Nearly 30 years ago, the economists Robert Solow and Stephen Roach caused a stir when they pointed out that, for all the billions of dollars being invested in information technology, there was no evidence of a payoff in productivity. Businesses were buying tens of millions of computers every year, and Microsoft had just gone public, netting Bill Gates his first billion. And yet, in what came to be known as the productivity paradox, national statistics showed that not only was productivity growth not accelerating; it was actually slowing down. “You can see the computer age everywhere,” quipped Solow, “but in the productivity statistics.”

Today, we seem to be at a similar historical moment with a new innovation: the much-hyped Internet of Things – the linking of machines and objects to digital networks. Sensors, tags, and other connected gadgets mean that the physical world can now be digitized, monitored, measured, and optimized. As with computers before, the possibilities seem endless, the predictions have been extravagant – and the data have yet to show a surge in productivity.

A year ago, research firm Gartner put the Internet of Things at the peak of its Hype Cycle of emerging technologies.

As more doubts about the Internet of Things productivity revolution are voiced, it is useful to recall what happened when Solow and Roach identified the original computer productivity paradox. For starters, it is important to note that business leaders largely ignored the productivity paradox, insisting that they were seeing improvements in the quality and speed of operations and decision-making. Investment in information and communications technology continued to grow, even in the absence of macroeconomic proof of its returns.

That turned out to be the right response. By the late 1990s, the economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Lorin Hitt had disproved the productivity paradox, uncovering problems in the way service-sector productivity was measured and, more important, noting that there was generally a long lag between technology investments and productivity gains.

Our own research at the time found a large jump in productivity in the late 1990s, driven largely by efficiencies made possible by earlier investments in information technology. These gains were visible in several sectors, including retail, wholesale trade, financial services, and the computer industry itself. The greatest productivity improvements were not the result of information technology on its own, but by its combination with process changes and organizational and managerial innovations.

Our latest research, The Internet of Things: Mapping the Value Beyond the Hype, indicates that a similar cycle could repeat itself. We predict that as the Internet of Things transforms factories, homes, and cities, it will yield greater economic value than even the hype suggests. By 2025, according to our estimates, the economic impact will reach $3.9-$11.1 trillion per year, equivalent to roughly 11% of world GDP. In the meantime, however, we are likely to see another productivity paradox; the gains from changes in the way businesses operate will take time to be detected at the macroeconomic level.

One major factor likely to delay the productivity payoff will be the need to achieve interoperability. Sensors on cars can deliver immediate gains by monitoring the engine, cutting maintenance costs, and extending the life of the vehicle. But even greater gains can be made by connecting the sensors to traffic monitoring systems, thereby cutting travel time for thousands of motorists, saving energy, and reducing pollution. However, this will first require auto manufacturers, transit operators, and engineers to collaborate on traffic-management technologies and protocols.

Indeed, we estimate that 40% of the potential economic value of the Internet of Things will depend on interoperability. Yet some of the basic building blocks for interoperability are still missing. Two-thirds of the things that could be connected do not use standard Internet Protocol networks.

Other barriers standing in the way of capturing the full potential of the Internet of Things include the need for privacy and security protections and long investment cycles in areas such as infrastructure, where it could take many years to retrofit legacy assets. The cybersecurity challenges are particularly vexing, as the Internet of Things increases the opportunities for attack and amplifies the consequences of any breach.

But, as in the 1980s, the biggest hurdles for achieving the full potential of the new technology will be organizational. Some of the productivity gains from the Internet of Things will result from the use of data to guide changes in processes and develop new business models. Today, little of the data being collected by the Internet of Things is being used, and it is being applied only in basic ways – detecting anomalies in the performance of machines, for example.

It could be a while before such data are routinely used to optimize processes, make predictions, or inform decision-making – the uses that lead to efficiencies and innovations. But it will happen. And, just as with the adoption of information technology, the first companies to master the Internet of Things are likely to lock in significant advantages, putting them far ahead of competitors by the time the significance of the change is obvious to everyone.

Editor's Note: This opinion originally appeared on Project Syndicate August 6, 2015.

Introduction

I would like to thank the Department for giving me the opportunity to testify on this important issue. The document I submitted to you is more general than most of the comments you have received, talking about the issues facing retirement savers and policymakers, rather than engaging in a point-by-point discussion of the detailed DOL proposal¹.

Issues around Retirement Saving

1. Most workers in the bottom third of the income distribution will rely on Social Security to support them in retirement and will save little. Hence it is vital that we support Social Security in roughly its present form and make sure it remains funded, either by raising revenues or by scaling back benefits for higher income retirees, or both.

2. Those in the middle and upper middle income levels must now rely on 401k and IRA funds to provide income support in retirement. Many and perhaps most households lack a good understanding of the amount they need to save and how to allocate their savings. This is true even of many savers with high levels of education and capabilities.

3. The most important mistakes made are: not saving enough; withdrawing savings prior to retirement; taking Social Security benefits too early² ; not managing tax liabilities effectively; and failing to adequately manage risk in investment choices. This last category includes those who are too risk averse and choose low-return investments as well as those that overestimate their own ability to pick stocks and time market movements. These points are discussed in the paper I submitted to DoL in July. They indicate that retirement savers can benefit substantially from good advice.

4. The market for investment advice is one where there is asymmetric information and such markets are prone to inefficiency. It is very hard to get incentives correctly aligned. Professional standards are often used as a way of dealing with such markets but these are only partially successful. Advisers may be compensated through fees paid by the investment funds they recommend, either a load fee or a wrap fee. This arrangement can create an incentive for advisers to recommend high fee plans.

5. At the same time, advisers who encourage increased saving, help savers select products with good returns and adequate diversification, and follow a strategy of holding assets until retirement provide benefits to their clients.

Implications for the DoL’s proposed conflicted interest rule

1. Disclosure. There should be a standardized and simple disclosure form provided to all households receiving investment advice, detailing the fees they will be paying based on the choices they make. Different investment choices offered to clients should be accompanied by a statement describing how the fees received by the adviser would be impacted by the alternative recommendations made to the client.

2. Implications for small-scale savers. The proposed rule will bring with it increased compliance costs. These costs, combined with a reluctance to assume more risk and a fear of litigation, may make some advisers less likely to offer retirement advice to households with modest savings. These households are the ones most in need of direction and education, but because their accounts will not turn profits for advisors, they may be abandoned. According to the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), the proposed rule will save families with IRAs more than $40 billion over the next decade. However, this benefit must be weighed against the attendant costs of implementing the rule. It is possible that the rule will leave low- and medium-income households without professional guidance, further widening the retirement savings gap. The DoL should consider ways to minimize or manage these costs. Options include incentivizing advisors to continue guiding small-scale savers, perhaps through the tax code, and promoting increased financial literacy training for households with modest savings. Streamlining and simplifying the rules would also help.

3. Need for Research on Online Solutions. The Administration has argued that online advice may be the solution for these savers, and for some fraction of this group that may be a good alternative. Relying on online sites to solve the problem seems a stretch, however. Maybe at some time in the future that will be a viable option but at present there are many people, especially in the older generation, who lack sufficient knowledge and experience to rely on web solutions. The web offers dangers as well as solutions, with the potential for sub-optimal or fraudulent advice. I urge the DoL to commission independent research to determine how well a typical saver does when looking for investment advice online. Do they receive good advice? Do they act on that advice? What classes of savers do well or badly with online advice? Can web advice be made safer? To what extent do persons receiving online advice avoid the mistakes described earlier?

4. Pitfalls of MyRA. Another suggestion by the Administration is that small savers use MyRA as a guide to their decisions and this option is low cost and safe, but the returns are very low and will not provide much of a cushion in retirement unless households set aside a much larger share of their income than has been the case historically.

5. Clarifications about education versus advice. The proposed rule distinguished education from advisement. An advisor can share general information on best practices in retirement planning, including making age-appropriate asset allocations and determining the ideal age at which to retire, without triggering fiduciary responsibility. This is certainly a useful distinction. However, some advisors could frame this general information in a way that encourages clients to make decisions that are not in their own best interest. The DoL ought to think carefully about the line between education and advice, and how to discourage advisors from sharing information in a way that leads to future conflicts of interest. One option may be standardizing the general information that may be provided without triggering fiduciary responsibility.

6. Implications for risk management. Under the proposed rule advisors may be reluctant to assume additional risk and worry about litigation. In addition to pushing small-scale savers out of the market, the rule may encourage excessive risk aversion in some advisors. General wisdom suggests that young savers should have relatively high-risk portfolios, de-risking as they age, and ending with a relatively low-risk portfolio at the end of the accumulation period. The proposed rule could cause advisors to discourage clients from taking on risk, even when the risk is generally appropriate and the investor has healthy expectations. Extreme risk aversion could decrease both market returns for investors and the “value-add” of professional advisors. The DoL should think carefully about how it can discourage conflicted advice without encouraging overzealous risk reductions.

The proposed rule is an important effort to increase consumer protection and retirement security. However, in its current form, it may open the door to some undesirable or problematic outcomes. With some thoughtful revisions, I believe the rule can provide a net benefit to the country.

^{1. Baily’s work has been assisted by Sarah E. Holmes. He is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Director of The Phoenix Companies, but the views expressed are his alone.}

^{2. As you know, postponing Social Security benefits yields an 8 percent real rate of return, far higher than most people earn on their investments. For most of those that can manage to do so, postponing the receipt of benefits is the best decision.}

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Australia's economic performance has been the standout among advanced economies for several decades. With economic growth at nearly twice the pace of US or Germany over the past decade, a remarkable 25 years without a recession and a large, highly competitive mining sector despite the end of the resources boom, Australia remains a strong economic participant in a region of the world where future global growth is likely to be generated.

But with drivers of growth over the past 25 years unlikely to be the engines of growth in coming decades, now is not a time for complacency. And if there's one lesson from Britain's decision to leave the EU, it's that that disruptive forces are sweeping through the global economy. Australia, with its cohesive politics and economic success, has been able to avoid the worst of these problems, but the dangers are present if the economic challenges are not met.

To start with, the impacts of the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s are fading. The investment boom in mining is over, and the prices for mining and agricultural exports will probably remain subdued with slower growth in China. While Australia's incomes were boosted by the improved terms of trade, this has partially reversed. The housing boom will inevitably eventually slow.

As evidenced by the results of the Brexit referendum, there is a distrust of the political and economic elites that have led the world's biggest economies. Disruptive, rapid changes in technology have not led to broad-based productivity growth. Workers in many countries have been left with stagnant incomes and governments with rising public debt.

Industry policy has a bad name among American economists who see it as a manifestation of "capture" where special interests are able to obtain subsidies from taxpayers or special protections that are not in the national interest. The modern theory of industry policy, however, recognises that a well-designed policy can actually help markets work better, therefore helping an economy like Australia's make the transition to a new growth path when faced with changing economic conditions. Productivity is the key to high growth and rising incomes – and well-designed industry policy can help.

Structure of trade competitiveness

Take, for example, Australia's manufacturing sector. Mostly because of comparative advantage, it is the smallest among all advanced economies relative to the size of its economy. In 2010, Germany had 21.2 per cent of its workforce in manufacturing while Australia's was 8.9 per cent. While it's not surprising that Australia's structure of trade competitiveness differs from Germany's because of its enormous export strength of mining and agriculture, it will benefit by taking advantage of its highly skilled workforce and the potential to develop industries based on this human capital – including advanced manufacturing industries.

One of the traditional strengths of the American economy is the close link that exists between leading universities and businesses – an area Australian policymakers are seeking to improve upon. At MIT and Stanford, professors of engineering, biology, finance or economics finish their lectures and head off to the companies they run or advise. They often enlist graduate or undergraduate students to help them with their commercial projects and these collaborations often result in jobs as well as experience. There is a danger in this model if pure research loses out to business interests, but the interaction between academia and the practical needs of companies can largely improve both research and business profitability. It's worth recalling that even the giants of science in the 18th century were motivated by the need to improve navigation or build new machines or design buildings. Funding for research should support greater industry-university cooperation as highlighted by the Watt Review.

Another important element in Australia's continued economic success is the growth of its service industries. With most jobs in these industries, the performance and productivity of services will be the largest determinant of Australia's living standards. Productivity comparisons between Australia and the United States show that Australian productivity lagged behind the US as recently as the mid-1990s, but there has since been substantial catch-up taking place. Smart regulation that promotes competition and rewards innovation are necessary to bring up the laggards. While there is a continuing debate about the possible end of productivity growth in advanced economies, Australia can still do much to catch up to global best practice.

The winners of this weekend's election will be charged with answering an important question: what is the role of government in a modern economy? How they answer that will determine future prosperity for all Australians.

Martin Baily is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington and a former chair of the US President's Council of Economic Advisers. He has been invited by the Australian Ministry of Industry Innovation and Science to report on lessons from the US for policies to enhance economic growth, innovation and competitiveness.

Warwick McKibbin AO, is the director of the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis in the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy and is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Editor's note: this opinion first appeared in Australian Financial Review.

I have been writing for years about the Armenian Genocide. The issue is of great emotional as much as ethical and historical significance to me. But for reasons I will explain for the first time, 1915 is also a very personal matter for me. No, not because I suddenly discovered I am of Armenian descent, but mainly because 1915 is the main reason my career took a turn toward academia rather than diplomacy.

I did not join the Foreign Service because I was detained almost 20 years ago, when I was a 25-year-old tour guide. The reason? I dared to answer a couple of questions about 1915 from a group of American tourists visiting the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara. That day changed my life. I'm not naïve; I knew answering their question in public would be risky. And I would have probably refrained from doing so had they not asked me first whether there is freedom of speech in Turkey. Trying to make light of it, I quipped: "Yes, there is freedom of speech, but freedom after speech can get tricky." I did not know my joke would turn into self-fulfilling prophecy.

Shortly after explaining to my group why the term “genocide” is problematic for Turkish officialdom, I was arrested by guards in the museum, taken to a police station and interrogated for five hours. This unexpected encounter with Turkish law enforcement convinced me about a couple of things. First, I realized how difficult life in Turkey would be if I were of Armenian descent. "Are you Armenian?" was the first question I was asked in the police station. When I said "No," the police officer laughed and said I was not the first Turkish traitor they had interrogated. To this day, I wonder how life in Turkey would be if my name was Onik instead of Ömer.

Second, I was also convinced that I no longer wanted to become a diplomat. As a diplomat, I knew you turn into a defense attorney for your country. I also knew that in the larger scheme of things, what happened to me that day was not tragic or even very consequential. But the idea of defending a country that arrests a tour guide for speaking about what happened 100 years ago turned me off intellectually and emotionally. All of a sudden, Turkey's predicament had gained a disturbingly personal dimension in my eyes and thoughts. I remember having a conversation the night I was arrested with my father, a Turkish diplomat himself and in disbelief about my lack of situational awareness. "Do you think you think you live in Sweden?" he asked me with sarcasm and some anger. Anyway, the case was closed for me. I now had a police detention record. And this was enough to disqualify me from the Foreign Ministry exam.

Since the Turkish Foreign Service had now lost a brilliant (!) future diplomat, I turned my gaze to academia and decided to continue my seditious activities in the United States by writing a dissertation on Turkey's identity problem. My focus was on the interplay between Kemalism, the official ideology of the republic and the Kurdish question and political Islam. Ever since I started working in academia and think-tanks, I made an involuntary reputation for myself as a public intellectual with pro-Kurdish, pro-Islamic, pro-Armenian tendencies. I guess that's a small price to pay for trying to be a liberal in today's Turkey. The alternative would have been a life in Turkish diplomacy talking about the "so-called Armenian Genocide,” the separatist-terrorist organization called the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and various "coup" attempts against the sacred Turkish state during the Gezi protests and the corruption investigations.

At the end of day, my arrest 20 years ago was a blessing in disguise. I'm happy my Armenian journey took me where I am.

This article was originally published in Today's Zaman.

