Editor's Note: This is the first part of a two piece series on internal displacement that originally appeared online in TerraNullius. The second part is available here.

The Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement recently released a study entitled "From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National Response to Internal Displacement." The study examined 15 out of the 20 countries with the highest number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) due to conflict, generalized violence and human rights violations—Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Georgia, Iraq, Kenya, Myanmar, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Turkey, Uganda and Yemen.

According to estimates, these 15 countries represent over 70 percent of the world’s 27.5 million conflict-induced IDPs. Wherever possible, we also tried to include government efforts to address internal displacement by natural disasters. But in this and the subsequent blog post, we will focus on our main general conclusions as well as particular issues around housing, land and property (HLP) rights that emerged from our analysis (see Part II of this posting).

The study looks at how governments have fared in terms of implementing 12 practical steps (“benchmarks”) to prevent and address internal displacement, as outlined in the 2005 Brookings publication entitled "Addressing Internal Displacement: A Framework for National Responsibility." The 12 benchmarks are as follows:

1. Prevent displacement and minimize its adverse effects.
2. Raise national awareness of the problem.
3. Collect data on the number and conditions of IDPs.
4. Support training on the rights of IDPs.
5. Create a legal framework for upholding the rights of IDPs.
6. Develop a national policy on internal displacement.
7. Designate an institutional focal point on IDPs.
8. Support national human rights institutions to integrate internal displacement into their work.
9. Ensure the participation of IDPs in decisionmaking.
10. Support durable solutions.
11. Allocate adequate resources to the problem.
12. Cooperate with the international community when national capacity is insufficient.

Stepping back from HLP issues (to be addressed in a subsequent set of comments in Part II of this guest posting), we drew several key observations on our overall findings.

The study found that political will was the main determining factor of response to internal displacement. Governments cannot always control the factors that cause displacement, or may themselves be responsible for displacement, but they can take measures to improve the lives and uphold the rights and freedoms of IDPs. Internal displacement due to con­flict derives from political issues, and all aspects of a government’s response to it therefore are affected by political considerations, including, for example, acknowledgment of displacement, registration and collection of data on IDPs, ensuring the participation of IDPs in decision-making, assistance and protection offered to different (temporal) caseloads of IDPs, support for durable solutions, which durable solutions are supported, and the facilitation of efforts by international organizations to provide protec­tion and assistance to IDPs.

While none of the governments surveyed was fully protecting and assisting IDPs, four stand out in particular—Colombia, Georgia, Kenya and Uganda—for implementing their responsibility toward IDPs while three others—Central African Republic, Myanmar and Yemen—had particular difficulties in fulfilling their responsibilities toward IDPs. In Myanmar, the obstacles were primarily political while in Yemen and the Central African Republic, as in many of the countries surveyed, the limitations appear to arise primarily from inadequate government capacity.

The other eight countries were somewhere in between. For example, some, such as Nepal, have demonstrated a significant commitment at one particular point in time but have failed to follow through. Others, such as Sri Lanka, have at times demonstrated blatant disregard for their responsibility and have moved swiftly to try to bring an end to displacement. Sudan, Pakistan, and to a certain extent, Turkey, have very problematic records with respect to preventing displacement in one part of the country yet have supported efforts to bring an end to displacement in others. In some cases, such as Afghanistan and Yemen, the continuing conflict and the role of nonstate actors (and in Afghanistan, the presence of foreign militaries as well) have made it difficult for the government to respond effectively to internal displacement.

Prevention of internal displacement is paramount, but is probably the most difficult measure to take and the least likely to be taken in the countries as­sessed, which all had large IDP populations. Given the scale of displacement in the fifteen countries surveyed, it was to be expected that these governments would not have been suc­cessful in preventing displacement. Nearly half of the fifteen countries assessed had adopted some preventive measures on paper, but all fifteen have fallen short of actually prevent­ing displacement in practice.

Moreover, many national authorities themselves have been or are perpetrators of violence or human rights abuses that have led to displacement, and many states foster a culture of impunity for alleged perpetrators of serious human rights violations. Further, the presence of foreign military forces and/or non-state armed actors limits the abil­ity of many states to exercise full sovereignty over their territory and therefore to prevent the conditions that drive people into displacement. Some countries have taken steps to prevent dis­placement due to natural disasters or develop­ment but not due to conflict, indicating that the former is perhaps less politically taboo and/or practically less difficult to implement than the latter.

Sustained political attention by the highest authorities is a necessary, though not suffi­cient, condition for taking responsibility for IDPs. Nearly all of the governments surveyed, at least at some point, have exercised their responsibility to IDPs by acknowledging the existence of internal displacement and their responsibility to address it as a national prior­ity, for example, by drawing attention to IDPs’ plight. However, government efforts to raise awareness of internal displacement through public statements was not always a useful indicator of a government’s commitment to upholding the fundamental human rights and freedoms of IDPs.

Among the five countries with laws on or related to internal displacement, there were notable limitations to the scope of the laws and gaps in implementing them. Legislation was quite comprehensive in scope in at least two cases and was narrow in others, address­ing specific rights of IDPs or a phase of dis­placement. Other countries lacked a national legislative framework on IDPs but had generic legislation relevant to IDPs. Still others had laws that violated or could violate the rights of IDPs. Laws on internal displacement must be viewed in the context of other legislation and administrative acts applicable to the general population (e.g., those related to documenta­tion, residency, housing, land and property, and personal status), which this study reviews to the extent possible, particularly in the case studies on Georgia, Kenya, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. In Africa, the region with the most IDPs, states have recognized in legally binding instruments the importance of addressing internal displace­ment by incorporating the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement into domestic legisla­tion and policy.

Many of the governments surveyed have adopted policies or action plans to respond to the needs of IDPs, but adequate implementa­tion and dissemination were largely lacking. Nine of the countries surveyed had developed a specific policy, strategy or plan on internal displacement, implemented to varying degrees; those in six of these countries were still active at the time of writing. In addition, at least two countries had national policies in draft form, and one country that does not recognize conflict-induced displacement had a plan for mitigating displacement by cyclones and a plan on disaster risk reduction, although it did not discuss displacement. While in some cases positive steps had been taken, by and large im­plementation of policies on internal displace­ment remains a challenge and has, in some cases, stalled. Available information indicates that efforts to raise awareness of IDP issues and policies have largely been inadequate.

It is difficult to assess governments’ com­mitment of financial resources to address internal displacement, but some trends were identified. Addressing internal displacement, especially over time, is a costly venture. While it was difficult to obtain a full picture of a coun­try’s expenditure on IDPs, several countries allocated funds to assist IDPs, including a few that had no national laws or policies on IDPs. In at least two countries, funds for assisting IDPs seemed to diminish in recent years. In many countries, difficulties arise at the district or municipal levels, where local authorities bear significant responsibility for addressing internal displacement but face many obstacles, including insufficient funds, to doing so. Allegations of corruption and misallocation of funds intended to benefit IDPs at certain points has been observed in some of the countries as­sessed. Some countries seem to rely on inter­national assistance to IDPs rather than national funds.

National human rights institutions (NHRIs) contribute invaluably to improving national responses to internal displacement in a number of countries. In recent years, an increasing number of NHRIs around the world have begun to integrate attention to internal displacement into their work. NHRIs have played an impor­tant role in raising awareness of internal dis­placement, monitoring displacement situations and returns, investigating individual complaints, advocating for and advising the government on the drafting of national policies to address inter­nal displacement, and monitoring and reporting on the implementation of national policies and legislation. In particular, the NHRIs of six of the countries surveyed stand out for their efforts to promote the rights of IDPs in their countries. Interestingly, almost all of their work with IDPs is funded by international sources, raising the question of whether national governments themselves should not be doing more to increase their funding of NHRIs in order to support their engagement with IDP issues.

International actors are valuable resources for efforts aiming to improve government response to IDPs. In many cases, the past Representatives of the UN Secretary-General (RSGs) mandated to study the issue of internal displacement (Francis Deng and his successor Walter Kälin) and the current UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons (Chaloka Beyani) had exercised significant influence on governments in encouraging and supporting action on behalf of IDPs. Along with these actors, UNHCR and the Brookings Project on Internal Displacement have provided technical assis­tance to support governments’ efforts to de­velop national legal frameworks to ensure IDPs’ access to their rights.

Durable solutions: Return was the durable solution most often supported by the govern­ments assessed. The Framework for National Responsibility identifies three durable solu­tions—return, local integration and settlement elsewhere in the country. However, the fifteen countries surveyed herein reflect a global ten­dency to emphasize return, often excluding the other durable solutions. Yet for solutions to be voluntary, IDPs must be able to choose among them, and local integration or settlement else­where in the country may in fact be some IDPs’ preferred solution. Especially in situations of protracted displacement, those may be the only feasible solutions, at least in the near future.

The most difficult benchmarks to analyze were those whose underlying concepts are very broad and those for which data was seemingly not publicly available. Chief among these were the benchmarks on preventing internal displacement (Benchmark 1), raising national awareness (Benchmark 2), promoting the participation of IDPs in decisionmaking (Benchmark 9), and allocating adequate resources (Benchmark 11). Analysis on all other benchmarks also faced data constraints as in many cases data were outdated or incomplete or simply were not available. Nonetheless, we found that the twelve benchmarks all directed attention to important issues in governments’ responses to internal displacement.

We also found that while protection is central to the Framework, the issue is of such importance that there should be a benchmark explicitly focused on it—and specifically on protection as physical security, provided to IDPs during all phases of displacement. This benchmark would also underscore the responsibility of governments to protect the security of humanitarian workers engaged with IDPs.

Overall, the study found that the Framework for National Responsibility is a valuable tool for analyzing government efforts to prevent dis­placement, to respond to IDPs’ needs for protection and assistance and to support durable solutions. But this study also reveals certain limitations to using the Framework as an assessment tool, particularly in terms of accounting for the responsibility of nonstate actors; accounting for national responsibility for protection, particularly during displacement; and accounting for causes of displacement other than conflict, violence and human rights violations.

       

       

DC KIDS COUNT, housed at the nonprofit DC Action for Children, is the DC chapter of a nationwide network of local-level organizations aiming to provide a community-by-community picture of the conditions of children. The 26 year-old project is funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and its aim is to provide high-quality data and trend analysis as well as help local governments monitor budget and legislative decisions based on evidence of what works for children and families. As we pointed out in our recent papers and a blog, developing reliable and comprehensive data is a critical step to building effective community partnerships and producing outcomes that improve economic mobility and health in a neighborhood.

We discussed these issues with HyeSook Chung, Executive Director of DC Action for Children.

Q. Please summarize the history of the DC Kids Count project. What motivated it, and how it has evolved over the last years?

A. As part of the nationwide Kids Count network, each chapter tracks a number of indicators on child and family well-being through an online database called Kids Count Data Center. Each chapter also releases a yearly data book which summarizes the state of child well-being within their state or locality. When DC Action for Children became the host of DC Kids Count in 2012, I wanted to rethink the way we presented our data to move beyond the traditional print format into the exciting realm of visualizing data. This led to the beginning of our partnership with DataKind, a group of dedicated pro-bono data scientists who worked with us to create an interactive, web-based data tool that maps out indicators of child well-being across DC’s 39 neighborhood clusters.

We know that the neighborhood children grow up in, and the resources they have access to, plays a huge role in shaping children’s future opportunities. The maps we created with our Data Tool 2.0  reveal sharp disparities in DC neighborhoods: some DC neighborhoods are wealthy and have many assets, while others are characterized by high levels of poverty. The many challenges that come with high poverty neighborhoods include: poorer performing schools, more crime, and less access to libraries, parks, and healthy foods.  

Q. What type of indicators do you gather? How many years does the data cover? What level of granularity does the data have?

A. We track a variety of indicators of child well-being, including demographics, economic well-being, health and safety. The data is housed online in two places: The KIDS COUNT Data Center and our Data Tool 2.0. The Data Tool 2.0 maps the most recent available data at the neighborhood cluster, while the Data Center allows for a wider range of geographies (citywide and ward level) and different timeframes.  Many of the indicators have data from 1990 to the present.

Q. How do you measure the data tool’s impact on policy and legislation?

A. We have made it a priority to conduct internal evaluations to assess the utilization of the online tool, but we also believe that measuring the tool’s impact must go beyond traditional web analytics. We regularly use the Data Tool 2.0 in our work with city officials and direct service providers to offer an overview of the social context in the city’s different neighborhoods.     

In a city where the allocation of resources is often guided by personal relationships and old-school politics, it is important to show clearly whether budget decisions are aligned with the needs of our children. We believe that our Data Tool 2.0 project can bring much needed transparency to the allocation of the DC government budget and help achieve agreement.

Q. The DC Kids Count project is helping build data capacity across organizations, with the aim of creating a more “data-literate” city. Could you tell us about some of these initiatives? 

A. Businesses like Amazon and Netflix increasingly focus on finding “actionable” insights from their data. For them, “big data” analytics can help answer tough business questions. With the right platforms for analytics, they can increase efficiency or even improve operations and sales.

In a similar manner, we at DC Action for Children believe that big data opens up the opportunity for us to improve and reshape our strategy and decision making process to better align services with the needs of DC children in the same way Amazon or Netflix does with their customers.

For instance, we are offering the Child and Family Services Agency technical and data analysis support for their Healthy Families Thriving Communities Collaboratives, which are a citywide network of community-based organizations designed to embed family supports in their communities. Their mission is to strengthen and stabilize families and to prevent child abuse and neglect by offering services in the form of case management and support. We use KIDS COUNT data at the ward and neighborhood levels to highlight needs in the community and inform their planning. This encourages the Collaboratives’ staff to look at data differently—integrating it as a vital part of their program planning and strategy.

