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As the 2016 election draws near, issues related to immigration and broader cultural change continue to dominate the national political dialogue. Now, an extensive new survey sheds light on how Americans view these issues. How do they feel about the proposed policy to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border or a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country? The survey of more than 2,500 Americans explores opinions on these questions and others concerning the current immigration system, immigrants’ contributions to American culture, and the cultural and economic anxieties fueling Donald Trump’s success among core Republican constituencies.

On June 23, Governance Studies at Brookings and the Public Religion Research Institute released the PRRI/Brookings Immigration Survey and hosted a panel of experts to discuss its findings. Additional topics explored in the survey and by the panel included perceptions of discrimination against white Americans and Christians, and the extent to which Americans believe that the uncertain times demand an unconventional leader.

Join the conversation on Twitter at #immsurvey and @BrookingsGov

Video

• The battle over the border: Public opinion on immigration and cultural change at the forefront of the election

Audio

• The battle over the border: Public opinion on immigration and cultural change at the forefront of the election

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160623_prri_jones_presentation
• 20160623_immigration_prri_transcript

On June 23, Brookings hosted the release of the Immigrants, Immigration Reform, and 2016 Election Survey, a joint project with the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). The associated report entitled, How immigration and concern about cultural change are shaping the 2016 election finds an American public anxious and intensely divided on matters of immigration and cultural change at the forefront of the 2016 Election.

On matters of cultural change, Jones painted a picture of a sharply divided America. Poll results indicate that a majority (55 percent) of Americans believe that the American way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence, while 44 percent disagree.  Responses illustrate a stark partisan divide:

Jones identified Americans’ views on language and “reverse discrimination” as additional touchstones of cultural change. Americans are nearly evenly divided over how comfortable they feel when they encounter immigrants who do not speak English: 50 percent say this bothers them and 49 percent say it does not. 66 percent of Republicans and 77 percent of Trump supporters express discomfort when coming into contact with immigrants who do not speak English; just 35 percent of Democrats say the same.

Americans split evenly on the question of whether discrimination against whites, or “reverse discrimination,” is as big of a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities (49 percent agree, 49 percent disagree). Once again, the partisan differences are considerable: 72 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of Trump supporters agree that reverse discrimination is a problem, whereas more than two thirds (68 percent) of Democrats disagree.

On economic matters, survey results indicate that nearly seven in ten (69 percent) Americans support increasing the tax rate on wealthy Americans, defined as those earning over $250,000 a year. This represents a modest increase in the share of Americans who favor increasing the tax rate relative to 2012, but a dramatic increase in the number of Republicans who favor this position.

The share of  Republicans favoring increasing the tax rate on wealthy Americans jumped from 36 percent in 2012 to 54 percent in 2016—an 18 point increase. Democrats and Independents views on this position remained relatively constant, increasing from 80 to 84 percent and 61 to 68 percent approval respectively.

Finally, on matters of immigration, Americans are divided over whether immigrants are changing their communities for the better (50 percent) or for the worse (49 percent). Across party lines, however, Americans are more likely to think immigrants are changing American society as a whole than they are to think immigrants are changing the local community. This, Jones suggested, indicates that Americans’ views on immigration are motivated by partisan ideology more than by lived experience. 

At the conclusion of Dr. Jones’s presentation, Brookings senior fellow in Governance Studies, Dr. William Galston moderated a panel discussion of the poll’s findings. Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow and research coordinator at the American Enterprise Institute, observed that cultural anxiety has long characterized Americans’ views on immigration. Never, Bowman remarked, has the share of Americans that favor immigrants outpaced the share of those who oppose immigrants. Turning to the results of the PRRI survey, Bowman highlighted the partisan divide influencing responses to the proposition that the United States place a temporary ban on Muslims. The strong level of Republican support for the proposal--64 percent support among Republicans--compared to just 23 percent support among Democrats has more to do with fear of terrorism than anxiety about immigration, she argued.

Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, remarked that many Americans feel that government should do more to ensure protection, prosperity, and security -- as evidenced by the large proportion of voters who feel that their way of life is under threat from terrorism (51%), crime (63%), or unemployment (65%).  In examining fractures within the Republican Party, Olsen considered the ways in which Trump voters differ from non-Trump voters, regardless of party affiliation. On questions of leadership, he suggested, the fact that 57% of all Republicans agree that we need a leader “willing to break some rules” is skewed by the high proportion of Trump supporters (72%) who agree with that statement. Indeed, just 49% of Republicans who did not vote for Trump agreed that the country needs a leader willing to break rules to set things right.

Joy Reid, National Correspondent at MSNBC, cited the survey’s findings that Americans are bitterly divided over whether American culture and way of life has changed for the better (49 percent) or the worse (50 percent) since the 1950s. More than two-thirds of Republicans (68 percent) and Donald Trump supporters (68 percent) believe the American way of life has changed for the worse since the 1950s. Connecting this nostalgia to survey results indicating anxiety about immigration and cultural change, Reid argued that culture—not economics—is the primary concern animating many Trump supporters.

An analysis of the growth and characteristics of the foreign-born in the Philadelphia metropolitan area between 1970 and 2006 finds:

• Among its peers, metropolitan Philadelphia has the largest and fastest growing immigrant population, which now stands at over 500,000, comprising 9 percent of the population. Between 2000 and 2006, greater Philadelphia’s immigrant population grew by 113,000, nearly as many as had arrived in the decade of the 1990s.
• Metropolitan Philadelphia has a diverse mix of immigrants and refugees from Asia (39 percent), Latin America and the Caribbean (28 percent), Europe (23 percent) and Africa (8 percent). The 10 largest source countries are India, Mexico, China, Vietnam, Korea, Italy, Ukraine, Philippines, Jamaica, and Germany.
• Immigrant growth in suburban Philadelphia has outpaced the city’s growth, but numerically, the city has the largest population of all local jurisdictions. Outside the city, Montgomery County had the earliest post- World War II suburban settlement of the foreign born and has the largest number of immigrants among jurisdictions, while Chester County saw the fastest growth during the 1970-2006 time period.
• Nearly 60 percent of the foreign-born living in metropolitan Philadelphia arrived in the United States after 1990. Although their naturalization rates and educational levels reflect their recentness of arrival, on the whole, greater Philadelphia’s immigrants are doing well on these measures as compared with some other U.S. metropolitan immigrant populations.
• Nearly 75 percent of greater Philadelphia’s labor force growth since 2000 is attributable to immigrants. Immigrants’ contributions to the labor force are considerably higher in this period than in the 1990s, when just 36 percent of the growth was due to immigrants.

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SUMMARY

Replacing inefficient kerosene lighting with electric lighting or other clean alternatives can rapidly achieve development and energy access goals, save money and reduce climate warming. Many of the 250 million households that lack reliable access to electricity rely on inefficient and dangerous simple wick lamps and other kerosene-fueled light sources, using 4 to 25 billion liters of kerosene annually to meet basic lighting needs. Kerosene costs can be a significant household expense and subsidies are expensive. New information on kerosene lamp emissions reveals that their climate impacts are substantial. Eliminating current annual black carbon emissions would provide a climate benefit equivalent to 5 gigatons of carbon dioxide reductions over the next 20 years. Robust and low-cost technologies for supplanting simple wick and other kerosene-fueled lamps exist and are easily distributed and scalable. Improving household lighting offers a low-cost opportunity to improve development, cool the climate and reduce costs.

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Global poverty and climate change are two of the most pressing challenges for global policymakers today, and require policy prescriptions that address their interrelated issues. Effective climate solutions must empower development by improving livelihoods, health and economic prospects while poverty alleviation must become a central strategy for both mitigating emissions and reducing the poor’s vulnerability to climate change.

