have empowered a simple majority to cut off debate. It took several decades until the minority exploited the lax limits on debate, leading to the first real-live filibuster in 1837.

Binder makes additional insightful points about the origin and historical uses of the Senate filibuster in that testimony to the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.

She also calls attention to another of Obama's recent judicial nominees: Ronnie White for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, which is yet another window, she says, on the "evolving wars of advice and consent."

Binder also has data on whether Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Senate GOP have "played fair" on President Obama's nominees.

For additional analysis about the filibuster, see Binder's "What Senate cloture votes tell us about obstruction," in which she wrote:

Ultimately, the rise of the 60-vote Senate in a period of polarized parties signals that the minority party has mastered the art of blocking the majority. Sometimes, the minority leader drives the opposition in his conference; other times, he follows it. Regardless, what’s true of the tango is also true of the Senate: It takes two parties to make it look good. The minority party no doubt often feels that the majority leader is too quick to call for a vote, and its members might reasonably oppose cloture on that ground. However, my sense is that far more often, majority leaders resort to cloture when they find themselves unable to cajole the minority party to cooperate. As the Senate GOP conference fractures between pragmatists and ideologues, securing GOP consent will likely become even harder. Counting cloture votes remains an imperfect — but still valid — method of capturing minority efforts to block the Senate.

Get all of Sarah Binder's research and commentary about the Senate filibuster on her bio page.

Sen. Harry Reid has gone ahead with the so-called "nuclear option" to attempt to change Senate filibuster rules on some executive branch nominations, passing the rule change with a 52-48 vote. In their Vital Statistics on Congress report, Brookings Senior Fellow Thomas Mann and AEI Resident Scholar Norman Ornstein provide data on the number of attempted Senate cloture votes taken from 1979 to 2012, the 96th to 112th Congresses. The chart below demonstrates the average attempted cloture vote taken by party when that party was in the minority.

For more data on both attempted and successful cloture votes sine 1919, look up table 6-7 in Vital Stats (PDF).

Senior Fellow Sarah Binder, a leading expert on Congress and congressional history who called, in 2010, the Senate filibuster a "mistake," offered a recent analysis of Senate cloture votes, writing that "Counting cloture votes remains an imperfect — but still valid — method of capturing minority efforts to block the Senate."

More recently, Binder wondered whether "Democrats have the guts to go there and, if so, whether that compels any Republicans to stand down."

In this podcast, congressional expert Sarah Binder explains why the Senate filibuster is a historical mistake. She talks about her research on Congress’s relationship with the Federal Reserve and addresses whether Congress is more polarized today than it has been in the past. Binder, a senior fellow in Governance Studies, is also a professor of political science at George Washington University and contributor to the Monkey Cage blog.

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Show notes:

• The Federal Reserve: Balancing Multiple Mandates (testimony by Alice Rivlin)
• Boom! What the Senate Will Be Like When the Nuclear Dust Settles
• Beyond the Horse Race to Lead the Fed
• Droning on: Thoughts on the Rand Paul “Talking Filibuster”
• Advice and Dissent: The Struggle to Shape the Federal Judiciary
• The History of the Filibuster

* In the image, Senator Henry Clay speaks about the Compromise of 1850 in the Old Senate Chamber. Daniel Webster is seated to the left of Clay and John C. Calhoun to the left of the Speaker's chair. (engraving by Robert Whitechurch, ca. 1880, Library of Congress)

Los Angeles has long been a city associated with the common ills of urban excess: sprawl, homelessness, and congestion. More charitable descriptions paint it as West Coast paradise, boasting sunshine and celebrities in equal measure.

A three-day visit to downtown Los Angeles exposed the nuances behind these stereotypes. Hosted by the Los Angeles Downtown Center Business Improvement District, which is focused on strengthening downtown as an innovation district, our visit began as a real estate tour but quickly revealed regeneration and innovation activity that confounded our expectations. 

Downtown LA (DTLA)’s innovation district focuses not just on tech firms but also on historic LA industry strengths like fashion, design, and real estate. LA may have sat in the shadow of the Silicon Valley tech boom, but it appears to be revitalizing in time for the convergence economy, in which tech is no longer a separate sector but ingrained in all forms of economic and creative activity.

