The Horatio Alger ideal of upward mobility has a strong grip on the American imagination (Reeves 2014). But recent years have seen growing concern about the distance between the rhetoric of opportunity and the reality of intergenerational mobility trends and patterns.

The related issues of equal opportunity, intergenerational mobility, and inequality have all risen up the agenda, for both scholars and policymakers. A growing literature suggests that the United States has fairly low rates of relative income mobility, by comparison to other countries, but also wide variation within the country. President Barack Obama has described the lack of upward mobility, along with income inequality, as “the defining challenge of our time.” Speaker Paul Ryan believes that “the engines of upward mobility have stalled.”

But political debates about equality of opportunity and social and economic mobility often provide as much heat as light. Vitally important questions of definition and motivation are often left unanswered. To what extent can “equality of opportunity” be read across from patterns of intergenerational mobility, which measure only outcomes? Is the main concern with absolute mobility (how people fare compared to their parents)—or with relative mobility (how people fare with regard to their peers)? Should the metric for mobility be earnings, income, education, well-being, or some other yardstick? Is the primary concern with upward mobility from the bottom, or with mobility across the spectrum?

In this paper, we discuss the normative and definitional questions that guide the selection of measures intended to capture “equality of opportunity”; briefly summarize the state of knowledge on intergenerational mobility in the United States; describe a new microsimulation model designed to examine the process of mobility—the Social Genome Model (SGM); and how it can be used to frame and measure the process, as well as some preliminary estimates of the simulated impact of policy interventions across different life stages on rates of mobility.

The three steps being taken in mobility research can be described as the what, the why, and the how. First, it is important to establish what the existing patterns and trends in mobility are. Second, to understand why they exist—in other words, to uncover and describe the “transmission mechanisms” between the outcomes of one generation and the next. Third, to consider how to weaken those mechanisms—or, put differently, how to break the cycles of advantage and disadvantage.

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British politics is starting to resemble a bowling alley. One after another, political figures are tumbling–including the leading lights of the Brexit campaign. They sowed the wind and now are reaping the whirlwind.

First to topple was the prime minister. After the referendum, David Cameron announced that he would step down. Last week fellow Conservative Boris Johnson, the leading light of the Brexit campaign, said he would not run to succeed Mr. Cameron after his ally Michael Gove, the justice secretary, concluded, in quintessentially British style, that Mr. Johnson lacked “the team captaincy” required. Then Nigel Farage stepped down as leader of the UK Independence Party, saying “I want my life back.” Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has lost the support of his parliamentary colleagues and may be next to fall.

The exit of the leading Brexiteers is a relief. The skills required to run a populist, fact-averse campaign are not the same skills needed to lead a nation. For all his mercurial talents, on full display during his colorful stint as mayor of London, Boris Johnson would have been a disastrous prime minister. The alternatives–especially Mr. Gove and Home Secretary Theresa May–are steadier souls. Both are also better positioned to unite Conservative members of Parliament and hold on until the next scheduled general election, in 2020.

Mr. Corbyn is likely to go; the question really is when. It he doesn’t, the Labour Party will break apart. In his case the departure will be only slightly about the vote to remain in or leave the European Union. Broadly, his fellow Labour MPs didn’t want him as their leader in the first place; it was the votes of more left-wing party members that propelled him to the leadership, and many see him as an electoral liability. (He is.)

There is no direct connection between Brexit and Donald Trump. But a few things can still be deduced on this side of the pond. First, Mr. Trump may succeed in making the connection tighter. His immediate announcement that the vote was about “declaring independence” reflected his sharpening political instincts. The day after the vote, Mr. Trump said: “The people of the United Kingdom have exercised the sacred right of all free peoples. They have declared their independence from the European Union. … Come November, the American people will have the chance to re-declare their independence. Americans will have a chance to vote for trade, immigration and foreign policies that put our citizens first.”

Independence is a powerful populist theme, one Mr. Trump is likely to exploit it to its fullest.

Brexit and the economic and political chaos it has already sparked are proof that no matter how crazy or far-fetched an electoral outcome appears, it can happen. Right up to the last minute, many believed that even if the vote were close, it would be to remain in the EU. At some level we just couldn’t imagine the alternative. Maybe Mr. Cameron and Mr. Corybn felt the same, which is why they were so complacent. Not so, the other side.

All this suggests the wisdom of treating every poll with a fistful of salt. Electorates are becoming more volatile and more visceral. Pollsters are getting it wrong as often as they get it right. The last general election in the U.K. is another case in point. Populist sentiment wrecks standard political models. When people are angry, they don’t weigh the costs and benefits of their actions in the usual way; that’s true in life and it’s true in voting.

It’s also why it’s risky to allow populist campaigners near the levers of power. I’ve written in this space before about the dangers of injecting direct democracy in a parliamentary political system. Think of referendums as akin to Ming vases: something rare, to be handled with great care. The British Parliament is now acting as a firebreak. The leading populists will not get the keys to 10 Downing Street.

But the United States holds direct elections for president. If Donald Trump wins in November, he will assume the most powerful office in the world. There is no firebreak, no buffer, no second chance.

Editor's note: This piece originally appeared on the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire blog.

Editors' Note: Hammering out the political deal that has now brought Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations to a successful conclusion was a landmark achievement, but as Mireya Solis argues, there are still battles to be fought. This post originally appeared in Nikkei Asian Review.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal that the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries struck in Atlanta today was five years in the making. More than once we heard that the end game had come, only to see deadlines pass us by as the negotiations continued to move at a frustratingly slow pace. The grueling work required to cinch this mega trade deal should not come as a surprise, however, given the sheer complexity of the negotiation agenda and the wide differences in the makeup of the participating countries.

Hammering out the essential political deal that has brought TPP negotiations to a successful conclusion is a landmark achievement. But we should not lose sight of the fact that more battles will need to be won before the TPP morphs from an agreement in principle to an agreement in reality. Success at the Atlanta ministerial, however, delivers immediate and portentous benefits. 

U.S. leadership: A balance between strength and flexibility 

Central to American grand strategy has been updating the international economic architecture to match the realities of 21st-century economy and consolidating the critical role of the United States as a Pacific power as envisioned by the Asian rebalance policy. The TPP has long emerged as a litmus test of the American will and resolve to rise to these challenges in a world of fluid geopolitics. With success at the TPP negotiating table, the convening power of the United States—as demonstrated by its ability to steward the most ambitious blueprint for trade integration—has received an enormous boost. 

But equally important is that in the final TPP deal, the United States has displayed another key trait of international leadership: flexibility. Critics of American trade strategy have frequently complained that the U.S. rigidly pushes for its own free-trade agreement (FTA) template without incorporating the preferences of its counterparts: that de facto, the United States does not “negotiate” in trade negotiations. But the set of final compromises that enabled the TPP deal to be struck at Atlanta shows a different picture, one that in fact makes U.S. leadership more attractive and the TPP project more compelling. 

The TPP project is still a promise, not a reality.

In endorsing the principle that TPP countries can opt out of investor-state dispute settlement in their public regulation of tobacco products, and in adopting a hybrid approach that will give up to eight years of data protection for biologic drugs, the United States has shown the strength to compromise without surrendering high standards. In turn, these negotiated compromises cast a favorable light on the TPP as a collective endeavor with a commonality of purpose among founding members: to ensure that protection of foreign direct investment does not hinder public health regulations; and to both promote innovation and access to medicines.

Reviving trade policy 

The trade regime has not had a success of this magnitude for the past two decades. Rather, the list of failures and missed opportunities is long, and the prospects of the Doha Round are dim at best. 