In its fifth annual gathering, led by Lael Brainard and co-chaired by Strobe Talbott and Richard C. Blum, the Brookings Blum Roundtable addressed the challenges of climate change and development and convened leaders from both the development and climate change communities from August 1-3, 2008, to discuss and debate policy ideas that could benefit both fronts. By examining common challenges—accountability, effective deployment of resources, agenda-setting, mobilizing the public and financial resources, and achieving scale and sustainability—the Roundtable established a solid foundation for collaboration among the climate change and development communities and fostered ideas for policy action.

Keynote Sessions

Keynote Panel: “Noble Nobels: Solutions to Save the Planet”

• Steven Chu, University of California, Berkeley
• Al Gore, Generation Investment Management; 45^th Vice President of the United States

Keynote Panel: Legal Empowerment of the Poor

• Mary Robinson, Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative
• Madeline Albright, The Albright Group; Former U.S. Secretary of State

Keynote Panel: “How Do We Achieve Climate Justice?”

• Kumi Naidoo, CIVICUS and the Global Call to Action Against Poverty
• Mary Robinson, Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative
  
  

On June 23, Brookings hosted the release of the Immigrants, Immigration Reform, and 2016 Election Survey, a joint project with the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). The associated report entitled, How immigration and concern about cultural change are shaping the 2016 election finds an American public anxious and intensely divided on matters of immigration and cultural change at the forefront of the 2016 Election.

On matters of cultural change, Jones painted a picture of a sharply divided America. Poll results indicate that a majority (55 percent) of Americans believe that the American way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence, while 44 percent disagree.  Responses illustrate a stark partisan divide:

Jones identified Americans’ views on language and “reverse discrimination” as additional touchstones of cultural change. Americans are nearly evenly divided over how comfortable they feel when they encounter immigrants who do not speak English: 50 percent say this bothers them and 49 percent say it does not. 66 percent of Republicans and 77 percent of Trump supporters express discomfort when coming into contact with immigrants who do not speak English; just 35 percent of Democrats say the same.

Americans split evenly on the question of whether discrimination against whites, or “reverse discrimination,” is as big of a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities (49 percent agree, 49 percent disagree). Once again, the partisan differences are considerable: 72 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of Trump supporters agree that reverse discrimination is a problem, whereas more than two thirds (68 percent) of Democrats disagree.

On economic matters, survey results indicate that nearly seven in ten (69 percent) Americans support increasing the tax rate on wealthy Americans, defined as those earning over $250,000 a year. This represents a modest increase in the share of Americans who favor increasing the tax rate relative to 2012, but a dramatic increase in the number of Republicans who favor this position.

The share of  Republicans favoring increasing the tax rate on wealthy Americans jumped from 36 percent in 2012 to 54 percent in 2016—an 18 point increase. Democrats and Independents views on this position remained relatively constant, increasing from 80 to 84 percent and 61 to 68 percent approval respectively.

Finally, on matters of immigration, Americans are divided over whether immigrants are changing their communities for the better (50 percent) or for the worse (49 percent). Across party lines, however, Americans are more likely to think immigrants are changing American society as a whole than they are to think immigrants are changing the local community. This, Jones suggested, indicates that Americans’ views on immigration are motivated by partisan ideology more than by lived experience. 

At the conclusion of Dr. Jones’s presentation, Brookings senior fellow in Governance Studies, Dr. William Galston moderated a panel discussion of the poll’s findings. Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow and research coordinator at the American Enterprise Institute, observed that cultural anxiety has long characterized Americans’ views on immigration. Never, Bowman remarked, has the share of Americans that favor immigrants outpaced the share of those who oppose immigrants. Turning to the results of the PRRI survey, Bowman highlighted the partisan divide influencing responses to the proposition that the United States place a temporary ban on Muslims. The strong level of Republican support for the proposal--64 percent support among Republicans--compared to just 23 percent support among Democrats has more to do with fear of terrorism than anxiety about immigration, she argued.

Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, remarked that many Americans feel that government should do more to ensure protection, prosperity, and security -- as evidenced by the large proportion of voters who feel that their way of life is under threat from terrorism (51%), crime (63%), or unemployment (65%).  In examining fractures within the Republican Party, Olsen considered the ways in which Trump voters differ from non-Trump voters, regardless of party affiliation. On questions of leadership, he suggested, the fact that 57% of all Republicans agree that we need a leader “willing to break some rules” is skewed by the high proportion of Trump supporters (72%) who agree with that statement. Indeed, just 49% of Republicans who did not vote for Trump agreed that the country needs a leader willing to break rules to set things right.

Joy Reid, National Correspondent at MSNBC, cited the survey’s findings that Americans are bitterly divided over whether American culture and way of life has changed for the better (49 percent) or the worse (50 percent) since the 1950s. More than two-thirds of Republicans (68 percent) and Donald Trump supporters (68 percent) believe the American way of life has changed for the worse since the 1950s. Connecting this nostalgia to survey results indicating anxiety about immigration and cultural change, Reid argued that culture—not economics—is the primary concern animating many Trump supporters.

Event Information

As part of an ongoing cooperative agreement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at Brookings has formed the Brookings Council on Antibacterial Drug Development (BCADD) to identify steps to address the major technical, regulatory, and financial barriers impeding antibacterial drug development. At the first meeting of the BCADD, stakeholders emphasized the importance of concentrating on discrete policy and program areas to revitalize the antibacterial drug development enterprise.

BCADD convened a diverse group of stakeholders, including FDA officials, industry and biotech representatives, payers, providers, clinicians, and academic researchers Wednesday, February 27, 2013, to discuss two of the economic challenges facing antibacterial drug development:

• Better understanding the potential role of incentives in drug discovery and development; and
• Identifying potential reimbursement models that can support both stewardship and expanded investment for antibacterial drug products.

Event Materials

• meeting summary 20130925 FINAL
• Discussion Guide
• Participant List
• Presentation

Editor's Note: In this blog, Vera Songwe introduces the African Leadership Transitions Tracker, a new interactive that aims to start a broader conversation about leadership transitions and what they mean for the region and beyond.

On March 28, Nigerians voters will go to the polls to participate in their nation’s fifth election since the military handed over power to civilians in 1999. As Africa’s largest economy and an important oil exporter, this election comes at an important time for Nigeria and for the continent as a whole.

The recent passing of Singapore’s 30 year-long leader Lee Kwan Yew credited with having taken Singapore from a third world country to a fully developed country in less than a generation, has brought the question of leadership and leadership transitions back to the fore. A 2010 report by Michael Spence’s Growth Commission heralds Lee Kuan Yew as the hero of Singapore’s growth story. The African Leadership Transition Tracker hopes to launch a dialogue on what the frequency, nature, and scope of leadership transitions mean for African countries’ growth, stability, and development trajectory overall. Moreover, how have transition trends in the region changed from the time of the African founding fathers and the tumultuous years of the 1960s to the present day?

As an initial step towards thinking this question through, Brookings’s African Growth Initiative is today launching the African Leadership Transitions Tracker as a resource both to inform readers about African political history and a tool to initiate analysis on what leadership changeover might mean (or not mean) for development. The Transitions Tracker specifically records all changes that have occurred at the head-of-state level in every African country between the end of the colonial period and the present day. We are hoping that recording this information and presenting it visually (and as a downloadable data set) will help start a broader conversation and support additional work on these issues. Brookings will update this data on a regular basis, and we welcome your feedback as we further refine this interactive. Moreover, the information we present today is by no means the full story—key variables are needed to complement this study, including, for example, the various political party affiliations of leaders within a country or cross tabulations with resources that seek to measure the level of citizen participation and engagement in these transitions. However, as further analysis takes place, we are hoping that the African Leadership Transitions Tracker will enrich dialogue about developments occurring in the region and place current news on elections or other types of changeover events within the broader context of the continent’s leadership story overall.  Over the next few months, we will be running a series of articles based on this data.  

Special thanks to Ehui Adovor, graduate student at George Washington University and the many AGI research assistants, analysts, and program staff that have supported this project, including Jessica Pugliese, Brandon Routman, Christina Golubski, Andrew Westbury, and Amy Copley.