If you're an upstanding U.S. citizen, you'll stand up and be counted this Election Day, right? Well, maybe not. Just because Americans can vote doesn't mean they do. But who shows up is what decides the tight races, which makes turnout one of the most closely watched aspects of every election -- and one that has fostered a number of myths. Here are five, debunked:

1. Thanks to increasing voter apathy, turnout keeps dwindling.

This is the mother of all turnout myths. There may be plenty of apathetic voters out there, but the idea that ever fewer Americans are showing up at the polls should be put to rest. What's really happening is that the number of people not eligible to vote is rising -- making it seem as though turnout is dropping.

Those who bemoan a decline in American civic society point to the drop in turnout from 55.2 percent in 1972, when 18-year-olds were granted the right to vote, to the low point of 48.9 percent in 1996. But that's looking at the total voting-age population, which includes lots of people who aren't eligible to vote -- namely, noncitizens and convicted felons. These ineligible populations have increased dramatically over the past three decades, from about 2 percent of the voting-age population in 1972 to 10 percent today.

When you take them out of the equation, the post-1972 "decline" vanishes. Turnout rates among those eligible to vote have averaged 55.3 percent in presidential elections and 39.4 percent in midterm elections for the past three decades. There has been variation, of course, with turnout as low as 51.7 percent in 1996 and rebounding to 60.3 percent by 2004. Turnout in the most recent election, in fact, is on a par with the low-60 percent turnout rates of the 1950s and '60s.

2. Other countries' higher turnout indicates more vibrant democracies.

You can't compare apples and oranges. Voting rules differ from nation to nation, producing different turnout rates. Some countries have mandatory voting. If Americans were fined $100 for playing voter hooky on Election Day, U.S. participation might increase dramatically. But in fact, many people with a ballot pointed at their head simply cast a blank one or a nonsense vote for Mickey Mouse.

Moreover, most countries have national elections maybe once every five years; the United States has presidential or congressional elections every two years. Frequent elections may lead to voter fatigue. New European Union elections, for instance, seem to be depressing turnout in member countries. After decades of trailing turnout in the United Kingdom, U.S. turnout in 2004 was on a par with recent British elections, in which turnout was 59.4 percent in 2001 and 61.4 percent in 2005.

Americans are asked to vote more often -- in national, state, local and primary contests -- than the citizens of any other country. They can be forgiven for missing one or two elections, can't they? Even then, over the course of several elections, Americans have more chances to participate and their turnout may be higher than that in countries where people vote only once every five years.

3. Negative ads turn off voters and reduce turnout.

Don't be so sure. The case on this one is still open. Negative TV advertising increased in the mid-1980s, but turnout hasn't gone down correspondingly. The negative Swift boat campaign against Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) apparently did little to depress turnout in the 2004 presidential race.

Some academic studies have found that negative advertising increases turnout. And that's not so surprising: A particularly nasty ad grabs people's attention and gets them talking. People participate when they're interested. A recent GOP attack ad on Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.), a Senate candidate, has changed the dynamic of the race, probably not because it changed minds or dissuaded Democrats, but because it energized listless Republicans.

We'll have to wait to see whether the attack on Ford backfires because voters perceive it as unfair. That's the danger of going negative. So campaigns tend to stick to "contrast ads," in which candidates contrast their records with those of their opponents. When people see stark differences between candidates, they're more likely to vote.

4. The Republican "72-hour campaign" will win the election.

Not necessarily. You can lead citizens to the ballot, but you can't make them vote.

Republicans supposedly have a super-sophisticated last-minute get-out-the-vote effort that identifies voters who'll be pivotal in electing their candidates. Studies of a campaign's personal contact with voters through phone calls, door-to-door solicitation and the like find that it does have some positive effect on turnout. But people vote for many reasons other than meeting a campaign worker, such as the issues, the closeness of the election and the candidates' likeability. Further, these studies focus on get-out-the-vote drives in low-turnout elections, when contacts from other campaigns and outside groups are minimal. We don't know what the effects of mobilization drives are in highly competitive races in which people are bombarded by media stories, television ads and direct mail.

Republican get-out-the-vote efforts could make a difference in close elections if Democrats simply sat on the sidelines. But this year Democrats have vowed to match the GOP mobilization voter for voter. So it'll take more than just knowing whether a prospective voter owns a Volvo or a BMW for Republicans to eke out victory in a competitive race.

5. Making voter registration easier would dramatically increase turnout.

Well, yes and no.

In 1993, the Democratic government in Washington enacted "Motor Voter," a program that allowed people to register to vote when they received their driver's license or visited a welfare office. Democrats thought that if everyone were registered, turnout rates would increase -- by as much as 7 percentage points.

But while many people registered to vote, turnout didn't go up much. Subsequent studies found only small increases in turnout attributable to Motor Voter, perhaps 2 percentage points.

Sizable increases in turnout can be seen in states with Election Day registration, which allows people to register when they vote. This may be related to the fact that lots of people don't make up their minds to vote until Election Day, rather than months in advance when they get a license.

On November 7, millions of Americans will exercise their civic duty to vote. At stake will be control of the House and Senate, not to mention the success of individual candidates running for office. President Bush's "stay the course" agenda will either be enabled over the next two years by a Republican Congress or knocked off kilter by a Democratic one.

With so much at stake, it is not surprising that the Pew Research Center found that 51 percent of registered voters have given a lot of thought to this November's election. This is higher than any other recent midterm election, including 44 percent in 1994, the year Republicans took control of the House. If so, turnout should better the 1994 turnout rate among eligible voters of 41 percent.

There is good reason to suspect that despite the high interest, turnout will not exceed 1994. The problem is that a national poll is, well, a national poll, and does not measure attitudes of voters within states and districts.

People vote when there is a reason to do so. Republican and Democratic agendas are in stark contrast on important issues, but voters also need to believe that their vote will matter in deciding who will represent them. It is here that the American electoral system is broken for many voters.

Voters have little choice in most elections. In 1994, Congressional Quarterly called 98 House elections as competitive. Today, they list 51. To put it another way, we are already fairly confident of the winner in nearly 90 percent of House races. Although there is no similar tracking for state legislative offices, we know that the number of elections won by less than 60 percent of the vote has fallen since 1994.

The real damage to the national turnout rate is in the large states of California and New York, which together account for 17 percent of the country's eligible voters. Neither state has a competitive Senate or Governor's election, and few competitive House or state legislative races. Compare to 1994, when Californians participated in competitive Senate and governor races the state's turnout was 5 percentage points above the national rate. The same year New York's competitive governor's race helped boost turnout a point above the national rate.

Lacking stimulation from two of the largest states, turnout boosts will have to come from elsewhere. Texas has an interesting four-way governor's race that might draw from infrequent voters to the polls. Ohio's competitive Senate race and some House races might also draw voters. However, in other large states like Florida, Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania, turnout will suffer from largely uncompetitive statewide races.

The national turnout rate will likely be less than 1994 and fall shy of 40 percent. This is not to say that turnout will be poor everywhere. Energized voters in Connecticut get to vote in an interesting Senate race and three of five Connecticut House seats are up for grabs. The problem is that turnout will be localized in these few areas of competition.

The fault is not on the voters; people's lives are busy, and a rational person will abstain when their vote does not matter to the election outcome. The political parties also are sensitive to competition and focus their limited resources where elections are competitive. Television advertising and other mobilizing efforts by campaigns will only be found in competitive races.

The old adage of "build it and they will come" is relevant. All but hardcore sports fans tune out a blowout. Building competitive elections -- and giving voters real choices -- will do much to increase voter turnout in American politics. There are a number of reforms on the table: redistricting to create competitive districts, campaign financing to give candidates equal resources, and even altering the electoral system to fundamentally change how a vote elects representatives. If voters want choice and a government more responsive to their needs, they should consider how these seemingly arcane election procedures have real consequences on motivating them to do the most fundamental democratic action: vote.

Senator Barack Obama’s Iowa victory has been largely attributed to his success among young voters.  According to the entrance polls, not only did he win an outright majority of the youth vote, the 24-and-under crowd also turned out to vote with unusual strength.

Can he do it again in New Hampshire and beyond?

The Iowa caucuses are unusual in three key respects when it comes to mobilization of young voters and their influence on the election outcome.

First, Obama and the other candidates have spent the last year building impressive organizations within Iowa to mobilize their supporters.  In this decade, campaigns have retooled their get-out-the-vote efforts to emphasize person-to-person contact, which has been demonstrated to significantly increase turnout among all voters.  Turnout in both parties’ caucuses—particularly the record 236,000 on the Democratic side—benefited from peaked voter interest and this new campaign tactic.

Unlike previous efforts to mobilize young voters by concerts and celebrities, young voters are particularly energized when encouraged to vote by their peers.  Obama’s campaign specifically tailored mobilization efforts to young voters.  It clearly worked, as the youth were a larger share of caucus attendees than they were four years ago.

Second, the caucuses occur in the evening when people with families, and/or working night shifts, are unable to participate.  The caucuses favor turnout among people who have time on their hands, like students who have yet to return to college from their winter break. 

Third, despite the historically high turnout on the Democratic side of the Iowa caucuses, the caucuses are still low-turnout affairs, with only about 16 percent of eligible Iowans participating on January 3.  Where organization and time can galvanize youth relative to other Iowa caucus attendees, it is highly unlikely that young voters will be as large a share of the electorate in primary states like New Hampshire where more people participate simply because voting is less burdensome.

These factors suggest that Obama will be disadvantaged in upcoming elections. 

But surprisingly, no; it is Hillary Clinton who will be disadvantaged because of the age of her supporters.

Where Obama’s support comes from the youth, Clinton’s comes from the elderly.  She was just shy of winning a majority of their vote in the Iowa caucuses.

Like the youth, the elderly also traditionally constitute a larger share of Iowa caucus attendees than of primary voters.  Older Americans are habitual voters and have time on their hands.

When candidate support among the different ages of Iowa caucus attendees are applied to the age distribution of the 2004 New Hampshire Democratic primary electorate, support for Obama and John Edwards rises, while support for Clinton actually decreases. 

Obama’s strength among people in their 30’s—a demographic he also won—will likely pack a larger wallop among the larger New Hampshire electorate, offsetting the youth’s lower share of the electorate.

Edwards, who eked out a win among middle-aged voters, benefits from their higher turnout. Edward's attacks on Clinton following Iowa make strategic sense. He believes that if he can become the alternative to Obama, Clinton's older supporters will flock to him, setting up all out generational war on the Democratic side.

Clinton sees her elderly support base diminish, and it is not replenished with fresh voters elsewhere.

Of course, the situation is still fluid.  2008 is not 2004, New Hampshire is not Iowa and we have yet to see where Joe Biden’s and Chris Dodd’s supporters go now that those contenders are out. 

Yet, Obama’s eggs are not all in one basket.  He does not need to rely on young voters solely to win New Hampshire; he just needs them to be as animated as they were in Iowa to add to his support among their slightly older peers. 

On the Republican side, we have to look back eight years to the last contested Republican nomination to understand what increased youth turnout means to the election outcome. It does not appear to be much. The age profile of the Republican Iowa 2000 electorate looks similar to that of 2008, with the exception that the 2008 Republican electorate is more middle-aged. When the Republican contest moved from the Iowa caucuses to the New Hampshire primary in 2000, the age profile remained relatively steady with the exception that the share of the electorate of those in their 30's increased while those 60 and older decreased.

Mike Huckabee won every age demographic category in 2008, but so did George W. Bush in 2000. John McCain came roaring back from an Iowa fifth place finish in 2000 to win New Hampshire and is poised to do so again. The difference between Iowa and New Hampshire Republican electorates is more about their ideologies rather than their ages.

There may still be something to learn from the age distribution of support for the Republican candidates. McCain drew his support in 2000 and from middle-aged and older voters, who together will likely make up a majority of the New Hampshire Republican electorate. Will he do it again in 2008?

Looking past Huckabee's Iowa's support, McCain and Mitt Romney both drew more support from older voters. There are thus three candidates vying for votes from older New Hampshire independents, who may choose to vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary: McCain, Romney, and Clinton. This may favor Obama, too, as his independent supporters are not faced with the same difficult choice of which primary to vote in as Clinton's are.

The Syndrome, the villain in the 2004 animated movie “The Incredibles,” is an ordinary guy who has a plan to put an end to superheroes by making everyone a superhero.

Syndrome’s evil machinations came to fruition on Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2008.

The political parties permit states to hold their presidential nominating contests as early as the first Tuesday in February, with familiar states such as Iowa and New Hampshire given exemptions. Other states jealous of the attention lavished on those early states plotted to make their primaries or caucuses sooner, sometimes even violating party rules and suffering a penalty as a consequence.

To quote Syndrome, when everyone is a super, no one is a super. And so it was with the Super Tuesday states.

Although not intended, a national primary emerged as 24 states fell over one another in a Keystone Kop spectacle by moving up their primaries and caucuses to Feb. 5.

Some argued that this would be good for the political parties in the general election since only a candidate who could run a national campaign would win the nomination.

Ironically, the candidates acted just like they do in a general election, where they concentrate on the competitive battleground states. On Super Tuesday they decided where they could be competitive, where they could pick up delegates, and targeted their scarce resources to those states.

States that thought they would be relevant found themselves irrelevant safe states that the candidates passed by and simply helped run up delegate totals for their favored candidate.

A year ago, the campaigns were focused on building organizations and cultivating supporters in the early contest states of Iowa and New Hampshire. Some candidate strategies were solely focused on jump-starting their campaigns by winning these early states, and others hoped that decisive wins would quickly seal the nomination. Some of the better-financed campaigns could be forward-looking, but they still would not want to spend time and money on Super Tuesday states unless they were sure they would need to.

By the time the nomination process was whittled down to the remaining players and the campaigns could start their Super Tuesday planning, little time was left to advertise, send direct mail and build volunteer organizations. Even where the campaigns decided they could be competitive, too many states were in play for the campaigns to pour in the same resources they did in Iowa and New Hampshire.

The resulting dynamic had a twofold effect on voter participation in this year of high voter interest.

Lack of competition drove down turnout in states such as New York, where Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) were expected to win big victories. Only 19 percent of eligible New Yorkers voted, compared with 53 percent in New Hampshire.

Lack of organization and campaigning drove turnout down across the board, as all primary states combined averaged a turnout rate of 29 percent. Poor organization particularly afflicted the caucuses, which require campaign organizations to mobilize supporters to give up an entire evening. While 16 percent of eligible Iowans attended caucuses, the combined attendance rate for the four states holding caucuses for both political parties was a meager 6 percent.

The silver lining is that continued voter interest buoyed participation where competition and organization failed. Turnout likely would have been much worse if the nominees already had been decided.

As we move forward from Super Tuesday, those states that did not crowd to the front of the line will now find themselves being courted a little more graciously and intensely by the campaigns. This should help increase voter participation. However, the nomination battles are still coming rather fast and furiously, so the campaigns still can’t give the extended engagement they do for the early states. Some campaigns are now facing hard choices as to where they can spend their limited remaining resources. Except for perhaps a few intensely fought competitive states remaining, voter turnout has thus likely peaked in this election cycle.

We expected Super Tuesday to soar into the stratosphere. Instead, it was more of a flop, a cheap imitation of Iowa and New Hampshire. When the dust settles after this primary season and we look back at how the parties nominate their candidates, we will still be searching for a way to have more equitable involvement by voters in all states.

A review essay of “Governance of Socio-technical Systems: Explaining Change”, edited by Susana Borrás and Jakob Edler (Edward Elgar, 2014, 207 pages).

Phasing-out a useful and profitable technology

I own a Nokia 2330; it’s a small brick phone that fits comfortably in the palm of my hand. People have feelings about this: mostly, they marvel at my ability to survive without a smart-phone. Concerns go beyond my wellbeing; once a friend protested that I should be aware of the costs I impose onto my friends, for instance, by asking them for precise directions to their houses. Another suggested that I cease trying to be smarter than my phone. But my reason is simple: I don’t need a smart phone. Most of the time, I don’t even need a mobile phone. I can take and place calls from my home or my office. And who really needs a phone during their commute? Still, my device will meet an untimely end. My service provider has informed me via text message that it will phase out all 2G service and explicitly encouraged me to acquire a 3G or newer model. 

There is a correct if simplistic explanation for this announcement: my provider is not making enough money with my account and should I switch to a newer device, they will be able to sell me a data plan. The more accurate and more complex explanation is that my mobile device is part of a communications system that is integrated to other economic and social systems. As those other systems evolve, my device is becoming incompatible with them; my carrier has determined that I should be integrated.

