Hillary Clinton was not ready on day one.

The autopsies of her defeat for the Democratic nomination contest all point to a series of early blunders by her campaign. Her campaign plan was simple: leverage her name recognition, early money lead, and organization to win the Super-Tuesday contests, thereby wrapping up the Democratic nomination in early February. As the inevitable winner, she could be the centrist candidate on the Iraq war and tout her experience as a problem solver.

But her over-confident and over-priced campaign consultants failed to recognize that in a “change” election, caucus attenders were not excited by an Iraq war centrist who also happened to be a Washington insider. Clinton’s lack of a plan to effectively contest the caucuses allowed Barack Obama to win what would be the all important delegate race, and more importantly, give him the mantle of momentum while she appeared mired in the mud at a crucial mid-February stage of the campaign.

But she was ready on day two.

She hit her stride late in the game by impressively winning a series of primary contests. All the more remarkable: she did so on a shoestring election-to-election budget while the media wrote her off as a spoiler. With a newfound voice that emphasized she was a populist who would fight for the people, her new message resonated particularly well as the economy continued to falter.

Unfortunately, by the time she retooled her message and got rid of the people who had driven her campaign into the ditch— campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle and chief strategist Mark Penn—it was already too late. Obama had built a nearly insurmountable lead in the delegate count.

It is here that the rules matter.

If states had not moved up or “frontloaded” the date of their primaries and caucuses, under the misimpression that doing so would give them a greater voice in the 2008 nomination, Clinton might be the Democratic nominee.

She would have received more delegates from Florida and Michigan, two states that she would have likely won if all Democratic candidates had vigorously campaigned, but was denied a full slate because these states violated party rules by holding their elections too early. Counting these contests was important for her delegate count and to her argument that she had won more popular votes than Obama.

If states had not frontloaded their primaries and caucuses, she would have recovered from her early stumbles before it was too late. She would have minimized damage from her disastrous February, when Obama racked up an impressive string of victories even in Virginia, where she might have done better given her later strength.

The irony is that Clinton was expected to benefit from frontloading. Only a candidate with name recognition, money, and organization could compete. Lesser candidates like Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson and even John Edwards would be quickly weeded out of the field, leaving her with only one real opponent to dispense with.

The lesson is that frontloading does not well serve the nomination process. Running for president is an unrehearsed drill. Mistakes will be made. Candidates become better as they learn how to campaign and to craft messages that work. Democratic Party leaders will undoubtedly look hard over the next four years at what steps can be taken to even out the flow of the nomination contests.

While these lessons may resound loudly for Democrats, they apply equally well to Republicans. Democrats permitted the process to play out over a longer time by awarding delegates proportionately; Republicans brought their nomination to a faster close by awarding delegates by winner-take-all. John McCain became the inevitable winner of his party’s nomination without even winning a state’s vote majority before his opponents dropped like flies.

While Republicans have delighted in the continued fight among the Democrats, McCain has been in a holding pattern since winning his nomination. Unable to use his time effectively to make headway with the American public, he has incurred problems in his own party. As evidence, 30 percent of South Dakota and Montana Republican primary voters registered a protest vote by voting for someone else.

Perhaps McCain won his party’s nomination too soon. He lost to George Bush in 2000 and has yet to demonstrate that he can run an effective general election campaign. He would have benefited from being more strongly tested, making more mistakes, and learning from them in the primary season. Now, he and his campaign will have to learn on the job in the general election, while they face, in Obama, an opponent who has been tempered in his party’s nomination fire stoked by Clinton.

Plenty of time remains for McCain to make his mistakes and for Obama to make more—and for both to recover before November. Campaigns often become so knee-jerk reactive to criticisms of any mistake that they fail to recognize the value in the lessons that may be learned. The primary election season is thus a valuable period for candidates to plumb their strengths and shore up their weaknesses, and we need to find a way to restore it as such.

      

Every 10 years — unfortunately, sometimes more frequently — legislative district lines are redrawn to balance population for demographic changes revealed by the census. What goes on is much more than a simple technical adjustment of boundaries, with ramifications that largely escape public notice.

Politicians often use redistricting as an opportunity to cut unfavorable constituents and potential challengers out of their districts. Barack Obama, for example, learned the rough and tumble of redistricting politics when Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) carved Obama's Chicago home out of Rush's congressional district after losing a 2000 primary challenge to Obama, then a state senator.

Incumbents can also use redistricting to move favorable constituents into their districts. Obama himself used the state legislative redistricting to extend his predominantly African American district north into a wealthy area of Illinois known as the Gold Coast. This new constituency allowed Obama to hone an effective biracial campaigning style that served him well when he ran for the U.S. Senate and the presidency.

Critically, these decisions are made with little or no public input or accountability. While Arizona and California are among the few states that give the public a chance to see and participate in how the boundaries are set, by using open redistricting commissions, most states gerrymander legislative lines behind closed doors. Figures from both major parties tilt the electoral playing field so much that one party is essentially assured of winning a given district, controlling the state legislature or winning the most seats in the state's congressional delegation. In other words, the democratic process is subverted. In this system, politicians select voters rather than voters electing politicians.

A 2006 Pew survey found that 70 percent of registered voters had no opinion about congressional redistricting. Among the few that expressed an opinion, some mistook the question to be about school districts rather than congressional districts.

For many reasons it has been hard to fault the public. An immense amount of population data must be sifted and then assembled, much like a giant jigsaw puzzle, to ensure that districts satisfy complex federal requirements relating to equal population and the Voting Rights Act, and varying state requirements that may include compactness and respect for existing political boundaries or communities. And access to these data and the software necessary to assemble and analyze them have long been out of public reach.

In the previous round of redistricting, according to a 2002 survey of authorities we conducted with our colleague Karin Mac Donald, most states did not provide any tools, facilities, dedicated assistance or software to support the public in developing redistricting plans. Many states failed to provide even minimal transparency by making data available, providing information about their plans online or accepting publicly submitted plans. Many redistricting authorities have not made firm plans to support transparency or public participation in the current round of redistricting.

In the coming year, however, technological advancements will enable anyone with a Web browser and an interest in how he or she is represented to draw district maps of his or her community and state that meet the same requirements as official submissions. Under the direction of scholars at the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, and with consultation from an array of experts in redistricting issues, we have developed a set of principles for transparency and public participation. These principles have been endorsed by an array of stakeholders, including Common Cause and the League of Women Voters of the United States.

Americans will be able to participate directly in their democracy by offering plans to be compared with the politician-drawn maps. The public and even the courts will no longer have to accept that whatever is devised by politicians in the backroom.

The Wizard of Oz appeared powerful because he hid behind a curtain -- until it was pulled back. The time has come to pull back the curtain on redistricting. A good place to start is by passing Rep. John Tanner's Redistricting Transparency Act, which has 38 co-sponsors from both parties. If Congress will not act, state governments can follow the lead of the few states that provide for meaningful transparency and public participation. Failure to provide for transparency and public participation should be recognized for what it is: an obviously self-serving act, placing the interests of politicians above the public interest.

       

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.