In powerful ways, the TPP revives a stagnant trade regime. It shows that mega trade agreements can offer a platform to devise updated rules on trade and investment that cover sizable share of the world economy. And it creates an incentive structure for concurrent trade agreements to aim higher if they want to remain competitive. 

A genuine re-launch of Abenomics 

After a bruising political battle to secure passage of the security legislation, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that the economy would be his utmost priority. In so doing, he disclosed three fresh arrows: a strong economy, raising the fertility rate, and boosting social security to care for the elderly. 

Abenomics 2.0, however, has fallen flat, as it lacks specifics on how to achieve the target of 600 trillion yen GDP, and because subsidies for young families and the expansion of nursing homes, while desirable and politically popular, do not make for a strategy of economic revitalization. Instead, the TPP deal boosts Abenomics 1.0 where its true transformative power lies: structural reform.

An informed debate on TPP 

After legal scrubbing, the TPP text will be released. This will offer the much-needed opportunity to debate the merits and demerits of the agreement with facts, and not speculation. Full disclosure of the agreement, close public scrutiny, and a spirited discussion on where the agreement has lived up to expectations and where it has fallen short will be essential in shoring up public support.

The TPP project is still a promise, not a reality. Another set of milestones will be required (twelve, to be exact). Each participating country has its own domestic procedures for ratification, and some definitely face an uphill battle: Malaysia is gripped by a major political crisis as Prime Minister Najib Razak fights charges of corruption; and it is anyone’s guess what the electoral results in a couple of weeks will mean for Canada’s place in the TPP. 

For the United States too, the quest for TPP ratification could not come at a more complicated time with a full-blown presidential election race. In wrapping up the TPP negotiations, the United States has demonstrated its leadership in convening a significant and diverse group of countries and in stewarding with success the negotiation of an ambitious blueprint for economic governance. But this will mean little if TPP is voted down in Congress or stays frozen in ratification limbo. Without the power to deliver a TPP in force, past accomplishments will rightfully be brushed aside. 

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Earlier this month, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement was signed by its 12 member states in New Zealand, bringing the trade deal one step closer to fruition. The member states must now work on resolving their respective domestic issues tied to TPP. For Japan, one of the major issue areas involving TPP is agriculture.

On February 24, the Center for East Asia Policy Studies hosted Kazuhito Yamashita for a presentation in which he discussed the impact of Japan’s market access commitment on agriculture, the TPP countermeasures that the Japanese government announced for agriculture, and the types of agricultural policy reform that are being considered in Japan.

Transcript

• Transcript of Kazuhito Yamashita Presentation (.pdf)

Event Materials

• Yamashita Brookings presentation for website 022416
• Transcript Kazuhito Yamashita Presentation

What makes the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) consequential?

Since the onset of the 21st century, countries from every corner of the world have vigorously negotiated free trade agreements (FTAs) based on the principle of preferential market access (as opposed to the most-favored nation obligation of the WTO). This has resulted in a veritable avalanche of such trade deals, with close to 400 FTAs notified to the WTO in the past 20 years. If the negotiation of preferential trade agreements is now the dominant trend in the trading regime, and almost no country has escaped contagion from the FTA syndrome, why does one agreement in particular—the TPP—remain the focal point of policy debates on trade?

Chart 1. Multilateral trade regimes and FTA proliferation

The TPP generates most attention because it has spurred the emergence of mega trade agreements (as compared to the mostly small bilateral trade deals that had characterized the FTA wave), and has offered a new platform to advance the trade agenda as negotiations on the Doha Round continue gridlocked. The TPP has come a long way from its humble beginnings as a trade grouping of four small open economies (Brunei, New Zealand, Chile, and Singapore). Today, it comprises 12 nations, covers 26 percent of world trade, and is expected to generate global income gains in the neighborhood of $492 billion by 2030.

Chart 2. From humble beginnings to mega trade deal

But the significance of the TPP is not to be grasped by numbers alone. Consider the following defining traits of this trade agreement:

1. Its high level of ambition for tariff liberalization vowing to disallow sectoral carve-outs. While it is true that sensitive sectors asserted their political weight by deferring or limiting tariff elimination (e.g., autos for the United States and five agricultural commodities for Japan), the commitment of TPP countries to eventually eliminate 99-100 percent of tariff rates is indeed impressive. Japan does stand out for a lower level of committed tariff elimination (95 percent); but again this is the highest level of liberalization that Japan has ever committed to in any trade negotiation.
2. Its comprehensive set of rules to target non-tariff barriers by introducing disciplines on issues such as regulatory coherence, state-owned enterprises, competitiveness, supply chains, etc. With 30 chapters and over 5,000 pages of text, grasping the reach of TPP rules will certainly take time. However, a quick glance does reveal novel, and needed, disciplines in important areas of the economy. For example, the e-commerce chapter establishes a binding obligation for governments to allow free data flows, disallows forced localization of data servers (except for the financial sector), and mandates that all countries must provide a legal framework to protect personal information. Another important innovation is the TPP provision that governments cannot require the transfer of source code from private companies operating in their market.
3. Its expansive vision as an Asia-Pacific platform with aspirations to set global standards. Its open architecture with a docking mechanism to encourage further member expansion and its explicit aim to establish a trans-regional platform that bridges Asia and North and South America are strong selling points for the TPP. It undercuts the oft-mentioned fear of using preferential trade agreements to create closed-off regions, and it gives its rules and standards the opportunity to disseminate far and wide.
4. Last but not least, the TPP has emerged as a central policy priority for both the U.S. and Japan to hone their international economic competitiveness and achieve broader foreign policy goals. In the area of foreign economic policy, the TPP is one of the most compelling frameworks to encourage China to deepen its market reforms and sign on to more ambitious liberalization commitments. The TPP, therefore, has emerged as a central arena for the interaction of the three giants of the world economy.

The United States as a Pacific power

The U.S. expects to reap important economic benefits from the TPP. It is a trade agreement that taps into the areas of competitive strength of the American economy: agricultural exports, trade in services, the digital economy, to name a few. Econometric studies put the expected income gains of the TPP for the U.S. in the order of $131 billion per year, and to the extent that the TPP becomes a global standard, these gains will grow. Indeed, the TPP is the centerpiece of the American trade agenda. Its success is required for continued momentum in the on-going trans-Atlantic trade negotiations, but it could also influence other important trade initiatives. For example, TPP disciplines on services and state-owned enterprises are expected to influence deliberations on the Trade in Services Agreement, a plurilateral trade negotiation carried out under the aegis of the WTO.

From the point of view of global governance, the TPP is a litmus test of the U.S. ability to provide leadership at a time of great complexity in the world economic order: one where supply chains have emerged as a main driver of production and trade, where emerging economies are increasingly vocal in the management of the global economy, and where the test of updating Bretton Woods institutions looms large. Through the TPP, the U.S. can display its convening power to negotiate novel trade rules, to devise new institutional forms that complement and spur on the multilateral regime, and to be proactive and not just reactive to initiatives from rising economic powers.

But the TPP is also a pillar of U.S. Asia policy, one that solidifies the U.S. commitment to remain an engaged Pacific power. This trade agreement increases the appeal of the rebalancing policy by defining it not just as a reorientation of military resources toward a region undergoing a significant power transition; but also as the pursuit of a common endeavor: furthering economic interdependence with rules that match the realities of the 21st century economy, and potentially establishing a bridge toward China with the prospect of TPP membership.