On Tuesday, May 24, Nigerian Central Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele announced that the country will adopt a more flexible foreign exchange rate system in the near future. This move signals a major policy shift by Emefiele and President Muhammadu Buhari, who had until this point opposed calls to let the naira weaken. Many international oil-related currencies have depreciated against the dollar as oil prices began their decline in 2014. Nigeria, however, has held the naira at a peg of 197-199 per U.S. dollar since March 2015, depleting foreign reserves and deterring investors, who remain concerned about the repercussions of a potential naira devaluation. Following the announcement, Nigerian stocks jumped to a five-month high and bond prices rose in anticipation that a new flexible exchange rate regime would increase the supply of dollars and help attract foreign investors.

For now it remains unclear exactly what a more flexible system will entail for Nigeria, however, some experts suggest that the Central Bank may introduce a dual-rate system, which allows select importers in strategic industries to access foreign currency at the current fixed rate, while more generally foreign currency will be available at a weaker, market-related level. This new regime raises a number of questions, including how it will be governed and who will have access to foreign currency (and at what rate). On Wednesday, Nigeria’s parliament requested a briefing soon from Emefiele and Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun to provide additional clarity on the new system, although the date for such a meeting has not yet been set.

Earlier this month, Kenya announced plans to close the Dadaab refugee camp, located in northeast Kenya, amid security concerns. The move to close the camp has been widely criticized by international actors. United States State Department Press Relations Director Elizabeth Trudeau urged Kenya to “uphold its international obligations and not forcibly repatriate refugees.” The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees stated that the closure of the refugee camp would have “devastating consequences.” Despite these concerns, this week, at the World Humanitarian Summit, Kenya stated that it will not go back on its decision and confirmed the closure of the refugee camps within a six-month period.

The camp houses 330,000 refugees, a majority of whom fled from conflict in their home country of Somalia. Kenya insists that the camp poses a threat to its national security, as it believes the camp is used to host and train extremists from Somalia’s Islamist group al-Shabab. Kenya also argued that the developed world, notably the United Kingdom, should host its fair share of African refugees. This is not the first time Kenya has threatened to close the refugee camp. After the Garissa University attacks last April, Kenya voiced its decision to close the refugee camps, although it did not follow through with the plan.

From May 23-27, Lusaka, Zambia hosted 5,000 delegates and participants for the 2016 Annual Meetings of the African Development Bank (AfDB), with the theme, “Energy and Climate Change.” Held in the wake of December’s COP21 climate agreement and in line with Sustainable Development Goals 7 (ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all) and 13 (take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts), the theme was timely and, as many speakers emphasized, urgent. Around 645 million people in Africa have no access to electricity, and only 16 percent are connected to an energy source. To that end, AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina outlined the bank’s ambitious aim: “Our goal is clear: universal access to energy for Africa within 10 years; Expand grid power by 160 gigawatts; Connect 130 million persons to grid power; Connect 75 million persons to off grid systems; And provide access to 150 million households to clean cooking energy."

As part of a push to transform Africa’s energy needs and uses, Rwandan President Paul Kagame joined Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on a panel to support the AfDB’s “New Deal on Energy” that aims to deliver electricity to all Africans by 2025. Kenyatta specifically touted the potential of geothermal energy sources. Now, 40 percent of Kenya's power needs come from geothermal energy sources, he said, but there is still room for improvement—private businesses, which make up 30 percent of Kenya’s on-grid energy needs, have not made the switch yet.

As part of the meetings, the AfDB, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) also launched their annual African Economic Outlook, with the theme “Sustainable Cities and Structural Transformation.” In general, the report’s authors predict that the continent will maintain an average growth of 3.7 percent in 2016 before increasing to 4.5 percent in 2017, assuming commodity prices recover and the global economy improves.  However, the focus was on this year’s theme: urbanization. The authors provide an overview of urbanization trends and highlight that successful urban planning can discourage pollution and waste, slow climate change, support better social safety nets, enhance service delivery, and attract investment, among other benefits.