And at a time where firms are revaluing proximity, vibrancy, and authenticity, DTLA could not be in a better place. While a number of U.S. cities subjected their downtowns to a range of urban renewal initiatives, the urban fabric of DTLA is largely intact. Vibrant areas like South Broadway feature boutique hotels, a dozen theatres, and clothing stores and bars that exist in historic infrastructure like reclaimed theatres. There is an urban feel that is authentically LA.

The initial renaissance of DTLA began in the late 1990s, after the residential units within its 65 blocks had dwindled to just 10,000.

Along with transportation improvements, permissive planning policies such as adaptive reuse—which allowed commercial buildings to be converted into residential use—were instrumental in increasing DTLA’s residential population. Since 1999, the residential population and housing units have tripled. With new bars and restaurants springing up on every corner, it is no surprise that three-quarters of DTLA’s current residents are aged between 23 and 44.

Building on this residential surge, an increasing number of businesses are now setting up or relocating downtown.

DTLA office space has not always been an easy sell. Employers balk at the prospect of subjecting their workforce to the punishing commute. And Bunker Hill and the adjacent Financial District, the epicenter of the central business district, offers little more than unpopulated plazas and cubicled office space.

DTLA has worked to serve its newfound residential population and attract more workers and companies by retrofitting buildings to modern aesthetic standards. The exposed brickwork and ceiling equipment of many DTLA offices like those of Nationbuilder, an online platform used for political and civic campaigns, is not just a statement of style but a conscious decision to make downtown office buildings feel hospitable to creative firms. The BLOC, a 1.9 million square foot retail development, is essentially a mall that has been turned inside out, with the roof removed to reveal an open air plaza, unrecognizable from the fortress-style building that once sat in the same spot.

While downtown’s office blocks are a fantastic asset in attracting innovation activity, the area also boasts a vast amount of warehouse space. These larger footprints, most often used for textile or food production, are attracting a range of activities that require space or, in the case of Tesla’s Hyperloop, secrecy. Such industrial firms are interspersed with new art galleries and a historic knitting mill, proof of the area’s artistic heritage.

The individuals leading the drive for a DTLA innovation district, such as Nick Griffin, director of Economic Development for the Downtown Center Business Improvement District, are realistic about challenges, such as the lack of quality public space, and proactive in leveraging existing assets, such as the large supply of creative office space.

These efforts and LA’s distinctive industry strengths are combatting one of the biggest challenges to attracting businesses downtown: the strength of competing areas like Silicon Beach, which includes Santa Monica and Playa del Rey and offers an established tech ecosystem alongside an attractive location.

Another challenge? Like many U.S. cities, LA bears the scars of suburban sprawl and a legacy of under investment in public transportation. Congestion is a constant complaint.

But here too LA is making progress.

In November, Angelinos will vote on an extension of Measure R—a 2008 ballot initiative raising the sales tax to fund core transportation projects—to provide sustainable funding for transportation infrastructure and improve access to the city center through the metro system.

Other ambitious projects, such as the Regional Connector, a light rail subway through the middle of downtown, will have a profound effect on the area's connectivity. This project is not just about getting people to and from downtown—it will also have a transformative effect on public space. The city is working with Project for Public Spaces to redesign one of the Connector’s hubs, Pershing Square, with the aim of providing a public space where employees and residents can convene and collaborate.

Connectivity will play a vital role in the continuing success of DTLA’s resurgence. But the DTLA innovation district’s main opportunity lies in better serving and connecting the people who make it work. With hometown authenticity and civic commitment, DTLA is on its way to creating a city center that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Photo Credit: Hunter Kerhart

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The Building Bridges Coalition was launched at the Brookings Institution in June 2006 to promote the role of volunteer service in achieving development goals and to highlight research and policy issues across the field in the United States and abroad. Among other efforts, the coalition promotes innovation, scaling up, and best practices for international volunteers working in development.

On June 14, the Brookings Institution and the Building Bridges Coalition co-hosted a 10th anniversary forum on the role of volunteers in achieving the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 and on the coalition’s impact research. General Stanley McChrystal was the keynote speaker and discussed initiatives to make a year of civilian service as much a part of growing up in America as going to high school.

Afterwards, three consecutive panels discussed how to provide a multi-stakeholder platform for the advancement of innovative U.S.-global alliances with nongovernmental organizations, faith-based entities, university consortia, and the private sector in conjunction with the launch of the global track of Service Year Alliance.