Japan is an essential partner for the U.S. to achieve these important goals. Japan came late to the TPP negotiations (in the summer of 2013), but it transformed the economic and political significance of this deal. Japan’s participation allowed the TPP to qualify as a mega trade agreement. For the U.S. alone, the projected economic gains with Japan on board tripled. This is not surprising given the size of the Japanese market and the fact that the U.S. and Japan do not have a bilateral trade agreement; nor has Japan ever accepted these levels of liberalization. Moreover, prior to Japan joining the TPP there were doubts as to whether this could indeed become an Asia-Pacific platform of economic integration since no major Asian economy was participating. Japan’s entry put those objections to rest.

Japan as a reviving power

For Japan as well, the TPP negotiations have had salutary effects on its trade diplomacy and on the pursuit of central domestic and foreign policy priorities. Prior to joining the TPP, Japan’s trade strategy had achieved modest results: it lagged behind its peer competitors in negotiating an FTA network that covered a substantial share of its trade, it had faced difficulty in persuading Southeast Asian countries to adopt many WTO+ rules, it had received the cold shoulder from the U.S. and Europe as it proposed the negotiation of trade agreements, and remained deadlocked with China over the membership configuration of an East Asian trade grouping. The TPP altered the parameters of Japanese trade policy. It allowed the country to negotiate preferential access to main markets of destination, to disseminate next frontier trade rules, and to undertake concurrent mega trade negotiations. As a reaction to Japan’s courting of TPP membership, China recalibrated its trade policy to speed up the launch of trilateral trade negotiations in Northeast Asia and was now amenable to a 16-member trade grouping upholding the principle of ASEAN centrality (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or RCEP), and the Europeans also came to the negotiation table.

As a full participant in the mega FTA movement, Japan can aim high in order to pursue signature objectives such as:

• Negotiate deep integration FTAs that enhance the international competitiveness of Japanese global supply chains. An assessment of Japan’s core competencies in the 21st century should start with the recognition that a significant share of industrial capacity has been relocated overseas. On-shoring of manufacturing operations is not a viable goal given projected demographic trends. Rather, the aim should be to sustain and strengthen Japan’s role in global supply chains (the leading force of international production and trade today). Japan’s international diplomacy has a role to play here by negotiating deep FTAs that meet the needs of fragmented production chains. Additionally, deep FTA commitments will also help Japan address its own domestic inefficiencies such as the modest liberalization of the services sector.
• Lock-in structural reforms. One of the main benefits of linking the domestic structural reform agenda to international trade commitments is that it will be harder to roll back the reforms if and when political circumstances change (this is indeed a major lesson of the failure to institutionalize Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s reforms). Importantly, the TPP negotiations do not conform to the old-style gaiatsu pattern where a reluctant Japan would deflect U.S. pressure for it to change its ways. This time Japan has eagerly sought to be at the TPP table and has—of its own accord—identified the synergies between the new trade commitments and its own efforts to reform the domestic economy.
• Manage the transition from “regime-taker” to “regime-maker.” With the stagnation of the WTO, we have moved to a system of decentralized competition whereby different clusters of countries seek to define the standards for economic integration. The costs of a passive trade policy are much higher today than in a most favored nation (MFN) world where preferential trade agreements were the exception and not the rule. The expectation of steady liberalization benefits through successive multilateral trade rounds has been sharply revised. Therefore, countries that want to avoid the discriminatory effects of existing preferential trade deals and to improve access to important markets through additional elimination of tariffs and the adoption of rules that address behind-the-border barriers have resorted to an active FTA diplomacy. More broadly, Japan has much to win from displaying leadership in international economic governance, in a manner that resonates with the goals of the Abe administration to play a proactive role in world affairs.

For all the shared interests between the U.S. and Japan in the TPP project, negotiations over long divisive market access terms proved difficult and frustratingly long. Of course, a host of other issues also kept the larger TPP membership apart. Biologics especially was the last topic to close in the final TPP ministerial held in Atlanta in October 2015, and negotiations went to the wire. Despite all these difficulties, the ability to strike a TPP deal last fall represents a big win for the trade regime which has not seen a success of this magnitude in two decades. Since its creation, the WTO has not updated the rules of international trade and investment, and the Doha Round lingers on life support. Many were skeptical that a major trade negotiation tackling front and center the complex and unwieldy behind-the-border agenda could succeed. This is the most powerful message coming from Atlanta: it can be done.

With a TPP deal in hand there is greater hope that we can manage the tectonic changes in international trade governance. The transformation of the trade agenda (increasingly about regulatory matters) and the limitations of the WTO as a negotiation forum, have called into question the pure multilateral ideal—one set of binding rules for 150+ countries. Instead, the center of action is now on what we call “variable geometry” arrangements where subsets of countries negotiate next-frontier rules: the plurilaterals in the WTO and the preferentials through mega trade agreements. The emerging system for trade governance is not risk-free, and much effort will be required to forestall potential dangers: fragmentation (if TPP-like standards do not disseminate widely) and exclusion (if less developed countries are bypassed by the FTA wave).

Moreover, the TPP deal opens a new and promising chapter in U.S.-Japan relations. It is certainly more than a U.S.-Japan trade agreement—it represents the ability of 12 countries at varying levels of development and with very different regulatory regimes to agree on the most substantive trade liberalization to date. But it is also true that at the core of the TPP, the U.S. and Japan as the largest and most developed economies have acted as an engine of negotiations. The TPP marks a milestone in U.S.-Japan relations, as an effective instance of cooperation to upgrade the international economic architecture. In the TPP, the U.S. and Japan are on close alignment on the rules area of the talks and were able to reach an agreement on market access issues that in the past had proven intractable.

Ratification, reform, and reach

None of these effects will be long lasting nor will they reach their full potential, if TPP countries (and the U.S. and Japan in particular) do not double down on the next crucial steps. For simplicity sake, these can be dubbed the three “Rs” of ratification, reform, and reach.

Ratification

Ratification rules in the TPP require that six countries representing 85 percent of combined GDP approve the agreement before it enters into force. Therefore, to meet this numerical requirement both the U.S. and Japan must ratify. However, for the U.S., TPP ratification will represent a steep political battle in the midst of an American presidential election year. Despite public opinion polls showing that most Americans see in international trade an opportunity, the politics of trade agreements are fractious. Long-standing opposition by environmental groups and unions to trade agreements has resulted in their active mobilization against the TPP. And the debate on the merits of trade agreements has only become more heated as critics suggest that trade globalization is to be blamed for growing income inequality and the erosion of state regulatory powers.

For both national parties, the TPP is a divisive issue. While President Barack Obama has made TPP negotiation and ratification a central priority of his administration, Democrats in Congress have not backed his trade initiative in large numbers, in part due to the opposition of the party’s traditional base, labor unions. The internal dynamics of the Republican Party have shifted dramatically, complicating the odds for the TPP. The Republican Party has become less cohesive with the emergence of the Tea Party wing determined to deny Obama a legacy-making trade agreement. The support of key Republican figures in the Senate has also waned due to dissatisfaction over the tobacco carve-out from investor-state dispute settlement and the exclusivity period for biologics. And the business community has also criticized these provisions, offering only qualified support for the TPP deal.

The U.S. has yet to fail in ratifying a negotiated trade agreement. And a vote down on the TPP would be singularly costly for the credibility of U.S. foreign policy and the evolution of the international trade regime.

Reform

One of the most powerful benefits of trade agreements is the ability of governments to use them as commitment devices to implement needed economic changes. Reform is in fact the crucial issue for Japan as it tries to leave behind stagnant growth. Economic revitalization certainly goes beyond agricultural reform, to encompass the host of productivity-enhancing measures across all areas of the economy, the internationalization of services, the promotion of inward direct investment, and the further upgrading of regional and trans-regional production networks.