	Change led by state actors	Change led by societal actors
Coordination by dominant hierarchies	Traditional deference to technocratic competence: command and control.	Monopolistic or oligopolistic industrial organization.
Coordination by non-dominant hierarchies	State agents as primus inter pares.	More competitive industries with little government oversight.

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.

       

       

       

After a recent talk about my ISIS book, one of the audience members asked, “What can I read to help me not hate Islam?” I don’t think it’s a scholar’s job to persuade others to love or hate any culture. But the question was sincere, so I suggested some books that have helped me better understand Islam. I also put the question to Twitter. Below is some of what I and others came up with.

Two cautions before we dive in: First, the list is obviously not exhaustive and I’ve left out overly apologetic books—in my experience, they only increase the skeptical reader’s suspicion that she’s being suckered. Second, people on Twitter gave me great suggestions but I’ve only included those I’ve read and can vouch for:

Muhammad and the Quran: Two of the best books you’ll ever read about Muhammad and the Quran are also the shortest: The Koran: A Very Short Introduction and Muhammad, both by Michael Cook. He writes with great wit and deep scholarship.

Other scriptures: Most non-Muslims are unaware that Islamic scripture is more than the Quran. It includes a vast collection of words and deeds attributed to Muhammad by later authors. These scriptures are sort of like the Gospels, and Muslim scholars fight over their authenticity like Christian scholars debate about the accuracy of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These extra Islamic scriptures contain most of the teachings that make modern people (Muslims included) uncomfortable about Islam. One of the world’s experts on these scriptures, Jonathan Brown, has written a terrific book about them, Misquoting Muhammad.

Rumi: The medieval mystic’s poems about life and death are beautiful and moving, no matter your belief system. I loved his poems so much as an undergrad that I went on to study Middle Eastern languages just so I could read his work in the original. I’m glad I first viewed Islam through the eyes of Rumi and not a group like ISIS. Neither is solely representative of Islam but both draw heavily on its scriptures and reach such different conclusions.

The Bible: Many people recommended reading the Bible to decrease hate of Islam. The nerd in me leapt to the least obvious conclusion, “Ah, good idea! Reading some of the rough stuff in the Hebrew Bible is a good way to put a kindred ancient religion like Islam in perspective.” But they meant something a little less complicated:

@will_mccants @jenanmoussa Read the bible and learn to love and not to hate. :-)

— Dirk Lont (@Denkkracht1) December 12, 2015

It’s a worthy perspective today no matter your faith.

      

       

       

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s idea to withdraw American forces from Asia—letting allies like Japan and South Korea fend for themselves, including possibly by acquiring nuclear weapons—is fundamentally unsound, as I’ve written in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Among the many dangers of preemptively pulling American forces out of Japan and South Korea, including an increased risk of war between Japan and China and a serious blow to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, such a move would heighten the threat of war between China and Taiwan. The possibility that the United States would dismantle its Asia security framework could unsettle Taiwan enough that it would pursue a nuclear deterrent against China, as it has considered doing in the past—despite China indicating that such an act itself could be a pathway to war. And without bases in Japan, the United States could not as easily deter China from potential military attacks on Taiwan. 

Trump’s proposed Asia policy could take the United States and its partners down a very dangerous road. It’s an experiment best not to run.

       

When she gives her speech tonight at the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton will of course be at a crucial point in her campaign for the presidency. Her fellow Democrats—including her running mate Senator Tim Kaine, as well as Michael Bloomberg—have roundly criticized her Republican opponent Donald Trump this week. Vice President Biden and President Obama usefully offered a counterpoint to the dark worldview we saw from Mr. Trump last week in Cleveland. And former President Bill Clinton, as well as first lady Michelle Obama, told us about Clinton’s longstanding dedication to women and children, the less fortunate, and the nation as a whole. As a parent of a child on the autism spectrum, I have seen and deeply appreciated this side of Clinton myself.

Now, it is up to Clinton to sketch out a positive vision for her own presidency. In so doing, she must strike a balanced tone—acknowledging and tapping the energy (and at times anger) of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and their wing of the Democratic Party—while also reaching out to independents and moderate Republicans to whom she should appeal (given her past and her politics, and most of all, her opponent), but who at present tend not to think favorably of her.

Against this complex backdrop, I would offer only a few suggestions for her upcoming speech:

• On the state of the world, we need a nuanced view. Yes, there are big problems. Yes, ISIS is a greater threat than President Obama has sometimes acknowledged. On balance, however, things are troubled but not bad. Democracy has taken a hit in recent years, and the world’s economy has struggled in many ways for a decade, and Russia and China have caused considerable problems of late. But taking a larger perspective, the international order still has many strong points. Our alliances are strong. Despite recent setbacks, a higher percentage of people around the world live in democratic countries and above the poverty line this century than ever before. Child mortality globally is way down. U.S.-India relations are better than ever, as are America’s ties to other key rising powers like Indonesia. The U.S. military is indeed very strong (as retired General David Petraeus and I write in a forthcoming Foreign Affairs article), even if there is much to do to make it even better.


• We do need to do better in fighting ISIS. Ideas on how to attack it in Syria and Libya, among other places, will be key, even if details will necessarily need to await 2017. And while I think President Obama has done better in dealing with Russia and China than commonly understood, Obama has not explained his strategies for handling these powers very well to the United States. Clinton can help.


• The fading middle-class economic dream in the United States remains the central issue of this campaign. It explains the rise of Sanders and Trump better than any other single factor or phenomenon. Clinton’s views on economics are good but they come across as a bit piecemeal, borrowing from Sanders on a few key points like the minimum wage and trade but somewhat lacking her own key stamp. Above all other issues, I hope she concentrates on this tonight.


• We have not heard much about Benghazi or about Clinton’s email problems this week. To be sure, many Republicans have inflated these issues beyond all reason. But Clinton should still apologize for her mistakes to the country, without overdoing it. As best I can tell, she put no true national secrets or American personnel at risk in her emails, and while Benghazi was a tragedy that might have been preventable, no one can be perfect in times like these. We don’t typically excoriate our military commanders for mistakes that tragically may cost American lives in a given tactical operation, recognizing that such setbacks happen in war. That is not to excuse the lack of proper attention to Libya and Benghazi by the U.S. government back in 2011 and 2012, only to put it in perspective.


• It would be good to hear some nice words about Republicans too, in an effort to reach across the aisle and defuse some of the anger in American politics today. I don’t mean just to compliment Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, but also to note the importance of people like Pete Domenici and Warren Rudman in fiscal policy and deficit reduction (and more recently, John Boehner and Paul Ryan); George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole in the Americans with Disabilities Act; the Republican Congress of the 1990s in welfare reform; George H.W. Bush again as well as people like Christie Todd Whitman in environmental policy; George W. Bush on PEPFAR/AIDS and also on stressing inclusivity while avoiding anti-Muslim rhetoric after the 9/11 attacks; and good GOP governors or former governors like Mitch Daniels, John Kasich, and Jeb Bush in fostering economic growth as well as education reform across much of the country. To Democrats angry with the current Republican presidential ticket, as well as much of the current congressional leadership, this may seem like bending over backwards to appease the opposition. But in fact, the above folks are not the opposition that Clinton needs to defeat now; they are responsible, constructive, patriotic members of the other main political party in the United States. They are not the enemy, and by reaching out to them, Clinton can improve her odds of beating the person who is now very much the adversary—not only of the Democratic ticket, but of much of this country’s finest bipartisan traditions and accomplishments.