Q. What are some of the obstacles and challenges you face in integrating the data, and updating it?

A. Historically, our data analysis looked at more traditional indicators, such as program enrollment and the number of child welfare cases. But now we think we can use our access to big data to pull out patterns within our datasets and help guide the decisions of the city administrators. For example, if we are trying to prevent future child abuse cases, we can look at patterns analyzing family and child data in specific neighborhoods. We can use the type of predictive analysis practiced in the for-profit business to help us serve DC children more efficiently and effectively.

One of the most significant obstacles we face is ensuring that the indicators are up-to-date. This can be an issue with government agencies since some of them are slow in their release of new data.  Moreover, there is also no standard format across local agencies for how data is collected and released. Furthermore, data is often aggregated at different geographical units, like zip codes or census tracts. To get the data ready to upload to our Data Tool, we must recalculate the data into neighborhood clusters.  

Q. What policy changes would help produce better data-sharing ecosystems? 

A. DC has in many ways demonstrated leadership in data sharing. The Office of the Chief Technology Officer works to make a large variety of datasets publicly available. We have also seen large investments over the years to create new data systems that track progress and service delivery for different agencies. But our city can do more to promote a data-sharing ecosystem. So can other cities.

While multiple agencies are adopting innovative data systems, the systems are often siloed and do not speak to each other. Moreover, since data is tracked differently across agencies, based on needs and requirements for reporting, it is difficult for agencies to share data both publicly and internally. It is also often difficult to get access to de-identified disaggregated data for richer analysis. We are glad that many agencies recognize the value of robust data collection, but more data transparency policies would give us a better understanding of the challenges that lie behind improving the wellbeing of children in the city.

Q. What are the next steps for the DC Kids Count project, and how do you expect it to grow over the next few years?

A. We just finished wrapping up some of the final work on our DataTool 2.0. In terms of next steps, we are working on a handbook that explains how we created our Data Tool so that other Kids Count chapters and organizations can replicate and adapt our tool.

We would also like to add local budget data to the asset maps to see if public investments align with the neighborhoods that need it the most. This would give us a more nuanced understanding of the geography of DC budget investments, including inequities in investments by geography and demographics.

Big data analytics has changed the way we focus our priorities and engage in business practices. I’m committed to this movement. I think that, through big data, we can also revolutionize the way we do policy.

***

In conclusion, DC Kids Count, housed at the nonprofit DC Action for Children, belongs to a larger, nationwide group of organizations helping to better coordinate regional development through data-driven decision making. By centralizing different government databases, and providing real-time, community level data, DC Kids Count can help local government entities allocate their resources more efficiently and creatively and help foster place-conscious strategies. The process behind compiling the data also illustrates many of the challenges—data sharing, interoperability of data systems, access to real-time data involved in building “data- sharing ecosystems.”

      

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With a number elections now underway in Europe and the United States, populist politicians are gaining support by tapping into frustration with the lingering effects of the global financial crisis and the eurocrisis, mounting fears of terrorism, concerns surrounding record levels of migration, and growing doubt over political elites’ abilities to address these and other crises. The global economic order is already beginning to be impacted by the mounting political pressure against it. Trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership that form the cornerstone of the global economic order have met with significant resistance. Brexit’s reverberations have already been felt in international markets. Fissures within the European Union and American anxiety towards a U.S. global role could have a pronounced impact on the international economic system.

On July 14, the Brookings Project on International Order and Strategy (IOS) hosted an event tied to the recent publication of Nonresident Senior Fellow Daniel Drezner’s new paper, “Five Known Unknowns about the Next Generation Global Political Economy.” The event was an opportunity to discuss the future of the global economic order given rising populism and discontent with globalization. Panelists included Nonresident Senior Fellow Daniel Drezner, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University; Caroline Atkinson, head of Google’s global public policy team and former White House deputy national security advisor for international economics; and David Wessel, director of the Brookings Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy.

Thomas Wright, director of IOS, provided brief opening remarks and moderated the discussion.

Video

• The future of the global economic order in an era of rising populism

Audio

• The future of the global economic order in an era of rising populism

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160714_global_economic_order_transcript

       

       

       

       

Policy Brief #173

America needs to transform its energy system, and the Great Lakes region (including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, West Virginia, western Pennsylvania and western New York) possesses many of the needed innovation assets. For that reason, the federal government should leverage this troubled region’s research and engineering strengths by launching a region-wide network of collaborative, high intensity energy research and innovation centers.

Currently, U.S. energy innovation efforts remain insufficient to ensure the development and deployment of clean energy technologies and processes. Such deployment is impeded by multiple market problems that lead private firms to under-invest and to focus on short-term, low-risk research and product development. Federal energy efforts—let alone state and local ones—remain too small and too poorly organized to deliver the needed breakthroughs. A new approach is essential.

	RECOMMENDATIONS
	The federal government should systematically accelerate national clean energy innovation by launching a series of “themed” research and commercialization centers strategically situated to draw on the Midwest’s rich complex of strong public universities, national and corporate research laboratories, and top-flight science and engineering talent. Organized around existing capacities in a hub-spoke structure that links fundamental science with innovation and commercialization, these research centers would engage universities, industries and labs to work on specific issues that would enable rapid deployment of new technologies to the marketplace. Along the way, they might well begin to transform a struggling region’s ailing economy. Roughly six compelling innovation centers could reasonably be organized in the Great Lakes states with total annual funding between $1 billion and $2 billion. To achieve this broad goal, the federal government should: Increase energy research funding overall. Adopt more comprehensive approaches to research and development (R&D) that address and link multiple aspects of a specific problem, such as transportation. Leverage existing regional research, workforce, entrepreneurial and industrial assets.

America needs to transform its energy system in order to create a more competitive “next economy” that is at once export-oriented, lower-carbon and innovation-driven. Meanwhile, the Great Lakes region possesses what may be the nation’s richest complex of innovation strengths—research universities, national and corporate research labs, and top-flight science and engineering talent. Given those realities, a partnership should be forged between the nation’s needs and a struggling region’s assets.

To that end, we propose that the federal government launch a distributed network of federally funded, commercialization-oriented, sustainable energy research and innovation centers, to be located in the Great Lakes region. These regional centers would combine aspects of the “discovery innovation institutes” proposed by the National Academy of Engineering and the Metropolitan Policy Program (as articulated in “Energy Discovery-Innovation Institutes: A Step toward America’s Energy Sustainability”); the “energy innovation hubs” created by the Department of Energy (DOE); and the agricultural experiment station/cooperative extension model of the land-grant universities.

In the spirit of the earlier land-grant paradigm, this network would involve the region’s research universities and national labs and engage strong participation by industry, entrepreneurs and investors, as well as by state and local governments. In response to local needs and capacities, each center could have a different theme, though all would conduct the kinds of focused translational research necessary to move fundamental scientific discoveries toward commercialization and deployment.

The impact could be transformational. If built out, university-industry-government partnerships would emerge at an unprecedented scale. At a minimum, populating auto country with an array of breakthrough-seeking, high-intensity research centers would stage a useful experiment in linking national leadership and local capacities to lead the region—and the nation—toward a more prosperous future.

The Great Lakes Energy System: Predicaments and Possibilities

The Great Lakes region lies at the center of the nation’s industrial and energy system trials and possibilities. No region has suffered more from the struggles of America’s manufacturing sector and faltering auto and steel industries, as indicated in a new Metropolitan Policy Program report entitled “The Next Economy: Rebuilding Auto Communities and Older Industrial Metros in the Great Lakes Region.”

The region also lies at ground zero of the nation’s need to “green” U.S. industry to boost national economic competitiveness, tackle climate change and improve energy security. Heavily invested in manufacturing metals, chemicals, glass and automobiles, as well as in petroleum refining, the Great Lakes states account for nearly one-third of all U.S. industrial carbon emissions.

And yet, the Great Lakes region possesses significant assets and capacities that hold promise for regional renewal as the “next economy” comes into view. The Midwest’s manufacturing communities retain the strong educational and medical institutions, advanced manufacturing prowess, skills base and other assets essential to helping the nation move toward and successfully compete in the 21st century’s export-oriented, lower-carbon, innovation-fueled economy.

Most notably, the region has an impressive array of innovation-related strengths in the one field essential to our nation’s future—energy. These include:

• Recognized leadership in R&D. The Great Lakes region accounts for 33 percent of all academic and 30 percent of all industry R&D performed in the United States.
• Strength and specialization in energy, science and engineering. In FY 2006, the Department of Energy sent 26 percent of its federal R&D obligations to the Great Lakes states and is the second largest federal funder of industrial R&D in the region. Also in 2006, the National Science Foundation sent 30 percent of its R&D obligations there.
• Existing clean energy research investments and assets. The University of Illinois is a key research partner in the BP-funded, $500 million Energy Biosciences Institute, which aims to prototype new plants as alternative fuel sources. Toledo already boasts a growing solar industry cluster; Dow Corning’s Michigan facilities produce leading silicon and silicone-based technology innovations; and the Solar Energy Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the oldest of its kind in the world, has significant proficiency in developing practical uses for solar energy. Finally, the region is home to the largest U.S. nuclear utility (Exelon), the nation’s largest concentration of nuclear plants and some of the country’s leading university programs in nuclear engineering.
• Industry potential relevant to clean energy. Given their existing technological specializations, Midwestern industries have the potential to excel in the research and manufacture of sophisticated components required for clean energy, such as those used in advanced nuclear technologies, precision wind turbines and complex photovoltaics.
• Breadth in energy innovation endeavors and resources. In addition to universities and industry, the region’s research laboratories specialize in areas of great relevance to our national energy challenges, including the work on energy storage systems and fuel and engine efficiency taking place at Argonne National Laboratory, research in high-energy physics at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and the work on bioenergy feedstocks, processing technologies and fuels occurring at the DOE-funded Great Lakes BioEnergy Research Center (GLBRC).
• Regional culture of collaboration. Finally, the universities of the Great Lakes area have a strong history of collaboration both among themselves and with industry, given their origins in the federal land-grant compact of market and social engagement. GLBRC—one of the nation’s three competitively awarded DOE Bioenergy Centers—epitomizes the region’s ability to align academia, industry and government around a single mission. Another example is the NSF-supported Blue Waters Project. This partnership between IBM and the universities and research institutions in the Great Lakes Consortium for Petascale Computation is building the world’s fastest computer for scientific work—a critical tool for advancing smart energy grids and transportation systems.

In short, the Great Lakes states and metropolitan areas—economically troubled and carbon-reliant as they are—have capabilities that could contribute to their own transformation and that of the nation, if the right policies and investments were in place.

Remaking America’s Energy System within a Federal Policy Framework

America as a whole, meanwhile, needs to overcome the massive sustainability and security challenges that plague the nation’s energy production and delivery system. Transformational innovation and commercialization will be required to address these challenges and accelerate the process of reducing the economy’s carbon intensity.

Despite the urgency of these challenges, however, a welter of market problems currently impedes decarbonization and limits innovation. First, energy prices have generally remained too low to provide incentives for companies to commit to clean and efficient energy technologies and processes over the long haul. Second, many of the benefits of longrange innovative activity accrue to parties other than those who make investments. As a result, individual firms tend to under-invest and to focus on short-term, low-risk research and product development. Third, uncertainty and lack of information about relevant market and policy conditions and the potential benefits of new energy technologies and processes may be further delaying innovation. Fourth, the innovation benefits that derive from geographically clustering related industries (which for many years worked so well for the auto industry) have yet to be fully realized for next-generation energy enterprises. Instead, these innovations often are isolated in secure laboratories. Finally, state and local governments—burdened with budgetary pressures—are not likely to fill gaps in energy innovation investment any time soon.

As a result, the research intensity—and so the innovation intensity—of the energy sector remains woefully insufficient, as pointed out in the earlier Metropolitan Policy Program paper on discovery innovation institutes. Currently, the sector devotes no more than 0.3 percent of its revenues to R&D. Such a figure lags far behind the 2.0 percent of sales committed to federal and large industrial R&D found in the health care sector, the 2.4 percent in agriculture, and the 10 percent in the information technology and pharmaceutical industries.

As to the national government’s efforts to respond to the nation’s energy research shortfalls, these remain equally inadequate. Three major problems loom:

The scale of federal energy research funding is insufficient. To begin with, the current federal appropriation of around $3 billion a year for nondefense energy-related R&D is simply too small. Such a figure remains well below the $8 billion (in real 2008 dollars) recorded in 1980, and represents less than a quarter of the 1980 level when measured as a share of GDP. If the federal government were to fund next-generation energy at the pace it supports advances in health care, national defense, or space exploration, the level of investment would be in the neighborhood of $20 billion to $30 billion a year.

Nor do the nation’s recent efforts to catalyze energy innovation appear sufficient. To be sure, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provided nearly $13 billion for DOE investments in advanced technology research and innovation. To date, Great Lakes states are slated to receive some 42 percent of all ARRA awards from the fossil energy R&D program and 39 percent from the Office of Science (a basic research agency widely regarded as critical for the nation’s energy future). However, ARRA was a one-time injection of monies that cannot sustain adequate federal energy R&D.

Relatedly, the Great Lakes region has done well in tapping two other relatively recent DOE programs: the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) and Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs). Currently, Great Lakes states account for 44 and 50 percent of ARPA-E and EFRC funding. Yet, with ARPA-E focused solely on individual signature projects and EFRC on basic research, neither initiative has the scope to fully engage all of the region's innovation assets.