For more information on the forum and the Building Bridges Coalition, click here.

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• Welcoming remarks and featured speaker
• Panel 1 — Role of volunteer service in achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals
• Panel 2 — Policy perspective: National and international service in the next administration
• Panel 3 — One million Americans in global service: The role of faith-based service

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• International volunteer service and the 2030 development agenda

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• 20160614_volunteering_development_transcript

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China’s meteoric rise lifted its economy but damaged its environment, and it has new aspirations to leadership on the global stage. Africa has enormous natural capital and is hungry for development. How can they collaborate? Their interests may intersect within a model of development that invests in natural capital instead of prizing only extraction.

On July 11th, the Brookings Tsinghua-Center, in collaboration with GreenPoint Group and School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University, hosted the panel Sustainability within the China-Africa Relationship: Governance, Investment, and Natural Capital. The panel was moderated by SMPP Associate Professor and IMPA director Zheng Zhenqing, and featured Mr. Peter Seligmann, chairman and CEO of Conservation International; Professor Qi Ye, director of the Brookings Tsinghua-Center; Honorable Minister Anyaa Vohiri of the Environmental Protection Agency of Liberia; Professor Pang Xun, expert on official direct assistance and the politics of aid; and Mr. Rule Jimmy Opelo, Permanent Deputy Secretary of the Ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism of Botswana.

Professor and Dean of School of Public Policy and Management Xue Lan gave the opening remarks, highlighting that both China and Africa face the challenge of balancing development and sustainability. Minister Vohiri then presented on the challenges and great potential of Africa's vast, untapped renewable energy resources before Professor Zheng opened the panel. Framing China and Africa as global partners with the common aspiration of growing sustainable, the panelists discussed the need for developing economies to recognize that the health of their environment is inseparable from the health of their economies.

Questions concerning the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and Millennium Development goals presented conservation as a global issue requiring global governance. Mr. Seligmann forwarded the idea that sustainable development as enlightened self-interest has entered mainstream thought, asserting that the challenge now lies in crafting region-specific policies and plans of implementation. The importance of cooperation surfaced as a common theme. Mr. Opelo examined the possibilities of South-South cooperation, and Professor Qi provided a history for the emergence of natural capital as a concept before underlining the need for government to collaborate with civil society and the private sector.

The highlighted benefits of Sino-African cooperation ranged from the greater political freedom afforded to aid recipient countries when there is donor competition to Africa's potential "leapfrog" development to a green economy if it obtains sufficient investment. Professor Qi spoke of the lessons provided by China’s evolution from a parochial developing country into the world’s leader in sustainable development. Professor Pang emphasized the benefits both to China and to African countries when the influence of conditional aid from the United States is diluted by Chinese competition. Minister Vohiri and Mr. Opelo discussed the challenges of balancing conservation enforcement with the provision of basic needs, concluding that China's capital and knowledge could help Africa develop its economy in a sustainable direction. The panelists closed by addressing questions from the audience that problematical transparency problems with China's current model of development in Africa, the sustainability of green energy subsidies, the threats of mining and poaching, and Africa's role in addressing a global environmental crisis to which it largely did not contribute.

Xue Lan gave the opening remarks

Minister Vohiri delivered keynote remarks

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• Sustainability within the ChinaAfrica relationship governance investment and natural capital

At a legislative conference in Cambridge, Ohio, Bruce Katz stressed the importance of cities and metro areas to the state's overall prosperity. Acknowledging the decline of Ohio's older industrial cities, Katz noted the area's many assets and argued for a focus on innovation, human capital, infrastructure, and quality communities as means to revitalize the region. 

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Global warming is changing environmental conditions in the Arctic and opening new opportunities for resource extraction. Greenland, long thought to have excellent potential for iron ore, copper, zinc, lead, gold, rubies, rare earth elements and oil, has looked to strengthen its economy through the development of these resources. For many in Greenland, including the current government, resource extraction is seen as a necessary step toward the ultimate goal of independence from Denmark.

On September 24, the Energy Security Initiative (ESI) and the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings hosted Premier Aleqa Hammond of Greenland for an Alan and Jane Batkin International Leaders Forum address on the future of natural resource extraction in Greenland. Following her address, a panel discussion highlighted the findings of a new Brookings report, “The Greenland Gold Rush: Promise and Pitfalls of Greenland’s Energy and Mineral Resources.” Report co-author Kevin Foley, a doctoral candidate at Cornell University, was joined on the panel by ESI Director Charles Ebinger and University of Copenhagen Professor Minik Rosing, who served as a discussant. The panel was moderated by Jonathan Pollack, a senior fellow with the China Center and Center for East Asia Policy Studies at Brookings.