I’ll be rooting for all the above (and also hoping to get to bed before midnight). Please bring it on, Hillary!

       

       

       

       

       

Editor's Note: The "Scaling up in Agriculture, Rural Development and Nutrition" publication is a series of 20 briefs published by the International Food Policy Research Institute. To read the full publication, click here.

Taking successful development interventions to scale is critical if the world is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and make essential gains in the fight for improved agricultural productivity, rural incomes, and nutrition. How to support scaling up in these three areas, however, is a major challenge. This collection of policy briefs is designed to contribute to a better understanding of the experience to date and the lessons for the future.

Scaling up means expanding, replicating, adapting, and sustaining successful policies, programs, or projects to reach a greater number of people; it is part of a broader process of innovation and learning. A new idea, model, or approach is typically embodied in a pilot project of limited impact; with monitoring and evaluation, the knowledge acquired from the pilot experience can be used to scale up the model to create larger impacts. The process generally occurs in an iterative and interactive cycle, as the experience from scaling up feeds back into new ideas and learning.

The authors of the 20 policy briefs included here explore the experience of scaling up successful interventions in agriculture, rural development, and nutrition under five broad headings: (1) the role of rural community engagement, (2) the importance of value chains, (3) the intricacies of scaling up nutrition interventions, (4) the lessons learned from institutional approaches, and (5) the experience of international aid donors.

There is no blueprint for when and how to take an intervention to scale, but the examples and experiences described in this series of policy briefs offer important insights into how to address the key global issues of agricultural productivity, food insecurity, and rural poverty.

      

Editor's Note: Johannes Linn discusses the potential of multilateral development banks in the latest G-20 Research Group briefing book on the St. Petersburg G-20 Summit. Read the full collection here.

The origins of the multilateral development banks (MDBs) lie with the creation of the World Bank at Bretton Woods in 1944. Its initial purpose, as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, was the reconstruction of wartorn countries after the Second World War. 

As Europe and Japan recovered in the 1950s, the World Bank turned to providing financial assistance to the developing world. Then came the foundation of the InterAmerican Development Bank (IADB) in 1959, of the African Development Bank (AfDB) in 1964 and of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 1966, each to assist the development of countries in their respective regions. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) was set up in 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, to assist with the transition of countries in the former Soviet sphere. 

The MDBs are thus rooted in two key aspects of the geopolitical reality of the postwar 20th century: the Cold War between capitalist ‘West’ and communist ‘East’, and the division of the world into the industrial ‘North’ and the developing ‘South’. The former aspect was mirrored in the MDBs for many years by the absence of countries from the Eastern Bloc. This was only remedied after the fall of the Bamboo and Iron curtains. The latter aspect remains deeply embedded even today in the mandate, financing pattern and governance structures of the MDBs. 

Changing global financial architecture 

From the 1950s to the 1990s, the international financial architecture consisted of only three pillars: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the MDBs represented the multilateral official pillar; the aid agencies of the industrial countries represented bilateral official pillar; and the commercial banks and investors from industrial countries made up the private pillar. 

Today, the picture is dramatically different. Private commercial flows vastly exceed official flows, except during global financial crises. New channels of development assistance have multiplied, as foundations and religious and non-governmental organisations rival the official assistance flows in size. 

The multilateral assistance architecture, previously dominated by the MDBs, is now a maze of multilateral development agencies, with a slew of sub-regional development banks, some exceeding the traditional MDBs in size. For example, the European Investment Bank lends more than the World Bank, and the Caja Andina de Fomento (CAF, the Latin American Development Bank) more than the IADB. There are also a number of large ‘vertical funds’ for specific purposes, such as the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. There are  specialized trust funds, attached to MDBs, but often with their own governance structures.

End of the North-South divide 

Finally, the traditional North-South divide is breaking down, as emerging markets have started to close the development gap, as global poverty has dropped and as many developing countries have large domestic capacities. This means that the new power houses in the South need little financial and technical assistance and are now providing official financial and technical support to their less fortunate neighbors. China’s assistance to Africa outstrips that of the World Bank.

The future for MDBs 

In this changed environment is there a future for MDBs? Three options might be considered: 

1. Do away with the MDBs as a relic of the past. Some more radical market ideologues might argue that, if there ever was a justification for the MDBs, that time is now well past. In 2000, a US congressional commission recommended the less radical solution of shifting the World Bank’s loan business to the regional MDBs. Even if shutting down MDBs were the right option, it is highly unlikely to happen. No multilateral financial institution created after the Second World War has ever been closed. Indeed, recently the Nordic Development Fund was to be shut down, but its owners reversed their decision and it will carry on, albeit with a focus on climate change. 

2. Carry on with business as usual. Currently, MDBs are on a track that, if continued, would mean a weakened mandate, loss of clients, hollowed-out financial strength and diluted technical capacity. Given their tight focus on the fight against poverty, the MDBs will work themselves out of a job as global poverty, according to traditional metrics, is on a dramatic downward trend. 

Many middle-income country borrowers are drifting away from the MDBs, since they find other sources of finance and technical advice more attractive. These include the sub-regional development banks, which are more nimble in disbursing their loans and whose governance is not dominated by the industrial countries. These countries, now facing major long-term budget constraints, will be unable to continue supporting the growth of the MDBs’ capital base. But they are also unwilling to let the emerging market economies provide relatively more funding and acquire a greater voice in these institutions.

Finally, while the MDBs retain professional staff that represents a valuable global asset, their technical strength relative to other sources of advice – and by some measures, even their absolute strength – has been waning. 

If left unattended, this would mean that MDBs 10 years from now, while still limping along, are likely to have lost their ability to provide effective financial and technical services on a scale and with a quality that matter globally or regionally. 

3. Give the MDBs a new mandate, new governance and new financing. If one starts from the proposition that a globalised 21st-century world needs capable global institutions that can provide long-term finance to meet critical physical and social infrastructure needs regionally and globally, and that can serve as critical knowledge hubs in an increasingly interconnected world, then it would be folly to let the currently still considerable institutional and financial strengths of the MDBs wither away.

Globally and regionally, the world faces infrastructure deficits, epidemic threats, conflicts and natural disasters, financial crises, environmental degradation and the spectre of global climate change. It would seem only natural to call on the MDBs, which have retained their triple-A ratings and shown their ability to address these issues in the past, although on a scale that  has been insufficient. Three steps would be taken under this option:

• The mandate of the MDBs should be adapted to move beyond preoccupation with poverty eradication to focus explicitly on global and regional public goods as a way to help sustain global economic growth and human welfare. Moreover, the MDBs should be able to provide assistance to all their members, not only developing country members. 

• The governance of the MDBs should be changed to give the South a voice commensurate with the greater global role it now plays in economic and political terms. MDB leaders should be selected on merit without consideration of nationality. 

• The financing structure should be matched to give more space to capital contributions from the South and to significantly expand the MDBs’ capital resources in the face of the current severe capital constraints.