The character and format of federal energy R&D remain inadequate. Notwithstanding the question of scale, the character of U.S. energy innovation also remains inadequate. In this respect, the DOE national laboratories—which anchor the nation’s present energy research efforts—are poorly utilized resources. Many of these laboratories’ activities are fragmented and isolated from the private sector and its market, legal and social realities. This prevents them from successfully developing and deploying cost-competitive, multidisciplinary new energy technologies that can be easily adopted on a large scale.

For example, DOE activities continue to focus on discrete fuel sources (such as coal, oil, gas or nuclear), rather than on fully integrated end use approaches needed to realize affordable, reliable, sustainable energy. Siloed approaches simply do not work well when it comes to tackling the complexity of the nation’s real-world energy challenges. A perfect example of a complicated energy problem requiring an integrated end-use approach is transportation. Moving the nation’s transportation industry toward a clean energy infrastructure will require a multi-pronged, full systems approach. It will depend not only upon R&D in such technologies as alternative propulsion (biofuels, hydrogen, electrification) and vehicle design (power trains, robust materials, advanced computer controls) but also on far broader technology development, including that related to primary energy sources, electricity generation and transmission, and energy-efficient applications that ultimately will determine the economic viability of this important industry.

Federal programming fails to fully realize regional potential. Related to the structural problems of U.S. energy innovation efforts, finally, is a failure to fully tap or leverage critical preexisting assets within regions that could accelerate technology development and deployment. In the Great Lakes, for example, current federal policy does little to tie together the billions of dollars in science and engineering R&D conducted or available annually. This wealth is produced by the region’s academic institutions, all of the available private- and public-sector clean energy activities and financing, abundant natural resources in wind and biomass, and robust, pre-existing industrial platforms for research, next-generation manufacturing, and technology adoption and deployment. In this region and elsewhere, federal policy has yet to effectively connect researchers at different organizations, break down stovepipes between research and industry, bridge the commercialization “valley of death,” or establish mechanisms to bring federally-sponsored R&D to the marketplace quickly and smoothly.

A New Approach to Regional, Federally Supported Energy Research and Innovation

And so the federal government should systematically accelerate clean energy innovation by launching a series of regionally based Great Lakes research centers. Originally introduced in the Metropolitan Policy Program policy proposal for energy discovery-innovation institutes (or e-DIIs), a nationwide network of regional centers would link universities, research laboratories and industry to conduct translational R&D that at once addresses national energy sustainability priorities, while stimulating regional economies.

In the Great Lakes, specifically, a federal effort to “flood the zone” with a series of roughly six of these high-powered, market-focused energy centers would create a critical mass of innovation through their number, size, variety, linkages and orientation to pre-existing research institutions and industry clusters.

As envisioned here, the Great Lakes network of energy research centers would organize individual centers around themes largely determined by the private market. Based on local industry research priorities, university capabilities and the market and commercialization dynamics of various technologies, each Great Lakes research and innovation center would focus on a different problem, such as renewable energy technologies, biofuels, transportation energy, carbon-free electrical power generation, and distribution and energy efficiency. This network would accomplish several goals at once:

• Foster multidisciplinary and collaborative research partnerships. The regional centers or institutes would align the nonlinear flow of knowledge and activity across science and non-science disciplines and among companies, entrepreneurs, commercialization specialists and investors, as well as government agencies (federal, state and local) and research universities. For example, a southeastern Michigan collaboration involving the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, the University of Wisconsin and Ford, General Motors, and Dow Chemical could address the development of sustainable transportation technologies. A Chicago partnership involving Northwestern and Purdue Universities, the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois, Argonne National Lab, Exelon and Boeing could focus on sustainable electricity generation and distribution. A Columbus group including Ohio State University and Battelle Memorial Institute could address technologies for energy efficiency. Regional industry representatives would be involved from the earliest stages to define needed research, so that technology advances are relevant and any ensuing commercialization process is as successful as possible.
• Serve as a distributed “hub-spoke” network linking together campus-based, industry-based and federal laboratory-based scientists and engineers. The central “hubs” would interact with other R&D programs, centers and facilities (the “spokes”) through exchanges of participants, meetings and workshops, and advanced information and communications technology. The goals would be to limit unnecessary duplication of effort and cumbersome management bureaucracy and to enhance the coordinated pursuit of larger national goals.
• Develop and rapidly deploy highly innovative technologies to the market. Rather than aim for revenue maximization through technology transfer, the regional energy centers would be structured to maximize the volume, speed and positive societal impact of commercialization. As much as possible, the centers would work out in advance patenting and licensing rights and other intellectual property issues.Stimulate regional economic development. Like academic medical centers and agricultural experiment stations—both of which combine research, education and professional practice—these energy centers could facilitate cross-sector knowledge spillovers and innovation exchange and propel technology transfer to support clusters of start-up firms, private research organizations, suppliers, and other complementary groups and businesses—the true regional seedbeds of greater economic productivity, competitiveness and job creation.
• Build the knowledge base necessary to address the nation’s energy challenges. The regional centers would collaborate with K-12 schools, community colleges, regional universities, and workplace training initiatives to educate future scientists, engineers, innovators, and entrepreneurs and to motivate the region’s graduating students to contribute to the region’s emerging green economy.
• Complement efforts at universities and across the DOE innovation infrastructure, but be organizationally and managerially separate from either group. The regional energy centers would focus rather heavily on commercialization and deployment, adopting a collaborative translational research paradigm. Within DOE, the centers would occupy a special niche for bottom-up translational research in a suite of new, largely top-down innovation-oriented programs that aim to advance fundamental science (EFRCs), bring energy R&D to scale (Energy Innovation Hubs) and find ways to break the cost barriers of new technology (ARPA-E).

To establish and build out the institute network across the Great Lakes region, the new regional energy initiative would:

• Utilize a tiered organization and management structure. Each regional center would have a strong external advisory board representing the participating partners. In some cases, partners might play direct management roles with executive authority.
• Adopt a competitive award process with specific selection criteria. Centers would receive support through a competitive award process, with proposals evaluated by an interagency panel of peer reviewers.
• Receive as much federal funding as major DOE labs outside the Great Lakes region. Given the massive responsibilities of the proposed Great Lakes energy research centers, total federal funding for the whole network should be comparable to that of comprehensive DOE labs, such as Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and others, which have FY2010 budgets between $1 and $2 billion. Based on existing industry-university concentrations, one can envision as many as six compelling research centers in the Great Lakes region.

Conclusion

In sum, America’s national energy infrastructure—based primarily upon fossil fuels—must be updated and replaced with new technologies. At the same time, no region in the nation is better equipped to deliver the necessary innovations than is the Great Lakes area. And so this strong need and this existing capacity should be joined through an aggressive initiative to build a network of regional energy research and innovation centers. Through this intervention, the federal government could catalyze a dynamic new partnership of Midwestern businesses, research universities, federal laboratories, entrepreneurs and state and local governments to transform the nation’s carbon dependent economy, while renewing a flagging regional economy.

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Policy Brief #175

As the nation strives to recover from the “Great Recession,” job creation remains one of the biggest challenges to renewed prosperity. Small businesses have been among the most powerful generators of new jobs historically, suggesting the value of a stronger focus on supporting small businesses—especially high-growth firms—and encouraging entrepreneurship. Choosing the right policies will require public and private decision-makers to establish clear goals, such as increasing employment, raising the overall return on investment, and generating innovations with broader benefits for society. Good mechanisms will also be needed for gauging their progress and ultimate success. This brief examines policy recommendations to strengthen the small business sector and provide a platform for effective programs. These recommendations draw heavily from ideas discussed at a conference held at the Brookings Institution with academic experts, successful private-sector entrepreneurs, and government policymakers, including leaders from the Small Business Administration. The gathering was intended to spur the development of creative solutions in the private and public sectors to foster lasting economic growth.

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	What incentives and assistance could be made available to “gazelles” and to small business more generally? What policies are likely to work most effectively? In the near term, government policies aimed at bolstering the recovery and further strengthening the financial system will help small businesses that have been hard hit by the economic downturn. Spurred by the interchange of ideas at a Brookings forum on small businesses, we have identified the following more targeted ideas for fostering the health and growth of small businesses (and, in many cases, larger businesses) over the longer run: Improve access to public and private capital. Reexamine corporate tax policy with an eye toward whether provisions of our tax code are discouraging small business development. Promote education to help businesses struggling with shortages of workers with particular skills, and promote research to spur innovation. Rethink immigration policy, as current policy may be contributing to shortages of key workers and deterring entrepreneurs who wish to start promising businesses in our country. Explore ways to foster “innovation-friendly” environments, such as regional cluster initiatives. Strengthen government counseling programs.

The term “small business” applies to many different types of firms. To begin, the small business community encompasses an enormous range of “Main Street” stores and services we use every day, such as restaurants, dry cleaners, card shops and lawn care providers. When such a business fails, it is often replaced by a similar firm. The small business community also includes somewhat bigger firms—in industries such as manufacturing, consulting, advertising and auto sales—that may have more staying power than Main Street businesses, but still tend to stay relatively small, with under 250 employees. While these two kinds of small businesses contribute relatively little to overall employment growth, they are a steady source of mainstream employment. If economic conditions do not support the formation of new businesses to replace the ones that fail, there would be a significant net destruction of jobs and harm to local communities.

Yet another type of small business has an explicit ambition for rapid growth. These high-growth companies are sometimes known as “gazelles.” According to the Small Business Administration, small businesses account for two-thirds of new jobs, and the gazelles account for much of this job creation. The most striking examples—such as Google and eBay—have tended to be in high-tech industries and were gazelles for a significant time before they graduated to be very large businesses. However, gazelles exist in all industry types and in all regions of the country, and the large majority are not grazing in the nation’s technology-dominated Silicon Valleys. According to one expert, the three largest industry categories for high-growth companies are restaurant chains, administrative services and health care companies. One non-high-tech example is Potbelly Sandwiches, a restaurant chain that began in Chicago. Another is the San Francisco-based Gymboree Corporation, a provider of child development programs and children’s clothing.

 

Fostering the Development of High-Growth Companies

High-growth small businesses represent only about 5 percent of total startups, making it important to determine how to spot and foster them. A key common characteristic is that growth is critically dependent on the entrepreneurs who start these companies; they are people on a mission, charismatic leaders who can inspire creativity and commitment from their staffs.

The age of these firms is highly correlated with when their growth is highest. Generally, the most dramatic growth occurs after at least four years of existence—and coincidentally lasts about four years—before it slows again to a more typical pace for small businesses. Of course, some firms such as Google defy this pattern and continue to experience high growth for many years.

Although dynamic small businesses can be found nearly everywhere and in many industries, some regions spawn more of them than others. These regions may have especially supportive features, such as a critical mass of potential workers with relevant skills, a social climate and network that encourage idea generation, locally available venture capital, or some combination of these factors.

Unfortunately, attempts to anticipate which companies or even industries are likely to produce gazelles are prone to error. Thus, excessive emphasis on national industrial policies that favor specific industries are likely misplaced. Without knowing how to target assistance precisely, broad strategies, such as assistance with funding, knowledge, contacts and other essential resources, may be the best approach to fostering high-growth businesses. Such support has the added value of also aiding Main Street businesses.

Many of the most promising policies focus on removing obstacles that hinder entrepreneurs with solid business plans from launching and expanding their businesses.

Funding

As a result of the burst of the dot.com bubble in early 2000 and the recent financial crisis, small businesses have found the availability of venture capital funds drastically diminished. The crisis has also made it more difficult to obtain funding from banks and other conventional means. These trends particularly affect the “missing middle” of small businesses—roughly, those with between 10 and 100 employees.

The venture capital market. Historically, venture capital has financed only a relatively small portion of small businesses, but those financed have tended to be the ones with the greatest growth potential. In recent years, firms that eventually grew to where they could issue initial public stock offerings generally relied more heavily on venture capital financing than the average small business.

The dollar value of venture capital deals funded today is only about one-fifth the size it reached at its peak. While the peak amount may have been too large, today’s value is probably too small. With their capital heavily invested in a small range of industries and locales, it seems likely that venture capital firms have missed a high proportion of potential investment opportunities. Further, “once burned, twice shy” funders have increasingly focused on larger, later-stage ventures. Consequently, mezzanine financing, which new companies need to survive and thrive in the critical early stages, is scarce.

The funding problems partly stem from venture capital firms today having less money to invest. Some investors who formerly contributed to such firms have become more risk-averse, and worse performance figures have discouraged new investors. Lack of venture capital affects some industries more than others, and even some green energy companies—viewed by some as one of the nation’s more promising industry sectors—have moved to China, where financial support is more readily available.

Bank lending. In contrast to large businesses, which can turn to capital markets for funding, many small businesses are dependent on banks for financing. Although the worst of the 2008–09 credit crunch is behind us, many small businesses still find it difficult to obtain bank loans. Community banks, a key source of small business financing, have been hard hit by losses in commercial real estate, which have limited their lending capacity. Further, many small business owners who historically would have used real estate assets as collateral for expansion loans can no longer do so because of declines in real estate prices. In addition, small businesses that have, in the past, used credit cards to purchase equipment and supplies have been hindered by reductions in credit limits.

Overall economic conditions

The high degree of uncertainty currently surrounding the economic and financing climate may have prompted many entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs to hold off on growth plans. Despite their reputation as high-flying risk-takers, good entrepreneurs take only calculated risks, where the benefits outweigh the dangers. Uncertainties about the future trajectory of the economy merely increase risk without raising potential rewards.