The system integration is easy to understand from a business perspective. My carrier may very well be able to make a profit keeping my account as is, and the accounts of the legion of elderly and low-income customers who use similar devices, and still they may not find it advantageous in the long run to allow 2G devices in their network. To understand this business strategy, we need to go back no farther than the introduction of the iPhone, which in addition to being the most marketable mobile phone set a new standard platform for mobile devices. Its introduction accelerated a trend underway in the core business of carriers: the shift from voice communication to data streaming because smart phones can support layers of overlapping services that depend on fast and reliable data transfer. These services include sophisticated log capabilities, web search, geo-location, connectivity to other devices, and more recently added bio-monitoring. All those services are part of systems of their own, so it makes perfect business sense for carriers to seamlessly integrate mobile communications with all those other systems. Still, the economic rationale explains only a fraction of the systems integration underway.

The communication system of mobile telephony is also integrated with regulatory, social, and cultural systems. Consider the most mundane examples: It’s hard to imagine anyone who, having shifted from paper-and-pencil to an electronic agenda, decided to switch back afterwards. We are increasingly dependent of GPS services; while it may have once served tourists who did not wish to learn how to navigate a new city, it is now a necessity for many people who without it are lost in their home town. Not needing to remember phone numbers, the time of our next appointment, or how to go back to that restaurant we really liked, is a clear example of the integration of mobile devices into our value systems.

There are coordination efforts and mutual accommodation taking place: tech designers seek to adapt to changing values and we update our values to the new conveniences of slick gadgets. Government officials are engaged in the same mutual accommodation. They are asking how many phone booths must be left in public places, how to reach more people with public service announcements, and how to provide transit information in real-time when commuters need it. At the same time, tech designers are considering all existing regulations so their devices are compliant. Communication and regulatory systems are constantly being re-integrated.

The will behind systems integration

The integration of technical and social systems that results from innovation demands an enormous amount of planning, effort, and conflict resolution. The people involved in this process come from all quarters of the innovation ecology, including inventors, entrepreneurs, financiers, and government officials. Each of these agents may not be able to contemplate the totality of the system integration problem but they more or less understand how their respective system must evolve so as to be compatible with interrelated systems that are themselves evolving.  There is a visible willfulness in the integration task that scholars of innovation call the governance of socio-technical systems.

Introducing the term governance, I should emphasize that I do not mean merely the actions of governments or the actions of entrepreneurs. Rather, I mean the effort of all agents involved in the integration and re-integration of systems triggered by innovation; I mean all the coordination and mutual accommodation of agents from interrelated systems. And there is no single vehicle to transport all the relevant information for these agents. A classic representation of markets suggests that prices carry all the relevant information agents need to make optimal decisions. But it is impossible to project this model onto innovation because, as I suggested above, it does not adhere exclusively to economic logic; cultural and political values are also at stake. The governance task is therefore fragmented into pieces and assigned to each of the participants of the socio-technical systems involved, and they cannot resolve it as a profit-maximization problem. 

Instead, the participants must approach governance as a problem of design where the goal could be characterized as reflexive adaptation. By adaptation I mean seeking to achieve inter-system compatibility. By reflexive I mean that each actor must realize that their actions trigger adaption measures in other systems. Thus, they cannot passively adapt but rather they must anticipate the sequence of accommodations in the interaction with other agents. This is one of the most important aspects of the governance problem, because all too often neither technical nor economic criteria will suffice; quite regularly coordination must be negotiated, which is to say, innovation entails politics.

The idea of governance of socio-technical systems is daunting. How do we even begin to understand it? What kinds of modes of governance exist? What are the key dimensions to understand the integration of socio-technical systems? And perhaps more pressing, who prevails in disputes about coordination and accommodation? Fortunately, Susana Borrás, from the Copenhagen Business School, and Jakob Edler, from the University of Manchester, both distinguished professors of innovation, have collected a set of case studies that shed light on these problems in an edited volume entitled Governance of Socio-technical Change: Explaining Change. What is more, they offer a very useful conceptual framework of governance that is worth reviewing here. While this volume will be of great interest to scholars of innovation—and it is written in scholarly language—I think it has great value for policymakers, entrepreneurs, and all agents involved in a practical manner in the work of innovation.

Organizing our thinking on the governance of change

The first question that Borrás and Edler tackle is how to characterize the different modes of governance. They start out with a heuristic typology across the two central categories: what kinds of agents drive innovation and how the actions of these agents are coordinated. Agents can represent the state or civil society, and actions can be coordinated via dominant or non-dominant hierarchies.

Source: Adapted from Borrás and Adler (2015), Table 1.2, p. 13.

This typology is very useful to understand why different innovative industries have different dynamics; they are governed differently. For instance, we can readily understand why consumer software and pharmaceuticals are so at odds regarding patent law. The strict (and very necessary) regulation of drug production and commercialization coupled with the oligopolistic structure of that industry creates the need and opportunity to advocate for patent protection; which is equivalent to a government subsidy. In turn, the highly competitive environment of consumer software development and its low level of regulation foster an environment where patents hinder innovation. Government intervention is neither needed nor wanted; the industry wishes to regulate itself.

This typology is also useful to understand why open source applications have gained currency much faster in the consumer segment than the contractor segment of software producers. Examples of the latter is industry specific software (e.g. to operate machinery, the stock exchange, and ATMs) or software to support national security agencies. These contractors demand proprietary software and depend on the secrecy of the source code. The software industry is not monolithic, and while highly innovative in all its segments, the innovation taking place varies greatly by its mode of governance.

Furthermore, we can understand the inherent conflicts in the governance of science. In principle, scientists are led by curiosity and organize their work in a decentralized and organic fashion. In practice, most of science is driven by mission-oriented governmental agencies and is organized in a rigid hierarchical system. Consider the centrality of prestige in science and how it is awarded by peer-review; a system controlled by the top brass of each discipline. There is nearly an irreconcilable contrast between the self-image of science and its actual governance. Using the Borrás-Edler typology, we could say that scientists imagine themselves as citizens of the south-east quadrant while they really inhabit the north-west quadrant.

There are practical lessons from the application of this typology to current controversies. For instance, no policy instrument such as patents can have the same effect on all innovation sectors because the effect will depend on the mode of governance of the sector. This corollary may sound intuitive, yet it really is at variance with the current terms of the debate on patent protection, where assertions of its effect on innovation, in either direction, are rarely qualified.

The second question Borrás and Edler address is that of the key analytical dimensions to examine socio-technical change. To this end, they draw from an ample selection of social theories of change. First, economists and sociologists fruitfully debate the advantage of social inquiry focused on agency versus institutions. Here, the synthesis offered is reminiscent of Herbert Simon’s “bounded rationality”, where the focus turns to agent decisions constrained by institutions. Second, policy scholars as well as sociologists emphasize the engineering of change. Change can be accomplished with discreet instruments such as laws and regulations, or diffused instruments such as deliberation, political participation, and techniques of conflict resolution. Third, political scientists underscore the centrality of power in the adjudication of disputes produced by systems’ change and integration. Borrás and Edler have condensed these perspectives in an analytical framework that boils down to three clean questions: who drives change? (focus on agents bounded by institutions), how is change engineered? (focus on instrumentation), and why it is accepted by society? (focus on legitimacy). The case studies contained in this edited volume illustrate the deployment of this framework with empirical research.

Standards, sustainability, incremental innovation

Arthur Daemmrich (Chapter 3) tells the story of how the German chemical company BASF succeeded marketing the biodegradable polymer Ecoflex. It is worth noting the dependence of BASF on government funding to develop Ecoflex, and on the German Institute for Standardization (DIN), making a market by setting standards. With this technology, BASF capitalized on the growing demand in Germany for biodegradables, and with its intense cooperation with DIN helped establish a standard that differentiate Ecoflex from the competition. By focusing on the enterprise (the innovation agent) and its role in engineering the market for its product by setting standards that would favor them, this story reveals the process of legitimation of this new technology. In effect, the certification of DIN was accepted by agribusinesses that sought to utilize biodegradable products.

If BASF is an example of innovation by standards, Allison Loconto and Marc Barbier (Chapter 4) show the strategies of governing by standards. They take the case of the International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labelling alliance (ISEAL). ISEAL, an advocate of sustainability, positions itself as a coordinating broker among standard developing organizations by offering “credibility tools” such as codes of conduct, best practices, impact assessment methods, and assurance codes. The organization advocates what is known as the tripartite system regime (TSR) around standards. TSR is a system of checks and balances to increase the credibility of producers complying with standards. The TSR regime assigns standard-setting, certification, and accreditation of the certifiers, to separate and independent bodies. The case illustrates how producers, their associations, and broker organizations work to bestow upon standards their most valuable attribute: credibility. The authors are cautious not to conflate credibility with legitimacy, but there is no question that credibility is part of the process of legitimizing technical change. In constructing credibility, these authors focus on the third question of the framework –legitimizing innovation—and from that vantage point, they illuminate the role of actors and instruments that will guide innovations in sustainability markets.

While standards are instruments of non-dominant hierarchies, the classical instrument of dominant hierarchies is regulation. David Barberá-Tomás and Jordi Molas-Gallart tell the tragic consequences of an innovation in hip-replacement prosthesis that went terribly wrong. It is estimated that about 30 thousand replaced hips failed. The FDA, under the 1976 Medical Device Act, allows incremental improvements in medical devices to go into the market after only laboratory trials, assuming that any substantive innovations have already being tested in regular clinical trials. This policy was designed as an incentive for innovation, a relief from high regulatory costs. However, the authors argue, when products have been constantly improved for a number of years after an original release, any marginal improvement comes at a higher cost or higher risk—a point they refer to as the late stage of the product life-cycle. This has tilted the balance in favor of risky improvements, as illustrated by the hip prosthesis case. The story speaks to the integration of technical and cultural systems: the policy that encourages incremental innovation may alter the way medical device companies assess the relative risk of their innovations, precisely because they focus on incremental improvements over radical ones. Returning to the analytical framework, the vantage point of regulation—instrumentation—elucidates the particular complexities and biases in agents’ decisions.

Two additional case studies discuss the discontinuation of the incandescent light bulb (ILB) and the emergence of translational research, both in Western Europe. The first study, authored by Peter Stegmaier, Stefan Kuhlmann and Vincent R. Visser (Chapter 6), focuses on a relatively smooth transition. There was wide support for replacing ILBs that translated in political will and a market willing to purchase new energy efficient bulbs. In effect, the new technical system was relatively easy to re-integrate to a social system in change—public values had shifted in Europe to favor sustainable consumption—and the authors are thus able to emphasize how agents make sense of the transition. Socio-technical change does not have a unique meaning: for citizens it means living in congruence with their values; for policy makers it means accruing political capital; for entrepreneurs it means new business opportunities. The case by Etienne Vignola-Gagné, Peter Biegelbauer and Daniel Lehner (Chapter 7) offers a similar lesson about governance. My reading of their multi-site study of the implementation of translational research—a management movement that seeks to bridge laboratory and clinical work in medical research—reveals how the different agents involved make sense of this organizational innovation. Entrepreneurs see a new market niche, researchers strive for increasing the impact of their work, and public officials align their advocacy for translation with the now regular calls for rendering publicly funded research more productive. Both chapters illuminate a lesson that is as old as it is useful to remember: technological innovation is interpreted in as many ways as the number of agents that participate in it.

Innovation for whom?

The framework and illustrations of this book are useful for those of us interested in the governance of system integration. The typology of different modes of governance and the three vantage points from which empirical analysis can be deployed are very useful indeed. Further development of this framework should include the question of how political power is redistributed by effect of innovation and the system integration and re-integration that it triggers. The question is pressing because the outcomes of innovation vary as power structures are reinforced or debilitated by the emergence of new technologies—not to mention ongoing destabilizing forces such as social movements. Put another way, the framework should be expanded to explain in which circumstances innovation exacerbates inequality. The expanded framework should probe whether the mutual accommodation is asymmetric across socio-economic groups, which is the same as asking: are poor people asked to do more adapting to new technologies? These questions have great relevance in contemporary debates about economic and political inequality. 

I believe that Borrás and Edler and their colleagues have done us a great service organizing a broad but dispersed literature and offering an intuitive and comprehensive framework to study the governance of innovation. The conceptual and empirical parts of the book are instructive and I look forward to the papers that will follow testing this framework. We need to better understand the governance of socio-technical change and the dynamics of systems integration. Without a unified framework of comparison, the ongoing efforts in various disciplines will not amount to a greater understanding of the big picture. 

I also have a selfish reason to like this book: it helps me make sense of my carrier’s push for integrating my value system to their technical system. If I decide to adapt to a newer phone, I could readily do so because I have time and other resources. But that may not be the case for many customers of 2G devices who have neither the resources nor the inclination to learn to use more complex devices. For that reason alone, I’d argue that this sort of innovation-led systems integration could be done more democratically. Still, I could meet the decision of my carrier with indifference: when the service is disconnected, I could simply try to get by without the darn toy.

Note: Thanks to Joseph Schuman for an engaging discussion of this book with me.

Editor's Note: TechTakes is a new series that collects the diverse perspectives of scholars around the Brookings Institution on technology policy issues. This first post in the series features contributions from Scott Andes, Susan Hennessey, Adie Tomer, Walter Valdivia, Darrell M. West, and Niam Yaraghi on the Internet of Things.

In the coming years, the number of devices around the world connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) will grow rapidly. Sensors located in buildings, vehicles, appliances, and clothing will create enormous quantities of data for consumers, corporations, and governments to analyze. Maximizing the benefits of IoT will require thoughtful policies. Given that IoT policy cuts across many disciplines and levels of government, who should coordinate the development of new IoT platforms? How will we secure billions of connected devices from cyberattacks? Who will have access to the data created by these devices? Below, Brookings scholars contribute their individual perspectives on the policy challenges and opportunities associated with the Internet of Things.

The Internet of Things will be everywhere

Darrell M. West is vice president and director of Governance Studies and founding director of the Center for Technology Innovation.

Humans are lovable creatures, but prone to inefficiency, ineffectiveness, and distraction. They like to do other things when they are driving such as listening to music, talking on the phone, texting, or checking email. Judging from the frequency of accidents though, many individuals believe they are more effective at multi-tasking than is actually the case.

The reality of these all too human traits is encouraging a movement from communication between computers to communication between machines. Driverless cars soon will appear on the highways in large numbers, and not just as a demonstration project. Remote monitoring devices will transmit vital signs to health providers, who then can let people know if their blood pressure has spiked or heart rhythm has shifted in a dangerous direction. Sensors in appliances will let individuals know when they are running low on milk, bread, or cereal. Thermostats will adjust their energy settings to the times when people actually are in the house, thereby saving substantial amounts of money while also protecting natural resources.

With the coming rise of a 5G network, the Internet of Things will unleash high-speed devices and a fully connected society. Advanced digital devices will enable a wide range of new applications from energy and transportation to home security and healthcare. They will help humans manage the annoyances of daily lives such as traffic jams, not being able to find parking places, or keeping track of physical fitness. The widespread adoption of smart appliances, smart energy grids, resource management tools, and health sensors will improve how people connect with one another and their electronic devices. But they also will raise serious security, privacy, and policy issues.

Implications for surveillance

Susan Hennessey is Fellow in National Security in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. She is the Managing Editor of the Lawfare blog, which is devoted to sober and serious discussion of "Hard National Security Choices.”

As the debate over encryption and diminished law enforcement access to communications enters the public arena, some posit the growing Internet of Things as a solution to “Going Dark.” A recently released Harvard Berkman Center report, “Don’t Panic,” concludes in part that losses of communication content will be offset by the growth of IoT and networked sensors. It argues IoT provides “prime mechanisms for surveillance: alternative vectors for information-gathering that could more than fill many of the gaps left behind by sources that have gone dark – so much so that they raise troubling questions about how exposed to eavesdropping the general public is poised to become.”

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper agrees that IoT has some surveillance potential. He recently testified before Congress that “[i]n the future, intelligence services might use the IoT for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials.”