In addition, MDB management should be guided by banks’ membership to streamline their operational practices in line with those widely used by sub-regional development banks, and they should be supported in preserving and, where possible, strengthening their professional capacity so that they can serve as international knowledge hubs. 

A new MDB agenda for the G20 

The G20 has taken on a vast development agenda. This is fine, but it risks getting bogged down in the minutiae of development policy design and implementation that go far beyond what global leaders can and should deal with. What is missing is a serious preoccupation of the G20 with that issue on which it is uniquely well equipped to lead: reform of the global financial institutional architecture. 

What better place than to start with than the MDBs? The G20 should review the trends, strengths and weaknesses of MDBs in recent decades and endeavour to create new mandates, governance and financing structures that make them serve as effective pillars of the global institutional system in the 21st century. If done correctly, this would also mean no more need for new institutions, such as the BRICS development bank currently being created by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. It would be far better to fix the existing institutions than to create new ones that mostly add to the already overwhelming fragmentation of the global institutional system.

       

Event Information

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

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

The meeting focused on four questions:

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

Event Materials

• Participant List
• MDB PostEvent Summary

       

The replenishment process for concessional resources of the multilateral development banks is broken. We have come to this conclusion after a review of the experience with recent replenishments of multilateral development funds. We also base it on first-hand observation, since one of us was responsible for the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) replenishment consultations 20 years ago and recently served as the external chair for the last two replenishment consultations of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which closely follow the common multilateral development bank (MDB) practice. As many of the banks and their donors are preparing for midterm reviews as a first step toward the next round of replenishment consultations, this is a good time to take stock and consider what needs to be done to fix the replenishment process.

So what’s the problem?

Most of all, the replenishment process does not serve its key intended function of setting overall operational strategy for the development funds and holding the institutions accountable for effectively implementing the strategy. Instead, the replenishment consultations have turned into a time-consuming and costly process in which donor representatives from their capitals get bogged down in the minutiae of institutional management that are better left to the boards of directors and the managements of the MDBs. There are other problems, including lack of adequate engagement of recipient countries in donors’ deliberations, the lack of full participation of the donors’ representatives on the boards of the institutions in the process, and inflexible governance structures that serve as a disincentive for non-traditional donors (from emerging countries and from private foundations) to contribute.

But let’s focus on the consultation process. What does it look like? Typically, donor representatives from capitals assemble every three years (or four, in the case of the Asian Development Bank) for a year-long consultation round, consisting of four two-day meetings (including the meeting devoted to the midterm review of the ongoing replenishment and to setting the agenda for the next consultation process). For these meetings, MDB staff prepare, per consultation round, some 20 substantive documents that are intended to delve into operational and institutional performance in great detail. Each consultation round produces a long list of specific commitments (around 40 commitments is not uncommon), which management is required to implement and monitor, and report on in the midterm review. In effect, however, this review covers only half the replenishment cycle, which leads to the reporting, monitoring, and accountability being limited to the delivery of committed outputs (e.g., a specific sector strategy) with little attention paid to implementation, let alone outcomes.

The process is eerily reminiscent of the much maligned “Christmas tree” approach of the World Bank’s structural adjustment loans in the 1980s and 1990s, with their detailed matrixes of conditionality; lack of strategic selectivity and country ownership; focus on inputs rather than outcomes; and lack of consideration of the borrowers’ capacity and costs of implementing the Bank-imposed measures. Ironically, the donors successfully pushed the MDBs to give up on such conditionality (without ownership of the recipient countries) in their loans, but they impose the same kind of conditionality (without full ownership of the recipient countries and institutions) on the MDBs themselves—replenishment after replenishment.

Aside from lack of selectivity, strategic focus, and ownership of the commitments, the consultation process is also burdensome and costly in terms of the MDBs’ senior management and staff time as well as time spent by ministerial staff in donor capitals, with literally thousands of management and staff hours spent on producing and reviewing documentation. And the recent innovation of having donor representatives meet between consultation rounds as working groups dealing with long-term strategic issues, while welcome in principle, has imposed further costs on the MDBs and capitals in terms of preparing documentation and meetings.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Twenty years ago the process was much simpler and less costly. Even today, recent MDB capital increases, which mobilized resources for the non-concessional windows of the MDBs, were achieved with much simpler processes, and the replenishment consultations for special purpose funds, such as the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria and for the GAVI Alliance, are more streamlined than those of the MDBs.

So what’s to be done?

We recommend the following measures to fix the replenishment consultation process:

1. Focus on a few strategic issues and reduce the number of commitments with an explicit consideration of the costs and capacity requirements they imply. Shift the balance of monitoring and accountability from delivery of outputs to implementation and outcomes.
2. Prepare no more than five documents for the consultation process: (i) a midterm review on the implementation of the previous replenishment and key issues for the future; (ii) a corporate strategy or strategy update; (iii) the substantive report on how the replenishment resources will contribute to achieve the strategy; (iv) a financial outlook and strategy document; and (v) the legal document of the replenishment resolution.
3. Reduce the number of meetings for each replenishment round to no more than three and lengthen the replenishment period from three to four years or more.
4. Use the newly established working group meetings between replenishment consultation rounds to focus on one or two long-term, strategic issues, including how to fix the replenishment process.

The initiative for such changes lies with the donor representatives in the capitals, and from our interviews with donor representatives we understand that many of them broadly share our concerns. So this is a good time—indeed it is high time!—for them to act.

       

I was honored today to speak at the kick off meeting of the new ReFormers Caucus. This group of over 100 former members of the U.S. Senate, the House, and governors of both parties, has come together to fight for meaningful campaign finance reform. In the bipartisan spirit of the caucus, I shared speaking duties with Professor Richard Painter, who was the Bush administration ethics czar and my predecessor before I had a similar role in the Obama White House. 

As I told the distinguished audience of ReFormers (get the pun?) gathered over lunch on Capitol Hill, I wish they had existed when in my Obama administration role I was working for the passage of the Disclose Act. That bill would have brought true transparency to the post-Citizens United campaign finance system, yet it failed by just one vote in Congress.  But it is not too late for Americans, working together, to secure enhanced transparency and other campaign finance changes that are desperately needed.  Momentum is building, with increasing levels of public outrage, as reflected in state and local referenda passing in Maine, Seattle and San Francisco just this week, and much more to come at the federal, state and local level.

       

       

       

       

       

       

If you’re reading this article, chances are you know people who are still getting married. But it’s getting rarer, especially among the youngest generation and those who are less educated. We used to assume people would marry before having children. But marriage is no longer the norm. Half of all children born to women under 30 are born out of wedlock. The proportion is even higher among those without a college degree.

What’s going on here? Most of today’s young adults don’t feel ready to marry in their early 20s. Many have not completed their educations; others are trying to get established in a career; and many grew up with parents who divorced and are reluctant to make a commitment or take the risks associated with a legally binding tie.

But these young people are still involved in romantic relationships. And yes, they are having sex. Any stigma associated with premarital sex disappeared a long time ago, and with sex freely available, there’s even less reason to bother with tying the knot. The result: a lot of drifting into unplanned pregnancies and births to unmarried women and their partners with the biggest problems now concentrated among those in their 20s rather than in their teens. (The teen birth rate has actually declined since the early 1990s.)