Government policies

Government policies affect the climate for small businesses in many ways. For example, small businesses face substantial hurdles when entering the complicated world of federal grants and contracts. At the state level, severe budget shortfalls mean that even well-designed initiatives to boost small businesses may founder.

The Small Business Administration (SBA) assists the full continuum of small businesses through a variety of means. These include: an $80 billion loan guarantee portfolio; specialized counseling and training centers; specialized business development programs targeting the socially and economically disadvantaged; oversight to ensure that at least 23 percent of federal government contracts go to small businesses (with certain preferences for minority and women-owned businesses); and the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Investment Companies programs.

The Obama administration is attempting to broaden support for small businesses by bringing the SBA into multi-agency initiatives that tackle common problems. For example, the Departments of Energy, Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Education, and Labor, along with the National Science Foundation and the SBA, are supporting a five-year, nearly $130 million Energy Regional Innovation Cluster.

Strength of “social capital”

Through the 1990s, the United States was a worldwide leader in fostering innovation and entrepreneurship and reaped the reward of employment growth. Current international comparisons suggest that we are now closer to tenth place among some 70 nations in our ability to support innovation. Much of what has kept our nation from remaining in the top spot appears to relate to insufficient cultural support for entrepreneurship.

Strong social networks in specific geographic regions appear to substantially bolster the growth of innovative businesses. These networks are built around entrepreneurial dealmakers who serve as the nodes of the network, forming connections among researchers, entrepreneurs and investors. Unfortunately, many regions and industries lack strong networks.

Access to decision-making information. Entrepreneurs need an array of information and advice about how to tackle the problems that arise at different stages in business development. The SBA reports that companies that have taken advantage of their long-term counseling programs, for example, have higher growth than companies that have not.

Opportunity for all. Social networks are self-selecting, and some people have to work extra hard to gain entry to a region’s network of entrepreneurs. While various organizations exist to help women and people of color access entrepreneurial skills and information, these efforts may not suffice. Under-representation of any group presumably would filter out a number of potential high-growth companies.

Workforce issues

A long-time strength of the American workforce, worker mobility has declined. This trend has been attributed in part to an aging population and in part to the current difficulty people have in selling their homes. Businesses report difficulty finding employees with the right training, especially at the technician level, where straightforward vocational training could help.

Global competition

Increasing global competition for good projects, entrepreneurs and capital is a positive trend from an international perspective, but runs counter to the national goal of promoting rapid growth in U.S. industry and employment. Today, many entrepreneurs can choose among starting a business here, in their home country, or even in a third, more hospitable nation. At the same time, current U.S. immigration policy hinders entrepreneurs from coming here to launch their companies. A recent report from The Brookings- Duke Immigration Policy Roundtable concluded that “educated workers with the knowledge and skills to innovate are critical” to the United States and recommended increasing the annual number of skilled visas.

 

Policy Goals for Small Business

Measuring Results

More work is needed to identify key policy goals and priorities related to small business success. Critically, what would constitute “improvement” in public policy regarding small business employment, and how would we measure it? Clearly, increasing the total number of jobs created each year (by both small and large businesses, net of job destruction) would be a positive outcome, all else being equal. Another potential goal would be improving the “quality” of the jobs created, as measured by average compensation or by job creation in new industries or geographic areas where unemployment is high. Creating “good jobs” that bring generous compensation would seem to be always desirable, but this outcome could conflict with other social goals, for example, if the jobs created required skills out of the reach of groups that are traditionally difficult to employ.

Slowing job destruction could be as important as increasing the creation of new jobs, but discouraging layoffs without increasing performance would do more harm than good. The trick is to raise the quality of marginal firms so that their improved performance allows them to retain employees they would otherwise have to let go.

A final key factor in setting policy goals that would support small businesses is measuring the cost to taxpayers of the initiatives that flow from the goals. This includes the subsidy cost contained in the federal budget, as well as costs and tradeoffs in society at large.

Changing Key Policies

Small businesses face both short-run and long-run challenges. With regard to the former, many small businesses have been hard hit by the recession and appear to be lagging behind larger businesses in their recovery. The cyclical struggles of this sector in part reflect the dependence of many small firms on the still-strained banking system for their financing; they also reflect the high toll that our extremely soft labor markets have taken on demand for Main Street goods and services. Thus, government policies aimed at broadly bolstering the recovery and further strengthening the financial system will yield important benefits to small businesses.

The government, in conjunction with the private sector, can also take steps that will foster an economic environment that is supportive of entrepreneurship and economic growth over the long run. Specific policy steps that might help small businesses (and, in many cases, large businesses) include:

Improve access to public and private capital. Implementing serious financial reform will reduce the likelihood that we will see a repeat of the recent credit cycle that has been so problematic for the small business sector. When credit market disruptions do occur, policymakers should be attentive to whether temporary expansions of the SBA loan guarantee program are needed to sustain lending to creditworthy borrowers. The SBA should also consider expanding the points of access to its loan programs through an expansion of its lending partners. Finally, the SBA (or a similar entity) might encourage venture capital funds to broaden their investments beyond familiar areas by systematically bringing these investors together with entrepreneurs from neglected geographic regions and business sectors.

Reexamine corporate tax policy. More thinking is needed about whether provisions in our tax code discourage small business development in a way that is harmful to the broader economy and that places the United States at a relative disadvantage internationally. For example, Congress might consider whether it would be beneficial, on net, to lower employment taxes as a way of spurring hiring at businesses with high-growth potential. In addition, some analysts believe there would be gains from increasing tax credits for research and development and further lowering taxes on capital equipment. A design priority in all cases should be simplicity, as complicated rules can limit take-up among smaller firms that do not have extensive accounting or legal expertise.

Promote education and research. Entrepreneurs report difficulty in finding workers with the skills they need for manufacturing, technology and other jobs that do not require four-year college degrees. Access to such educational opportunities, including tailored vocational training, should be affordable and ubiquitous.

At the university level, improvements are needed in the way academic research is brought to the commercial market. Continued public and private support for basic research might be wise, particularly if we are in a trough between waves of innovation, as some analysts believe. The large investments by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and other ambitious public and private programs laid the groundwork for many of the high-growth businesses of today. It may be worth exploring whether support for research in “softer” areas than the sciences might do an equal or better job of inspiring innovations.

Rethink immigration policy. A reconsideration of limits on H1-B visas might help entrepreneurs struggling with shortages of workers with particular skills. In addition, current immigration policy discourages immigrants who want to establish entrepreneurial businesses in America. Any efforts to expand immigration are frequently perceived as “taking jobs away from Americans,” but studies have shown that new businesses create jobs for Americans.

Explore ways to foster “innovation-friendly” environments. Some regions of the United States clearly do a better job of encouraging innovation. Silicon Valley is the classic example, but there may be as many as 40 such clusters scattered around the country. While clusters often arise organically, typically near major universities, some states have made an explicit commitment to innovation and entrepreneurship. Examples include the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative and California’s Biological Technologies Initiative, involving community colleges statewide. Federal, state and local policymakers should keep a keen eye on ways of adapting best practices from these initiatives as information becomes available about which elements are most effective.

Strengthen government counseling programs. The SBA might do more to expand and tailor its already successful growth counseling programs to better meet the needs of both Main Street and potential high-growth businesses, as well as firms at different developmental stages. Any effort to expand small businesses’ opportunities for federal grants and contracts should be accompanied by significant streamlining of the application process.

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Editor's note: This article is part of a series marking International Women's Day, on March 8, 2016. Read the latest from Global scholars on bridging the gender inequality gap, women’s well-being, and gender-sensitive policies in sub-Saharan Africa. 

This Tuesday, March 8, marks the first International Women’s Day since world leaders agreed last September to launch the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030. A more rounded conception of gender equality marks one of the SDGs’ most important improvements compared to their predecessor Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Two SDG targets help to illustrate the broadening geopolitical recognition of the challenges. They also help to underscore how much progress is still required.

A new target: Eliminating child marriage

The inclusion of SDG target 5.3 adds one of the most important new priorities to the global policy agenda: to “eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage, and female genital mutilation.” Until only a few years ago, the child marriage portion of this target had received only scant international attention. The driving force advancing the issue has been Girls Not Brides, a fast-gelling coalition that now includes more than 550 civil society organizations from over 70 countries. The initiative was first spearheaded by Mabel van Oranje, the dynamic international policy entrepreneur.

At a practical level, ending child marriage faces at least two major challenges. First, it is largescale. Every year, an estimated 15 million girls around the world are married before the age of 18. Second, it is highly complex. There are no simple solutions to addressing cultural practices with deep roots. Impressively, Girls Not Brides has already published a thoughtful theory of change to inform policy conversations, accompanied by a menu of recommended indicators for measuring progress. Regardless of whether this specific theory turns out to be correct, the coalition deserves significant credit for advancing public discussions toward practical action and outcomes. One can only hope that every constituency that lobbied for an SDG target presents similarly considered proposals soon. The advocates for ending child marriage have already registered some early gains. In 2015, four countries raised the age of marriage to 18: Chad, Guatemala, Ireland, and Malawi.

A renewed target: Protecting mothers’ lives

The SDGs are also carrying forward the previous MDG priority of maternal health. Target 3.1 aims as follows: “By 2030, reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births.” Formally this falls under Goal 3 for health and wellbeing, but it certainly represents a gender equality objective too. Part of that is by definition; mothers are female. Part of it is driven by the need to overcome gender bias; male decision-makers at all levels might overlook key health issues with which they have no direct personal experience.

As of the early 2000s, maternal mortality was too often considered a topic only for specialist discussions. One of the MDG movement’s most important contributions was to elevate the issue to the center stage of global policy. For example, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper made it a centerpiece among his own foreign policy priorities, including at the G-8 Muskoka summit he hosted in 2010.

Figure 1 shows an initial estimate of the gains across developing countries since 2000, as measured by maternal mortality ratios (MMR). The solid line indicates the actual rate of progress. The dotted lines indicate how things would have looked if previous pre-MDG trends had continued as of 1990-2000 and 1996-2001, respectively. (This is the same basic counterfactual methodology I have previously used for child mortality trends here and here, noting that maternal mortality data remain considerably less precise and subject to ongoing updates in estimation.)

The graph shows that developing countries’ average MMR dropped from approximately 424 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1990, down to 364 in 2000, and further to 233 in 2015. That works out to a 36 percent decline over the past 15 years alone, driven by acceleration in progress during the mid-2000s. Importantly, the value in 2015 was also at least 12 percent lower than it would have been under pre-MDG rates of progress—287 under 1990-2000 trends and 266 under 1996-2001 trends.

Figure 1: Developing country progress on maternal mortality, 1990-2015

A long road ahead

Whereas the MDGs focused on developing countries, the SDGs apply universally to all countries. In that spirit, and slightly different from the previous graph, Figure 2 shows an estimate of the current global MMR trajectory for 2030, extrapolating the rates of progress from 2005 to 2015. Drawing from available data for 174 countries with a current population of 200,000 or more, the world’s MMR is on course to drop from approximately 216 in 2015 to 163 in 2030. This would mark a 25 percent improvement, but falls far short of the global MMR target of 70. (These calculations follow a similar methodology to my assessment last year of under-5 mortality trajectories.)

Figure 2: Global maternal mortality - current trajectory to 2030

The mothers of nations

Although the SDG for maternal mortality is set at a global level (unlike the country-level target 3.2 for child mortality), it is worth assessing how many individual countries are trailing the MMR benchmark of 70. The geographic nature of the global challenge is underscored in Figure 3. It lists the number of countries with MMR above 70 across the respective years 2000, 2015, and—on current trajectory—2030. As of 2000, 90 countries still had MMRs greater than 70. By 2015, this was down to 77 countries. By 2030, on current rates of progress, the relevant figure drops only slightly to 68 countries.

Most notably, the figure for sub-Saharan Africa remains unchanged between 2015 and 2030, at 44 countries, even though most of the region is already experiencing major mortality declines. Rwanda, for example, saw its MMR plummet from 1,020 in 2000 to 290 by 2015. It is on track to reach 106 by 2030. Meanwhile, Sierra Leone saw a decline from 2,650 in 2000 to 1,360 in 2015, on a path toward 768 in 2030. The challenge is not a lack of progress. Instead, it is simply that these countries have huge ground to cover to reach the ambitious goal. On current trajectory, 11 African countries are on course to have MMRs of 500 or greater in 2030.

Figure 3: Scoping progress on SDG 3.1

Number of countries with maternal mortality ratios > 70

Women and girls deserve more

Although these two targets for child marriage and maternal mortality embody only a small portion of the SDGs’ broader gender equality imperatives, they reflect crucial aspects of the overall challenge. On the positive side, they provide inspiration for the ways in which long-overlooked issues can rapidly gain political and policy traction. But they also underscore the scale of the task ahead. The global challenges of gender inequality—ranging from discrimination to violence against women to inequalities of opportunity—all require dramatic accelerations in progress. On this International Women’s Day, we all need to recommit to break from business as usual. Our mothers, sisters, daughters, and partners around the world all deserve nothing less. 

Note: The maternal mortality figures presented above have been updated subsequent to the original post in order to correct for a coding error discovered in the original country-weighting calculations for global trajectories.

      

       

       

       

       

The composition and track record of the current Israeli government leads Palestinians to expect very little from Israel in the way of advancing peace. After five decades of military occupation, and repeated failures of two decades of bilateral negotiations based on the Oslo Accords, there is a clear need for new ideas. But the proposals offered by Amos Yadlin’s post last month, “Two states, four paths for achieving them,” do not accord with basic realities on the Palestinian side, and as such do not offer a viable pathway to a two-state outcome.