But intelligence gathering in the Internet age is fundamentally about finding needles in haystacks – IoT is poised to add significantly more hay than needles. Law enforcement and the intelligence community will have to develop new methods to isolate and process the magnitude of information. And Congress and the courts will have to decide how laws should govern this type of access.

For now, the unanswered question remains: How many refrigerators does it take to catch a terrorist?

IoT governance

Scott Andes is a senior policy analyst and associate fellow at the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Initiative on Innovation and Placemaking, a part of the Centennial Scholar Initiative at the Brookings Institution.

As with many new technology platforms, the Internet of Things is often approached as revolutionary, not evolutionary technology. The refrain is that some scientific Rubicon has been crossed and the impact of IoT will come soon regardless of public policy. Instead, the role of policymakers is to ensure this new technology is leveraged within public infrastructure and doesn’t adversely affect national security or aggravate inequality. While these goals are clearly important, they all assume technological advances of IoT are staunchly within the realm of the private sector and do not justify policy intervention. However, as with almost all new technologies that catch the public’s eye—robotics, clean energy, autonomous cars, etc.—hyperbolic news reporting overstates the market readiness of these technologies, further lowering the perceived need of policy support.

The problem with this perspective is twofold. First, greater scientific breakthroughs are still needed. The current rate of improvement in processing power and data storage, miniaturization of devices, and more energy efficient sensors only begin to scratch the surface of IoT’s full potential. Advances within next-generation computational power, autonomous devices, and interoperable systems still require scientific breakthroughs and are nowhere near deployment. Second, even if the necessary technological advancements of IoT have been met, it’s not clear the U.S. economy will be the prime recipient of its economic value. Nations that lead in advanced manufacturing, like Germany, may already be better poised to export IoT-enabled products. Policymakers in the United States should view technological advancements in IoT as a global economic race that can be won through sound science policies. These should include: accelerating basic engineering research; helping that research reach the market; supporting entrepreneurs’ access to capital; and training a science and engineering-ready workforce that can scale up new technologies.

IoT will democratize innovation

Walter D. Valdivia is a fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings.

The Internet of Things could be a wonderful thing, but not in the way we imagine it.

Today, the debate is dominated by cheerleaders or worrywarts. But their perspectives are merely two sides of the same coin: technical questions about reliability of communications and operations, and questions about system security. Our public imagination about the future is being narrowly circumscribed by these questions. However, as the Internet of Things starts to become a thing—or multiples things, or a networked plurality—it is likely to intrude so intensely into our daily lives that alternative imaginations will emerge and will demand a hearing.

A compelling vision of the future is necessary to organize and coordinate the various market and political agents who will integrate IoT into society. Technological success is usually measured in terms set by the purveyor of that vision. Traditionally, this is a small group with a financial stake in technological development: the innovating industry. However, the intrusiveness and pervasiveness of the Internet of Things will prompt ordinary citizens to augment that vision. Citizen participation will deny any group a monopoly on that vision of the future. Such a development would be a true step in the direction of democratizing innovation. It could make IoT a wonderful thing indeed.

Applications of IoT for infrastructure

Adie Tomer is a fellow at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program and a member of the Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative.

The Internet of Things and the built environment are a natural fit. The built environment is essentially just a collection of physical objects—from sidewalks and streets to buildings and water pipes—that all need to be managed in some capacity. Today, we measure our shared use of those objects through antiquated analog or digital systems. Think of the electricity meter on a building, or a person manually counting pedestrians on a busy city street. Digital, Internet-connected sensors promise to modernize measurement, relaying a whole suit of indicators to centralized databases tweaked to make sense of such big data.

But let’s not fool ourselves. Simply outfitting cities and metro areas with more sensors won’t solve any of our pressing urban issues. Without governance frameworks to apply the data towards goals around transportation congestion, more efficient energy use, or reduced water waste, these sensors could be just another public investment that doesn’t lead to public benefit.

The real goal for IoT in the urban space, then, is to ensure our built environment supports broader economic, social, and environmental objectives. And that’s not a technology issue—that’s a question around leadership and agenda-setting.

Applications of IoT for health care

Niam Yaraghi is a fellow in the Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation.

Health care is one of the most exciting application areas for IoT. Imagine that your Fitbit could determine if you fall, are seriously hurt, and need to be rushed to hospital. It automatically pings the closest ambulance and sends a brief summary of your medical status to the EMT personnel so that they can prepare for your emergency services even before they reach the scene. On the way, the ambulance will not need to use sirens to make way since the other autonomous vehicles have already received a notification about approaching ambulance and clear the way while the red lights automatically turn green. 

IoT will definitely improve the efficiency of health care services by reducing medical redundancies and errors. This dream will come true sooner than you think. However, if we do not appropriately address the privacy and security issues of healthcare data, then IoT can be our next nightmare. What if terrorist organizations (who are becoming increasingly technology savvy) find a way to hack into Fitbit and send wrong information to an EMT? Who owns our medical data? Can we prevent Fitbit from selling our health data to third parties? Given these concerns, I believe we should design a policy framework that encourages accountability and responsibility with regards to health data. The framework should precisely define who owns data; who can collect, store, mine and use it; and what penalties will be enforced if entities acted outside of this framework.

Will McCants: ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Egypt indicate the organization wants to take the fight to its enemies abroad. One reason might be that all is not well in ISIS-land. The nascent state in Syria and Iraq has lost around 25 percent of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in the year since America and its allies began to their campaign to defeat it. While the state still endures for now, it's under tremendous pressure because of the costs of ceaseless war.

To explain the troubles ISIS faces at home, we have invited a group of scholars to comment on its governance over the past years and speculate on what they might face in the year ahead. First was Mara Revkin, who examined how opinions towards ISIS have changed since it captured Mosul more than a year ago.

Next up is Aymenn al-Tamimi, a Jihad-Intel research fellow at the Middle East Forum, who argues that internal documents show increasing challenges for the Islamic State. 

Aymenn al-Tamimi: There are a variety of ways to assess Islamic State (or ISIS) governance over its territories. One angle involves trying to talk to residents living within ISIS-controlled lands, and indeed this is the primary line of evidence Mara Revkin relies on in her piece assessing ISIS administration.

While oral testimony may produce some interesting observations on ISIS governance, it is also beset with difficulties in reliability and corroboration. The ISIS system of rule is a totalitarian dictatorship, on the lookout for anyone who could be deemed to be collaborating with the outside world. As such, residents may be reluctant to criticize, out of fear that they could be accused of leaking information harmful to ISIS. That can get a person disappeared or publicly executed. 

Last year, when I was speaking with a friend living in the western Anbar town of Rawa, he initially said that most residents preferred life under ISIS: 

“We are not content like before but I and most of the people here prefer living under the shade of the Islamic State, as no soldier comes upon our lands, and now I assure you that all the people of Rawa will fight in one rank against the [Iraqi] army if it tries to advance an inch because the army won’t have mercy on anyone…and this is the truth…and I give you knowledge of the sentiment among most of the people who were persecuted by the army but had committed no crime or fault, but we only lack [national grid] electricity.” 

At first glance, his sentiments seem quite understandable. Harassment, mass arrests, and disappearances in prisons of Iraqi Sunnis by the Baghdad government’s security forces were common grievances—maybe they have more weight than loss of access to public services like the national electricity grid, from which most areas under IS control have now been cut off. 

Yet in a subsequent conversation, in which I inquired about any publications ISIS had distributed in his area, the fear of ISIS became very apparent: 

“Brother, you know why I am cautious in giving you information: because the Internet is being monitored. And I want to know what you will do with it and whether this thing will harm the Dawla [ISIS], because after God Almighty and Exalted is He, we don’t have anything besides the Islamic State, and I fear having a [negative] effect on them.” 

Another resident of Rawa refused to discuss anything about life in the town, with the same concern about Internet communication being monitored by ISIS. 

These examples offer a glimpse into the challenges of understanding ISIS administration through local testimony. How can we be sure the testimony is not compromised on account of fear? It is of course possible to find people critical of ISIS living within its territories: for instance, a relative in Mosul told me a year ago that 90 percent of the city’s inhabitants prefer life before ISIS, but said fear prevents them from expressing their true feelings. But how does one even verify that claim? 

Cracks in the system

With clear shortcomings in oral testimony, I prefer to focus instead on internal ISIS documents to understand the evolution in governance—as well as problems facing ISIS that we don’t see in the endless streams of propaganda. To be sure, this method also has limitations: though I have managed to compile hundreds of documents so far, they likely constitute only a small fraction of the whole cache. Only if the ISIS project collapses with loss of major strongholds like Raqqa and Mosul—and hopefully the capture of tens of thousands of documents—will we get a fuller picture. 

Even so, the documents unearthed so far yield a number of important insights. The ISIS bureaucracy is ostensibly comprehensive and impressive, but it is clear that as time progresses, the state project is facing challenges due to pressure from its enemies. 

Only if the ISIS project collapses with loss of major strongholds like Raqqa and Mosul—and hopefully the capture of tens of thousands of documents—will we get a fuller picture.

For example, in mid-2015, the agricultural department issued a general notification urging people to conserve grain stocks on account of the “economic war” being waged by the coalition against ISIS, indicating that agricultural output in ISIS territories was in trouble. In addition, while ISIS makes no secret of its appeals for medical personnel to come to the caliphate, internal documents show that brain-drain is also a problem: multiple ultimatums have been issued, calling for medical professionals to return to ISIS lands or risk having their property confiscated. 

While ISIS would like to cultivate a new generation of professionals, the only real existing institution is Mosul University, which practically remains open only to Iraqi students. ISIS closed some departments on the grounds of contravening its ideology, and even those that remain open cannot function, likely owing to the wider issue of brain drain.

Documents also show great concern about the anti-ISIS coalition’s ability to launch airstrikes on high-profile targets. Worried about data security, the ISIS leadership increasingly attempts to restrict all broadcasting of information to its own channels. It has warned fighters and commanders not to open social media accounts or use mobiles, and recently banned satellite television.

Cash rules everything

Finally, for all the criticisms of the anti-ISIS coalition’s strategies, it is clear that they have significantly dented the group’s financial revenues. The Iraqi government no longer pays salaries of workers living under ISIS rule, airstrikes have hit ISIS-owned assets in the oil industry, Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) have taken the key Syria-Turkey border point of Tel Abyad, and Turkey has tightened security on remaining border areas under ISIS control. 

As a result, ISIS has reduced expenditures and increased taxation on its populations. In Mosul, for instance, ISIS imposed all costs for printing textbooks on school students. From Raqqa province, a memo dating to November/December 2015 established a 50 percent pay cut for all fighters, regardless of rank. The latter pointed to “the exceptional circumstances” ISIS is facing (referring, no doubt, to financial troubles). This is particularly significant as a financial budget I obtained from Deir az-Zor province shows that military upkeep—primarily in the form of fighters’ salaries—can be reasonably estimated to account for two-thirds of ISIS expenditures. These pay cuts may exacerbate problems of military cohesion in ISIS’s ranks—evidenced by a month-long general amnesty issued in October 2015 for deserters, and the failures of mobilization efforts to stop the Assad regime and Iran from breaking the ISIS siege of Kweiris airbase in Aleppo province.

Bring the fight home

For all of these insights into internal challenges for the ISIS project, I deem the prospect of collapse from an internal revolt unlikely. It is evident that internal opponents of ISIS face a stifling environment, and no one to date has offered them an alternative model of governance. Any internal uprisings that do occur—such as the Sha’itat revolt in Deir az-Zor province back in 2014—have been put down with ruthless efficiency. From the economic side, the group’s financial difficulties are unlikely to translate into total collapse, as it’s impossible to completely seal off cash flow between ISIS and the outside world. 

All of this shows that it will be up to outside forces to take the fight against ISIS to its heartlands.

Will McCants: ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Egypt indicate the organization wants to take the fight to its enemies abroad. One reason might be that all is not well in ISIS-land. The nascent state in Syria and Iraq has lost around 25 percent of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in the year since America and its allies began to their campaign to defeat it. While the state still endures for now, it's under tremendous pressure because of the costs of ceaseless war.

To explain the troubles ISIS faces at home, we have invited a group of scholars to comment on its governance over the past years and speculate on what they might face in the year ahead. First was Mara Revkin, who examined how opinions towards ISIS have changed since it captured Mosul more than a year ago.

Next up was Aymenn al-Tamimi, a Jihad-Intel research fellow at the Middle East Forum, who argued that internal documents show increasing challenges for the Islamic State. 

This time, we’ve asked Aaron Zelin, the Richard Borow Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, to weigh in with a historical perspective.

Aaron Zelin: Attempts by salafi-jihadis to create states or govern territory are not a new phenomenon. Even for the Islamic State (IS), this is its second attempt at establishing a state and governing territories it controls. What sets it apart this time is the level of planning, sophistication, and capabilities compared to ten years ago.

Unlike the prior pieces in this series, I hope to present a historical perspective on IS governance, since I do not think one can be separate from the other.

The first state

In October 2006—when the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) was declared—the leader of al-Qaida in the Land of Two Rivers (better known as AQI), Abu Ayyub al-Masri (Abu Hamza al-Muhajir) pledged allegiance to the new self-declared leader of the faithful, Abu ‘Umar al-Baghdadi. In a January 2007 book, ISI’s Shaykh ‘Uthman ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Tamimi explains the rationale for declaring the state. In it, he also outlines the state’s responsibilities for areas it controls: prosecuting criminals and sinners, implementation of the hudud (fixed punishments in the Qur’an and Hadith), mediating and resolving conflicts, providing security, distributing food and relief, and selling oil and gas. 

Although it called itself a state, the Islamic State of Iraq controlled only small amounts of territory, for limited periods of time—in no small part because of the American military occupation, but also due to insurgent and tribal competition for power. It attempted to show a veneer of legitimacy by establishing a cabinet of ministries in April 2007 and September 2009. Because of ISI’s limitations, it was nearly impossible to resolve conflicts, provide security, distribute food and relief, or sell oil and gas. Instead, it fell back on mostly only instituting hisba (moral policing) activities and targeting enemies as murtadin (apostates) and therefore legitimate to target and kill. Ten years ago, therefore, ISI did not live up to its own standards of governance excellence.

Ten years ago, therefore, ISI did not live up to its own standards of governance excellence.

ISI killed and kidnapped leaders from prior allies—such as the Islamic Army of Iraq, Ansar al-Sunnah, and other insurgent factions—because they were unwilling to pledge allegiance to al-Baghdadi. It required female residents to wear the niqab, burned down beauty salons and stores selling music, flogged individuals for drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes, and banned barbers’ use of electric razors. ISI also banned positioning certain fruits next to one another at markets out of concerns over sexual innuendo, as well as banned the local bread (samun) and the use of ice. In town after town, this precipitated what eventually became known as the tribal sahwa, or awakening. That, along with the U.S. military surge in Iraq, tactically defeated ISI by 2009.

Towards a second state

Since ISI was only tactically and not strategically defeated, it used the American drawdown of troops that ended in December 2011, Sunni grievances with the Nouri al-Maliki regime in Baghdad, and most importantly the battlefield next door in Syria to rebuild its infrastructure and capabilities. As I noted in March 2013, a month before it changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS): “Through sectarian rhetoric, [ISI] will use the Syrian fight to try and gain more recruits in Iraq and redeem itself for its lost opportunity last decade.” Indeed it did. This time proved much different than a decade earlier. It also had a provisional position paper that outlined how it sought to take over territory and govern.

Prior to the infighting that began in January 2014 between ISIS and revolutionary, Islamist, and other jihadi factions in Syria, there was an understanding among the different insurgent forces against the Assad regime. As a consequence, ISIS was able to embed itself within the broader anti-Assad coalition even if other factions were wary of it—unlike now, when IS has pariah status. From April 2013 to January 2014, ISIS’s main focus was to present itself in a positive light to the Syrian population through da’wa (missionary) forums and by providing services. It also conducted softer moral policing, such as burning cigarettes or confiscating alcohol. But similar to a decade ago, it also killed other leaders from Syrian insurgent factions, prompting backlash. ISIS was pushed out of Latakia, Idlib, and parts of Aleppo governorates between January and March 2014. 