This event was part of the Alan and Jane Batkin International Leaders Forum Series, a new event series hosted by Foreign Policy at Brookings which brings global political, diplomatic and thought leaders to Washington, D.C. for major policy addresses.

 Join the conversation on Twitter using #Greenland

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• Natural Resource Development in Greenland: An Alan and Jane Batkin International Leaders Forum with Greenland's Premier Aleqa Hammond

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• 20140924_greenland_transcript

During his address at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy graduation this week, President Obama highlighted climate change as “a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to (U.S.) national security.” Is President Obama right? Are the national security threats from climate change real?

When I listen to the “know-nothing” crowd and their front men in Congress who actively ignore ever-stronger scientific evidence about the pace of climate change, I want to quit my day job and organize civic action to close them down. The celebration of anti-knowledge, the denial of science, the treatment of advanced education as a mark of ignominy rather than the building block of American innovation and citizenship—these are as grave a threat to America’s future as any I can identify. So I’m sympathetic to the Obama administration’s desire to take a bludgeon to climate deniers. But is “national security” the right stick to move the naysayers forward? 

The Danger of Overstating for Effect

The White House’s report on the national security implications of climate change is actually pretty measured and largely avoids waving red flags, but it overstates for effect, as do the President’s remarks to the Coast Guard Academy. 

The report gets right the notion that climate change will hit hardest where governance is weakest and that this will exacerbate the challenge of weak states; but it’s a pre-existing challenge and almost all weak states are already embroiled in forms of internal war—climate change may exacerbate this problem, but it certainly won’t create it. The White House report also asserts a link to terrorist havens, and of course there are risks here—but it’s far from a 1:1 relationship, and there’s little evidence that the countries where climate will hit governance worst are the places where the terrorism problem is most serious. 

The report also highlights the Arctic as a region most dramatically effected by climate change, and that is true—but so far what we’re seeing in the Arctic is that receding ice is triggering commercial competition and governance cooperation; not conflict. The security challenge from the Arctic is modest: the climate challenge of melting ice caps and potential release of trapped greenhouse gases is potential very serious indeed. 

Then there are the domestic effects. The report highlights that the armed services may be drawn in more to dealing with coastal flooding and similar crises, and that’s a fair point—though it’s a National Guard point more than its an armed forces point. That is to say, it’s about the question of whether we have enough domestic disaster response capacity: an important question, not obviously a national security question. And it oddly passes over what’s likely to be the most important consequence of climate change in the United States, namely declining agricultural productivity in the American heartland. America’s farmers, not just its coastal cities, are in the front lines here. 

All of these are real issues and the U.S. government will have to plan for lots of them, including in the armed services; all fair. But is national security really the right way to frame this? Is linking it directly to the capacities needed for America’s armed services the right way to mobilize support for more serious action on climate change? 

Of course the term “security” has been evolving, and has long since extended beyond the limited purview of nuclear risks and great power conflict. Civil wars and weak governance and rising sea leaves are certainly a security issue to somebody, and we’re sure to be involved—whether it’s in dealing with refugee flows, or more acute crises where severe impacts overlay on pre-existing tensions. These are global security issues for someone, to be sure; I’m not sure they are “immediate risks to our national security.

Words Matter

Why does the rhetoric matter? Am I glad that we have a President who cares about climate change? Yes. Do I want the Obama administration to be focusing on mobilizing the American public on this? Yes. So why does it bother me if they use a national security lens? A national security framework implicitly does several things: it invokes a sense of direct threat, which I think distorts the nature of the challenge; it puts military responses front forward, which is the wrong emphasis; and although the report doesn’t get into this question, if the President highlights the immediate national security risk from climate, it displaces other security threats that we confront and truly require U.S. strategic planning, preparedness, and resources. None of this is totally wrong, but surely there are other ways to mobilize the American public to an erosion of our natural and agricultural environment than to invoke the security frame? 