Yet, farming countermeasures adopted in the wake of the TPP deal have raised doubts about the government’s resolve to transform its agricultural sector. Japan’s TPP market access commitments do include a 56,000-ton import rice quota (to grow eventually to 78,400 tons). But the government promptly announced an increase in stockpiling purchases to match the TPP quota, effectively preventing a drop in the price of rice and market adjustment. This artificial support preempts the modernization of the agricultural sector since it enables part-time farmers to continue operating in tiny plots, hindering the emergence of commercial farming. The government also submitted a generous 2016 supplementary budget with 312 billion yen earmarked for agricultural TPP countermeasures. But informed experts question its impact in boosting farming competitiveness since public works allocations still loom large (30 percent of outlays will go to land reclamation projects).

Just as the electoral cycle has not facilitated TPP ratification in the U.S., the looming Japanese Upper House election in July is not conducive to moving past prior trade compensation practices.

Reach

The release of the TPP text has clarified a very important point: membership can be extended not only to APEC economies but also to other countries that are willing to meet TPP disciplines. Enlargement will be critical to avoid the above-mentioned risks of fragmentation and exclusion by helping disseminate TPP standards. In the short and medium term, the conclusion of the TPP talks is expected to have two main effects: increase the list of potential applicants, and encourage a higher level of ambition among on-going trade negotiations.

The number of economies expressing an interest in joining the TPP has grown to include South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Colombia, and Costa Rica, among others. Regarding the second wave of accession the key issue will be readiness to undertake the ambitious liberalization commitments of the TPP, and the list of prospective applicants shows wide variation on this score. The conclusion of TPP talks also creates an incentive for the updating of existing FTAs and/or scaling up the level of ambition in ongoing trade negotiations, as countries outside the TPP want to secure export markets, attract foreign direct investment, and embed their companies in global supply chains.

In the long run, the key challenge will be to devise an effective strategy to engage emerging economies, such as China, India, and Brazil. This is still the gaping hole in the U.S. plans to develop trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic trade groupings. Certainly, putting in place the TPP and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is the first step in such strategy since it changes the incentive structure for these countries to entertain further market liberalization. But at the end of the day, these emerging economies must reach the determination that it is in their national interest to abide by these economic standards, and find the political will to tackle vested interests. This is a tall order indeed.

The most pressing question may well be how China will position itself vis-à-vis the TPP. Can we expect it to act on past precedent and seek TPP accession just as in the past it used WTO membership to advance economic reforms? Or will it choose instead to champion the negotiation of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) after both the TPP and RCEP materialize, in order to play a more proactive role in the international economic architecture—more in conformance with the recent launch of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank?

The recently struck TPP agreement underscores the potential of furthering U.S.-Japan cooperation to supply needed international economic governance. However, the overview of remaining challenges also shows that clinching a TPP deal is just the first step.

This article originally appeared in the March/April 2016 issue of Economy, Culture & History Japan SPOTLIGHT Bimonthly.

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Unprecedented armed conflicts and natural disasters are now driving a global displacement crisis. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, more than 60 million people are displaced worldwide, and half of them are children. These displaced children are hindered from developing cognitive and social-emotional skills—such as perseverance, emotional regulation, and conflict resolution—which are essential for school readiness and serve as the foundation for a more peaceful and stable future. However, through the development and testing of innovative educational strategies, we can build effective practices for improving young children’s learning and developmental outcomes in crisis contexts.

On June 8, the Center for Universal Education at Brookings and Sesame Workshop co-hosted a panel discussion to explore innovative strategies to meet the needs of young children in humanitarian crises. 

Audio

• Supporting early childhood development in humanitarian crises

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160608_early_childhood_transcript

“This is about governments using data for performance rather than compliance” was a resounding message coming out of the U.S. Department of Education’s conference on June 10 on the use of Pay for Success contracts in education. These contracts, known globally as social impact bonds, continue to be at the forefront of global conversations about results-based financing mechanisms, and have garnered significant momentum this week with passage of the Social Impact Partnerships for Pay for Results Act in the U.S. While limitations certainly exist, their potential to revolutionize the way we fund social projects is tremendous.

A social impact bond (SIB) is a set of contracts where a government agency agrees to pay for service outputs or outcomes, rather than funding defined service inputs, and an investor provides upfront risk capital to the service provider. The investor is potentially repaid principal and interest contingent on the achievement of the predetermined outputs or outcomes.

In our research on impact bonds at the Center for Universal Education, we have analyzed the use of SIBs for education in the U.S., other high-income countries, and low- and middle-income countries. Practitioners in each of these contexts are having far more similar conversations than they may realize—all are united in their emphasis on using SIBs to build data systems for performance. There is tremendous potential for lessons learned across these experiences and across the broader discussions of results-based financing mechanisms for education globally.

Current SIBs for education globally

There are currently five SIBs for education worldwide: two in the U.S. for preschool education, one in Portugal for computer science classes in primary school, and one each in Canada and Israel for higher education. In addition, a number of countries have used the SIB model to finance interventions to promote both education and employment outcomes for teens—there are 21 such SIBs in the U.K., three in the Netherlands, and one in Germany. There is also a Development Impact Bond (DIB), where a donor rather than government agency serves as the outcome funder, for girls’ education in India. The Center for Universal Education will host a webinar to present the enrollment and learning outcomes of the first year of the DIB on July 5 (register to join here).

U.S. activities to facilitate the use of SIBs for education

At the June 10 conference at the Department of Education, the secretary of education and the deputy assistant to the president for education said that they saw the greatest potential contribution of SIBs in helping to scale what works to promote education outcomes and in broadening the array of partners involved in improving the education system. Others pointed out the value of the mechanism to coordinate services based on the needs of each student, rather than a multitude of separately funded services engaging the student individually. In addition to using data to coordinate services for an individual, participants emphasized that SIBs can facilitate a shift away from using data to measure compliance, to using data to provide performance feedback loops.

The interest in data for performance rather than compliance is part of a larger shift across the U.S. education sector, represented by the replacement of the strict compliance standards in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 with the new federal education funding law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, signed into law in December of 2015. The law allows for federal outcome funding for SIBs in education for the first time, specifically for student support and academic enrichment programs. The recently passed Social Impact Partnerships for Pay for Results Act also allows for outcome funding for education outcomes. The Department of Education conference explored potential applications of SIBs across the education sector, including for early home visiting programs, programs to encourage completion of higher education programs, and career and technical education. The conference also analyzed the potential to use SIBs for programs that support specific disadvantaged populations, such as dual language learners in early education, children of incarcerated individuals, children involved in both the child protection and criminal justice systems, and Native American youth. Overall, there was a focus on areas where the U.S. is spending a great deal on remediation (such as early emergency room visits) and on particular levers to overcome persistent obstacles to student success (such as parent engagement).

To help move the sector forward, the Department of Education announced three new competitions for feasibility study funding for early learning broadly, dual language learners in early education, and technical education. The department is also facilitating connections between existing evaluation and data system development efforts and teams designing SIBs. The focus on early childhood development by the Department of Education is reflective of the national field as a whole: Programming in the early years is becoming a particularly fast-growing sector for SIBs in the U.S. with over 40 SIBs feasibility and design stages.

SIBs for education in low- and middle-income countries

There is only one DIB for education in low- and middle-income countries; however, there are a number of SIBs and DIBs for education in design and prelaunch phases. In particular, the Western Cape Province of South Africa has committed outcome funding for three SIBs across a range of health and development outcomes for children ages 0 to 5.