This led to ISIS’s independent consolidation of territory farther to the east in the Raqqa governorate and parts of Dair al-Zour governorate. It is also when more harsh punishments began to appear, such as cutting off hands for robbery or crucifying alleged apostates. In this period, ISIS also sought to appear as a state-like entity, showing off its various administrative departments including its da’wa offices, shariah courts, religious schools, police stations, and local municipalities, among others. It was an uneven process across its proto-wilayat (provinces) until its June 2014 declaration of the Caliphate, when ISIS changed its name again—to IS.

The second state

Since then, based on my review of thousands of IS media releases, a pattern emerged in IS attempts to expand, take over new territory, and consolidate its control. IS’s systematizing, bureaucratizing, and formalizing its governance structures allow it to operate consistently and in parallel across its various wilayat. This governance model can equally be applied in its core territory of Iraq and Syria as well as various other provinces. It is far more advanced than its prior incarnations, let alone al-Qaida branches (the closest instance being al-Shabab in Somalia).

IS’s systematizing, bureaucratizing, and formalizing its governance structures allow it to operate consistently and in parallel across its various wilayat.

My research demonstrates that IS state-building exhibits two stages: pre- or partial territorial control and full territorial control. Within these two categories are five phases of establishing control: intelligence, military, da’wa, hisba (consumer protection and moral policing), and governance. Although hisba would generally be considered part of IS’s governance apparatus, I separated the two—this helps distinguish the level of advancement and sophistication associated with meting out justice, versus that associated with actual services, administration, and economic activity, since the former is easier to implement than the latter. More details with specifics and case studies can be found here.

When compared with its first state as ISI and its building toward a second state as ISIS, the post-June 2014 IS structures, plans, and implementation are far superior.

When compared with its first state as ISI and its building toward a second state as ISIS, the post-June 2014 IS structures, plans, and implementation are far superior. Further, depending on the date and the particular province, IS did live up to its own standards of governance. That’s not to legitimize it, but rather to understand it on its own terms. This increased efficacy illustrates the organization’s ability to learn from past experiences. It also suggests that IS may apply lessons learned as more of its governance plays out in areas outside of Iraq and Syria—especially in Libya, but possibly even in Yemen or Afghanistan in the future. New knowledge will sharpen IS’s thinking and continue its growth and evolution as well as shorten its learning curve.

Therefore, aspects of the IS model could shift in the future. Moreover, since the American-led airstrikes began, its capabilities have been slowly diminished. As a result, it is currently difficult to determine whether IS is living up to its standards anymore.

Moreover, since the American-led airstrikes began, its capabilities have been slowly diminished. As a result, it is currently difficult to determine whether IS is living up to its standards anymore.

Watch and learn

Similar to IS, al-Qaida is in the process of learning lessons from the governance experience of the ISI in the mid-2000s. It is also looking back on its first attempted cases of governance activities by its own branches in the past several years in Somalia, Yemen, Mali, and Syria. Unlike IS, al-Qaida is attempting to root itself into local insurgencies in Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Mali, and not play a monopolizing role (at least for now). The second governance attempt by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is still in its infancy, but its performance will provide more answers about the evolution in al-Qaida’s thinking on governance and how it differs from IS’s second governance attempt. 

The establishment of jihadi governance projects are a new normal. For now, it’s clear that IS has set a higher standard when compared to its earlier attempt a decade ago and to al-Qaida’s present governance. But the question going forward is whether either IS’s or al-Qaida’s models (or both) will be able to self-sustain in the long-term as they continue to incorporate lessons learned.

Will McCants: ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Egypt indicate the organization wants to take the fight to its enemies abroad. One reason might be that all is not well in ISIS-land. The nascent state in Syria and Iraq has lost around 25 percent of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in the year since America and its allies began to their campaign to defeat it. While the state still endures for now, it's under tremendous pressure because of the costs of ceaseless war.

To explain the troubles ISIS faces at home, we have invited a group of scholars to comment on its governance over the past years and speculate on what they might face in the year ahead. First was Mara Revkin, who examined how opinions towards ISIS have changed since it captured Mosul more than a year ago. Then Aymenn al-Tamimi argued that internal documents show increasing challenges for the Islamic State. Next, Aaron Zelin weighed in with a historical perspective, analyzing the extent to which ISIS has lived up to its own standards of governance.

Now, we have Kamran Bokhari, a fellow with George Washington University's Program on Extremism, to argue that security—namely defending territory—is the foremost governance objective of ISIS in the short term.

Kamran Bokhari: Ascertaining the extent to which ISIS excels at governing requires, among other things, an understanding of its imperatives and capabilities. The most fundamental act of governance for any state is protecting its territory. With many of the world’s most powerful militaries now dedicating significant resources towards the Islamic State’s destruction, the group has its work cut out for it in this regard. Defending its current territorial holdings in Syria and Iraq (and expanding if and where possible) is the single most critical imperative for ISIS.

This is not to say that other aspects of governance, including those detailed by Mara Revkin, Aymenn al-Tamimi, and Aaron Zelin, are not priorities for ISIS. The polity erected by the transnational jihadist movement cannot hope to survive—much less expand—without the provision of essential services such as sanitation, utilities, healthcare, and education to its citizenry. However, ISIS can only focus so much on these functions when the areas it controls are under attack on multiple fronts. In the last few months, it has lost ground in certain areas—largely in Iraq—but its core turf in Syria remains intact. 

This resilience should sharpen the focus of U.S. and Western military and intelligence institutions. At present, analysts and policymakers focus too much on ISIS’s ideology and too little on its war-making tradecraft. Radicalization is necessary but not sufficient to produce violence—definitely not on the scale that ISIS has demonstrated. The geopolitical real estate directly under ISIS control in Syria and Iraq is about the size of the state of New York; if we include the swathes of land where it enjoys relative freedom of operation, it’s approximately as big as Great Britain. 

Defending such a wide expanse against ground assaults, airstrikes, special operations forces missions, as well as human and signals intelligence probes requires elaborate institutionalization. Aaron Zelin details how ISIS systematized bureaucratic structures between the fall of its first attempt at statehood (2006 to 2009) and its second incarnation (2011 to the present). During these periods, it crucially developed a multi-divisional conventional military and counter-intelligence. In addition to its primary need to defend its nascent state, the jihadist movement has spent most of its existence developing military and intelligence capabilities, which played a key role in its emergence as the most potent rebel force in post-Arab spring Syria. 

Where did ISIS leaders pick up their self-defense strategies? One answer is al-Qaida, though many analysts over-emphasize that linkage. ISIS leadership has also likely studied the rise and fall of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Run by the Afghan Taliban, the Emirate was the first and only contemporary jihadist movement to have established a state of any significance before ISIS. There are differences, of course. The Taliban emirate was based within the confines of the Afghan nation-state, and enjoyed active backing from Pakistan and other Gulf Arab states. Furthermore, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has denounced the movement founded by Mullah Mohammed Omar as a “deviant” entity. However, the experiences of the Afghan Taliban from 1996 to 2001 offer very valuable lessons for ISIS—all the more since the latter’s caliphate rejects national boundaries and lacks state sponsorship. 

Security first

ISIS leaders fear losing their nascent state in the face of growing economic and military pressures. They seek to avoid, in particular, the circumstances that allowed for the collapse of the Taliban regime following the September 11 attacks. Many have asked why ISIS would engage in transcontinental attacks in the West if its primary aim is the preservation of its polity. As Shadi Hamid has discussed, ISIS likely does not view its terrorist attacks like the one in Paris as undermining its state. I would actually argue that ISIS sees a U.S. ground intervention as only helping its cause. What it fears is a more complex approach from the Americans involving Syrian boots on the ground. 

Thus in many ways, ISIS’s caliphate today faces circumstances similar to the ones that the Taliban emirate did in late 2001. The U.S.-led coalition against the Taliban launched airstrikes, while intelligence and special operations forces supported an anti-Taliban militia coalition, the proverbial “boots on the ground.” Fast-forward 15 years, and the battlespace that ISIS finds itself in—though much more complex—has the same basic configuration. The ISIS leadership is now vigorously searching for ways to endure airstrikes, block intelligence efforts, and thwart special operations missions designed to take out critical leadership and infrastructure. 

Perhaps most pressing is the need to prevent the emergence of a critical mass of Kurdish and/or rival jihadist militias to whom ISIS could potentially lose significant tracts of land. In Afghanistan, anti-Taliban militiamen with U.S. support were able to stage a comeback from their bases in northern Afghanistan near the Tajikistan border, sweeping through Kabul and even seizing the Taliban’s home turf of Kandahar. ISIS does not want to experience something similar to that, with Syrian rebel forces turning toward its territory in eastern Syria, especially now that they have run into serious problems in western parts of the county. There, regime forces backed by Russian aircraft are gaining the upper hand in critical places in Aleppo and Idlib provinces. U.S. strategy, for its part, seems to be focused not on the collapse of the Assad regime but rather in equipping rebel forces to take on ISIS. Some rebels may do so in the hope of garnering greater Western support. 

For these reasons, ISIS needs to ensure that both those in its own ranks as well as the people over whom it rules have little incentive to desert or rebel. Coercion helps, but only to a certain extent. The Afghan Taliban learned this lesson the hard way, when the very same population that had initially welcomed it as protectors against anarchy turned against the movement and were instrumental in the implosion of its state. This is why the ISIS regime will try to balance coercion and the provision of quality services (which Mara Revkin highlights). But as Aymenn al-Tamimi notes, financial constraints seriously limit the organization’s ability to sustain public support by providing essential services without having to resort to tax increases. 

Civilian administration is a relatively new activity for ISIS, and it therefore will take time to improve its performance. In the short term, ISIS will focus more heavily on the security aspects of governance. It is better equipped and experienced in this sphere, given its own prior experience as non-state jihadist force. ISIS is likely to continue to focus on what it knows best, as doing so offers it a better chance of holding hard-fought ground against its opponents.

Will McCants: ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Egypt indicate the organization wants to take the fight to its enemies abroad. One reason might be that all is not well in ISIS-land. The nascent state in Syria and Iraq has lost around 25 percent of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in the year since America and its allies began to their campaign to defeat it. While the state still endures for now, it's under tremendous pressure because of the costs of ceaseless war.

To explain the troubles ISIS faces at home, we have invited a group of scholars to comment on its governance over the past years and speculate on what they might face in the year ahead. First was Mara Revkin, who examined how opinions towards ISIS have changed since it captured Mosul more than a year ago. Then Aymenn al-Tamimi argued that internal documents show increasing challenges for the Islamic State. Next, Aaron Zelin weighed in with a historical perspective, analyzing the extent to which ISIS has lived up to its own standards of governance. And Kamran Bokhari argued that security—namely defending territory—is the foremost governance objective of ISIS in the short term.

Below is an analysis from Quinn Mecham, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University. He focuses on the need to provide alternative, positive models of governance for the populations living under ISIS control.

Quinn Mecham: The Islamic State group (ISIS), despite clear pretentions to statehood in the form of the “caliphate” it declared in June 2014, does not preside over a particularly successful “state.” It faces numerous challenges from both within and without, challenges that accelerated in 2015 with increasingly systematic airstrikes on ISIS fighters and facilities by numerous external actors. 

However, the governing institutions over which the Islamic State presides currently represent the best approximation of institutionalized governance for the millions of people in Iraq and Syria under its rule. Though international actors unanimously refuse to acknowledge the Islamic State as a legitimate state in the international system, it nevertheless provides many of the functions of a state for those living within its territory. The fulfillment of these state functions is critical to the lives and livelihoods of those governed in territory controlled by the Islamic State. An effective policy to challenge the Islamic State must take the group’s governance agenda into account by constructing appealing alternatives to Islamic State governance rather than simply seeking to undermine it. 

The Islamic State’s ambitious state-building efforts present a challenging policy problem for the array of states now fighting the Islamic State group. France, Britain, Russia, and the United States, among others, regularly articulate the urgent need to destroy the group and they have increasingly acted to do so. Airstrikes that accelerated in the later half of 2015 have put substantial pressure on the Islamic State’s institutions, killing off thousands of Islamic State fighters and destroying a substantial amount of military and economic infrastructure, most notably the capacity to refine and distribute oil resources. Ground operations, such as the one that retook the Iraqi city of Ramadi in December, have also ratcheted up the pressure. 

[I]n addition to degrading the organization, the attacks on ISIS are also degrading the only current form of effective governance for civilians.

While these efforts help fulfill the primary goal of degrading or destroying ISIS by targeting the group’s military and operational infrastructure, they also harm the coalition’s ultimate goal of creating regional stability. This is because, in addition to degrading the organization, the attacks on ISIS are also degrading the only current form of effective governance for civilians, leading to very negative consequences for the populations living under Islamic State rule. As governing capacity is degraded without providing an effective substitute for ISIS governance, many of the coalition’s objectives in the region will become more elusive in the medium term. Additionally, certain aspects of the Islamic State’s state-building goals, which outside groups would like to prevent, may actually be enhanced as a result of the conflict. 

War, what is it good for?

As military pressure mounts on the Islamic State, significant parts of its project are in danger, including its financing, military success, and leadership capacity. However, it is not certain that all aspects of its state capacity will decline. Scholarship on state-building makes it clear that although war can destroy states, it can also help to build them. Although the Islamic State is often viewed externally simply as a rebel group, its domestic state-building agenda follows the historical path of many developing states in that it has benefitted from some of the effects of being at war.

[A]lthough war can destroy states, it can also help to build them.

War helps to build states in a number of ways. First, it creates an environment where the state can much more efficiently extract resources from the population in the form of taxation, military conscription, or extortion. When security is at stake, people are more willing to give up other goods for protection; a state at war also has a high degree of readiness for violence, which can be applied to extract resources from its own people. 

Second, state survival during war requires a high degree of institutional efficiency, including the creation of new bureaucratic structures such as taxation systems, governance mechanisms, information networks, and other institutions designed to control and manage conquered territory. Finally, the pressures of constant warfare for those under threat and on the front lines can also solidify group commitments and strengthen aspects of the military culture, bureaucracy, and ideology that have contributed to the group’s success.

Scaling back

Certainly warfare also can degrade state capacity, and it has done so across Islamic State territory over the past year. Much of that degraded capacity is military in nature, but the process has also reduced state capacity on which civilians directly depend. There is substantial evidence now to suggest that military pressure on the Islamic State group has negatively impacted a variety of core state functions for civilians. While most coalition airstrikes to date have sought to avoid dominantly civilian targets, economic infrastructure has been actively targeted, leading to a significant decline in the resources devoted to civilian concerns.

Compared with only a year ago, the group is now a less effective distributor of resources and has also become more dependent on resource extraction from the populations that it controls. For example, as the group’s revenues from oil and the initial spoils from captured territory have declined, both its social service provision and its ability to pay salaries have severely deteriorated. This is harmful not just because of concerns over civilian protection, but also because it reduces social stability and plays into the group’s narrative that its enemies are making people’s lives much worse. While it is difficult to measure the extent to which civilians blame the group for these new difficulties, a current media crackdown in ISIS territory means that the dominant ISIS narrative of blaming external aggressors is the only one disseminated and likely has significant impact on public opinion.

After airstrikes accelerated in the autumn, an internal Islamic State memo revealed that due to a loss of revenue, the salaries of Islamic State fighters were being cut by a dramatic 50 percent from the original promised payments. These cuts have also affected non-military employees of the Islamic State, spreading to all civil servants. At the same time, the prices for basic goods have been dramatically increasing. Financial infrastructure has also been targeted, making basic economic transactions much harder, while declining soldier salaries make it more likely that those with guns will look to civilian resources to supplement their incomes. Popular policies such as subsidies for bread have been difficult to finance and in some areas under external pressure, essentials such as wheat have become very scarce. This pressure on the food supply impacts civilians in unpredictable ways because the Islamic State has tightly regulated agricultural markets and has failed to allow free market mechanisms to efficiently distribute food resources. 