Every piece of evidence I’ve seen about the state of temperature change; the real pathway we are on in terms of carbon-based fuels consumption (despite optimistic pledges in the lead up to the Paris climate conference); realistic projections of growth in renewable energies; and demand growth in the developing world (especially India) tells me that we’re rapidly blowing past the two degree target for limiting the rise in average global temperatures, and we’re well on our way to a four degree shift. 

We need urgently to pivot our scientific establishment away from the now well-trod field of predicting temperature shift to getting a much more granular understanding about the ways in which changing temperature will affect water sources, agricultural productivity, biodiversity, and dramatic weather events. And we need to treat those who willfully deny science—in climate and other areas—as a serious threat to our nation’s  future. I’m just not convinced that national security is the right or best way to frame the arguments and mobilize the America public’s will around this critically important issue.

The Center for Neighborhood Technology, a Chicago-area nonprofit promoting urban sustainability, has a long-run vision of a Chicagoland building energy-efficiency system, which, if started up quickly, would help to effectively deploy relevant stimulus dollars in the near-term. Its activities focus on ramping up existing weatherization and retrofit programs in the short-term to take best advantage of current stimulus dollars while at the same time building the institutional capacity to launch and sustain a new regional initiative aimed at coordinating energy efficiency information, financing, and service delivery for the seven-county region over the long-term.

The Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) is using ARRA and other resources to work toward a long-run vision of a sustainable regional energy efficiency system. CNT envisions a centrally-coordinated initiative— either through a new stand-alone entity or a formalized network—to manage the financing, marketing, performance monitoring and certification, information provision, supply chain development, and customer assistance required to efficiently scale up the delivery of retrofit services for all types of buildings across the Chicago region.

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Increasingly, there are concerns about the direction of Turkey’s politics, economy, security, and foreign policy. Debate is growing about the Turkish economy’s vibrancy, and its commitment to democratic norms is being questioned. Moreover, against the backdrop of the chaos in the region, its ability to maintain peace and order is hindered. These difficulties coincide with a larger trend in which the global economy remains fragile, European integration is fracturing, and international governance seems under duress. The spill-over from the conflicts in Syria and Iraq has precipitated a refugee crisis of historic scale, testing the resolve, unity, and values of the West. Will these challenges prove pivotal in reshaping the international system? Will these trials ultimately compel the West to formulate an effective collective response? Will Turkey prove to be an asset or a liability for regional security and order?

On April 14, the Turkey Project of the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings hosted a discussion to assess Turkey’s strategic orientation amid the ever-changing international order. Panelists included Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Bruce Jones, Şebnem Kalemli-Özcan of the University of Maryland, and Francis Riccardone of the Atlantic Council. Cansen Başaran-Symes, president of the Turkish Industry and Business Association (TÜSİAD) made introductory remarks. Turkey Project Director and TÜSİAD Senior Fellow Kemal Kirişci moderated the discussion.

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• 20160414_turkey_neighborhood_transcript

The United Nations will convene a major international conference on Financing for Development (FfD) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from July 13 to 16, 2015, to discuss financing for the post-2015 agenda on sustainable development. This conference, the third of its kind, will hope to replicate the success of the Monterrey conference in 2002 that has been credited with providing the glue to bind countries to the pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The analogy is pertinent but should not be taken too far. The most visible part of the Monterrey Consensus was the commitment by rich countries to “make concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7 percent of gross national product” as official development assistance (ODA). This was anchored in a clear premise that “each country has primary responsibility for its own economic and social development,” which includes support for market-oriented policies that encourage the private sector. While not all of the Monterrey targets have been met, there has been a considerable increase in resources flowing to developing countries, as a central plank of efforts to achieve the MDGs.

Today, aid issues remain pivotal for a significant number of countries, but they are less relevant for an even larger number of countries. The core principles of Monterrey need to be reaffirmed again in 2015, but if the world is to follow-through on a universal sustainable development agenda, it must address the multi-layered financing priorities spanning all countries. A simple “30-30-130” mnemonic helps to illustrate the point. There are 193 U.N. member states. Of these, only around 30 are still low-income countries (33 at the latest count). These are the economies that are, and will continue to be, the most heavily dependent on aid as the world looks to how it should implement the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Conversely, there are only around 30 “donor” countries (including 28 members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee, or DAC) that have made international commitments to provide more aid. For the remaining 130 or so emerging middle-income economies that have achieved higher levels of average prosperity, aid discussions risk forming a sideshow to the real issues that constrain their pursuit of sustainable development. The bottom line is that for most countries, the Financing for Development conference should unlock finance from many different sources, including but not exclusively aid, to implement the SDGs.