For more on urbanization in sub-Saharan Africa, see Chapter 4 of Foresight Africa 2016: Capitalizing on Urbanization: The Importance of Planning, Infrastructure, and Finance for Africa’s Growing Cities.

Event Information

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

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

Transcript

• Transcript of Kazuhito Yamashita Presentation (.pdf)

Event Materials

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

Editors’ Note: In a recent interview with Foreign Policy Interrupted, Tamara Wittes was asked about how the situation in the Middle East has changed since she published her 2008 book Freedom’s Unsteady March. Five years after the Arab uprisings and the start of the Syrian civil war, and a year and a half after the Islamic State captured Mosul (along with the world’s attention), Tamara says that many of the same fundamental dynamics in the Middle East are still at work.

The situation in the region has changed so dramatically since then, but I think that the fundamental insights that informed that book remain true. The underlying drivers of change in the Middle East are still there in terms of the demographic drivers, the economic drivers, the technological drivers that I described in the book; they are all still present.

Although there’s a lot of disorder and a lot of violence, and that leads people on the ground to prioritize security and to search for security in different ways, that doesn’t mean that they’re going to be satisfied. It doesn’t mean that the, “well, at least it’s not ISIS” line is going to suffice for governments in the Middle East for very long.

The underlying drivers of change are still present, the pressure for change is still present, and a lot of those pressures are about the simple fact of individual empowerment. Expectations shifted, and people, individuals, have the ability to act in ways that they didn’t before. States and governments have to accommodate that. It’s affecting politics all over the world, and the Middle East is not immune.

So the question becomes: how are governments going to learn to accommodate that and turn it into a strength? I think that the United States does have a really important role to play there. There were mistakes that the Bush administration made—setting aside his vision of Iraq, which has of course been very thoroughly discussed and assessed. But even in terms of non-military intervention to try to advance reform, the critique I made in the book is that the Bush administration was overly focused on political process and elections in particular. I think that one of the other lessons that has come of recent years is that the United States and other Western countries get very focused on political institutions and think, well, if we set up a judicial system, and we set up a parliament, and a constitution, then the gears in the machine sort of start to turn, the states start to function. Look at the rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan, for example.

But what we see in the Middle East today is that formal institutions aren’t enough. People have to have trust in the institutions, and people and communities have to have sufficient agreement on the basic rules of the game to make those institutions legitimate and authoritative. And that’s what’s missing in a lot of places around the region right now, that there isn’t enough dialogue and debate and ultimately negotiated agreement on the basic rules of the game. So I think that the challenge for the United States and others who care about stability in the Middle East going forward is how to help cultivate platforms for that kind of dialogue, and how to help cultivate the skills and the mechanisms for resolving very fundamental questions about how government should be organized and what should be the role of religion and politics, and what’s the balance between individual rights and collective identity.

These are big, big, questions, and right now, in too many places, they are being fought over violently. But the questions still have to be answered, and so the challenge is helping develop ways to do that, to do it peacefully.

Real political change in Turkey has been hard to come by in recent years. Establishment parties in Turkey have, time and again, proven unable to change the political system. Now a new hope for reform has emerged in Turkey from an unlikely source: the Kurds.

During most of the Cold War—and particularly during the 1980s and 1990s—Turkey had, for lack of a better word, a Kemalist consensus: The military played a major role behind the scenes, and those outside the consensus, especially the Islamists and the Kurds, were essentially excluded from politics. 

The first wave of democratization in the post-Cold War era in Turkey came from the Islamists—specifically, from the Justice and Development Party (AKP). In 2002, when the AKP came to power, it decided that accession to the European Union should be its main goal and that effort could serve as tool to undermine the political power of the Turkish military that still lurked behind the scenes. So, incredibly, an Islamist party, the AKP, decided to bring about a post-Kemalist system by pushing for membership in the EU’s essentially liberal, democratic project. This strategy explains why Turkish liberals supported the AKP and could hope that the Islamists would push the system in a liberal direction.