Though the number of impact bonds may be relatively small, a significant amount of work has been done in the last 15 years in results-based financing for education. The U.K. Department for International Development (DfID), the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, the Global Partnership for Output-Based Aid, and Cordaid had together funded 24 results-based financing initiatives for education as of 2015. Of particular interest, DfID is funding results-based financing projects through a Girls Education Challenge and the World Bank launched a new trust fund for results-based financing in education in 2015. As with impact bonds in the U.S., a primary aim of results-based financing for education in low- and middle-income countries is to strengthen data and performance systems. Early childhood development programs and technical and vocational and training programs have also been identified as sub-sectors of high potential. Here are a few final takeaways for those working on results-based financing for education in low- and middle-income countries from the U.S. Department of Education conference:

1. The differences between the No Child Left Behind Act and the Every Student Succeeds Act should be analyzed carefully to ensure other data-driven education performance management systems promote both accountability and flexibility.
2. In building data systems through results-based financing, ensure services can be coordinated around the individual, feedback loops are available for providers, and data on early education, child welfare, parent engagement, and criminal justice involvement are also incorporated.
3. There are potential lessons to be learned from the U.S. Department of Education’s effort to conduct more low-cost randomized control trials in education and the U.S. Census Bureau’s data integration efforts.
4. SIBs provide an opportunity to work across agencies or levels of government in education, which could be particularly fruitful in both low- and middle-income countries and the U.S.

As the global appetite for results-based financing continues to grow and new social and development impact bonds are implemented throughout the world, we’ll have an opportunity to learn the true potential of such financing models.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editors’ Note: President Obama came into office promising to turn the page on a chapter of American history defined by two wars in the greater Middle East, writes Tamara Wittes. Ironically, however, his fixation on closing one chapter led him to decisions that opened a new one that reads very similarly. This post originally appeared on The Atlantic.

President Obama came into office promising to turn the page on a chapter of American history defined by two wars in the greater Middle East. His consistency in delivering on that promise is admirable, as is the focus with which he has learned from and sought to avoid his predecessor’s mistakes regarding the use of American force abroad.

Ironically, however, Obama’s fixation on closing one chapter led him to decisions that opened a new one that reads very similarly. This new war on ISIS—Obama’s war—which began in August 2014, can be traced to two errors of judgment. Jeffrey Goldberg’s article on “The Obama Doctrine” reveals that these errors were driven by the president's determination to keep his promises to the American people and to avoid the mistakes of the past.

The first mistake was Obama’s retreat from Iraq—the withdrawal not just of U.S. forces, but even more so of diplomatic energy and leverage, which, successfully deployed, might have mitigated the collapse of the Iraqi political experiment and thus blunted the rise of ISIS. After Iraq held its (pre-American withdrawal) elections in 2010, the Obama administration took a hands-off approach to Iraqi domestic politics, and it failed to replace the American military presence with a robust set of civilian, economic, and other partnerships to sustain American influence. In 2011, my last of about two years working on Middle East policy in Obama’s State Department, we were planning for sharp cuts in civilian programs for Iraq alongside the military drawdown—and over the next two years, U.S. economic aid to Iraq dropped nearly 50 percent. The administration had ample warning about the damage Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s sectarian and power-hungry behavior was having on Iraqi security and stability. But the president and Vice President Biden, who managed the Iraq portfolio on Obama’s behalf, chose to do very little to constrain Maliki as he began to unravel the tentative political bargains between Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds within federal Iraq.

America’s regional partners decried the rise of Iranian influence as the United States stepped back, and feared Maliki’s steps against Sunni politicians could reignite civil violence, but the White House brushed off their concerns in both Iraq and Syria. And so the Gulf states sent their own support to Sunni tribes in western Iraq and militias battling Assad in Syria, stoking the sectarian flames and setting the stage for extremists to outbid them. As ISIS began to gain ground among Sunni populations alienated from the central government, the administration didn’t see any reason to invest in persuading Maliki toward a political accommodation that might have tamped down the emergent Iraqi Sunni militias and held Iraq together. That’s not to say Obama would have succeeded—but because he wanted to turn the page on the Iraq experience, he failed to try.

Likewise, Obama’s read of the Syrian conflict as holding only narrow implications for American interests was a signal failure to learn the lessons of the 1990s and recognize the risk that Syria’s civil war could spill over in ways that directly implicated U.S. interests. It did not, in 2012 and 2013, require special foresight to apply to the Syrian case other lessons from history than those Obama focused on. The experience of the 1990s clearly suggested how a neglected civil war offered easy opportunities for a violent jihadist movement—just as the Afghanistan war did for the Taliban in the mid-1990s—and how large-scale refugee flows would destabilize Syria’s neighbors, including key U.S. security partners like Jordan and Turkey. And as we now know, ISIS used the security and governance vacuums created by the Syrian Civil War to consolidate a territorial and financial base that the United States has been seeking since late 2014, with limited success, to undermine.

These two errors of understanding and judgment, both driven by the president’s commitment to avoid his predecessor’s mistakes, left major risks to regional stability unaddressed, and thus fed the rise of an ISIS threat so significant as to compel Obama, in August 2014, to overturn his longstanding preferences and recommit American blood and treasure to fighting Islamist extremists on the ground in Iraq, and now in Syria. His errors (as well as the famous “red line” climbdown) also provoked anxious regional partners to take their own initiatives to advance interests they felt Obama had slighted—condoning jihadism at times along the way, and very often exacerbating the disorder and sectarianism on which ISIS feeds.

Obama feared a slippery slope going up against Bashar al-Assad in Syria—but the war against ISIS is the slipperiest slope of them all.

Obama feared a slippery slope going up against Bashar al-Assad in Syria—but the war against ISIS is the slipperiest slope of them all. In just under two years, the administration has moved from airstrikes, to 475 additional military advisers in Iraq, to over 4,000 troops on the ground including U.S. special-operations forces in both Iraq and Syria. At the same time, the metastasizing threat from ISIS is forcing Obama to order limited military strikes in Libya, consider plans for further military intervention there, and build up military commitments to the Sunni Arab states of the Persian Gulf—the latter two steps, if Goldberg’s piece is accurate, against his own inclinations. An American president who, in May 2013, rejected the notion of a “global war on terror” has now launched one.

Meanwhile, the wide gulf between Obama's fixation on defeating ISIS, and his regional partners’ focus on pushing back Iran and Assad, means that America finds itself with too few partners to share the burden of this battle, which U.S. generals now call a "generational struggle.” America’s regional friends are acting to defend their own interests, not always in ways congruent with American interests. Obama’s apparent inability to see the conflicts between his Syria policy and his ISIS policy, and his reticence to do the sustained work necessary to hash out common priorities with the Gulf Arabs, Turkey, and Israel, have generated a problem more costly and harder to solve than the free-rider problems he complains of. The price is visible in, for example, Obama’s wordless facilitation of Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen—which, ironically again, has given al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula its most congenial working environment in years.

Finally, Obama’s actions—his reticence to push Maliki, his dithering over Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s 2013 military coup in Egypt, and now his reversion to uncritical security partnerships with Gulf states in the name of fighting ISIS—suggest that what he fears is not just military entanglement: It’s entanglement of any kind, any uncertain investment of American leverage to try and shape outcomes in places where the locals’ interests are not already aligned with Washington’s. This is clear from his abandonment of any concerted nonmilitary effort to generate lasting stability in the Middle East in the way he still says is necessary. Obama’s own strategic judgment—announced publicly in May 2011 and repeated to Goldberg—is that stability in the Middle East will only emerge through addressing dysfunctional governance. But after the first blush of 2011, Obama demonstrated little readiness to invest political capital or build platforms for persistent engagement on behalf of the messy, imperfect, and always incomplete work of democratic growth. To the contrary, Obama cut funding for democracy assistance globally throughout his presidency. Between May 2011 and his 2013 speech at the United Nations General Assembly, democratic reform in the Middle East moved from a “top priority” to a bare footnote.