Does all of this matter? In a word, yes.

These trends are not good for the young people involved and they are especially problematic for the many children being born outside marriage. The parents may be living together at the time of the child’s birth but these cohabiting relationships are highly unstable. Most will have split before the child is age 5.

Social scientists who have studied the resulting growth of single-parent families have shown that the children in these families don’t fare as well as children raised in two-parent families. They are four or five times as likely to be poor; they do less well in school; and they are more likely to engage in risky behaviors as adolescents. Taxpayers end up footing the bill for the social assistance that many of these families need.

Is there any way to restore marriage to its formerly privileged position as the best way to raise children? No one knows. The fact that well-educated young adults are still marrying is a positive sign and a reason for hope. On the other hand, the decline in marriage and rise in single parenthood has been dramatic and the economic and cultural transformations behind these trends may be difficult to reverse.

Women are no longer economically dependent on men, jobs have dried up for working-class men, and unwed parenthood is no longer especially stigmatized. The proportion of children raised in single-parent homes has, as a consequence, risen from 5 percent in 1960 to about 30 percent now.

Conservatives have called for the restoration of marriage as the best way to reduce poverty and other social ills. However, they have not figured out how to do this.

The George W. Bush administration funded a series of marriage education programs that failed to move the needle in any significant way. The Clinton administration reformed welfare to require work and thus reduced any incentive welfare might have had in encouraging unwed childbearing. The retreat from marriage has continued despite these efforts. We are stuck with a problem that has no clear governmental solution, although religious and civic organizations can still play a positive role.

But perhaps the issue isn’t just marriage. What may matter even more than marriage is creating stable and committed relationships between two mature adults who want and are ready to be parents before having children. That means reducing the very large fraction of births to young unmarried adults that occur before these young people say they are ready for parenthood.

Among single women under the age of 30, 73 percent of all pregnancies are, according to the woman herself, either unwanted or badly mistimed. Some of these women will go on to have an abortion but 60 percent of all of the babies born to this group are unplanned.

As I argue in my book, “Generation Unbound,” we need to combine new cultural messages about the importance of committed relationships and purposeful childbearing with new ways of helping young adults avoid accidental pregnancies. The good news here is that new forms of long-acting but fully reversible contraception, such as the IUD and the implant, when made available to young women at no cost and with good counseling on their effectiveness and safety, have led to dramatic declines in unplanned pregnancies. Initiatives in the states of Colorado and Iowa, and in St. Louis have shown what can be accomplished on this front.

Would greater access to the most effective forms of birth control move the needle on marriage? Quite possibly. Unencumbered with children from prior relationships and with greater education and earning ability, young women and men would be in a better position to marry. And even if they fail to marry, they will be better parents.

My conclusion: marriage is in trouble and, however desirable, will be difficult to restore. But we can at least ensure that casual relationships outside of marriage don’t produce children before their biological parents are ready to take on one of the most difficult social tasks any of us ever undertakes: raising a child. Accidents happen; a child shouldn’t be one of them.

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Editor's Note: this piece originally appeared in Inside Sources.

      

As a rhetorical ideal, greater opportunity is hard to beat. Just about all candidates for high elected office declare their commitments to promoting opportunity – who, after all, could be against it? But opportunity is, to borrow a term from the philosopher and political theorist Isaiah Berlin, a "protean" word, with different meanings for different people at different times.

Typically, opportunity is closely entwined with an idea of upward mobility, especially between generations. The American Dream is couched in terms of a daughter or son of bartenders or farm workers becoming a lawyer, or perhaps even a U.S. senator. But even here, there are competing definitions of upward mobility.

It might mean being better off than your parents were at a similar age. This is what researchers call "absolute mobility," and largely relies on economic growth – the proverbial rising tide that raises most boats.

Or it could mean moving to a higher rung of the ladder within society, and so ending up in a better relative position than one's parents.

Scholars label this movement "relative mobility." And while there are many ways to think about status or standard of living – education, wealth, health, occupation – the most common yardstick is household income at or near middle age (which, somewhat depressingly, tends to be defined as 40).

As a basic principle, we ought to care about both kinds of mobility as proxies for opportunity. We want children to have the chance to do absolutely and relatively well in comparison to their parents.

On the One Hand…

So how are we doing? The good news is that economic standards of living have improved over time. Most children are therefore better off than their parents. Among children born in the 1970s and 1980s, 84 percent had higher incomes (even after adjusting for inflation) than their parents did at a similar age, according to a Pew study. Absolute upward income mobility, then, has been strong, and has helped children from every income class, especially those nearer the bottom of the ladder. More than 9 in 10 of those born into families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution have been upwardly mobile in this absolute sense.

There's a catch, though. Strong absolute mobility goes hand in hand with strong economic growth. So it is quite likely that these rates of generational progress will slow, since the potential growth rate of the economy has probably diminished. This risk is heightened by an increasingly unequal division of the proceeds of growth in recent years. Today's parents are certainly worried. Surveys show that they are far less certain than earlier cohorts that their children will be better off than they are.

If the story on absolute mobility may be about to turn for the worse, the picture for relative mobility is already pretty bad. The basic message here: pick your parents carefully. If you are born to parents in the poorest fifth of the income distribution, your chance of remaining stuck in that income group is around 35 to 40 percent. If you manage to be born into a higher-income family, the chances are similarly good that you will remain there in adulthood.

It would be wrong, however, to say that class positions are fixed. There is still a fair amount of fluidity or social mobility in America – just not as much as most people seem to believe or want. Relative mobility is especially sticky in the tails at the high and low end of the distribution. Mobility is also considerably lower for blacks than for whites, with blacks much less likely to escape from the bottom rungs of the ladder. Equally ominously, they are much more likely to fall down from the middle quintile.

Relative mobility rates in the United States are lower than the rhetoric about equal opportunity might suggest and lower than people believe. But are they getting worse? Current evidence suggests not. In fact, the trend line for relative mobility has been quite flat for the past few decades, according to work by Raj Chetty of Stanford and his co-researchers. It is simply not the case that the amount of intergenerational relative mobility has declined over time.

Whether this will remain the case as the generations of children exposed to growing income inequality mature is not yet clear, though. As one of us (Sawhill) has noted, when the rungs on the ladder of opportunity grow further apart, it becomes more difficult to climb the ladder. To the same point, in his latest book, Our Kids – The American Dream in Crisis, Robert Putnam of Harvard argues that the growing gaps not just in income but also in neighborhood conditions, family structure, parenting styles and educational opportunities will almost inevitably lead to less social mobility in the future. Indeed, these multiple disadvantages or advantages are increasingly clustered, making it harder for children growing up in disadvantaged circumstances to achieve the dream of becoming middle class.

The Geography of Opportunity

Another way to assess the amount of mobility in the United States is to compare it to that found in other high-income nations. Mobility rates are highest in Scandinavia and lowest in the United States, Britain and Italy, with Australia, Western Europe and Canada lying somewhere in between, according to analyses by Jo Blanden, of the University of Surrey and Miles Corak of the University of Ottawa. Interestingly, the most recent research suggests that the United States stands out most for its lack of downward mobility from the top. Or, to paraphrase Billie Holiday, God blesses the child that's got his own.