Yadlin’s argument is premised on the belief that a negotiated two-state outcome is not possible today because of a Palestinian refusal to engage. He argues: “It appears that in 2016, the Palestinians do not view a two-state solution…as a preferred outcome.” Palestinians, by contrast, see their leaders’ actions, like the November 2012 UN General Assembly resolution that accorded Palestine observer state status, as efforts to save the two-state solution in the face of Israeli actions that undermine it.

The outcome Yadlin offers as one that would meet Israel’s needs would require Palestinians to forfeit basic components of statehood and basic principles of Israeli-Palestinian peace that are enshrined in international law, such as the right for Palestinian refugees to return to their or their families’ places of origin in what is today Israel. 

Similarly, Yadlin calls for Palestinians to accept “limitations on their sovereignty” to meet Israeli security concerns. From a Palestinian perspective, though, that sovereignty has been systematically constrained already by Israeli policies, including annexation of territory and the expanding settlement enterprise. These are but two examples of divergent viewpoints between Israelis and Palestinians that doom each of the “four paths” Mr. Yadlin proposes to reach a two-state solution. 

Each of Yadlin’s proposed paths for Israel—negotiations toward a final status agreement (with the expectation that they would fail due to Palestinian intransigence), pursuing a regional agreement, seeking an interim bilateral agreement, and taking unilateral action—is problematic.

“A negotiation process resulting in a final status agreement” – The Oslo Peace Accords and the 20 years of unconsummated negotiations that followed were an intensive effort to achieve just that. However, they failed in part because they did not address the fundamental asymmetry between the parties to those accords—Palestinians recognized a state, and Israel, in turn, recognized the representative body of a national movement seeking its right to self-determination. 

If Israelis were serious about two states, and heeded lessons from the failed interim agreements of the Oslo process, a good starting point would be for Israel to reciprocate the political recognition of Israel that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) made back in 1993. Israel’s recognition of the state of Palestine is long overdue, especially after more than 130 countries—including the Vatican—have done so. 

This symmetrical recognition would also define the end game upfront as the outcome to which both sides are already formally committed—and then both sides can spend their negotiating energies on realizing two states living in peace.

“A regional agreement” – The notion that a regional track could substitute for the bilateral track suggests a failure to learn from the past. At many points throughout the history of this conflict, Israeli politicians and policymakers have sought to transfer the Palestinian issue onto other regional states—as in the Camp David I agreement with Egypt, or the suggestion that Palestinians should instead create their state in Jordan, a sovereign country. 

It is positive that Mr. Yadlin seems to embrace the Arab Peace Initiative (API) as a means for progress toward two states—but it can only play the role he envisions if it morphs into something it is not. 

The API is not a starting point for negotiations, but rather terms of reference for an agreement that Arab states would recognize as sufficient to gain Israel normalization within the Middle East. As such, Yadlin’s call for an “updated version” in which the “plan should be decoupled from the issue of the [occupied] Golan Heights” and “not be conditional on a solution to the refugee problem according to U.N. Security Council Resolution 194 from 1949,” do not take into account Arab governments’ own interests in these issues. Regional peace for Israel is unattainable without Israel first making peace with Palestinians.

“An interim bilateral agreement” – When Palestinians accepted the interim agreements of the Oslo bilateral process, there were 100,000 illegal settlers on the ground. Two decades of negotiations has left us with over 500,000 settlers and with the Palestinian community in the West Bank and Gaza further fragmented and battered. This is why the Palestinian leadership has been crystal clear in rejecting another interim agreement. 

Without more than verbal commitments to a viable two-state solution, and without a clear pathway to get there, another interim agreement would only allow Israel to create more “facts on the ground” that would preclude such a solution. It is hard to understand how such a proposal would offer Palestinians any hope of progress, given the experience of the past two decades. 

“In the case a negotiated agreement cannot be realized, an independent Israeli determination of its own borders” – It is even harder to understand how a unilateral Israeli determination of its own borders could, as Yadlin argues, “reinforce the agreed two-state solution paradigm,” especially because this would likely require massive Israeli military force (along with continued blind support from the United States) to create more facts on the ground. It’s understandable why Israelis would prefer to negotiate this conflict with themselves rather than engage with their adversaries, but it is the vast disparity in power between Israelis and Palestinians, not the logic of conflict resolution, that gives Israelis the realistic ability to do so. Still, this does not mean that unilateral decisions by Israel will one day find support among Palestinians. 

It’s understandable why Israelis would prefer to negotiate this conflict with themselves rather than engage with their adversaries, but it is the vast disparity in power between Israelis and Palestinians, not the logic of conflict resolution, that gives Israelis the realistic ability to do so.

It is the nature of international conflicts that they can “end” only in one of two ways: either the two parties agree to a solution that meets their mutual interests, or the side with greater power dictates, imposes, and enforces an outcome over the objections of the weaker side. In proposing unilateralism as a “solution,” Yadlin abandons the more sustainable former pathway for the latter, which I see as doomed. 

If Israel’s leadership is serious about reaching a two-state solution, the road is defined and clear. It requires that Israelis grapple with the real interests and demands of Palestinians as of equal substance and value to their own, rather than wishing them away. Equality can be achieved in two, truly independent states; or this conflict will default to a single state—as warned by President Obama and Secretary Kerry—marred by a civil rights struggle that may take another 70 years to bear fruition, but whose result is pre-defined.

      

       

Breakthrough therapy designation (BTD) is the newest of four expedited programs developed by the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to accelerate the development and review of novel therapies that target serious conditions. The public response to the program has been largely positive, and dozens of drugs have successfully received the designation. However, the FDA denies many more requests than it grants. In fact, as of March 2015, less than one in three of the BTD requests submitted have been granted. By contrast, roughly 75 percent of the requests for fast track designation (another of the Agency’s expedited programs) were granted between 1998 and 2007. This discrepancy suggests ongoing uncertainty over what exactly constitutes a “breakthrough” according to the FDA’s criteria.

On April 24, the Center for Health Policy at Brookings will host an event, Breakthrough Therapy Designation: Exploring the Qualifying Criteria, that will discuss qualifying criteria for the BTD program using real and hypothetical case studies to explore how FDA weighs the evidence submitted. Below is a primer that describes the definition, value, and impact of BTD.

What is BTD?

BTD was established in 2012 under the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act, and is intended to expedite the development and review of drugs that show signs of extraordinary benefit at early stages of the clinical development process. However, BTD is not an automatic approval. The drug still has to undergo clinical testing and review by the FDA. Rather, BTD is designed to facilitate and shorten the clinical development process, which can otherwise take many years to complete.

What criteria does FDA use to evaluate potential breakthroughs?

In order to qualify for the designation, a therapy must be intended to treat a serious or life-threatening illness, and there must be preliminary clinical evidence that it represents a substantial improvement over existing therapies on at least one clinically significant outcome (such as death or permanent impairment).

In considering a request for BTD, FDA relies on three primary considerations:

1) the quantity and quality of the clinical evidence being submitted;

2) the available therapies that the drug is being compared to; and

3) the magnitude of treatment effect shown on the outcome being studied.

In practice, however, it can be difficult to define a single threshold that a therapy must meet. The decision depends on the specific context for that drug.  In some cases, for example, the targeted disease has few or no treatments available, while in others there may be several effective alternative treatments to which the new therapy can be compared. The request may also be made at different stages of the clinical development process, which means that the amount and type of data available to FDA can vary. In some cases, early evidence of benefit may disappear when the drug is tested in larger populations, which is why FDA reserves the right to rescinded the designation if subsequent data shows that the therapy no longer meets the criteria.

How many therapies have received the designation?

As of March 2015, FDA had received a total of 293 requests for BTD. Of these, 82 received the designation, and 23 have since been approved for marketing. Ten of these approvals were new indications for already approved drugs, rather than novel therapies that had never before received FDA approval.

What are the benefits of BTD?

For drug manufacturers, it is about the intensity and frequency of their interactions with FDA. Once the designation is granted, the FDA takes an “all hands-on-deck” approach to providing the manufacturer with ongoing guidance and feedback throughout the clinical development process. Products that receive BTD are also able to submit portions of their marketing application on a rolling basis (rather than all at once at the end of clinical trials) and BTD can also be used in combination with other expedited programs in order to further reduce the product’s time to market.

For patients, the potential benefits are straightforward: earlier access to therapies that may significantly improve or extend their lives.

How does BTD relate to the other three expedited programs?

The other three expedited review and development programs—fast track designation, priority review, and accelerated approval—are also geared at facilitating the development and approval of drugs for serious conditions. These other programs have been in place for over 15 years, and have played a significant role in accelerating patient access to new therapeutics (Table 1). In 2014 alone, 66 percent of the 41 drugs approved by FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research used at least one of these four pathways, and 46 percent received at least two of the designations in combination.

Table 1: Overview of FDA’s Expedited Review Programs

 Adapted from FDA's Guidance for Industry: Expedited Programs for Serious Conditions - Drugs and Biologics

      

Event Information

Register for the Event

Established by the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act of 2012, breakthrough therapy designation (BTD) is one of several programs developed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to speed up the development and review of drugs and biologics that address unmet medical needs. In order to qualify for this designation, the treatment must address a serious or life-threatening illness. In addition, the manufacturer (i.e., sponsor) must provide early clinical evidence that the treatment is a substantial improvement over currently available therapies. The FDA is working to further clarify how it applies the qualifying criteria to breakthrough designation applications.

On April 24, under a cooperative agreement with FDA, the Center for Health Policy convened a public meeting to discuss the qualifying criteria for this special designation. Using examples from oncology, neurology, psychiatry, and hematology, the workshop highlighted considerations for the BTD application process, the evaluation process, and factors for acceptance or rejection. The discussion also focused on key strategies for ensuring that the qualifying criteria are understood across a broad range of stakeholder groups.

Video

• Breakthrough therapy designation: Two and a half years in
• Applying the breakthrough therapy criteria: Oncology
• Applying the breakthrough therapy criteria: Neurology
• Applying the breakthrough therapy criteria: Anti-infective/psychiatry/hematology
• Summary and discussion of lessons learned

Event Materials

• Breakthrough Therapy Designation_final
• Breakthrough therapy slide deck

      

The breakthrough therapy designation (BTD) program was initiated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2012 to expedite the development of treatments for serious or life-threatening illness that demonstrate “substantial improvement” over existing therapies. The program has since become a widely supported mechanism for accelerating patient access to new drugs. As of March 2015, FDA has received a total of 293 requests for BTD. However, it has granted just  82 (28%), which indicates an ongoing lack of clarity over what exactly meets the criteria for the designation.

On April 24, the Center for Health Policy at Brookings convened a public meeting to explore the designation’s qualifying criteria and how FDA applies those criteria across therapeutic areas. Panelists used real-world and hypothetical case studies to frame the discussion, and highlighted major considerations for the application process, the FDA’s evaluation of the evidence, and the key factors for acceptance or rejection. The discussion also identified strategies to ensure that qualifying criteria are well understood. Here are the five big takeaways:

1.  The BTD program is viewed positively by drug companies, researchers, advocates, and others 

Across the board, participants expressed enthusiasm for the BTD program. Industry representatives noted that their experience had been extremely positive, and that the increased cooperation with and guidance from FDA were very helpful in streamlining their development programs. Receiving the designation can also raise a drug company’s profile, which can facilitate additional investment as well as clinical trial patient recruitment; this is particularly important for smaller companies with limited resources.

Patient and disease advocates were likewise supportive, and expressed hope that the early lessons learned from successful breakthrough therapy approvals (which have been mostly concentrated in the oncology and antiviral fields) could be translated to other disease areas with less success. However, while BTD is an important tool in expediting the development of new drugs, it is just one piece of broader scientific and regulatory policy landscape. Accelerating the pace of discovery and development of truly innovative new drugs will depend on a range of other factors, such as developing and validating new biomarkers that can be used to measure treatment effects at an earlier stage, as well as establishing networks that can streamline the clinical trial process. It will also be important to develop effective new approaches to collecting, analyzing, and communicating information about these treatments once they are on the market, as this information can potentially be used by FDA, providers, and patients to  further improve prescription drug policy and medical decision-making.

2.  BTD requests far outnumber those that actually meet the qualifying criteria

Since the program began, less than 30 percent of requests have received BTD designation. A substantial majority were denied at least in part due to either a lack of data or problems with the quality of the data, or some combination of the two. For example, some sponsors requested the designation before they had any clinical data, or submitted the request using clinical data that was incomplete or based on flawed study designs. Many requests also failed to meet the Agency’s bar for “substantial improvement” over existing therapies.

One reason for the high denial rate may be a lack of a clear regulatory or statutory bar that could be used as a definitive guide for sponsors to know what is needed to qualify for the designation. BTD denials are also confidential, which means that sponsors effectively have nothing to lose by submitting a request. Going forward, manufacturers may need to exercise more discretion in deciding to request the designation, as the process can be resource- and time-intensive for both sides.

3.  There is no single threshold for determining what defines a breakthrough therapy

About 53 percent of the 109 total BTD denials were due at least in part to the fact that the drug did not represent a substantial improvement over existing therapies. During the day’s discussion, FDA and sponsors both noted that this is likely because the criteria for BTD are inherently subjective. In practice, this means there is no clear threshold for determining when a new therapy represents a “substantial improvement” over existing therapies. Designation decisions are complex and highly dependent on the context, including the disease or condition being targeted, the availability of other treatments, the patient population, the outcomes being studied, and the overall reliability of the data submitted. Given the multiple factors at play, it can be difficult in some cases to determine when a new product is potentially “transformational” as opposed to “better,” especially for conditions that are poorly understood or have few or no existing treatments. In making its determinations, FDA considers the totality of the evidence submitted, rather than focusing on specific evidentiary requirements.