Having failed to implement his own views on the primacy of governance, Obama is now using force to defeat ISIS while abjuring the work necessary to build something with which to replace it. That path bodes ill for the anti-ISIS project he has launched, and recreates for the next U.S. president the same dysfunctions in U.S.-Arab relations—moral hazard, security overcommitments, and the like—that Obama resents. To be sure, the weakness and illegitimacy of state institutions and the upwelling of societal conflicts in the Arab world is making the process of reforming politics both lengthy and painful. But those challenges are the inescapable legacies of authoritarianism, and would have emerged no matter how or when the region’s regimes collapsed. They are certainly not a consequence of American intervention or mere “tribalism,” nor are they evidence, as Obama suggests, that American military intervention in Libya “didn’t work.” What didn’t work was the administration’s constant reliance on arguments about slippery slopes and the wisdom of restraint to shoot down proposals for deeper U.S. engagement in regional problem-solving—even and perhaps especially nonmilitary engagement. The policy debate may have been won in public, but the policy objective was lost.

A president elected and reelected on a platform of ending wars in the Middle East has reproduced, at the end of his presidency, the very situation he inherited, decried, and swore to avoid.

It is a tragic irony: A president elected and reelected on a platform of ending wars in the Middle East has reproduced, at the end of his presidency, the very situation he inherited, decried, and swore to avoid: an escalating war against a vague terrorist enemy, with no geographic boundaries, no clear military or strategic objectives, and no principles or policies that might stop the slide down this slippery slope.

The Obama presidency’s relentless focus on avoiding entanglements came alongside a failure to reckon with risks—especially those risks that grow from inaction. This should be instructive for us all, but perhaps especially for those who, surveying the many messes in today’s Middle East, conclude that Obama was right to sit out the Syrian war, and is right today to regret his intervention in Libya as a failure.

The lesson is that inaction is not obviously better than action as a moral choice in foreign policy—it is a choice, and it carries consequences. The United States is a global power, one that moreover roots its global power in a set of universal moral claims. As such, America's choices (whether to do, or to not do) have global implications, and carry moral responsibility. One cannot avoid the moral responsibility for these choices by citing the Hippocratic Oath, or by creating some idealized set of criteria, the total fulfillment of which are necessary to justify even a limited use of American military power. While Obama repeatedly reminds Goldberg that his primary concern in contemplating force is the risk to the American people, not to citizens of other regions, the new war on ISIS reminds us powerfully that threats to others, left unaddressed, very easily land on America’s doorstep in ways its citizens see and feel.

[I]naction is not obviously better than action as a moral choice in foreign policy—it is a choice, and it carries consequences.

Taking foreign policy seriously, and taking moral responsibility for American power seriously, means recognizing that all America’s choices have consequences, and policymakers must nonetheless choose a path in situations of imperfect information and facing imperfect options. A global power cannot simply avoid messes, ignore risks, and set its sights rigidly on the pursuit of strategic opportunities. It cannot do so because even the best opportunities can be torpedoed by unaddressed problems. Given the necessity and moral responsibility of choice, delay and avoidance in the face of those problems are merely the dishonest versions of a decision to do nothing.

That’s why I don’t condemn Obama for launching this new phase of the global war on terror, and I don’t think his supporters, who voted for an end to wars, should either. I commend him for recognizing the gravity of the threat ISIS presents to regional and international security, for admitting his long-held preferences cannot hold in the face of this challenge, and for stepping up to explain to the American people why and how he was reversing course. I only wish he’d admit that his reticence to recognize the risks of inaction helped make it so, and that, in that regard, the lessons he learned from his predecessors were woefully incomplete.

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A conversation with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker

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• Economic opportunities and the liberal international order

For years, corporate campuses like Silicon Valley were known for innovation. Located in suburban corridors that were only accessible by car, these places put little emphasis on creating communities where people work, live and go out.

But now, as the economy emerges from the recession, a shift is occurring where innovation is taking place. Districts of innovation can be found in urban centres as disparate as Montreal, Seoul, Singapore, Medellin, Barcelona, and London. They are popping up in the downtowns and midtowns of cities like Atlanta, Cambridge, Philadelphia, and St. Louis.

These are places where advanced research universities, medical complexes, and clusters of tech and creative firms are attracting businesses and residents.

Other innovation districts can be found in Boston, Brooklyn, San Francisco, and Seattle, where older industrial areas are being re-imagined and remade, leveraging their enviable location near waterfronts and city centres and along transit lines. Innovative companies and talented workers are flocking to these areas in abundance.

Even traditional science parks like Research Triangle Park in Raleigh-Durham are scrambling to urbanise to keep pace with their workers' preference for walkable communities and their companies' desire to be near other firms.

In these districts, leading anchor institutions and start-ups are clustering and connecting with one another. They are coming together with spin-off companies, incubators, and accelerators in the relentless pursuit of new discoveries for the market.

These areas are small and accessible, growing talent, fostering open collaboration, and offering housing and office space as well as modern urban amenities. They are both competitive places and "cool" spaces.

The growth of innovation districts is being driven by private and civic actors like universities, philanthropies, business associations and business improvement districts. Yet local governments play an important role in accelerating the growth of districts and maximising their potential . Three roles stand out:

1) Mayors are leading efforts to designate districts

Barcelona's former mayor Joan Clos set his eyes on transforming his city into a "city of knowledge". Through extensive, focused public planning and investment, Clos designed an innovation district from the debris of a 494-acre industrial area, which was scarred and separated from the rest of the city by railroad tracks. His vision included burying these tracks, increasing access via a new public tram, designing walkable streets, and creating new public spaces and housing.

Today, the area is a 21st-century urban community with 4,500 firms, thousands of new housing units, and clusters of universities, technology centres, and incubators.

Across the Atlantic in Boston, former mayor Tom Menino declared the South Boston waterfront an innovation district in 2010. Menino persuaded innovators like MassChallenge to move to the district and exacted important concessions from developers (including land for innovation-oriented retail, shared labs and other spaces, and micro-housing) to help realise the district's vision.

2) Changing land-use laws to build spaces with a mix of facilities

Barcelona and Research Triangle Park, for example, developed bold master plans encouraging the "mixing" of large and small firms, research facilities, housing, restaurants, and retail and outlining where to create open spaces for networking. Cambridge, Massachusetts, by contrast, has allowed incremental moves from rigid, antiquated rules to encourage similar outcomes in Kendall Square .

3) Supporting scarce public resources with large private and civic investments

In New York , former mayor Michael Bloomberg deployed $100m in municipal capital to prepare the infrastructure necessary to lure Cornell and Technion universities to Roosevelt Island. In other cities, including St Louis and Seattle, local resources are financing infrastructure improvements to buttress and accelerate private growth.

Given that many innovation districts are adjacent to low-income neighbourhoods, cities like Philadelphia are considering smart use of school investments to prepare disadvantaged youth for good jobs in the Stem (science, technology, engineering, and math) economy.

As this decade unfolds, we should expect more cities to use their powers in the service of this new model of innovative, inclusive, and resilient growth.