In the realm of health and education, student registration fees have gone up dramatically while subsidies have declined, scaling back access to a key service designed to systematically socialize students into the ideology of the Islamic State. Professionals are also fleeing Islamic State territory, as exemplified by physicians who have been leaving the Islamic State in large numbers. Despite apparently having significant physical resources for basic medical care, such as vaccinations, the new labor shortage of physicians has made it impossible to keep up regular vaccination schedules within the civilian population. More recently, pressure on obtaining key medical supplies has also increased. 

Two sides of the coin

Attacks on the Islamic State have therefore both strengthened and degraded different components of state capacity. Some aspects of state capacity have actually increased under conditions of war, such as taxation, extortion, conscription, and coercive institutions that control civilians. Military attacks have degraded other aspects of the state, however, such as the resources of ISIS fighters and civil servants, resource distribution capacity, and institutions that support economic development. 

It is not yet clear what these changes in military and state capacity will have on the overall trajectory of Islamic State survival and the stated goal to destroy the Islamic State. While the Islamic State could ultimately be destroyed by a coalition military campaign that proactively takes and governs territory, under the present strategy it is much more likely that the Islamic State will persist and continue to preside over a fragile and increasingly marginal system of governance that is neither good for the group, for the people that live within its territory, or for long-term stability in the Middle East. 

Costs and benefits of a military campaign

This creates a set of difficult policy choices because there are also many good reasons for the military campaign against the Islamic State. The group has demonstrated its capacity and will continue to launch violent attacks on a range of international targets, providing external actors with clear justification to destroy the group’s military capacity in an effort to maintain global security. Likewise, the group’s military success and territorial control are central to its attractiveness to foreign fighters. The ideology that drives the Islamic State depends in part on its continued ability to challenge the current international system. Delivering sustained military defeats is therefore critical to puncturing the group’s apocalyptic narrative of ever greater success and expansion. 

Much of the Islamic State’s domestic control is also maintained through fear, and military defeats confirm in the public imagination that the group can be beaten, from without and potentially from within. Although significant local challenges have not yet materialized, as the Islamic State’s coercive capacity becomes weaker, defections to other groups may occur, and domestic opponents may begin to recalculate their odds of a successful challenge. 

[U]nder the present strategy it is much more likely that the Islamic State will persist and continue to preside over a fragile and increasingly marginal system of governance.

The clear need for military action must, however, be weighed against the serious costs to both civilian populations and to the long-term war effort of harming existing state capacity on which civilians depend. The largely aerial campaign against the Islamic State group has had painful effects on the populations it controls. The reduction of fuel availability, the collapse in salaries, the removal of food and educational subsidies, and the deep insecurity that comes from a constant fear of bombardment has likely done very little to endear civilian populations to the cause of the coalition’s military activity, which is often seen as supporting the Syrian regime. 

Degrading state capacity through military action also feeds into the group’s narrative that both the West and Arab leaders have no concern for Muslim civilians, and that the group is the only possible one that can act as a protector against external enemies. Dozens of recent Islamic State videos paint the anti-ISIS coalition as a Russian, Syrian, Jewish, or U.S. conspiracy designed to harm civilians. While it is difficult to determine the extent of civilian casualties as a result of the campaign to date, the heightened deprivation resulting from the coalition military campaign, coupled with a glaring lack of alternative models of good governance, is unlikely to break the dependence of civilians on the Islamic State. 

Wanted: Alternatives

When one takes the Islamic State’s substantive role in governance into account in formulating a strategy to destroy the group, it becomes increasingly clear that an effective military strategy must be coupled with a much more robust agenda to build alternative governance mechanisms if it is to be successful at permanently displacing the group from its territory. 

Challenging civilian dependence on the Islamic State requires alternative forms of governance that are more appealing to the populations currently governed by the group. Even if the quality of Islamic State governance declines in relative terms, a substantively more appealing option must be available if those currently under the Islamic State’s control will be willing to support it. The great current challenge is to formulate a policy that can meet or exceed the Islamic State’s ability to build governing institutions, not just tear them down. At this point in the tragic narrative, those craving good governance are likely to be much less interested in regime type than in institutions that can provide consistent levels of security, economic growth, and the rule of law.

The great current challenge is to formulate a policy that can meet or exceed the Islamic State’s ability to build governing institutions, not just tear them down.

While the Islamic State adeptly uses theatrical violence and fear to exercise control within its territory, a large portion of its success in maintaining control should also be attributed to the poor alternative options for the populations that reside within it. For many Sunnis in Iraq and Syria, the imaginable alternative models of governance are currently deeply unappealing. These include:

• re-absorption into the repressive cruelties of the Syrian state, 
• control by violent and corrupt Syrian rebel groups without a track record of effective governance, 
• governance by a deeply sectarian, Shiite-dominated Iraqi government that is dependent on ideological sectarian militias to maintain security, or 
• rule by ethnic Kurdish militias that have a poor reputation for their treatment of Arab communities. 

When compared with these options, the Islamic State group often comes across as more authentic, less corrupt, more committed to the rule of law, and a better provider of state services. Its current basic governance failures, while many, are also increasingly attributable to the effects of the military campaign waged by its enemies. 

Let's build

Despite its deep, persistent flaws, an alternative, better system of governance is more likely to come from the Iraqi state (in the case of large population centers such as Mosul), or from existing informal tribal governance (in Syria and more rural areas) than it is to come from other sources. The key actions that currently need to be taken are thus two-fold:

1. First, in territory already reclaimed from the group—such as in the devastated city of Ramadi—the anti-ISIS coalition should extend every effort to distribute needed resources, infuse the economy with ready employment options, reaffirm property rights and judicial institutions, and severely punish those pursuing violent retribution. Unfortunately, little in this direction has been accomplished in the months since the capture of Ramadi, as the rebuilding of civilian infrastructure has been treated as secondary to lingering security concerns. A clear investment of institutional and economic resources that helps to demonstrate the ability to maintain security and equal treatment under the rule of law will send a more powerful signal of the Islamic State’s weakness than the results of an aerial bombing campaign. 
2. Second, a greater external commitment to support the best in existing institutions within the Iraqi state as well as in areas with the potential for effective non-state tribal governance is a critical investment in the long-term stability of Islamic State territory. In other words, external resources should increasingly focus not just on training and equipping local military allies, but also in supporting high quality civilian institutions of local and regional governance. 

Unfortunately, it takes much longer to build effective state institutions than to destroy them.

Aggressively pursuing a governance strategy will be much more difficult than pursuing an air war against a proto-state without anti-air defenses, but it is a necessary one if the persistent appeal of the group’s state-building project is to be overcome. Because the Islamic State has powerfully distinguished itself from other jihadist competitors through its governance agenda, its support cannot be eliminated through a strategy solely dependent on destroying the governance upon which local populations depend. 

Unfortunately, it takes much longer to build effective state institutions than to destroy them. The faster that a serious, resource-intensive commitment to building alternative governing institutions in areas bordering Islamic State territory begins, the more likely we are to see the group that calls itself the Islamic State lose control of its narrative, its territory, and the civilian support upon which it relies.

Will McCants: ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Egypt indicate the organization wants to take the fight to its enemies abroad. One reason might be that all is not well in ISIS-land. The nascent state in Syria and Iraq has lost around 25 percent of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in the year since America and its allies began to their campaign to defeat it. While the state still endures for now, it's under tremendous pressure because of the costs of ceaseless war.

To explain the troubles ISIS faces at home, we have invited a group of scholars to comment on its governance over the past years and speculate on what they might face in the year ahead. First was Mara Revkin, who examined how opinions towards ISIS have changed since it captured Mosul more than a year ago. Then Aymenn al-Tamimi argued that internal documents show increasing challenges for the Islamic State. Next, Aaron Zelin weighed in with a historical perspective, analyzing the extent to which ISIS has lived up to its own standards of governance. Kamran Bokhari argued that security—namely defending territory—is the foremost governance objective of ISIS in the short term, while Quinn Mecham focused on the need to provide alternative, positive models of governance for the populations living under ISIS control.

Next up, Nelson Kasfir, Professor of Government Emeritus at Dartmouth College, and Zachariah Mampilly, Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of Africana Studies at Vassar College, compare ISIS’s governance choices with how other armed groups have governed civilian populations. 

Nelson Kasfir and Zachariah Mampilly: Now that the Islamic State (ISIS) claims to be a state, any useful analysis of how it rules should rest on a systematic conception of governance by insurgents who hold populated territory, a surprisingly common phenomenon. If we are to understand what ISIS is doing, how long it is likely to stick around and indeed why some civilians in its domain prefer its government to what they had experienced from either Baghdad or Damascus, it would be a good idea to compare its choices of governance with other armed groups that have captured territory and governed civilian populations. All of them must administer territory without the advantages conferred by sovereignty—an important resource available to even the weakest internationally recognized states.

In our new book, Rebel Governance in Civil War, we offer a framework to explain how rebels govern. We bring together leading scholars to explore specific issues and cases from all over the globe. While single-factor hypotheses don't help much, there are broad patterns describing how and why armed groups govern that fit ISIS.

By rebel governance, we mean decision-making, the provision of services and the regulatory framework that armed groups establish to produce a social order within a specific territory they control. Rebel governance activities can be separated into those that concern how decisions are made, what social services are provided and how the production or taxation of economic rents is organized. Symbolic practices and ideologies, including religious creeds, have significant effects in supporting any system of rebel rule.

Armed groups differ widely in their approach to governance.

Armed groups differ widely in their approach to governance, as the case studies in our book demonstrate. Few armed groups that control territory can ignore civilian governance, short of expelling civilian populations altogether. The vast majority of insurgent organizations range from governing minimally, by assuming few regulatory functions, to maximally by ruling everything, including the provision of public goods.

For example, although the leaders of the National Patriotic Front (NPFL) in Liberia were primarily interested in personal profit, they still created the veneer of government to seek international recognition and to ensure the proceeds of commercial enterprises went into their pockets. Both types of insurgents were active during the Greek civil war, the conservatives limiting their governance activities, while the communists tried to regulate all aspects of social life.

Despite the many Western press accounts that dwell on ISIS’ penchant for flamboyant displays of callous cruelty, it would be a mistake to think that ISIS does not engage in civilian governance. As Charles Lister notes: "By perceiving and presenting itself as a state, IS [ISIS] has sought to control and govern territory and maintain a cabinet of ministers responsible for a broad range of 'ministries,' incorporating military, civil, political, and financial duties." As a caliphate, ISIS has opted primarily for a hierarchical top-down administration. It demands strict obedience, but it is also intent on building infrastructure and running it effectively. By basing governance on its revival of the "Caliphate according to the prophetic method," that is, re-establishing institutions on the basis of what it understands the Prophet Mohammed to have insisted, ISIS leaders appear to have demanded control over most facets of social and personal life.

As a caliphate, ISIS has opted primarily for a hierarchical top-down administration.

As early as 2007, ISIS published a booklet outlining its plans for governance. In 2013, it issued pamphlets that laid out the exact governance activities the organization would undertake once in control of specific territories. Immediately after capturing various towns in Syria and Iraq, ISIS set about taking control over key industries and services including the distribution of electricity, water, and fuel as well as the production and distribution of food. ISIS monopolized service provision and proved sophisticated in using it to balance its brutality. As a result, "Sunni civilians have been more likely to accept the imposition of harsh norms," as Lister has written.

Symbolic processes are powerful tools of governance that legitimate rebel groups or signal their coercive capability. These processes are often influenced by specific ideological concerns. Like nation-states, rebels create distinctive symbolic repertoires by producing their own flags, currencies, mausoleums and staging parades and rallies. The leaders of ISIS are well aware of the importance of symbols. "The Islamic State was signaling that its flag was not only the symbol of its government and the herald of a future caliphate; it was the harbinger of the final battle at the End of Days," writes Will McCants in The ISIS Apocalypse.

The leaders of ISIS are well aware of the importance of symbols.

Explaining varying approaches

What factors shape these different traits of rebel governance? In our book, we identify four clusters: causes arising before the rebellion; causes arising during the rebellion; those emanating from attributes or behavior of the rebels; and finally those developing from responses of civilians.

First, pre-conflict factors involving the relations between state and society shape subsequent patterns of rebel governance. History matters because insurgents mostly acquire their cultural values, education, and ideas about governance, while growing up in the society they later defy. These experiences shape them even as they rebel. How they resolve these contradictions will vary from case to case. Thus, the Forces Nouvelles that occupied northern Côte d'Ivoire after 2002 "adopted—or rather adapted—procedures from the former state administration." Since they did not hold unchallenged authority, they chose to share the maintenance of security with neo-traditional hunters' associations who were deeply trusted by local residents. In a different case, General Padiri's Mai-Mai militia in the Democratic Republic of the Congo adopted the administrative pattern of offices of the Congolese government while adding "Bureau Six" to incorporate commonly held autochthonous magico-religious beliefs that greatly deepened the legitimacy of the militia's leaders.

Because ISIS takes an uncompromisingly radical stance, it is difficult to identify its continuities with prior governance. Still, a closer examination of ISIS’ involvement in food distribution provides an illustrative example of its links with the practices of past regimes. As one recent academic study (by José Ciro Martínez and Brent Eng, in a still-unpublished manuscript) points out, food production has long been understood as a key element of the weak social contract binding pre-conflict regimes in Syria and Iraq to their people. In pre-conflict Syria, the Baath Party had long understood direct control over the bread market as an integral task of the social welfare pact it struck with the population. Recognizing the importance of bread distribution to the Syrian population, ISIS undertook numerous efforts to control and ensure the production of bread within its territories. In a 2013 pamphlet published in Aleppo that outlines ISIS’ governance strategy, a promise to ensure bread distribution stands out alongside more conventional governance activities. Importantly, considering the propagandistic nature of many ISIS communications, the group went far beyond rhetorical positions in their commitment to policies concerning bread. Instead of merely mandating the manner in which bread would be produced and distributed in ISIS-controlled areas of Aleppo and Raqqa, the group also “subsidized the cost of flour, accelerated the opening of bakeries and distributed bread itself when necessary,” as Martínez and Eng write.

[W]artime contextual factors...affect rebel governance.

Second, wartime contextual factors—those circumstances that emerge during rebellion— also affect rebel governance. As rebels fight and as they engage with civilians, they often change their practices of governance. The military threat of the incumbent and other military rivals as well as the broader wartime political economy often significantly impact insurgents’ approaches toward civilians. With regard to military capacity, Stathis Kalyvas shows that as the communist insurgents lost territory towards the end of the Greek civil war, they became more coercive. In Latin America as well, there have been many cases in which rebel governance decayed when insurgent groups failed to protect their civilian populations from either internal or external violence, or in response to expansion of electoral opportunities by the incumbent state.

Similarly, a comparison of ISIS’ governance in Raqqa and Mosul, the two largest cities under its control, suggests that external military pressure has made the government more intimidating and sometimes less willing to abide by its own rules. After ISIS took control of each city, it quickly imposed its authority and provided more efficient administration than its predecessors had. In Raqqa the regime acted on the basis of its posted rules until American-led air strikes caused its leaders to become somewhat “more paranoid and prone to kidnapping people randomly.” In Mosul, residents, who originally regarded ISIS as “liberators,” became more dissatisfied as their taxes greatly increased and their nonpayment was met with physical punishments and fines. The failure of ISIS to protect its citizens from collateral damage from air strikes is certain to have increased their discontent.

After ISIS took control of each city, it quickly imposed its authority and provided more efficient administration than its predecessors had.

Material rewards also affect rebel governance. Rebels often change their pattern of governance when they begin to accumulate significant rents through the exploitation of natural resources. The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) changed after it began to export diamonds and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) stopped following some of its Marxist principles after it began to export cocaine.

Usually, rebels cannot defend oil wells from attacks by incumbent states. ISIS has been an exception, making a daily income of $3 million in September 2014. After the recent steep fall in crude oil prices and air strikes, internal taxation (or extortion) may have become a more significant source of revenue. ISIS has also profited from kidnapping and bank robberies. Its reliance on oil production has proven both a boon and curse as the value of ISIS-produced oil shifts dramatically due to both the challenge of ensuring production and fluctuations in oil prices globally. The income permitted ISIS to pay generous salaries to civilians to keep sanitation and utility services functioning.