Any differences among countries, while notable, are more than matched by differences within Pioneering work (again by Raj Chetty and his colleagues) shows that some cities have much higher rates of upward mobility than others. From a mobility perspective, it is better to grow up in San Francisco, Seattle or Boston than in Atlanta, Baltimore or Detroit. Families that move to these high-mobility communities when their children are still relatively young enhance the chances that the children will have more education and higher incomes in early adulthood. Greater mobility can be found in places with better schools, fewer single parents, greater social capital, lower income inequality and less residential segregation. However, the extent to which these factors are causes rather than simply correlates of higher or lower mobility is not yet known. Scholarly efforts to establish why it is that some children move up the ladder and others don't are still in their infancy.

Models of Mobility

What is it about their families, their communities and their own characteristics that determine why they do or do not achieve some measure of success later in life?

To help get at this vital question, the Brookings Institution has created a life-cycle model of children's trajectories, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth on about 5,000 children from birth to age 40. (The resulting Social Genome Model is now a partnership among three institutions: Brookings, the Urban Institute and Child Trends). Our model tracks children's progress through multiple life stages with a corresponding set of success measures at the end of each. For example, children are considered successful at the end of elementary school if they have mastered basic reading and math skills and have acquired the behavioral or non-cognitive competencies that have been shown to predict later success. At the end of adolescence, success is measured by whether the young person has completed high school with a GPA average of 2.5 or better and has not been convicted of a crime or had a baby as a teenager.

These metrics capture common-sense intuition about what drives success. But they are also aligned with the empirical evidence on life trajectories. Educational achievement, for example, has a strong effect on later earnings and income, and this well-known linkage is reflected in the model. We have worked hard to adjust for confounding variables but cannot be sure that all such effects are truly causal. We do know that the model does a good job of predicting or projecting later outcomes.

Three findings from the model stand out. First, it's clear that success is a cumulative process. According to our measures, a child who is ready for school at age 5 is almost twice as likely to be successful at the end of elementary school as one who is not.

This doesn't mean that a life course is set in stone this early, however.

Children who get off track at an early age frequently get back on track at a later age; it's just that their chances are not nearly as good. So this is a powerful argument for intervening early in life. But it is not an argument for giving up on older youth.

Second, the chances of clearing our last hurdle – being middle class by middle age (specifically, having an income of around $68,000 for a family of four by age 40) – vary quite significantly. A little over half of all children born in the 1980s and 1990s achieved this goal. But those who are black or born into low-income families were very much less likely than others to achieve this benchmark.

Third, the effect of a child's circumstances at birth is strong. We use a multidimensional measure here, including not just the family's income but also the mother's education, the marital status of the parents and the birth weight of the child. Together, these factors have substantial effects on a child's subsequent success. Maternal education seems especially important.

The Social Genome Model, then, is a useful tool for looking under the hood at why some children succeed and others don't. But it can also be used to assess the likely impact of a variety of interventions designed to improve upward mobility. For one illustrative simulation, we hand-picked a battery of programs shown to be effective at different life stages – a parenting program, a high-quality early-edcation program, a reading and socio-emotional learning program in elementary school, a comprehensive high school reform model – and assessed the possible impact for low-income children benefiting from each of them, or all of them.

No single program does very much to close the gap between children from lower- and higher-income families. But the combined effects of multiple programs – that is, from intervening early and often in a child's life – has a surprisingly big impact. The gap of almost 20 percentage points in the chances of low-income and high-income children reaching the middle class shrinks to six percentage points. In other words, we are able to close about two-thirds of the initial gap in the life chances of these two groups of children. The black-white gap narrows, too.

Looking at the cumulative impact on adult incomes over a working life (all appropriately discounted with time) and comparing these lifetime income benefits to the costs of the programs, we believe that such investments would pass a cost-benefit test from the perspective of society as a whole and even from the narrower prospective of the taxpayers who fund the programs.

What Now?

Understanding the processes that lie beneath the patterns of social mobility is critical. It is not enough to know how good the odds of escaping are for a child born into poverty. We want to know why. We can never eliminate the effects of family background on an individual's life chances. But the wide variation among countries and among cities in the U.S. suggests that we could do better – and that public policy may have an important role to play. Models like the Social Genome are intended to assist in that endeavor, in part by allowing policymakers to bench- test competing initiatives based on the statistical evidence.

America's presumed exceptionalism is rooted in part on a belief that class-based distinctions are less important than in Western Europe. From this perspective, it is distressing to learn that American children do not have exceptional opportunities to get ahead – and that the consequences of gaps in children's initial circumstances might embed themselves in the social fabric over time, leading to even less social mobility in the future.

But there is also some cause for optimism. Programs that compensate at least to some degree for disadvantages earlier in life really can close opportunity gaps and increase rates of social mobility. Moreover, by most any reasonable reckoning, the return on the public investment is high.

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Editor's note: This piece originally appeared in the Milken Institute Review.

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

Last week’s Seventh Summit of the Americas in Panama will be remembered for the historic handshakes and broad smiles shared by Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro—the first sit-down meeting of leaders from the two nations since Fidel Castro marched triumphantly into Havana in early 1959. But this memorable encounter was merely the most visible piece of a much broader Cuban strategy at the Panama Summit.

The large Cuban delegation took full advantage of the several forums that comprise the complex Summit process. These periodic inter-American conclaves feature meetings among heads of state and foreign ministers, a CEO Summit for corporate executives, and a Civil Society Forum for representatives of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The Cubans seized all three opportunities and fielded strong teams to advance their interests: to engage with the multi-level inter-American system, and to send clear signals back home of where government policy is headed.

Face-to-face diplomacy

In addition to the Obama-Castro encounter, foreign ministers John Kerry and Bruno Rodriguez held a lengthy bilateral. Since Obama and Castro publicly announced their intention to renew relations on December 17 of last year, negotiations have dragged on. Cuba is reluctant to grant American diplomats unrestricted travel throughout the island to engage with Cuban citizens, including political dissidents. This is the norm in international diplomacy, the United States argues, whereas the Cubans remain fearful that U.S. diplomats will provide encouragement and assistance to activists advocating for political pluralism. The Cubans want to be removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation which automatically invokes economic sanctions. The White House is withholding that relief as a bargaining chip in the negotiations.

In his opening plenary remarks, President Castro spoke passionately and at length, impressing the audience with his heartfelt remarks even as he came across as an elder statesman indulging in the memories and glories of his youth. Yet, Castro was also sending signals to the stalwarts in the Communist Party back home that he had not forgotten their sacrifices and was not abandoning their values. His engagement with the United States would not be allowed to endanger their tight control of Cuban society. Still, most significantly, Castro kept the door open to engagement with the United States by dramatically addressing President Obama, tossing him compliments: “President Obama is an honest man…I have read his two memoirs and I believe he is a man who has remained faithful to his humble origins.”

By lauding Obama, holding a private bilateral, and appearing with a broad smile at a press opportunity, Castro reaffirmed his commitment to improving relations with the United States. He also may have been nudging his negotiators to wrap up the talks to allow the mutual re-opening of embassies. The Cubans are aware that not all of Washington favors improved relations, and that they must consolidate the process of diplomatic normalization while Obama commands the White House.