But then something tragic happened. The AKP became the establishment. After the military was essentially defeated as a political force, the AKP ceased to be an anti-establishment party. Rather, it became a party that started to use the privileges of power, and itself began its own networks of patronage clientelism, and became a victim of this entity called the state. The AKP became the state. 

Now we're in a situation where the second wave of democratization may also come from an anti-establishment party, this one mostly representing the Kurds. The most democratic, the most liberal, the most progressive narrative that you hear in Turkish politics today is coming from Selahattin Demirtaş of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP)—not the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), not the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and not the AKP.

There is reason to think that, in Turkey, only anti-establishment parties can actually improve the system. The old AKP was an anti-establishment party. What gives me hope about the HDP is that, even when it enters the parliament—and even if a miracle happens and it enters a coalition government—it will never become the state. 

By definition, the HDP is a Kurdish political party. The Islamists could become the state, because Turkey is 99 percent Muslim, and people could establish basically a sense of supremacy based on Muslim identity. The Kurds will never be able to represent the majority. They will never be able to become the state. They have vested and permanent interest in the rule of law—indeed their very survival depends on it. Their survival depends on minority rights and on checks and balances. This stark fact gives me hope about the HDP and its agenda.

What’s wrong with the rest of the Turkish opposition?

The real puzzle is the failure of establishment political parties to challenge the system. It would have been wonderful for a center-right party or a center-left party to have taken Turkey to the post-Kemalist phase, to a post-military, pro-E.U., pro-progressive phase. But the mainstream political parties have failed. The establishment of Turkey has failed. The Kemalist order in Turkey has failed.

The agent of change was first the Islamists, and now the agent of change has become the Kurds. 

What is it that creates this mental block of establishment political parties? Why did it take so many years for the CHP to understand that it can become an agent of change, too? In the absence of a left-wing movement in Turkey, there will never be balance. We need a progressive left. We need something that can challenge the strong coalition on the right. The HDP alone cannot be there.

One thing that is not being discussed in Turkey is the possibility of a CHP-HDP coalition, yet this is the most natural coalition. The CHP, if it's a progressive political party, it should be able to get rid of its Kemalist, neo-nationalist baggage and embrace the progress of liberal, democratic agenda of the HDP. 

One reason that the CHP voters and the CHP itself are unable to really embrace the HDP is because the CHP, deep down, is still the party of Atatürk, still the party of Kemalism, still the party of nationalism. And what the Kurds want in Turkey—make no mistake—what the Kurds want in Turkey is autonomy. They want nothing short of autonomy.

The days when you could basically solve the Kurdish question with some cosmetic cultural reforms are over. They want democratic decentralization. And to me, that translates into autonomy. And this is a very difficult step to digest for the CHP. Add to this the fact that the disgruntled CHP voters are voting for the HDP, the fact that people who usually could vote for a central-left progressive party are so disillusioned with the CHP that they're gravitating to the HDP. Therefore, there is also a tactical obstacle, in terms of cooperation between the HDP and the CHP right now. 

But down the line, I think the best reconciliation between Turkish nationalism and Kurdish nationalism would come from a CHP-HDP coalition. Turkish nationalism needs to reconcile itself to the fact that the Kurdish genie is out of the bottle. The good old days of assimilating the Kurds are over. The Kurds want autonomy. They will probably get it, hopefully in a bloodless way.

When Süleyman Demirel died last week I asked myself why such a permanent giant of Turkish politics failed to change the country during his 40 years of active politics. Why is it that genuine political change in Turkey proved to be so elusive during the long decades of Demirel's public service? The answer has partly to do with the fact that Demirel was synonymous with the establishment. Establishment parties in Turkey have, time and again, proven unable to change the political system.

During most of the Cold War—and particularly during the 1980s and 1990s—Turkey had, for lack of a better word, a Kemalist consensus, and those outside the consensus, especially the Islamists and the Kurds were essentially excluded from politics.