Third, rebel attributes and behavior—organizational structure and ideological orientation—affect rebel governance. Ideologies often provide rebels with political identities, coherent frameworks for political and social action and a sense of disciplined commitment to an overriding purpose. The Greek communists learned their Marxism before they rebelled. Ethnic secessionists, such as the Naga in India, knew whom they were going to exclude from their imagined polity in advance of taking up arms.

Establishing a legal code is a social service that often demonstrates the influence of ideology on rebel governance.

Establishing a legal code is a social service that often demonstrates the influence of ideology on rebel governance. Rules that rebels create and civilians obey can help provide legitimate authority, whether out of trust (as in the case of the Shining Path in Peru) or out of fear (as inspired by the Taliban in Afghanistan).

ISIS bases not only its fundamental character, but also its plan of governance, almost entirely on its peculiar interpretation of Islamic doctrine. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader, received both a masters and a doctorate in Islamic rhetoric from the University of Islamic Sciences in Baghdad. As the caliph, some of the Islamic rationales that have been supplied to justify specific ISIS regulations can be traced to his earlier education.

The influence of Islam on ISIS’ ideology is most evident in its attempts to establish a legal system. The rebellion "sees itself as creating a distinctive and authentic legal order for the here and now, one that is based not only on a literal (if selective) reading of early Islamic materials but also on a long-standing [Islamic] theory of statecraft and legal authority." Andrew March and Mara Revkin identify laws governing land, trade, taxation and treatment of prisoners and slaves, all derived from ISIS’ interpretation of scripture. In addition, they assert "the theory of the caliphate implies a law-based social contract with reciprocal obligations and rights between the caliph and the people." The extent to which this legal order actually results in enforceable rights that protect civilians is unclear. However, there is evidence that ISIS officials engaged in dispute resolution among civilians, even punishing its fighters when they took bribes or harmed civilians.

[C]ivilian responses to the insurgent group affect rebel governance.

Finally, civilian responses to the insurgent group affect rebel governance. We examine both individual reactions to armed groups as well as how varying social groups—such as traders, religious orders, ethnic groups, and civil society organizations—engage with or challenge an armed group’s governance efforts. ISIS is challenging to study since it is perceived as denying civilians’ agency completely. But even under the most autocratic governance arrangements, civilians have found ways to influence and even challenge armed groups. For example, during the war in Sri Lanka, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam had numerous methods for incorporating civilian feedback despite its deserved reputation as an autocratic and brutal organization. The education system in Tiger-ruled areas emerged as a result of civilian pressure and meaningfully incorporated civilians into its daily operations.

Indeed, a surprising number of rebel groups have shared decision-making with civilians. The African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC) created democratic village councils, as did the National Resistance Army during its war in Uganda. On the other hand, summary justice and brutal punishments can increase legitimacy among civilians when meted out to thieves and rapists. Residents gave strong support to rebels who took over neighborhoods in Medellín, Colombia and provided instant justice to those the community regarded as criminals.

It appears that ISIS does not share decision-making with civilians, similar to other rebels that take Islam as the doctrinal basis for their revolt such as the Taliban in Afghanistan or Boko Haram in Nigeria. But discerning whether civilian responses affect ISIS governance would require difficult (though not impossible) field visits to ISIS-controlled territory. The fact that the group frequently needs to rely on civilians in order to provide services suggests that there may be greater scope for civilian involvement than is commonly recognized.

[W]hile ISIS may appear unique, it is not an exception from the pressures that shape rebel governance patterns generally.

Taken together, the above discussion shows that while ISIS may appear unique, it is not an exception from the pressures that shape rebel governance patterns generally. Armed groups do not determine the outcome of their governance efforts in a vacuum. Rather, civilian governance outcomes are established by the behavior of a variety of actors each interacting in a shifting and complex environment. While ISIS may be distinctive in its commitment to implementing a form of civilian governance based on its understanding of Islamic modes of governance, it is still subject to these dynamics. Analyzing it through the four clusters of factors discussed above show how its governance of civilians compares with other rebel groups.

The sustainability question

What does this tell us about the future of civilian governance under ISIS? Because ISIS has established a caliphate, it is committed to governing the people in the territories it conquers. As discussed above, ISIS leaders have adopted an approach to law that creates room for some protections for civilians and an approach to social welfare that provides space for a limited social pact. Yet, these rulers have fashioned an uncompromising notion that civilians must be governed within their strict interpretation of Islamic doctrine. In addition, they depend on foreign military recruits to buttress their rule.

These factors create contradictions that may cause regime instability that might either increase regime brutality, if leaders remain constant to their principles, or result in regime decay, if they lose their sense of purpose. ISIS may eventually be “hamstrung by its radicalism.” During the short time that ISIS has ruled civilians, it has insisted that its decisions cannot be questioned. The relevant lesson from studying other rebellions is that groups better able to accommodate different political actors through a process of political negotiation are more likely to endure. If ISIS leaders remain obstinate, refusing to compromise in favor of a principled ideological stand, civilians will continue to suffer and either fight or flee if they can. Alternately, if the group’s leaders are tempted by the wealth the regime has accumulated, they may give in to corruption and fashion a more predatory regime.

ISIS has also become a magnet for foreign fighters. No one really knows how many there are, but an early (2014) estimate is 15,000 from 90 countries. Although the flow has decreased recently, cultural interactions and political disputes among these foreigners and civilians are certain to remain problematic. As the external military threats faced by ISIS grow, its leaders are likely to rely on the loyalty and morale of their foreign fighters at the expense of the civilian population. Civilian governance will probably decay, resulting in greater instability and perhaps sowing the seeds of ISIS' own demise.

Will McCants: ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris, Beirut, Egypt, and Brussels indicate the organization wants to take the fight to its enemies abroad. One reason might be that all is not well in ISIS-land. The nascent state in Syria and Iraq has lost around 25 percent of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in the year since America and its allies began to their campaign to defeat it. While the state still endures for now, it's under tremendous pressure because of the costs of ceaseless war.

To explain the troubles ISIS faces at home, we have invited a group of scholars to comment on its governance over the past years and speculate on what they might face in the year ahead. First was Mara Revkin, who examined how opinions towards ISIS have changed since it captured Mosul more than a year ago. Then Aymenn al-Tamimi argued that internal documents show increasing challenges for the Islamic State. Next, Aaron Zelin weighed in with a historical perspective, analyzing the extent to which ISIS has lived up to its own standards of governance. And Kamran Bokhari argued that security—namely defending territory—is the foremost governance objective of ISIS in the short term. Quinn Mecham focused on the need to provide alternative, positive models of governance for the populations living under ISIS control, and most recently, Nelson Kasfir and Zachariah Mampilly compared ISIS’ governance choices with how other armed groups have governed civilian populations.

Next up is Hassan Hassan, a resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy and co-author of ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror. He assesses ISIS’ model of governance before and after coalition airstrikes against the group began. Before the strikes, he argues, ISIS had a freer hand to implement its policies, and has used savagery and governance to both deter and incentivize communities under its control.

Hassan Hassan: Abu Sameh, a Syrian in his late twenties, joined the Syrian al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front as a fighter in early 2013. He fought for the group in Deir Ezzor and northeastern Syria until the Islamic State (ISIS) began to dominate there in the summer of 2014. That’s when he switched sides.

He was drawn to ISIS through one of his relatives, a commander of a small armed faction operating near the Iraqi border. With ISIS, battle-hardened Abu Sameh landed a job related to his undergraduate major for the first time since graduating college in 2009. He became an accountant working in the group’s oil industry.

As with many like Abu Sameh, ISIS benefited from local expertise to run its state-building enterprise in the areas it conquered in northwestern Iraq and northeastern Syria in 2013 and 2014. It also re-opened institutions that ceased to operate after the collapse of provisional governments—former employees, for instance, had continued to receive salaries from Baghdad and Damascus, but they typically sat at home and enjoyed the kickbacks, without being made to work by armed groups in control of the areas. When ISIS took over, many of them were forced back to work.

Enforcement of strict rules helped ISIS establish a semblance of order, which appealed to local communities plagued by kidnapping, highway robbery, theft, and warlordism. After ISIS took control, crime disappeared overnight and people could travel unarmed from Aleppo to Mosul. Through savagery and governance, ISIS both deterred and incentivized communities under its control.

Through savagery and governance, ISIS both deterred and incentivized communities under its control.

Local perception

Assessments of ISIS’ model of governance should distinguish between the periods before and after coalition airstrikes. Priority should be given to the period that preceded the airstrikes—between June and November 2014 in most areas—when the group had a freer hand to implement its policies. Assessments must also consider how ISIS fared in comparison to the armed groups and governments which preceded it. In some cases, ISIS appeared to have gone even further than previous governments in extending its writ to rural areas of Iraq and Syria. 

In this context, local perception is key to the evaluation of ISIS’ performance. According to weekly or sometimes daily conversations I have had with residents in eastern Syria—where I am originally from—people living under ISIS rule equally blame airstrikes or government bombings for the worsening economic situation in their areas, not just ISIS. The desire to link ISIS’ inability to deliver services with the failure of its model is understandable, it allows one to undermine its appeal and wholly blame it for the deteriorating situation in ISIS-held areas. But properly understanding the way ISIS ruled during this specific period with an emphasis on local perceptions is vital not only for academic objectivity but also to fully grasp the unintended consequences of the current coalition campaign against ISIS.

Referring to the destruction of Ramadi after the expulsion of ISIS in December, Col. Steven H. Warren, a Pentagon spokesman in Iraq, told The New York Times: “One hundred percent of this is on ISIL [another acronym for ISIS] because no one would be dropping any bombs if ISIL hadn’t gone in there.” In reality, however, many in those areas see the causes of destruction with a little more nuance than “no ISIS, no bombs.” First, ISIS entered most of those towns with little confrontation with civilians; it was political grievances and the failure of other armed groups that partly enabled ISIS to occupy certain areas to begin with. Moreover, the air campaign targeted bridges and oil facilities, which made life harder for civilians and disrupted a wartime economy that preceded ISIS rule.

Beyond violence 

ISIS is a manager and not a distributor of resources. In the Syrian context, nationalist, Islamist, and jihadist groups have generally sought to win hearts and minds primarily through the free or cheap provision of basic resources. ISIS, however, opts for managing what it has under its control. Even as it charges the population for services, the model remains more effective than the ones in southern and northern Syria for a simple reason. Because ISIS seeks to function as a state, local communities obtain essential benefits in return: safety and security, effective courts, and unified rule. Elsewhere, like in Eastern Ghouta outside Damascus or in Aleppo, provision of services is trumped by chaos, uncertainty, and ineffective courts, because local groups do not have exclusive or unchallenged control over territory.

Because ISIS seeks to function as a state, local communities obtain essential benefits in return: safety and security, effective courts, and unified rule.

Other forces that ruled in Syria prior to ISIS aimed to establish order based on consent. Even the Nusra Front, which was far more powerful and disciplined than other forces up until the rise of ISIS, retracted some of its decisions, seeking to avoid clashes with local families. The Nusra Front (and other Islamist groups as well) typically shied away from enforcing their rules to avoid alienating the population. In most court cases, for instance, whether a ruling would be enforced or not would hinge on whether the criminal or his family had voluntarily accepted the court’s judgment in the first place.

Conversely, under ISIS, courts have a high enforcement mechanism. This was true even when ISIS was a minor player operating from bases in rebel-controlled areas in early 2013. ISIS would encourage people to seek its help when they had a complaint about a person and would forcefully resolve the issue, even if that meant confrontation with powerful groups or individuals. This occurred numerous times ahead of ISIS’ rise to prominence in late 2013. This partly explains why many villagers either travelled outside their towns to fight for ISIS even after it was driven out of their areas in that period or accepted it when it returned later.

ISIS’ model was high-risk. The group was consistent and determined about enforcing its rules, and would not tolerate rivalry in its territory or recognize Sharia commissions other than its own. It demanded uniformity at any cost. One of the most claimed “advantages" of ISIS’ rule in its territories is that it “gets the job done.” Unlike the Free Syrian Army and other Islamist groups, ISIS would send a patrol to fetch someone if another person filed a complaint about him (these complaints typically involved financial fraud or unsettled commercial disputes). According to one resident who was involved in such a case, even if the complaint in question dated back to the years before the uprising, ISIS would settle the situation, provided that the complainant had proof.

ISIS...demanded uniformity at any cost.

“If you’re an FSA commander and you have a civilian relative, [FSA and other rebels] would accept mediation,” Hassan al-Salloum, a former rebel commander from Idlib, told me, referring to the time when ISIS was still a marginal player in 2013. “But with ISIS, if I complain about an FSA member, they go and bring him in for interrogation. They would not accept mediation. People then started to go to complain to ISIS, looking for help and asking them to intervene.”

Regulations and price controls are other areas in which ISIS’ governance proved successful. It banned fishermen from using dynamite and electricity to catch fish. It also prohibited residents from using the chaos of war to stake new land claims. This was especially true in the Syrian desert, where residents had attempted to build new homes or establish new businesses in public lands, much to the chagrin of their neighbors. ISIS also limited the profit margins on oil by-products, ice, flour, and other essential commodities. It also prohibited families from setting up refineries close to private residences, under the threat of confiscation, a policy that led some families to quit the oil business altogether, according to residents I interviewed.

A state—and more

In certain cases, ISIS governed areas more comprehensively than the governments of Baghdad and Damascus. Whether in delivery of services or management of people and resources under its control, ISIS makes it clear it is the only ruler in town, and once residents recognize that, they are often allowed to help govern their areas. There have been instances, according to tribal sources from Iraq and Syria I spoke to, of “deputization” whereby ISIS re-armed specific tribesmen to control their own area, though that process remained extremely limited.

Before, other groups and previous governments would use tribal leaders as intermediaries between them and local communities. ISIS, by contrast, acts as an intermediary between different tribes and even within the same tribe to resolve disputes, some of which date back to the 1970s and 1980s. Furthermore, it has systematically disarmed local communities that came under its rule in a way that previous governments failed to do over decades. 

The group is the only one in the two countries that employs an extensive network of staff exclusively dedicated to dealing with tribal affairs. The man in charge of tribal affairs is a Saudi national by the name of Daygham Abu Abdullah, locally known to be well-versed in tribal lineage and dynamics. He oversees a bureau that receives tribal delegations from across the self-styled caliphate that desire to resolve conflict or appeal for clemency. After ISIS asserts control over an area, tribal outreach helps it engage with local tribes and act as a social arbiter. Even though the organization carried out mass atrocities against certain tribes, the group often has other members of those same tribes fighting in its ranks, including members of Albu Nimr and Albu Fahad in Iraq, and Al Shaytat in Syria. ISIS employs a seemingly contradictory strategy of divide-and-rule. It first attempts infiltrate an area, and follows up with an outreach policy after consolidating control. The office that handles amending tribal disputes is known as Public Relations Bureau.

Whereas Islamic inheritance laws stipulate that women are to receive half of that received by a male sibling, tribal society often deprives women even of that half share. Unlike governments, which rarely enforce Sharia-based inheritance laws, ISIS sent out instructions to local communities to provide women with their due share and some women who complained to ISIS judges would receive their shares retroactively from their brothers.

These measures suggest that the group, in some instances, is more vigorous and micro-managerial than previous governments that ruled these predominantly rural areas in Iraq and Syria.

These measures suggest that the group, in some instances, is more vigorous and micro-managerial than previous governments that ruled these predominantly rural areas in Iraq and Syria. Lawlessness, kidnappings, arbitrary killings, and highway robbery are greater sources of grievance for people living outside regime areas than poor services, something that ISIS has dealt with by providing security based on brutal justice and policing. The semblance of order established by ISIS remains a strong advantage for the group, despite its diminished ability in other aspects of governance, and forces that will take over from ISIS will be judged accordingly.

Conclusion

There is little doubt that the group has lost the initial appeal it had when it conquered large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria in the summer of 2014. The U.S.-led air campaign has blunted the group’s ability to generate income from oil and war spoils that usually come from rapid expansion. It has also reduced the group’s capacity to provide sufficient services for communities under its rule. The air campaign has also resulted in an interesting trend: it has strengthened the role of ISIS’ security and intelligence core in the towns, villages and cities the group controls, a development that has led to mounting complaints about their harsh and crude behavior.