This opinion originally appeared in The Guardian

Introduction

Ninety years after the foundation of the Turkish Republic, Ankara appears to be on the verge of a paradigmatic change in its approach to the Kurdish question. It is too early to tell whether the current negotiations between Ankara and the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) will manage to accommodate Kurdish cultural and political demands. Yet, for perhaps the first time in its history, the Turkish Republic seems willing to incorporate Kurds into the political system rather than militarily confront them. For decades, Turkey sought to assimilate its sizable Kurdish minority, about 15 million people, or around 20 percent of its total population. From the mid-1920s until the end of the Cold War, Ankara denied the ethnic existence of Kurds and their cultural rights. It took a three-decade-long PKK-led insurgency – which started in 1984 and caused a death toll of 40,000 – for the republic to start accepting the “Kurdish reality” and introduce cultural reforms. This perhaps explains why the PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Öcalan is a national hero in the eyes of significant segments of Kurdish society.

Of the approximately 30 million Kurds in the Middle East, about half live in Turkey. Kurds also constitute a significant minority in neighboring Iraq, Iran and Syria. The Palestinians are often referred to as the most famous case of a “nation without a state” in the Middle East. But the Kurds, who outnumber the Palestinians by a factor of five, are by far the largest ethnic community in the region seeking national self-determination. The future of Turkey - and the Middle East - is therefore intimately linked to the question of Kurdish nationalism.

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• Turkey and the Kurds: From Predicament to Opportunity

Abstract

An individual-based computational model of smallpox epidemics in a two-town county is presented and used to develop strategies for bioterror containment. A powerful and feasible combination of preemptive and reactive vaccination and isolation strategies is developed which achieves epidemic quenching while minimizing risks of adverse side effects. Calibration of the model to historical data is described. Various model extensions and applications to other public health problems are noted.

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Analysis of dozens of publicly created redistricting plans shows that map-making technology can improve political representation and detect a gerrymander.  In 2012, President Obama won the vote in Ohio by three percentage points, while Republicans held a 13-to-5 majority in Ohio’s delegation to the U.S. House. After redistricting in 2013, Republicans held 12 of Ohio’s House seats while Democrats held four. As is typical in these races, few were competitive; the average margin of victory was 32 points. Is this simply a result of demography, the need to create a majority-minority district, and the constraints traditional redistricting principles impose on election lines—or did the legislature intend to create a gerrymander?

Crowd-Sourced Redistricting Maps

In the Ohio elections, we have a new source of information that opens a window into the legislature’s choice: Large numbers of publicly created redistricting plans.

During the last round of redistricting, across the country thousands of people in over a dozen states created hundreds of legal redistricting plans. Advances in information technology and the engagement of grassroots reform groups made these changes possible. To promote these efforts we created the DistrictBuilder open redistricting platform and many of these groups used this tool to create their plans.

Over the last several years, we have used the trove of information produced by public redistricting to gain insight into the politics of representation. In previous work that analyzed public redistricting in Virginia^[1], and in Florida^[2], we discovered that members of the public are capable of creating legal redistricting plans that outperform those maps created by legislatures in a number of ways.

Public redistricting in Ohio shows something new—the likely motives of the legislature. This can be seen through using information visualization methods to show the ways in which redistricting goals can be balanced (or traded-off) in Ohio , revealing the particular trade-offs made by the legislature.

The figure below, from our new research paper^[3], shows 21 plots—each of which compares legislative and publicly-created plans using a pair of scores—altogether covering seven different traditional and representational criteria. A tiny ‘A’ shows the adopted plan. The top-right corner of each mini-plot shows the best theoretically possible score. When examined by itself, the legislative plan meets a few criteria: it minimizes population deviation, creates an expected majority-minority seat, and creates a substantial majority of districts that would theoretically be competitive in an open-seat race in which the statewide vote was evenly split.

Figure 1: Pairwise Congressional Score Comparisons (Scatterplots) - Standardized Scores

In previous rounds of redistricting, empirical analysis would stop here—unless experts were called in to draw alternative plans in litigation. However, the large number of public plans now available allows us to see other options, plans the legislature could readily have created had it desired to do so. Comparison of the adopted plans and public plans reveal the weakness of the legislature’s choice. Members of the public were able to find plans that soundly beat the legislative plan on almost every pair of criteria, including competitive districts.

So why was the adopted plan chosen? Information visualization can help here, as well, but we need to add another criterion—partisan advantage:

Pareto Frontier: Standard Criteria vs. Democratic Surplus

When we visualize the number of expected Democratic seats that was likely to result from each plan, and compare this to the other score, we can see that the adopted plan is the best at something— producing Republican seats.

Was Ohio gerrymandered? Applying our proposed gerrymandering detection method, the adopted plans stands in high contrast to the public sample of plans, even if the overall competition scoring formula is slightly biased towards the Democrats, as strongly biased towards the Republicans on any measure of partisan fairness. Moreover analyzing the tradeoffs among redistricting criteria illuminate empirically demonstrates what is often suspected, but is typically impossible to demonstrate—that had the legislature desired to improve any good-government criterion—it could have done so, simply by sacrificing some partisan advantage. In light of this new body of evidence, the political intent of the legislature is clearly displayed.

However, when politics and technology mix, beware of Kranzberg’s first law: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.”^[4] Indeed there is an unexpected and hopeful lesson on reform revealed by the public participation that was enabled by new technology. The public plans show that, in Ohio, it is possible to improve the expected competitiveness, and to improve compliance with traditional districting principles such as county integrity, without threatening majority-minority districts simply by reducing partisan advantage—this is a tradeoff we should gladly accept.

Event Information

The Center for 21st Century Security Intelligence seventh annual military and federal fellow research symposium

On March 1, the seventh annual military and federal fellow research symposium featured the independent research produced by members of the military services and federal agencies who are currently serving at think-tanks and universities across the nation. Organized by the fellows themselves, the symposium provides a platform for building greater awareness of the cutting-edge work that America’s military and governmental leaders are producing on key national security policy issues.

With presidential primary season well underway, it’s clear that whoever emerges in November 2016 as the next commander-in-chief will have their hands full with a number of foreign policy and national security choices. This year’s panels explored these developing issues and their prospects for resolution after the final votes have been counted. During their keynote conversation, the Honorable Michèle Flournoy discussed her assessment of the strategic threat environment with General John Allen, USMC (Ret.), who also provided opening remarks on strategic leadership and the importance of military and other federal fellowship experiences.

Video

• Opening remarks and The future of the All-Volunteer Force
• The next generation of terrorism
• Harnessing technology in the future force
• Keynote discussion: Assessing the strategic environment
• To intervene, or not to intervene?

Audio

• Beyond 2016: Security challenges and opportunities for the next administration

What are the greatest dangers to citizens of the world's cities, as well as its towns, villages, and rural areas? This is an important issue to understand as we approach the general election season in the United States, when candidates for the highest office in the land will have to help voters make sense of the state of violence around the world—and tell us what they would do about it.

Headlines can be deceiving. We hear about China's rise, Russia's adventures, North Korea's nuclear misbehavior, the Iran nuclear deal, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and of course ISIS and civil war in the Middle East all the time. But it is also worth taking a step back to understand the broader state of violence on the planet today. Do so, and you might be surprised.