4.  Early communication with FDA is strongly recommended for BTD applicants

Roughly 72 percent of the BTD denials related at least in part to trial design or analysis problems, which led several people to suggest that sponsors engage with FDA prior to submitting their request. Though there are several formal mechanisms for interacting with the agency, informal consultations with the relevant review division could help sponsors to get a better  and much earlier sense of what kind of data FDA might need. This early communication could both strengthen viable BTD requests and reduce the number of frivolous requests.

5.  FDA may need more resources for implementing the BTD program

Drugs that receive breakthrough designation are subject to much more intensive FDA guidance and review. However, when the program was established in 2012, Congress did not allocate funding to cover its costs. There have been ongoing concerns that the program is exacting a significant toll on FDA’s already limited resources, and potentially affecting the timeline for other drug application reviews. These concerns were reiterated during the day’s discussion, and some suggested that Congress consider attaching a user fee to the BTD program when the Prescription Drug User Fee Act comes up for reauthorization in 2017.

      

If current economic growth trends persist, the “great divergence” between Western Europe and East and South Asia in per capita income that commenced 200 years ago will close sometime this century. Key to the closing will be greater accessibility to technology, higher education in East and South Asia, and the relentless diffusion of knowledge including in the biosciences. Advances in the biosciences are poised to contribute in a major way to English economist Thomas Malthus’s four necessities of human life–food, fiber, fuel, and building materials–as well as to human and animal health, biodiversity conservation, and environmental remediation and sustainability.

As my coauthor Leo Furcht and I recently wrote in “Divergence, Convergence, and Innovation: East-West Bioscience in an Anxious Age”, 21st century history will describe the great economic and technological convergence between East and West. It will also further entwine the economic and ecological storylines of the human experience as the vast populations of China and India strive to enter the middle class. Environmentally sustainable economic growth will require putting knowledge of life code, cellular processes, biosynthesis, and biological regeneration to practical use. That prospect is at hand because the biosciences are in the midst of their own convergence–with information technology, nanotechnology, microelectronics, materials, artificial intelligence, robotics, architecture, and design.

From William Hoffman and Leo Furcht, "The Biologist’s Imagination: Innovation in the Biosciences" (Oxford University Press, 2014)

Biomolecules, brainpower, and Malthusian limits

Products arising from molecular biology constitute a growing share of the global economy with each passing year as technologies evolve, production processes improve, and markets expand. In recent years industrial biotechnology has grown faster than the biologic drugs and agricultural biotech sectors in the U.S.

 

U.S. biotech revenue in billions of U.S. dollars.
Source: Robert Carlson, "Nature Biotechnology", In press

Industrial biotechnology employs greener and cleaner technologies to make chemicals, solvents, fuels, and materials such as biocomposites and bioplastics. Growth in this sector can weaken the link between economic growth, environmental pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. Genomics, synthetic biology and metabolic engineering are poised to accelerate growth in the design and manufacture of industrial enzymes and renewable bio-based products. East and South Asian production and consumption of industrial enzymes are on the rise as the Asian middle class expands.

Bioscience is enabling major cereal crops such as wheat, rice, and corn to adapt to a changing climate. Cereal crop yields need to grow by an estimated 70 percent by mid-century to feed the projected nine billion people expected to then inhabit our planet. The challenge of feeding nine billion people without further deforestation and environmental degradation has resurrected the specter of Malthusian limits to our planet’s ecological carrying capacity. These limits are expressed in food and water shortages, forced migrations, political instability, armed conflict, abatement and cleanup activities, and health care related to pollution and climate change. Even with the powerful tools of food crop bioscience–marker-assisted selection, targeted mutation-selection, genetic modification, and others–maintaining crop production levels at expected higher temperatures and with less water is highly questionable.

Precise genomic editing of cereal grains could equip rice, wheat, and corn with nitrogen fixation capabilities, thus reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers with their environmental and atmospheric costs. East and South Asia, facing major food production challenges, ecological limits, pollution from fertilizer use, and drought from climate change, may take the lead over the West in adopting innovative food crop technologies.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of human beings of many ethnicities have had their genomes decoded over the past decade, with the number expected to increase exponentially as sequencing technologies grow in productivity and decline in price. Genomic information coupled with precise genomic editing and bioregenerative tools give us unprecedented power to shape the course of evolution, including our own.

             

Cost trend of sequencing a human-sized genome and Moore’s Law 2001 – 2015.
Source: Kris A. Wetterstrand, DNA Sequencing Costs: Data from the NHGRI Genome Sequencing Program.

The practice of technological innovation in the industrial era – the systematic application of ideas, inventions and technology to markets, trade, and social systems–is now being joined with the code of life, DNA, and the basic unit of life, the cell. Even as the economic gap between East and West narrows, no other convergence has such profound implications for our future and the future health of living systems and ecosystems. That makes the task for policymakers a daunting one.

       

       

The Federal Reserve last week released transcripts of Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings that took place in 2008 amidst a worsening global financial crisis. Sarah Binder describes what was found amongst the transcripts. Alongside financial and economic crises facing the Fed that year, the Fed faced a crisis as a political institution.  

       

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

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

Listen to the full podcast here:

       

Although there has been some progress in forming a national unity government in Libya, “unity” is a rather inapplicable word for the country. In reality, friction between various political actors remains high. Ultimately, perhaps a form of disunity—confederation, rather than centralization—is the best model for Libya.

Libyan politics: A primer

During the summer of 2014, the Libyan leadership, after an initial hint of cooperation, split into two governments: 

• One, headquartered in Tobruk and based on a secular matrix, was recognized internationally. It received support from the House of Representatives and was abetted by General Khalifa Haftar and his so-called National Libyan Army. Externally, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia have supported this government because of its anti-Islamist ideology. In May 2014, Haftar launched "Operation Dignity" against the Islamist militias, supported by the Zintan brigades (consisting of the Civic, al-Sawaiq, and al-Qaaqa brigades), and the militias coming from the ethnic minorities of Tebu and Fezzan.
• The other, headquartered in Tripoli, was Islamic in nature. It was supported by the new General National Congress (GNC) and was part of the Libya Dawn group of pro-Islamist militias (which included groups from Misrata, Amazigh, and Tuareg). Qatar, Sudan, and Turkey have supported this government for different reasons, including to earn a more prominent place on the global stage or to support the Muslim Brotherhood. 

But it gets more complicated, since it wasn’t just the Tobruk- and Tripoli-based governments that competed to fill the power vacuum post-Gadhafi. The constellation of militias and brigades has changed continuously. There are Salafist groups such as:

• Ansar al-Sharia Libya (or ASL, located between Benghazi and Derna); 
• Muhammad Jamal Network (between Benghazi and Derna);
• Al-Murabitun (in the southeast, around Ghat, Ubari, Tasawah, and Murzuq);
• Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (or AQIM, in the southwest and northeast of Libya); and
• Ansar al-Sharia Tunisia (or AST, located between Derna and Ajdabiya). 

Then in 2015, an Islamic State (or ISIS) cell—made up of about 3,000 Tunisians, Yemenis, Algerians, and Libyans, especially former supporters of the Gadhafi regime and members of Ansar al-Sharia—began to take hold in the city of Sirte, Gadhafi's hometown. Sirte is in an oil-rich desert area with tremendous strategic value, lying between the two regions of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. And Misratan militias treated Sirte ruthlessly after Gadhafi’s fall, prompting many locals to welcome ISIS. So it was no accident that ISIS chose that spot, or that it stepped into the Libyan power vacuum more broadly: Libya is strategically important for eventually expanding across North Africa; it’s a launching point for criminal trafficking in the Mediterranean; and there is a potential to exploit huge energy resources, as ISIS has done to a degree in Iraq. 

Then in December 2015 in Morocco, the Government of National Unity (GNA) signed an agreement by which Fayez Serraj became prime minister. But General Haftar and the government in Tobruk didn’t support the move, and the security environment across the country is still abysmal. Despite the assurances from United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) Special Envoy Martin Kobler that Libya would achieve stability, Libya is still seriously fragmented. 

Today, the real fight is not even between Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, per se, because the two regions—along with Fezzan—are so divided internally. Serraj was barely allowed to arrive in Tripoli this March, for instance—only thanks to the intervention of the international community. The GNC (with Prime Minister Khalifa Gwell and President Nouri Abusahmain) immediately dubbed Serraj’s cabinet "illegal," but then a month later decided to disband in favor of Serraj’s GNA. The government in Tobruk, led by President of the House of Representatives Aguila Saleh Issa, has still not given his full endorsement.

Bright spots?

In spite of these political frictions, there have been small signs of progress. Foreign ministers from other countries and even the prime minister of Malta have arrived in Tripoli as a sign that the new political situation is formalizing. And while embassies remain closed, there is a sense that things are moving in a positive direction. Given this, in late April Serraj asked the international community to intervene in order to secure oil wells, theoretically protected by Jadran Ibrahim and his Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG), a powerful allied militia in Tripoli. But while the international community has seemed ready—including the Italian government, which has taken a leadership role—accusations of local weakness and Western meddling complicate the Libyan political arena. 

ISIS, meanwhile, is suffering setbacks, having been attacked in Sirte from the south, west, and east by a collection of GNA forces, Misrata militia brigades, and the PFG. The GNA forces are currently in the center of Sirte, clashing with ISIS and gaining terrain every day. ISIS seems to be weaker than many thought (indicating that estimates of its numbers were wrong) and now may be fleeing south—to Fezzan—where its strategy can be more fluid and less based on territorial control. 

Re-considering the fragmentation problem

The persistent fragmentation in Libya is what is most worrying. Internal divisions are the product of decades of Gadhafi’s reckless governing—he kept his citizens from each other and from the rest of the world and deprived them of any solid governmental or administrative structure that could keep the country stable in the event of a "post-regime" moment. And looking even further back, it’s important to remember that Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were never aligned, even during the two decades of rebellion against Italy. The Italians used the old "divide et impera" (divide and conquer) strategy, digging real "furrows of blood"—in the words of British scholar Edward E. Evans-Pritchard in 1949—between Libyan tribes. 

And today? A serious agreement between the main political factions—the Government of National Unity and the House of Representatives—seems out of reach. Meanwhile, few of the fundamental institutions required for the development and governance of a modern country are in place. Libya has invested little in education, and both corruption and unemployment are off the charts. Despite immense energy resources, the economy is contracting. Oil production has declined from 500,000 barrels per day in 2013 to 300,000 in January 2016, and not because deposits have depleted. And tourism, it goes without saying, isn’t taking place. 

Fayez Serraj, Libyan prime minister-designate under the proposed unity government, attends a meeting with officials of municipal council of Tripoli in Tripoli, Libya. Photo credit: Reuters/Ismail Zitouny.

Instead, there have been thousands of deaths and a massive outflow of refugees. While UNSMIL’s efforts have been commendable, the international community should seriously consider how to do more in Libya. It’s better to devise and implement an intervention plan now than wait for a true emergency in Libya. The international community must think about and articulate a real strategy, not merely implement tactical operations. Given the dramatically deteriorated security situation today, it seems impossible to imagine a non-security related intervention, even in defense of the soldiers called to the simple mission of protecting the new coalition government. 

One approach to consider is helping Libyans build a confederal state, divided into three large regions: Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan (or perhaps more if the Libyan people deem it appropriate). Perhaps it is time that such provinces become more autonomous—following different paths as they choose, based on their unique ethnic, social, religious, and political origins. This is an extreme solution, of course. But it is clear that the international community, which had been so much a part of the Libyan revolution, cannot now permit the failure of Libya as a state.

The paradox of deconstructing to construct, in this case, can work. The long-advocated national-level solution of political unity does not, in fact, seem possible. Instead, a confederation of the three regions built on the original disposition of tribes and natural borders could probably assure a deeper stability. Regional governments could better protect local interests in security, economic reconstruction, and governance. The international community should thus start from the bottom, emphasizing local solutions, supporting local actors, and helping to empower Libyans to choose their leaders at a local level. This is not to rule out a central government someday, but would mean that such a government would be somewhat less influential. It’s an incredibly difficult and long plan, but probably the only one that can work. 

       

Although there has been some progress in forming a national unity government in Libya, “unity” is a rather inapplicable word for the country. In reality, friction between various political actors remains high. Ultimately, perhaps a form of disunity—confederation, rather than centralization—is the best model for Libya.

Libyan politics: A primer

During the summer of 2014, the Libyan leadership, after an initial hint of cooperation, split into two governments: 

• One, headquartered in Tobruk and based on a secular matrix, was recognized internationally. It received support from the House of Representatives and was abetted by General Khalifa Haftar and his so-called National Libyan Army. Externally, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia have supported this government because of its anti-Islamist ideology. In May 2014, Haftar launched "Operation Dignity" against the Islamist militias, supported by the Zintan brigades (consisting of the Civic, al-Sawaiq, and al-Qaaqa brigades), and the militias coming from the ethnic minorities of Tebu and Fezzan.
• The other, headquartered in Tripoli, was Islamic in nature. It was supported by the new General National Congress (GNC) and was part of the Libya Dawn group of pro-Islamist militias (which included groups from Misrata, Amazigh, and Tuareg). Qatar, Sudan, and Turkey have supported this government for different reasons, including to earn a more prominent place on the global stage or to support the Muslim Brotherhood. 