ISIS associates, too, complain of the group’s security apparatus to the extent that it has become common to hear of clerics explaining to ISIS members that the state that Prophet Mohammed founded also included munafiqun, or “hypocrites,” and that this should not be a reason to abandon it, according to interviews I conducted, including with members. (Connoting someone who only feigns belief in public, the term munafiqun is a heavy accusation to levy at a fellow Muslims, and such people are condemned in the Quran.)

[T]argeting the economy of ISIS-controlled areas can make matters worse.

But all that will not translate into a rebellion against ISIS. Additionally—and more importantly—targeting the economy of ISIS-controlled areas can make matters worse. In some cases, airstrikes led families to send their children to join ISIS as the only way to generate income. Iraqi officials have warned that choking off ISIS’s economic routes might result in “collateral damage.” While they may see this as necessary evil, it also runs the risk of helping ISIS tighten its grip by driving residents closer to it as the only employer or provider in town.

The unintended consequences of the air campaign are a serious concern, especially if ISIS is to be defeated strategically. This is something I have discussed with everyone involved, from civilians to ISIS members to Western officials involved in the anti-ISIS campaign. Residents often complain that they are suffering collective punishment by inconsiderate foreign forces. ISIS, meanwhile, tells the communities under its rule that it would have brought more prosperity to their towns had it not been for the airstrikes. A high-level American official involved in the campaign acknowledged to me that officials were aware of the possibility of unintended consequences but insisted that airstrikes targeting the economy in eastern Syria and western Iraq will only intensify. 

Event Information

By most metrics, the 1991 Gulf War, also known as Operation Desert Storm, was a huge and rapid success for the United States and its allies. The mission of defeating Iraq's army, which invaded Kuwait the year prior, was done swiftly and decisively. However, the war's impact on soldiers who fought in it was lasting. Over 650,000 American men and women served in the conflict, and many came home with symptoms including insomnia, respiratory disorders, memory issues and others attributed to a variety of exposures – “Gulf War Illness."

On June 16, the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at Brookings and Georgetown University Medical Center co-hosted a discussion on Desert Storm, its veterans, and how they are faring today. Representative Mike Coffman (R-Col.), the only member of Congress to serve in both Gulf wars, delivered an opening address before joining Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow at Brookings, for a moderated discussion. Joel Kupersmith, former head of the Office of Research and Development of the Department of Veterans Affairs, convened a follow-on panel with Carolyn Clancy, deputy under secretary for health for organizational excellence at the Department of Veterans Affairs; Adrian Atizado, deputy national legislative director at Disabled American Veterans; and James Baraniuk, professor of medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center.

Audio

• Desert Storm after 25 years: Confronting the exposures of modern warfare

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160616_desert_storm_transcript

Event Information

In 2015, 193 countries adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a new global agenda that is more ambitious than the preceding Millennium Development Goals and aims to make progress on some of the most pressing issues of our time. Goal 4, "To ensure inclusive and quality education for all, with relevant and effective learning outcomes," challenges the international education community to meet universal access plus learning by 2030. We know that access to primary schooling has scaled up rapidly over previous decades, but what can be learned from places where transformational changes in learning have occurred? What can governments, civil society, and the private sector do to more actively scale up quality learning?

On April 18-19, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings launched "Millions Learning: Scaling Up Quality Education in Developing Countries," a comprehensive study that examines where learning has improved around the world and what factors have contributed to that process. This two-day event included two sessions. Monday, April 18 focused on the role of global actors in accelerating progress to meeting the SDGs. The second session on Tuesday, April 19 included a presentation of the Millions Learning report followed by panel discussions on the role of financing and technology in scaling education in developing countries.

 Join the conversation on Twitter #MillionsLearning

Video

• Getting millions to learn: What will it take to accelerate progress on meeting the Sustainable Development Goals?
• Scaling quality education: The launch of the Millions Learning report
• Do funders help or hinder scaling in education?
• What role can technology play in scaling education?

Audio

• Getting millions to learn: What will it take to accelerate progress on meeting the Sustainable Development Goals?

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript - Day 1 (.pdf)
• Uncorrected Transcript - Day 2 (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160418_millions_learning_transcript
• 20160419_millions_learning_transcript

Editor's Note: On Thursday Brookings Visiting Fellow, Amb. Norm Eisen addressed the Italian Parliament to discuss ethics in government, highlighting efforts in the US to improve transparency and accountability. In the speech, Amb. Eisen argues that while ethics reform can be difficult, it is an absolutely essentially part of any democratic system.

As Prepared For Delivery

Signora Presidente Boldrini, Madam President Brasseur, honorevoli Parlamentari, fellow panelists and distinguished guests, buon pomerigo. Thanks for inviting me to address the urgent subject of ethical standards in political life. It is an honor to be here in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, in this beautiful and ancient city, to which we Americans owe so many elements of our system of government. And in my town of Washington, DC we also borrowed a lot of your architecture, so we owe you for that as well.

In exchange for all that, as a small form of repayment, I would like to offer some perspectives from the U.S. as you consider the adoption of a code of ethical conduct for the Italian Parliament.

Since we are in the Chamber of Deputies, the equivalent of our U.S. Congress’ House of Representatives, I will start with best practices in that body, based on years of my professional life—too many—spent addressing alleged violations of its codes of conduct, including as a defense lawyer and later as the co-founder of a government watchdog group.

And I think there are also important lessons to be drawn from the new, innovative code of conduct for White House officials we established while I served as the "Ethics Czar" of President Obama. At his direction I helped write that new code, the Obama "ethics pledge," and although I am biased I think it has been effective so far, knock wood, there have been no major White House scandals. So I will talk about the lessons of that code of conduct a bit as well. My reflections are those of a friend and partner nation with plenty of challenges of our own. So I approach the issue with genuine humility in sharing our successes and failures.

I. Government ethics while standing on one leg

So—what is our U.S. view of best practices for the contents of government codes of ethics? In the U.S. and dare I say internationally, there is a pretty well developed set of best practices. In our House of Representatives, for example, our equivalent of this Chamber of Deputies, Rule XXIII is the Code of Official Conduct. It provides rules in four core areas;

• one, for regulating conflicts of interest, that is, situations where personal interests or financial holdings may conflict with official parliamentary duties;
• two, for gifts, particularly those from lobbyists and other persons interested in parliamentary decisions;
• three, for outside employment of parliamentarians before, during and after government service, particularly with lobbyists, a situation which we call in the US the revolving door; and
• four, for parliamentarians’ proper use of official resources, that is, hiring, staff, budget, travel and such.

There is much more detail in our code of conduct, and a few other rules as well, but those four items—conflicts, gifts, employment and resources—are the key. These same four key areas are also at the center of our codes of conduct for employees of our executive branch, as codified in our statutes and regulations, as well as in the Obama ethics pledge.

I emphasize these four key items because, having helped draft one code of conduct, and having often delved into many other codes, I sometimes find that I lose the forest for the trees when working with these codes, that the priorities at least for me sometimes get lost in the detail. So I try to keep the core always in mind, though I should add that the content of any such code must of course be particularized for the circumstances of particular government bodies and jurisdictions. Thus our U.S. House code is five pages long, elaborating on those four core items, and the House Ethics Manual of official guidance for the code is 456 pages long. Our Obama ethics pledge we got onto one page, we were proud of that. And we made everyone read and sign that page. To be fair, we could do that because we built on and added to other rules which already existed, and we did have several pages of definitions and references attached to the pledge.

II. Enforcement and transparency

But a good code is only the beginning. In our U.S. experience, just as important as the code, maybe even more important, is its enforcement. And here is where I want to share some lessons drawn from U.S. challenges in recent years, and how we responded. I am going to add two more items to our check list: enforcement and transparency.

Candidly, even with our parliamentary code of conduct in the U.S., our enforcement has sometime lagged. That is in part because under our Constitution, the ultimate enforcers are the parliamentarians themselves, and so they can at times be understandably reluctant to sanction their colleagues and friends. It's human nature.

For example, from about 1998 to 2004, there was a seven-year truce in filing complaints in our House of Representatives. The government watchdog organization I co-founded helped end that in 2004 by writing a complaint together with a brave but lonely member of Congress who was willing to file it with the House Ethics Committee. The resulting investigation resulted in the discipline of the member investigated, and ultimately helped lead to his party losing majority control of the body.

Out of all of that came a new enforcement tool in 2008, in our House of Representatives, that I strongly recommend to you: the creation of a new, independent entity, the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). This is a nonpartisan fact-finding body that investigates allegations from any source, including whistleblowers who might otherwise be afraid to step forward. OCE then recommends action to the parliamentarians who constitutionally maintain the ultimate decision-making power. Most importantly, the OCE referrals become public, allowing press, civil society and voter accountability. As a result, I believe, since the creation of the OCE for our House in 2008, there have been a significantly higher number of meritorious investigations there than in our Senate, which does not have a comparable body. The total is about 46 OCE referrals and about 20 House disciplinary actions versus just four letters of admonition by our Senate in that period. To be fair the Senate is a smaller body—but not that much smaller!

That last aspect of OCE enforcement—transparency, and the accountability it brings from media, NGOs and the public—is the sixth and final point I want to emphasize. In our U.S. parliamentary ethics system we have many transparency mechanisms: asset disclosures that our parliamentarians file, disclosures that lobbyists must make about their activities, information in campaign finance filings, and more.

To explain the value of transparency, I would like to close by turning to one of our Obama White House ethics transparency innovations. Starting in 2009, we for the first time put on the Internet virtually all visitor records of those coming to the White House. It used to be that just to get a handful of these records you had to file litigation and wait for years to know who was coming to the White House, who they were meeting with and what the subject of the meeting was. Now millions of Obama White House visitor records are online, each with a dozen or so basic categories of information: the name of the visitor, the person visited, the subject of the meeting and so on.

Why is that important? I began by referencing the Obama White House's record in avoiding major scandal. I think there are a number of reasons for that, including the President's own integrity and the new code of conduct we put into place. But an important part of that success story has also been the fact that records of White House meetings go on the Internet for everyone to see. That transparency brings accountability from the press, civil society and the public. That transparency and accountability has in turn powerfully reinforced the code of conduct: it has discouraged people from having meetings they shouldn't have, and if you don't have the meeting, you can't get in trouble for it.

So the U.S. view in one sentence: regulate conflicts, gifts, employment, and resource use, with strong enforcement and above all transparency. Thanks again for inviting me to share the U.S. perspective. Grazie!

I had the pleasure earlier this month of welcoming my friend, Czech Republic Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek, here to Brookings for a discussion of critical issues confronting the Europe-U.S. alliance. Foreign Minister Zaoralek was appointed to his current position in January 2014 after serving as a leading figure in the Czech Parliament for many years. He was accompanied by a distinguished delegation that included Dr. Petr Drulak of the Foreign Ministry, and Czech Ambassador Petr Gandalovic. I was fortunate enough to be joined in the discussion by colleagues from Brookings including Fiona Hill, Shadi Hamid, Steve Pifer, and others, as well as representatives of other D.C. think tanks. Our discussion spanned the globe, from how to respond to the Syrian conflict, to addressing Russia’s conduct in Ukraine, to the thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations, to dealing with the refugee crisis in Europe. The conversation was so fascinating that the sixty minutes we had allotted flew by and we ended up talking for two hours—and we still just scratched the surface.

Amb. Eisen and FM Zaoralek, October 2, 2015

Yesterday, we had a visit from Czech State Secretary Tomas Prouza, accompanied by Ambassador Martin Povejsil, the Czech Permanent Envoy to the EU. We also talked about world affairs. In this case, that included perhaps the most important governance matter now confronting the U.S.: the exceptionally entertaining (if not enlightening) presidential primary season. I expressed my opinion that Vice President Biden would not enter the race, only to have him prove me right in his Rose Garden remarks a few hours later. If only all my predictions came true (and as quickly). We at Brookings benefited greatly from the insights of both of these October delegations, and we look forward to welcoming many more from every part of the Czech political spectrum in the months ahead.

Prouza, Eisen, Povejsil, October 21, 2015

Event Information

This program was aired live on CSPAN.org » 

With the demand for its services constantly evolving, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) faces complex challenges in providing accessible care to America’s veterans. Amidst a history of long patient wait times, cost overruns, and management concerns, the VA recently conducted a sweeping internal review of its operations.  The result was the new MyVA program.

How will MyVA improve the VA’s care of veterans? What will it do restore public confidence in its efforts? What changes is the VA undergoing to address both internal concerns and modern challenges in veteran care? 

On June 20, Governance Studies at Brookings hosted VA Secretary Robert McDonald. Secretary McDonald described the VA’s transformation strategy and explained how the reforms within MyVA will impact veterans, taxpayers and other stakeholders. He addressed lessons learned not just for the VA but for all government agencies that strive to achieve transformation and improve service delivery.

This event was broadcast live on C-SPAN.

Join the conversation on Twitter at #VASec and @BrookingsGov

Audio

• Can the Department of Veterans Affairs be modernized?

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160620_veterans_affairs_mcdonald_transcript

On June 20, I moderated a conversation on the future of the Department of Veterans Affairs with Secretary Robert McDonald. When he took office almost two years ago, Secretary McDonald inherited an organization in crisis: too many veterans faced shockingly long wait-times before they received care, VA officials had allegedly falsified records, and other allegations of mismanagement abounded.

Photo: Paul Morigi

Since he was sworn into office, Secretary McDonald has led the VA through a period of ambitious reform, anchored by the MyVA program. He and his team have embraced three core strategies that are securing meaningful change. They are important insights for all government leaders, and private sector ones as well.

1. Set bold goals

Secretary McDonald’s vision is for the VA to become the number one customer-service agency in the federal government. But he and his team know that words alone won’t make this happen. They developed twelve breakthrough priorities for 2016 that will directly improve service to veterans. These actionable short-term objectives support the VA’s longer term aim to deliver an exceptional experience for our veterans. By aiming high, and also drafting a concrete roadmap, the VA has put itself on a path to success.

2. Hybridize the best of public and private sectors

To accomplish their ambitious goal, VA leadership is applying the best practices of customer-service businesses around the nation. The Secretary and his colleagues are leveraging the goodwill, resources, and expertise of both the private and public sector. To do that, the VA has brought together diverse groups of business leaders, medical professionals, government executives, and veteran advocates under their umbrella MyVA Advisory Committee. Following the examples set by private sector leaders in service provision and innovation, the VA is developing user-friendly mobile apps for veterans, modernizing its website, and seeking to make hiring practices faster, more competitive, and more efficient. And so that no good idea is left unheard, the VA has created a "shark tank” to capture and enact suggestions and recommendations for improvement from the folks who best understand daily VA operations—VA employees themselves.

3. Data, data, data

The benefits of data-driven decision making in government are well known. As led by Secretary McDonald, the VA has continued to embrace the use of data to inform its policies and improve its performance. Already a leader in the collection and publication of data, the VA has recently taken even greater strides in sharing information between its healthcare delivery agencies. In addition to collecting administrative and health-outcomes information, the VA is gathering data from veterans about what they think . Automated kiosks allow veterans to check in for appointments, and to record their level of satisfaction with the services provided.

The results that the Secretary and his team have achieved speak for themselves:

• 5 million more appointments completed last fiscal year over the previous fiscal year
• 7 million additional hours of care for veterans in the last two years (based on an increase in the clinical workload of 11 percent over the last two years)
• 97 percent of appointments completed within 30 days of the veteran’s preferred date; 86 percent within 7 days; 22 percent the same day
• Average wait times of 5 days for primary care, 6 days for specialty care, and 2 days for mental health are
• 90 percent of veterans say they are satisfied or completely satisfied with when they got their appointment (less than 3 percent said they were dissatisfied or completely dissatisfied).
• The backlog for disability claims—once over 600,000 claims that were more than 125 days old—is down almost 90 percent.

Thanks to Secretary McDonald’s continued commitment to modernization, the VA has made significant progress. Problems, of course, remain at the VA and the Secretary has more work to do to ensure America honors the debt it owes its veterans, but the past two years of reform have moved the Department in the right direction. His strategies are instructive for managers of change everywhere.

Fred Dews and Andrew Kenealy contributed to this post.