The CEO and Civil Society Forums

Presumably, the main Cuban motivation for engaging the United States is economic: to attract more tourists, financial remittances, and eventually productive investments from the United States and the rest of the world, and to extract a relaxation of sanctions, particularly those impeding international financial transactions. Cuban Minister of Trade and Investment Rodrigo Malmierca led a commercial delegation that included top executives from state-owned enterprises, as well as leadership from the new Mariel Development Zone. At the CEO Summit, Malmierca was granted one of the few time slots for a keynote address. But rather than take advantage of this unique opportunity, the Cuban minister rushed through an uninspired text, offering nothing that could not be found in previous government press releases and official documents. More than two years after the passage of a much-heralded foreign investment law and over a year after the official opening of the Mariel Development Zone, very few new investments have earned official authorization.  

While potentially interested in Cuban markets, executives I spoke with remain cautious, skeptical that the government has yet created a sufficiently business-friendly environment to warrant the risk. They speculate as to why so few new foreign ventures are underway: is it opposition from well-placed hard-liners, bureaucratic inertia, or lack of financing or other necessary business inputs? In private conversations, Malmierca hinted at a political obstacle: many Cubans identify the revolution with nationalizations of private property, so it will be difficult to explain to them why foreign investment is now so welcome.

The Cubans also fielded a significant presence at the Civil Society Forum. The dominant group represented government-affiliated “non-governmental” organizations (GONGOS) such as the official trade union or Confederation of Cuban Women, while opposition NGOs marshalled about a dozen persons. At a pre-Summit speech in Caracas, Castro had ominously labelled these opposition NGOs “mercenaries” in the pay of foreign intelligence services. Following that lead, the government-affiliated group staged aggressive, noisy demonstrations denouncing the opposition representatives and accusing them of harboring infamous terrorists. The GONGOS threatened to boycott the Forum (although some did eventually participate), and disrupted the Forum’s working group on democratic governance. Here again, the message being telegraphed back home was clear: the Cuban government does not consider these opposition voices to be legitimate actors and loyal Cuban citizens should not associate with them.

Discernable signals

Altogether, at the three forums the Cubans demonstrated their strong interest in participating actively in hemispheric affairs and institutions. The Cubans are capable of fielding smart, disciplined delegations with well-scripted strategies and messages. Once again, the high-quality Cuban diplomacy demonstrated that it has few peers in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The messages transmitted at the Panama Summit were subtle but decodable. In the diplomatic sphere, Castro wants to move forward, to take advantage of Obama’s tenure to relax U.S.-Cuban tensions and gain some economic advantages. In the business sphere, Malmierca reaffirmed Castro’s oft-repeated admonitions that economic change on the island will be very gradual and socialist planning will not be discarded under his watch. In the political sphere, the Cuban Communist Party intends to maintain its absolute hegemony—political pluralism outside the Party is definitely not yet on the policy agenda.

Read more about the Summit with Richard Feinberg's post on how the United States came out of the Panama Summit of the Americas.

      

       

Seven months have passed since Israel officially apologized to Turkey for the Mavi Marmara incident of May 2010, in which nine Turks were killed by Israeli fire. What seemed, at the time, to be a diplomatic breakthrough, capable of setting into motion a reconciliation process between America’s two greatest allies in the region, has been frustrated by a series of spiteful interactions.

The Turkish-Israeli alliance of the 1990s and first decade of the 2000s was viewed by senior U.S. officials as an anchor of stability in a changing region. The relationship between Ankara and Jerusalem served vital U.S. interests in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, and so it was therefore a U.S. priority to restore dialogue between the two former allies-turned-rivals. The Obama administration, throughout both terms, has made a continuous effort to rebuild the relationship and was ultimately successful in setting the stage for the Israeli apology and the Turkish acceptance of that apology. The U.S. was not the only party that stood to gain from reconciliation; both Turkey and Israel have many incentives for normalizing relations. For Turkey, the reestablishment of a dialogue with Israel has four main potential benefits: It would allow for greater involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, it would provide greater opportunity for information sharing on the developments of the Syrian civil war allowing Turkey to have a more comprehensive perspective, it would also provide more economic opportunities for Turkey especially with regard to cooperation in the field of natural gas (following Israel's High Court of Justice recent ruling that paves the way toward exports of natural gas), and finally it would remove an irritant from Turkey's relations with the United States. In turn, Israel would benefit from the reestablishment of dialogue in three major ways: the rebuilding of relations between senior Turkish and Israeli officials would facilitate intelligence sharing and help to gain a more complete picture of the Syrian crisis, Israel would have the opportunity to contain delegitimization efforts in the Muslim and Arab worlds, and Israel may be able to rejoin NATO related activities and maneuvers.

Despite these enticements, in recent weeks a series of news stories and revelations have put the Turkish-Israeli relationship, yet again, in the international spotlight, raising doubts whether reconciliation between the two countries is at all possible at this time. As the Obama administration struggles to deal with the fallout of allegations that the NSA has tapped the office and cellular phones of Western European leaders and as it focuses on more pressing issues in the Middle East, namely the P5+1 negotiations with Iran, the Syrian crisis, Egypt and negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, it finds itself with little time to chaperone the Turkish-Israeli reconciliation process. Nevertheless, despite tensions, direct talks are reportedly being held between senior Turkish and Israeli officials in an effort to reach a compensation agreement in the near future.

The Israeli apology and Turkish acceptance, orchestrated by Barack Obama during his trip to the region in March 2013, was an essential first step in a long process of reconciliation, aimed at normalizing relations between the two countries after a four year hiatus in their relationship. The next step was an agreement between the two sides in which Israel was to pay compensation to the families of the victims of the Mavi Marmara. Several rounds of talks between senior Turkish and Israeli representatives were reportedly held during the spring of 2013 in Ankara, Jerusalem and Washington, but to no avail. Disagreements over the amount of compensation to be paid by Israel were reported, but later, in July, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Arinc clarified that money was not the issue. He stated that the problem lay in Israel’s refusal to acknowledge that the payment was a result of its “wrongful act.” Arinc added that another point of contention was Turkey's demand that Israel cooperate in improving the living conditions of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Arinc emphasized that only when these two conditions were met could the countries move forward to discuss the specific amount of compensation.

The shadow cast over negotiations by Arinc’s comments was darkened by a string of comments made by Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan against Israel. First, he blamed the “interests lobby” – perhaps a reference to the so-called “Israel Lobby” -- for the large protests that took place against him and his government in Istanbul’s Taksim square and across Turkey in June. Then, in August, Erdogan accused Israel of backing the military coup in Egypt, citing comments made in 2011 by the French Jewish philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy, as proof of a long standing Israeli-Jewish plot to deny the Muslim Brotherhood power in Egypt. This drew sharp Israeli criticism, notably from former Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who compared Erdogan to the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.