But it gets more complicated, since it wasn’t just the Tobruk- and Tripoli-based governments that competed to fill the power vacuum post-Gadhafi. The constellation of militias and brigades has changed continuously. There are Salafist groups such as:

• Ansar al-Sharia Libya (or ASL, located between Benghazi and Derna); 
• Muhammad Jamal Network (between Benghazi and Derna);
• Al-Murabitun (in the southeast, around Ghat, Ubari, Tasawah, and Murzuq);
• Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (or AQIM, in the southwest and northeast of Libya); and
• Ansar al-Sharia Tunisia (or AST, located between Derna and Ajdabiya). 

Then in 2015, an Islamic State (or ISIS) cell—made up of about 3,000 Tunisians, Yemenis, Algerians, and Libyans, especially former supporters of the Gadhafi regime and members of Ansar al-Sharia—began to take hold in the city of Sirte, Gadhafi's hometown. Sirte is in an oil-rich desert area with tremendous strategic value, lying between the two regions of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. And Misratan militias treated Sirte ruthlessly after Gadhafi’s fall, prompting many locals to welcome ISIS. So it was no accident that ISIS chose that spot, or that it stepped into the Libyan power vacuum more broadly: Libya is strategically important for eventually expanding across North Africa; it’s a launching point for criminal trafficking in the Mediterranean; and there is a potential to exploit huge energy resources, as ISIS has done to a degree in Iraq. 

Then in December 2015 in Morocco, the Government of National Unity (GNA) signed an agreement by which Fayez Serraj became prime minister. But General Haftar and the government in Tobruk didn’t support the move, and the security environment across the country is still abysmal. Despite the assurances from United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) Special Envoy Martin Kobler that Libya would achieve stability, Libya is still seriously fragmented. 

Today, the real fight is not even between Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, per se, because the two regions—along with Fezzan—are so divided internally. Serraj was barely allowed to arrive in Tripoli this March, for instance—only thanks to the intervention of the international community. The GNC (with Prime Minister Khalifa Gwell and President Nouri Abusahmain) immediately dubbed Serraj’s cabinet "illegal," but then a month later decided to disband in favor of Serraj’s GNA. The government in Tobruk, led by President of the House of Representatives Aguila Saleh Issa, has still not given his full endorsement.

Bright spots?

In spite of these political frictions, there have been small signs of progress. Foreign ministers from other countries and even the prime minister of Malta have arrived in Tripoli as a sign that the new political situation is formalizing. And while embassies remain closed, there is a sense that things are moving in a positive direction. Given this, in late April Serraj asked the international community to intervene in order to secure oil wells, theoretically protected by Jadran Ibrahim and his Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG), a powerful allied militia in Tripoli. But while the international community has seemed ready—including the Italian government, which has taken a leadership role—accusations of local weakness and Western meddling complicate the Libyan political arena. 

ISIS, meanwhile, is suffering setbacks, having been attacked in Sirte from the south, west, and east by a collection of GNA forces, Misrata militia brigades, and the PFG. The GNA forces are currently in the center of Sirte, clashing with ISIS and gaining terrain every day. ISIS seems to be weaker than many thought (indicating that estimates of its numbers were wrong) and now may be fleeing south—to Fezzan—where its strategy can be more fluid and less based on territorial control. 

Re-considering the fragmentation problem

The persistent fragmentation in Libya is what is most worrying. Internal divisions are the product of decades of Gadhafi’s reckless governing—he kept his citizens from each other and from the rest of the world and deprived them of any solid governmental or administrative structure that could keep the country stable in the event of a "post-regime" moment. And looking even further back, it’s important to remember that Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were never aligned, even during the two decades of rebellion against Italy. The Italians used the old "divide et impera" (divide and conquer) strategy, digging real "furrows of blood"—in the words of British scholar Edward E. Evans-Pritchard in 1949—between Libyan tribes. 

And today? A serious agreement between the main political factions—the Government of National Unity and the House of Representatives—seems out of reach. Meanwhile, few of the fundamental institutions required for the development and governance of a modern country are in place. Libya has invested little in education, and both corruption and unemployment are off the charts. Despite immense energy resources, the economy is contracting. Oil production has declined from 500,000 barrels per day in 2013 to 300,000 in January 2016, and not because deposits have depleted. And tourism, it goes without saying, isn’t taking place. 

Fayez Serraj, Libyan prime minister-designate under the proposed unity government, attends a meeting with officials of municipal council of Tripoli in Tripoli, Libya. Photo credit: Reuters/Ismail Zitouny.

Instead, there have been thousands of deaths and a massive outflow of refugees. While UNSMIL’s efforts have been commendable, the international community should seriously consider how to do more in Libya. It’s better to devise and implement an intervention plan now than wait for a true emergency in Libya. The international community must think about and articulate a real strategy, not merely implement tactical operations. Given the dramatically deteriorated security situation today, it seems impossible to imagine a non-security related intervention, even in defense of the soldiers called to the simple mission of protecting the new coalition government. 

One approach to consider is helping Libyans build a confederal state, divided into three large regions: Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan (or perhaps more if the Libyan people deem it appropriate). Perhaps it is time that such provinces become more autonomous—following different paths as they choose, based on their unique ethnic, social, religious, and political origins. This is an extreme solution, of course. But it is clear that the international community, which had been so much a part of the Libyan revolution, cannot now permit the failure of Libya as a state.

The paradox of deconstructing to construct, in this case, can work. The long-advocated national-level solution of political unity does not, in fact, seem possible. Instead, a confederation of the three regions built on the original disposition of tribes and natural borders could probably assure a deeper stability. Regional governments could better protect local interests in security, economic reconstruction, and governance. The international community should thus start from the bottom, emphasizing local solutions, supporting local actors, and helping to empower Libyans to choose their leaders at a local level. This is not to rule out a central government someday, but would mean that such a government would be somewhat less influential. It’s an incredibly difficult and long plan, but probably the only one that can work. 

       

      

      

Good afternoon Chair Ayotte, Ranking Member Cantwell, and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify today on the important topic of domestic unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).

I am a nonresident senior fellow in Governance Studies and the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution. I am also a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and a professor at UCLA, where I hold appointments in the Electrical Engineering Department and the Department of Public Policy. The views I am expressing here are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of the Brookings Institution, Stanford University or the University of California.

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In this post-election season and with a fiscal cliff looming, states and metros have begun the work of meeting their many challenges. They’re implementing game-changing initiatives to create jobs and restructure their economies for the long haul. The federal government needs to take notice and get on board note, Metropolitan Program policy experts Bruce Katz and Mark Muro as they urge a move for remaking our federalism and renewing the economy. Katz and Muro explain in this episode of @ Brookings.

Video

• Bruce Katz and Mark Muro: Remaking Federalism and Renewing the Economy

       

Despite widespread agreement that the federal budget is on an unsustainable path, there is also widespread disagreement about what should be done. The Hamilton Project asked leading experts from a variety of backgrounds—the policy world, academia, and the private sector, and from both sides of the political aisle—to develop and share their ideas for addressing the deficit. The proposals will be released at two events scheduled for February 22 and February 26. In a dialogue previewing those events, Hamilton Project Director Michael Greenstone and Policy Director Adam Looney discuss some of the key ideas offered by the experts.

Greenstone stresses that the goal of the papers is to move beyond the fights and disagreements between President Obama and Congress and to provide some of the poetry, or some of the details, on how government might run better. The papers will also be featured in a book, 15 Ways to Rethink the Federal Budget, and will take on a wide-ranging set of topics, including immigration, transportation, health care, defense spending, and tax expenditures.

Video

• Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney: These Authors Have Drafted Policies That Help the Budget and Provide Economic Benefits

       

       

       

Although there has been some progress in forming a national unity government in Libya, “unity” is a rather inapplicable word for the country. In reality, friction between various political actors remains high. Ultimately, perhaps a form of disunity—confederation, rather than centralization—is the best model for Libya.

Libyan politics: A primer

During the summer of 2014, the Libyan leadership, after an initial hint of cooperation, split into two governments: 

• One, headquartered in Tobruk and based on a secular matrix, was recognized internationally. It received support from the House of Representatives and was abetted by General Khalifa Haftar and his so-called National Libyan Army. Externally, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia have supported this government because of its anti-Islamist ideology. In May 2014, Haftar launched "Operation Dignity" against the Islamist militias, supported by the Zintan brigades (consisting of the Civic, al-Sawaiq, and al-Qaaqa brigades), and the militias coming from the ethnic minorities of Tebu and Fezzan.
• The other, headquartered in Tripoli, was Islamic in nature. It was supported by the new General National Congress (GNC) and was part of the Libya Dawn group of pro-Islamist militias (which included groups from Misrata, Amazigh, and Tuareg). Qatar, Sudan, and Turkey have supported this government for different reasons, including to earn a more prominent place on the global stage or to support the Muslim Brotherhood. 

But it gets more complicated, since it wasn’t just the Tobruk- and Tripoli-based governments that competed to fill the power vacuum post-Gadhafi. The constellation of militias and brigades has changed continuously. There are Salafist groups such as:

• Ansar al-Sharia Libya (or ASL, located between Benghazi and Derna); 
• Muhammad Jamal Network (between Benghazi and Derna);
• Al-Murabitun (in the southeast, around Ghat, Ubari, Tasawah, and Murzuq);
• Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (or AQIM, in the southwest and northeast of Libya); and
• Ansar al-Sharia Tunisia (or AST, located between Derna and Ajdabiya). 

Then in 2015, an Islamic State (or ISIS) cell—made up of about 3,000 Tunisians, Yemenis, Algerians, and Libyans, especially former supporters of the Gadhafi regime and members of Ansar al-Sharia—began to take hold in the city of Sirte, Gadhafi's hometown. Sirte is in an oil-rich desert area with tremendous strategic value, lying between the two regions of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. And Misratan militias treated Sirte ruthlessly after Gadhafi’s fall, prompting many locals to welcome ISIS. So it was no accident that ISIS chose that spot, or that it stepped into the Libyan power vacuum more broadly: Libya is strategically important for eventually expanding across North Africa; it’s a launching point for criminal trafficking in the Mediterranean; and there is a potential to exploit huge energy resources, as ISIS has done to a degree in Iraq. 

Then in December 2015 in Morocco, the Government of National Unity (GNA) signed an agreement by which Fayez Serraj became prime minister. But General Haftar and the government in Tobruk didn’t support the move, and the security environment across the country is still abysmal. Despite the assurances from United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) Special Envoy Martin Kobler that Libya would achieve stability, Libya is still seriously fragmented. 

Today, the real fight is not even between Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, per se, because the two regions—along with Fezzan—are so divided internally. Serraj was barely allowed to arrive in Tripoli this March, for instance—only thanks to the intervention of the international community. The GNC (with Prime Minister Khalifa Gwell and President Nouri Abusahmain) immediately dubbed Serraj’s cabinet "illegal," but then a month later decided to disband in favor of Serraj’s GNA. The government in Tobruk, led by President of the House of Representatives Aguila Saleh Issa, has still not given his full endorsement.

Bright spots?

In spite of these political frictions, there have been small signs of progress. Foreign ministers from other countries and even the prime minister of Malta have arrived in Tripoli as a sign that the new political situation is formalizing. And while embassies remain closed, there is a sense that things are moving in a positive direction. Given this, in late April Serraj asked the international community to intervene in order to secure oil wells, theoretically protected by Jadran Ibrahim and his Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG), a powerful allied militia in Tripoli. But while the international community has seemed ready—including the Italian government, which has taken a leadership role—accusations of local weakness and Western meddling complicate the Libyan political arena. 

ISIS, meanwhile, is suffering setbacks, having been attacked in Sirte from the south, west, and east by a collection of GNA forces, Misrata militia brigades, and the PFG. The GNA forces are currently in the center of Sirte, clashing with ISIS and gaining terrain every day. ISIS seems to be weaker than many thought (indicating that estimates of its numbers were wrong) and now may be fleeing south—to Fezzan—where its strategy can be more fluid and less based on territorial control. 

Re-considering the fragmentation problem

The persistent fragmentation in Libya is what is most worrying. Internal divisions are the product of decades of Gadhafi’s reckless governing—he kept his citizens from each other and from the rest of the world and deprived them of any solid governmental or administrative structure that could keep the country stable in the event of a "post-regime" moment. And looking even further back, it’s important to remember that Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were never aligned, even during the two decades of rebellion against Italy. The Italians used the old "divide et impera" (divide and conquer) strategy, digging real "furrows of blood"—in the words of British scholar Edward E. Evans-Pritchard in 1949—between Libyan tribes. 

And today? A serious agreement between the main political factions—the Government of National Unity and the House of Representatives—seems out of reach. Meanwhile, few of the fundamental institutions required for the development and governance of a modern country are in place. Libya has invested little in education, and both corruption and unemployment are off the charts. Despite immense energy resources, the economy is contracting. Oil production has declined from 500,000 barrels per day in 2013 to 300,000 in January 2016, and not because deposits have depleted. And tourism, it goes without saying, isn’t taking place. 

Fayez Serraj, Libyan prime minister-designate under the proposed unity government, attends a meeting with officials of municipal council of Tripoli in Tripoli, Libya. Photo credit: Reuters/Ismail Zitouny.

Instead, there have been thousands of deaths and a massive outflow of refugees. While UNSMIL’s efforts have been commendable, the international community should seriously consider how to do more in Libya. It’s better to devise and implement an intervention plan now than wait for a true emergency in Libya. The international community must think about and articulate a real strategy, not merely implement tactical operations. Given the dramatically deteriorated security situation today, it seems impossible to imagine a non-security related intervention, even in defense of the soldiers called to the simple mission of protecting the new coalition government. 