As part of a Brookings-JPMorgan Chase project that we call Securing Global Cities, we have attempted to map these trends in violence, benefiting greatly from ongoing work at European think tanks like the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the University of Maryland, and the United Nations. Here are some of the most salient facts and figures:

• Even with Russian President Vladimir Putin's activities from Ukraine to Syria in recent years, interstate conflict remains low and mild in intensity by historical standards, thankfully. China's activities in the South China Sea, however concerning, do not presently broach the threshold of interstate war.
• Unfortunately, the picture is more muddled for civil war. It remains less prevalent and less deadly than in the worst periods of the Cold War and the 1990s. But it has ticked up considerably since the beginning of the Arab spring in 2011, especially in the broad arc from the Sahel in Africa through the Middle East and to South Asia. Worldwide, perhaps 100,000 people a year are dying in civil wars.
• Yet war and terrorism are not the primary security threats to most people on the planet today. Notably, each year, more than 400,000 people are murdered around the globe, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
• Murder rates are highest in the Americas and in Africa, at least twice the global average. They are greatest in central and southern Africa, and from Brazil and Venezuela/Colombia to Central America and the Caribbean and Mexico.
• The least violent parts of the world include most of East Asia and Western Europe, despite the terrorism threat afflicting the latter region of late. 
• The “most improved” regions in recent decades include Colombia, former war-torn African states like Angola, Mozambique, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, as well as parts of Southeast Asia and a number major U.S. cities.
• If one broadens the lens on the definition of violence, motor vehicle accidents constitute an even bigger threat. The World Health Organization estimates that 1.2 million people a year die in such accidents worldwide.
• As cities and countries think about future security, they must bear in mind not just these current realities but the potential for catastrophe—from earthquakes, droughts, pandemics, nuclear reactor disasters, and massive infrastructural failures. In a worst case, tens of millions could suddenly be put at acute risk.

There is much to celebrate about the human condition today. Despite the headlines, life has actually never been safer or more prosperous for a higher fraction of the world's population. But our progress is fragile, and it is of course incomplete. 

The next U.S. president needs a plan for Syria, Libya, and Yemen, to be sure. But he or she also needs to address the broader challenges of urban and global security for a planet that is getting healthier and more secure but which still has a very long ways to go. A good first step is to collect and study what works in key cities and countries around the world so that we can all learn from each other, on topics ranging from breaking up gangs to corralling drug traffickers to stopping terrorism. A great deal has been learned; it is time to spread the knowledge, and emulate the best practices worldwide.

Event Information

The year 2015 will be a milestone year, with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the post-2015 development agenda by world leaders in September; the Addis Ababa Accord on financing for development in July; and the conclusion of climate negotiations at COP21 in Paris in December. The draft Addis Ababa Accord, which focuses on the actions needed to attain the SDGs, highlights the key role envisaged for the multilateral development banks (MDBs) in the post-2015 agenda. Paragraph 65 of the draft accord notes: “We call on the international finance institutions to establish a process to examine the role, scale, and functioning of the multilateral and regional development finance institutions to make them more responsive to the sustainable development agenda.”          

Against this backdrop, on April 18, 2015, the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings held a private roundtable with the leaders of the MDBs and other key stakeholders to discuss the role of the MDBs in supporting the post-2015 development agenda.

The meeting focused on four questions:

1. What does the post-2015 development agenda and the ambitions of the Addis and Paris conferences imply for the MDBs?


Given the ability of the MDBs to leverage shareholder resources, they can be efficient and effective mechanisms for scaling up development cooperation, particularly with respect to the agenda on investing in people and to the financing of sustainable infrastructure. New roles, instruments and partnerships might be needed.

2. How can MDBs best take advantage of the political attention that is being paid to the various conferences in 2015?   


The World Bank and selected regional development banks have launched a series of initiatives to optimize their balance sheets, address other constraints and enhance their catalytic role in crowding in private finance. And new institutions and mechanisms are coming to the fore. But the responses are not coordinated to best take advantage of each MDB’s comparative advantage.

3. What are the key impediments to scaling up the role and engagement of the MDBs?


Views on constraints are likely to differ but discussions should cover policy dialogue, capacity building, capital, leverage, shareholder backing on volume, instruments on leverage and risk mitigation, safeguards, and governance. 

4. How should the MDBs respond to the proposal to establish a process to examine the role, scale and functioning of the multilateral and regional development finance institutions to make them more responsive to the sustainable development agenda?   


A proactive response and engagement on the part of the MDBs would facilitate a better understanding of the contribution that the MDBs can make and greater support among shareholders for a coherent and stepped-up role.

Event Materials

• Participant List
• MDB PostEvent Summary

In 2015 the international community agreed on a set of ambitious sustainable development goals (SDGs) for the global society, to be achieved by 2030. One of the lessons that the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG s) has highlighted is the importance of a systematic approach to identify and sequence development interventions—policies, programs, and projects—to achieve such goals at a meaningful scale. The Chinese approach to development, which consists of identifying a problem and long-term goal, testing alternative solutions, and then implementing those that are promising in a sustained manner, learning and adapting as one proceeds—Deng Xiaoping’s “crossing the river by feeling the stones”—is an approach that holds promise for successful achievement of the SDGs.

Having observed the Chinese way, then World Bank Group President James Wolfensohn in 2004, together with the Chinese government, convened a major international conference in Shanghai on scaling up successful development interventions, and in 2005 the World Bank Group (WBG ) published the results of the conference, including an assessment of the Chinese approach. (Moreno-Dodson 2005). Some ten years later, the WBG once again is addressing the question of how to support scaling up of successful development interventions, at a time when the challenge and opportunity of scaling up have become a widely recognized issue for many development institutions and experts.

Since traditional private and public service providers frequently do not reach the poorest people in developing countries, social enterprises can play an important role in providing key services to those at the “base of the pyramid.”

In parallel with the recognition that scaling up matters, the development community is now also focusing on social enterprises (SEs), a new set of actors falling between the traditionally recognized public and private sectors. We adopt here the World Bank’s definition of “social enterprises” as a social-mission-led organization that provides sustainable services to Base of the Pyramid (BoP) populations. This is broadly in line with other existing definitions for the sector and reflects the World Bank’s primary interest in social enterprises as a mechanism for supporting service delivery for the poor. Although social enterprises can adopt various organizational forms—business, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and community-based organizations are all forms commonly adopted by social enterprises—they differ from private providers principally by combining three features: operating with a social purpose, adhering to business principles, and aiming for financial sustainability. Since traditional private and public service providers frequently do not reach the poorest people in developing countries, social enterprises can play an important role in providing key services to those at the “base of the pyramid.” (Figure 1)

Figure 1. Role of SE sector in public service provision

Social enterprises often start at the initiative of a visionary entrepreneur who sees a significant social need, whether in education, health, sanitation, or microfinance, and who responds by developing an innovative way to address the perceived need, usually by setting up an NGO, or a for-profit enterprise. Social enterprises and their innovations generally start small. When successful, they face an important challenge: how to expand their operations and innovations to meet the social need at a larger scale. 

Development partner organizations—donors, for short—have recognized the contribution that social enterprises can make to find and implement innovative ways to meet the social service needs of people at the base of the pyramid, and they have started to explore how they can support social enterprises in responding to these needs at a meaningful scale. 

The purpose of this paper is to present a menu of approaches for addressing the challenge of scaling up social enterprise innovations, based on a review of the literature on scaling up and on social enterprises. The paper does not aim to offer specific recommendations for entrepreneurs or blueprints and guidelines for the development agencies. The range of settings, problems, and solutions is too wide to permit that. Rather, the paper provides an overview of ways to think about and approach the scaling up of social enterprise innovations. Where possible, the paper also refers to specific tools that can be helpful in implementing the proposed approaches. 

Note that we talk about scaling up social enterprise innovations, not about social enterprises. This is because it is the innovations and how they are scaled up that matter. An innovation may be scaled up by the social enterprise where it originated, by handoff to a public agency for implementation at a larger scale, or by other private enterprises, small or large. 

This paper is structured in three parts: Part I presents a general approach to scaling up development interventions. This helps establish basic definitions and concepts. Part II considers approaches for the scaling up of social enterprise innovations. Part III provides a summary of the main conclusions and lessons from experience. A postscript draws out implications for external aid donors. Examples from actual practice are used to exemplify the approaches and are summarized in Annex boxes.

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