Addis will take place in the context of sluggish global growth, an upsurge in conflict, considerable strains in multilateral 2 political cooperation, and challenging ODA prospects in many countries.

There are other differences between Addis and Monterrey. Monterrey took place after agreement had been reached on the MDGs, while Addis will precede formal agreement on the SDGs by a few months. Monterrey was focused on a government-to-government agreement, while Addis should be relevant to a far larger number of stakeholders—including businesses, academics, civil society, scientists, and local authorities. Monterrey was held against a backdrop of general optimism about the global economy and widespread desire for intensified international collaboration following the terrorist events of September 11, 2001. Meanwhile, Addis will take place in the context of sluggish global growth, an upsurge in conflict, considerable strains in multilateral political cooperation, and challenging ODA prospects in many countries. In addition, regulators are working to reduce risk-taking by large financial institutions, increasing the costs of providing long-term capital to developing countries.

Against this backdrop, an Intergovernmental Committee of Experts on Sustainable Development Finance (ICESDF) crafted a report for the United Nations on financing options for sustainable development. The report provides an excellent overview of issues and the current state of global financing, and presents over 100 recommendations. But it falls short on prescribing the most important priorities and action steps on which leaders should focus at Addis.

This paper seeks to identify such a priority list of actions, with emphasis on the near-term deliverables that could instigate critical changes in trajectories towards 2030. At the same time, the paper does not aim to describe the full range of outcomes that need to be in place by roughly 2025 in order to achieve the SDGs by their likely deadline of 2030. Addis will be a critical forum to provide political momentum to a few of the many useful efforts already underway on improving global development finance. Time is short, so there is limited ability to introduce new topics or ideas or to build consensus where none already exists.

We identify three criteria for identifying top priorities for agreement in Addis:

• Priorities should draw from, and build on, on-going work—including the ICESDF report and the outputs „„of several other international workstreams on finance that are underway.
• Agreements should have significant consequences for successful implementation of the SDGs at the coun„„try, regional or global level.
• Recommendations should be clearly actionable, with next steps in implementation that are easy to under„„stand and easy to confirm when completed.

It is not necessary (or desirable) that every important topic be resolved in Addis. In practical terms, negotiators face two groups of issues. First are those on which solutions can be negotiated in time for the July conference. Second are those for which the problems are too complex to be solved by July, but which are still crucial to be resolved over the coming year or two if the SDGs are to be achieved. For this second group of issues, the intergovernmental agreement can set specific timetables for resolving each problem at hand. There is some precedent for this, including in the 2005 U.N. World Summit, which included timetables for some commitments. What is most critical is that the moment be used to anchor and advance processes that will shift toward creating a global financing system for achieving sustainable development across all countries. Committing to timetables for action and building on reforms already undertaken could be important ways of enhancing the credibility of new agreements.

In this paper, we lay out nine areas where we believe important progress can be made. In each area, we start from identifying a gap or issue that could present an obstacle to the successful implementation of the SDGs if left unattended. In some cases the gaps will affect all countries, in other cases only a subset of countries. But we believe that the package of actions, taken as a whole, reflects a balance of opportunities, responsibilities and benefits for all countries. We also believe that by making the discussion issue-focused, the needs for financing can be balanced with policy actions that will be required to make sure financing is effectively and efficiently deployed.

In addition to the nine areas listed below, there are other commitments already made which have not yet been met. We urge renewed efforts to meet these commitments, but also recognize that political and financial realities must be managed to make progress. Such commitments include meeting the Monterrey Consensus target to provide 0.7 percent of GNI in official development assistance (ODA), the May 2005 agreement of all EC-15 countries to reach that target by 2015, and bringing the Doha Development Round of trade talks to a successful conclusion. These remain important and relevant, but in this paper we choose to focus on new areas and fresh ideas so as to avoid treading over well-worn territory again.

At a legislative conference in Cambridge, Ohio, Bruce Katz stressed the importance of cities and metro areas to the state's overall prosperity. Acknowledging the decline of Ohio's older industrial cities, Katz noted the area's many assets and argued for a focus on innovation, human capital, infrastructure, and quality communities as means to revitalize the region. 

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