One approach to consider is helping Libyans build a confederal state, divided into three large regions: Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan (or perhaps more if the Libyan people deem it appropriate). Perhaps it is time that such provinces become more autonomous—following different paths as they choose, based on their unique ethnic, social, religious, and political origins. This is an extreme solution, of course. But it is clear that the international community, which had been so much a part of the Libyan revolution, cannot now permit the failure of Libya as a state.

The paradox of deconstructing to construct, in this case, can work. The long-advocated national-level solution of political unity does not, in fact, seem possible. Instead, a confederation of the three regions built on the original disposition of tribes and natural borders could probably assure a deeper stability. Regional governments could better protect local interests in security, economic reconstruction, and governance. The international community should thus start from the bottom, emphasizing local solutions, supporting local actors, and helping to empower Libyans to choose their leaders at a local level. This is not to rule out a central government someday, but would mean that such a government would be somewhat less influential. It’s an incredibly difficult and long plan, but probably the only one that can work. 

         

       

       

Abstract

Scaling up of development interventions is much debated today as a way to improve their impact and effectiveness. Based on a review of scaling up literature and practice, this paper develops a framework for the key dynamics that allow the scaling up process to happen. The authors explore the possible approaches and paths to scaling up, the drivers of expansion and of replication, the space that has to be created for interventions to grow, and the role of evaluation and of careful planning and implementation. They draw a number of lessons for the development analyst and practitioner. More than anything else, scaling up is about political and organizational leadership, about vision, values and mindset, and about incentives and accountability—all oriented to make scaling up a central element of individual, institutional, national and international development efforts. The paper concludes by highlighting some implications for aid and aid donors.

An annotated bibliography of the literature on scaling up and development aid effectiveness was created by Oksana Pidufala to supplement this working paper. Read more »

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Editor's Note: The current U.S. presidential race demonstrates the deep political divisions that exist in our country. But what does it mean to be "liberal" or "conservative," "Republican" or "Democratic"? According to Shadi Hamid, certain values transcend political chasms. This post originally appeared on PBS NewsHour.

What does it mean to say that the Republican Party is on the “right”? The GOP, long defined (at least in theory) by its faith in an unbridled free market, the politics of personal responsibility, and a sort of Christian traditionalism, is no longer easily plotted on the traditional left-right spectrum of American politics. Under the stewardship of presidential nominee Donald Trump, the Republican Party appears to be morphing into a European-style ethnonationalist party. With Trump’s open disrespect for minority rights and the Bill of Rights, the GOP can no longer be considered classically “liberal” (not to be confused with capital-L American Liberalism). This is a new kind of party, an explicitly illiberal party.

These developments, of course, further constrain Republicans’ appeal to minority voters (I haven’t yet met an American Muslim willing to admit they’re voting for Trump, but they apparently exist). This makes it all the more important to distinguish between conservative values and those of this latest iteration of the Republican Party.

There are some aspects of Burkean conservative thought – including aspects of what might be called civic communitarianism – that could plausibly strike a chord in the current cultural landscape across “left” and “right,” categories which, in any case, are no longer as clearly distinguishable as they once were. (Take, for example, British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s Euroskepticism and that of his opponents on the right, or the populist anti-elitism and trade protectionism that are now the province of both Republicans and Democrats).

Everyone seems angry or distrustful of government institutions, which, even when they provide much needed redistributive fiscal stimulus and services, are still blamed for being incompetent, inefficient, or otherwise encouraging a kind of undignified dependency. After the Brexit debacle, it seemed odd that some of the most Europhobic parts of Britain were the very ones that benefited most from EU subsidies. But this assumes that people are fundamentally motivated by material considerations and that they vote – or should vote – according to their economic interests.

If there’s one thing that the rise of Trump and Brexit – and the apparent scrambling of left-right divides – demonstrates, it’s that other things may matter more, and that it’s not a matter of people being too stupid to realize what’s good for them. As Will Davies put it in one of the more astute post-Brexit essays, what many Brexiteers craved was “the dignity of being self-sufficient, not necessarily in a neoliberal sense, but certainly in a communal, familial and fraternal sense.”

The communitarian instinct – the recognition that meaning ultimately comes from local communities rather than happiness-maximizing individuals or bloated nanny-states – transcends the Republican-Democratic or the Labour-Conservative chasm. In other words, an avowedly redistributive state is fine, at least from the standpoint of the left, but that shouldn’t mean neglecting the importance of local control and autonomy, and finding ways, perhaps through federal incentives, to encourage things like “local investment trusts.”

Setting up local investment trusts, expanding the child tax credit, or introducing a progressive consumption tax aren’t exactly a call-to-arms, and various traditionalist and communitarian-minded philosophers have, as might be expected from philosophers, tended to stay at the level of abstraction (authors armed with more policy proposals are more likely to be young conservative reformers like Ross Douthat, Reihan Salam, and Yuval Levin). Douthat and Salam want to use wide-ranging tax reform to alter incentives in the hope of strengthening families and communities. This is a worthy goal, but realizing such policies requires leadership on the federal level from the very legislators who we should presumably become less dependent on.

This is the reformer’s dilemma, regardless of whether you’re on the left or right. If your objective is to weaken a centralized, overbearing state and encourage mediating or “middle” institutions, then you first need recourse to that same overbearing state, otherwise the proposed changes are unlikely to have any significant impact on the aggregate, national level.

The fact that few people seem interested in talking about any of this in our national debate (we instead seem endlessly intrigued by Melania Trump’s copy-and-paste speechwriting) suggests that we’re likely to be stuck for some time to come. Incidentally, however, the Hillary Clinton campaign slogan of “Stronger Together” has an interesting communitarian tinge to it. I doubt that was the intent, and it’s only in writing this column that I even took a minute to think about what the slogan might actually mean. I, as it happens, have been much more interested in talking about – and worrying about – an unusually fascinating and frightening man named Donald Trump.

       

Event Information

Register for the Event

Many clinicians have terrific ideas for improving the quality and cost of health care, but often don’t know how to navigate the frequently baffling landscape of payment and delivery reform options. To address this need in clear, practical terms, we are pleased to announce the third MEDTalk event in the “Merkin Series on Innovations in Care Delivery.” The series is designed to support clinicians and policymakers who’ve always wondered how delivery reform occurs, but didn’t know where to begin.

Our third case drew on the experiences of the Community Asthma Initiative, an enhanced pediatric asthma intervention, and their efforts in sustainability. The event featured seven brief “TED-style” talks that consider the challenges of delivering pediatric care, while tackling non-medical factors that drive suboptimal care, improving patient and family quality of life, and reducing costs. The agenda included firsthand experiences from patients, payers, policymakers, and clinical leadership from Massachusetts and Arkansas. Sustainable improvement strategies and the financial mechanisms available to encourage innovations in asthma were explored.

Video

• MEDTalk: Pediatric Asthma and Transforming Care for the Most Vulnerable
• A Day in the Life: The Patient Experience
• Challenge Accepted: Delivery of Asthma Care in a Triple Aim World
• The Community Asthma Initiative: A Case Study in Clinical Innovation
• Paying for Asthma Care: Options for Tackling Challenges
• State Medicaid Innovation: Opportunities and Barriers
• A Tale of Success: How to Get the Payer on Board
• Lessons Learned and the Path Forward
• Question and Answer Session

       

        

Editor’s Note: The National Perspectives on Global Leadership (NPGL) project reports on public perceptions of national leaders’ performance at important international events. This fifth installation of the NPGL Soundings provides insight on the issues facing leaders at the Seoul G-20 Summit and the coverage they received in their respective national media. Read the other commentary »

The week before the Seoul G-20 Summit was one in which the main newspapers read in Washington (The New York Times, The Washington Post and Financial Times) all focused their primary attention on the “currency war,” global imbalances, the debate on quantitative easing (QE 2), the struggle over whether there would be numerate current account targets or only words, and the US-China relationship. As early as Wednesday, November 10, The Washington Post front-page headline read: “Fed move at home trails U.S. to Seoul; Backlash from Europe; Obstacles emerge for key goals at G-20 economic summit.” By Thursday, November 11, things had gotten worse. “Deep fractures hit hopes of breakthrough; governments are unlikely to agree on a strategy to tackle economic imbalances” read the Financial Times headline on Alan Beattie’s article from Seoul. Friday, November 12, The New York Times front-page headline declared: “Obama’s Economic View is Rejected on World Stage; China, Britain and Germany Challenge U.S.; Trade Talks with Seoul Fail, Too.” By Saturday, the Financial Times concluded in its lead editorial: “G-20 show how not to run the world.”

From these reports, headlines and editorials it is clear that conflicts over policy once again dwarfed the progress on other issues and the geopolitical jockeying over the currency and imbalances issues took centre stage, weakening G-20 summits rather than strengthening them. Obama was painted as losing ground, supposedly reflecting lessening U.S. influence and failing to deliver concrete results. China, Germany and Brazil were seen to beat back the U.S. initiative to quantify targets on external imbalances. Given the effort that Korean leaders had put into achieving positive results and “consolidating” G-20 summits, it was, from this optical vantage point, disappointing, to say the least.

How was the Rebalancing Issue Dealt With?

At lower levels of visibility and intensity, however, things looked a bit different and more positive. Howard Schneider and Scott Wilson in Saturday’s edition of The Washington Post (November 13) gave a more balanced view of the outcomes. Their headline read: “G-20 nations agree to agree; Pledge to heed common rules; but economic standards have yet to be set.” They discerned progress toward new terrain that went beyond the agreement among G-20 finance ministers in October at Gyeongju, which other writers missed.

“By agreeing to set economic standards, the G-20 leaders moved into uncharted waters,” they wrote. “The deal rests on the premise that countries will take steps, possibly against their own short-term interests, if their economic policies are at odds with the wider well-being of the world economy. And leaders are committing to take such steps even before there’s an agreement on what criteria would be used to evaluate their policies.”

They continued: “In most general of terms, the statement adopted by the G-20 countries says that if the eventual guidelines identify a problem, this would ‘warrant an assessment of their nature and the root causes’ and should push countries to ‘preventive and corrective actions.’”

The Schneider-Wilson rendering went beyond the words of the communiqué to an understanding of what was going on in official channels over time to push this agenda forward in real policy, rather than declarative terms. As the Saturday, November 13, Financial Times’ editorial put it, “below the headline issues, however, the G-20 grouping is not completely impotent,” listing a number of other issues on which progress was made including International Monetary Fund (IMF) reform which the Financial Times thought might actually feed back into a stronger capacity to deal with “managing the global macroeconomy.”

The Role of President Barack Obama

Without doubt, the easy, simple, big-picture message coming out of Seoul was that Obama and the United States took a drubbing. And this did not help the G-20 either. The seeming inability of the U.S. to lead the other G-20 leaders toward an agreement in Seoul on global imbalances, the criticism of U.S. monetary easing and then, on top of it all, the inability to consummate a US-Korea trade deal, made it seem as if Obama went down swinging.

But again, below the surface of the simple, one got a different picture. Obama himself did not seem shaken or isolated at the Seoul summit by the swirl of forces around him. At his press conference, he spoke clearly and convincingly of the complexity of the task of policy coordination and the time it would take to work out the policies and the politics of adjustment.

“Naturally there’s an instinct to focus on the disagreements, otherwise these summits might not be very exciting,” he said. “In each of these successive summits we’ve made real progress,” he concluded. Tom Gjeltin, from NPR news, on the Gwen Ifyl Weekly News Roundup commented Saturday evening that the G-20 summits are different and that there is a “new pattern of leadership” emerging that is not quite there yet. Obama seems more aware of that and the time it takes for new leadership and new patterns of mutual adjustment to emerge. He may have taken a short-run hit, but he seems to have the vision it takes to connect this moment to the long-run trajectory.

Reflections on the Role of South Korea

From a U.S. vantage point, Seoul was one more stop in Asia as the president moved from India to Indonesia to Korea to Japan. It stood out, perhaps, in higher profile more as the locus of the most downbeat moments in the Asia tour, because of the combination of the apparent lack of decisive progress at the G-20 along with the needless circumstance of two presidents failing to find a path forward on something they both wanted.

From a Korean vantage point, the summit itself was an event of immense importance for Korea’s emergence on the world stage as an industrial democracy that had engineered a massive social and economic transformation in the last 50 years, culminating in being the first non-G8 country to chair the G-20 summit. No one can fault Korea’s efforts to reach significant results. However, the fact is that the Seoul Summit’s achievements, which even in the rebalancing arena were more significant than they appeared to most (see Schneider and Wilson), but included substantial progress on financial regulatory reform, international institutional reform (specifically on the IMF), on development and on global financial safety nets, were seen to be less than hoped for. This was not the legacy the Koreans were looking for, unfortunately.

Conflicts among the major players on what came to be seen as the major issue all but wiped out the serious workmanlike progress in policy channels. The leaders level interactions at G-20 summits has yet to catch up to the highly significant degree of systemic institutionalization of the policy process of the G-20 among ministers of finance, presidents of central banks, G-20 deputies and Sherpas, where the policy work really goes on. On its watch, Korea moved the agenda in the policy track forward in a myriad of significant ways. It will be left to the French and French President Nicolas Sarkozy to see if they can bring the leaders into the positive-sum game arrangements that are going on in the policy channels and raise the game level of leaders to that of G-20 senior officials.