Despite these setbacks, bilateral trade between Turkey and Israel has expanded since the official apology and the number of Israeli tourists returning to visit Turkey has risen dramatically. Yet it is clear that with such harsh rhetoric it will be difficult to effectively advance a reconciliation process. Among American, Turkish and Israeli experts, the prevailing view is that Erdogan and the AKP government, mainly due to domestic political considerations, are not interested in normalizing relations with Israel, and that the only reason Erdogan accepted Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s apology was to gain favor with U.S. President Obama.

At the end of August, as the plan for a U.S. military strike in Syria gained momentum, relative calm prevailed in the relations between Ankara and Jerusalem, both focusing on preparations and plans to address the fallout of such an attack. Yet, just when it seemed that tensions were reducing, and Turkish President Gul stated that negotiations "are getting on track," in a September interview with the Washington Post, a series of news stories and revelations injected a poisonous dimension to the already-strained ties.

In early October another round of Turkish-Israeli verbal attacks and counter-attacks was sparked by a Wall Street Journal profile of the Turkish Head of Intelligence, Hakan Fidan, which included a quote from an anonymous Israeli official stating, "It is clear he (Fidan) is not an enemy of Iran." Shortly after came the revelation by David Ignatius in the Washington Post that quoted reliable sources that pointed to Fidan as allegedly passing the names of 10 Iranians working for the Israeli Mossad on to the Iranian intelligence in early 2012. These ten people were later arrested by the Iranian authorities. Senior Turkish officials blamed Israel for leaking the story to Ignatius and the Turkish daily, Hurriyet, reported that Fidan was considering severing ties between Turkish and Israeli intelligence agencies. Reactions in Turkey and Israel to the Ignatius story were harsh and emotional. Turkish officials denied the report while Israeli officials refrained from any public comments. The Friday edition of Yediot's front page headline read, “Turkish Betrayal,” and former Foreign Minister Lieberman voiced his opposition to the apology made in March; he expressed his opinion that it weakened Israel’s stance and image in the region, and he attacked Erdogan for not being interested in a rapprochement.

In recent days Prime Minister Erdogan struck a more conciliatory tone, saying that if Israel is denying involvement in the leak then Turkey must accept it. Israeli media outlets reported over the weekend that Israeli and Turkish negotiators are again trying to reach a compensation agreement. Israeli experts, quoted in these reports, view November 6 as a possible target date to end negotiations over this agreement. The logic behind this being that former Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman’s verdict is expected that day. If acquitted of corruption charges Mr. Lieberman will return to the Foreign Minister’s job and will likely try and block any attempt to reach an agreement. Turkish experts however assess that Turkey is simply not ready to move forward at this time due to domestic political constraints, as Prime Minister Erdogan and the AKP are bracing for Presidential and local elections in 2014.

Notwithstanding, the next few weeks will be crucial in determining whether Turkey and Israel can move forward and finally put the Marmara incident behind them. Turkey and Israel both have separate disagreements with the U.S. - Turkey over Syria, Egypt and the Turkish decision to build a missile defense system with a Chinese firm under U.S. sanctions; Israel over the Iran nuclear issue. However, the lingering Syrian crisis and reported progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track, in addition to economic considerations such as trade, tourism and above all potential cooperation on natural gas may entice both sides to proceed. Undoubtedly, a final deal will require strong U.S. support.

       

The recent outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Hamas is a serious setback to ongoing Turkish-Israeli normalization efforts. Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, its third operation against Hamas since leaving Gaza in 2005, in response to rockets and missiles fired by Hamas from Gaza into Israel. As in Israel’s two previous Gaza campaigns, Operation Cast Lead (2008-09) and Operation Pillar of Defense (2012), Turkey quickly condemned Israel’s actions, yet offered to mediate, together with Qatar, between Israel and Hamas.

After Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in the midst of his presidential campaign, equated Israeli policy towards Gaza to a “systematic genocide” and accused Israel of surpassing “Hitler in barbarism,” Israel accepted an Egyptian cease-fire proposal. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman accused Turkey and Qatar of “sabotaging the cease-fire proposal,” and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complained to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry about Erdogan’s statements.

Turkish leaders’ harsh rhetoric sparked violent demonstrations in front of Israel’s embassy in Ankara and its consulate in Istanbul, lead the Israeli government to evacuate diplomats’ families, and issue a travel warning advising against travel to Turkey, which prompted numerous cancellations of tourist travel. On Sunday, Netanyahu refrained from declaring Turkish-Israeli reconciliation dead, but accused Erdogan of anti-Semitism more aligned with Tehran then the West.

These heightened Israeli-Turkish tensions come just as the two countries were negotiating a compensation deal for families of victims of the May 31, 2010 Mavi Marmara incident. The deal was intended to facilitate a long-awaited normalization between the two countries, more than a year after Israel’s official apology. The draft stipulated an estimated $21 million in Israeli compensation, the reinstatement of each country’s ambassador, and the reestablishment of a senior-level bilateral dialogue. However, a series of issues has prevented the deal’s finalization, including: Turkish domestic political considerations about the timing (related to March 2014 municipal elections and August 2014 presidential elections) and Israeli demands for Turkish commitments to block future lawsuits related to the Marmara incident.

With the ongoing Gaza conflict, prospects for normalization have again faded at least in the short term, and policymakers on both sides seem to have accepted a limited relationship. Erdogan even declared publicly that as long as he’s in power, there is no chance “to have any positive engagement with Israel”, dismissing any prospect for normalization. Israeli-Turkish animosity runs deep, not only among leaders, but at the grassroots level as well. While it may be difficult to look beyond the short term, a focus on the broader regional picture suggests four reasons why the two countries would benefit from restoring ties.

• First, they share strategic interests. Turkey and Israel see eye to eye on many issues: preventing a nuclear Iran; concerns over spillover from the Syrian civil war; and finally, the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS/ISIL) and security and stability in Iraq. A resumed dialogue and renewed intelligence sharing can pave the way for more concrete cooperation between Turkey and Israel on all these regional issues, with development of a joint approach toward Syria topping the agenda.
• Second, regional environment may be beyond their control, the bilateral relationship is not. Normalization can eliminate one factor of instability in an unstable region.
• Third, Washington sees greater cooperation and cohesiveness in the U.S.-Turkey-Israel triangle as essential. President Obama has sought to restore a dialogue between Ankara and Jerusalem, including efforts to “extract” an Israeli apology and Turkish acceptance. Senior U.S. officials remain active in trying to improve the Turkish-Israeli relationship.
• Fourth, normalization may convey benefits in the economic sphere, with possible cooperation on natural gas, tourism, and enhanced trade. Gas in particular is viewed as a possible game-changer. In 2013, bilateral trade first crossed the $5 billion mark, and data from the first six months of 2014 indicates a continued rise. A political thaw can help accelerate these joint business opportunities. 

Nevertheless, at this stage it is clear that serious U.S. involvement is required for Turkish-Israeli rapprochement to succeed, even in a limited fashion. At present, there are far greater challenges for U.S. foreign policy in the region. The question now is whether the relationship between two of America’s closest regional allies reflects a new “normal,” or whether the leaders of both countries – and the U.S. – can also muster the political will to reconnect the US-Turkey-Israel triangle along more productive lines.

Check back to Brookings.edu for Dan Arbell’s upcoming analysis paper: The U.S.-Turkey-Israel Triangle.