The first wave of democratization in the post-Cold War era in Turkey came from the Islamists—specifically, from the Justice and Development Party (AKP). In 2002, when the AKP came to power, it decided that accession to the European Union should be its main goal and that that effort could serve as tool to undermine the political power of the Turkish military, which still lurked behind the scenes. So, incredibly, the AKP, an Islamist party, decided to bring about a post-Kemalist system by pushing for membership in the EU's essentially liberal, democratic project. This strategy explains why Turkish liberals supported the AKP and could hope that the Islamists would push the system in a liberal direction.

But then something tragic happened. The AKP became the establishment. After the military was essentially defeated as a political force, the AKP ceased to be an anti-establishment party. Rather, it became a party that started to use the privileges of power, and itself began its own networks of patronage clientelism, and became a victim of this entity called the state. The AKP became the state.

I think similar dynamics were at play in Demirel's political career. Demirel, too, started his career by challenging the establishment but ended up becoming one of the most permanent politicians identified with the state. His ability to change the system vanished the minute he became the system. The real puzzle is the failure of establishment political parties to challenge the system. It would have been wonderful for a center-right party or a center-left party to have taken Turkey to the post-Kemalist phase, to a post-military, pro-EU and progressive phase. But the mainstream political parties have failed. The establishment of Turkey has failed. The Kemalist order in Turkey has failed. And together with that order, Demirel failed.

There is reason to think that, in Turkey, only anti-establishment parties can actually improve the system. The old AKP was an anti-establishment party. Now we're in a situation where the second wave of democratization may also come from an anti-establishment party, this one mostly representing the Kurds. The most democratic, the most liberal, the most progressive narrative heard in Turkish politics today comes from Selahattin Demirtaş, co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) -- not the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), not the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and not the AKP.

What gives me hope about the HDP is that, even when it enters Parliament—and even if a miracle happens and it enters a coalition government—it will never become the state. By definition, the HDP is a Kurdish political party. The Islamists were able to become the state because Turkey is 99 percent Muslim and people could basically establish a sense of supremacy based on Muslim identity. The Kurds will never be able to represent the majority. They will never be able to become the state. They have vested and permanent interest in the rule of law—indeed their very survival depends on it. Their survival depends on minority rights and on checks and balances. This stark fact gives me hope about the HDP and its agenda.

This piece was originally published by Today's Zaman.

So we’ve almost reached the end of the year 2015, which could go down in the history of global sustainable development efforts as one of the more significant years, with the trifecta of the approval of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the agreement on the Addis Agenda on Financing for Development (FfD) and the (shortly to be completed) Paris COP21 Climate Summit. Yet, all will depend on how the agreements with their ambitious targets are implemented on the ground.

Effective implementation will require a theory of change—a way to think about how we are to get from “here” in 2015 to “there” in 2030. The key problem is what has very appropriately been called by some “the missing middle,” i.e., the gap between the top-down global targets on the one hand and the bottom-up development initiatives, projects, and programs that are supported by governments, aid agencies, foundations, and social entrepreneurs.

One way to begin to close this gap is to aim for scaled-up global efforts in specific areas, as is pledged in the Addis Agenda, including efforts to fight global hunger and malnutrition, international tax cooperation and international cooperation to strengthen capacities of municipalities and other local authorities, investments and international coopera­tion to allow all children to complete free, equitable, inclusive and quality early childhood, primary and secondary education, and concessional and non-concessional financing.

Another way is to develop country-specific national targets and plans consistent with the SDG, Addis, and COP21 targets, as is currently being done with the assistance of the United Nations Development Program’s MAPS program. This can provide broad guidance on policy priorities and resource mobilization strategies to be pursued at the national level and can help national and international actors to prioritize their interventions in areas where a country’s needs are greatest.

However, calling for expanded global efforts in particular priority areas and defining national targets and plans is not enough. Individual development actors have to link their specific projects and programs with the national SDG, Addis, and COP21 targets. They systematically have to pursue a scaling-up strategy in their areas of engagement, i.e., to develop and pursue pathways from individual time-bound interventions to impact at a scale in a way that will help achieve the global and national targets. A recent paper I co-authored with Larry Cooley summarizes two complementary approaches of how one might design and implement such scaling-up pathways. The main point, however, is that only the pursuit of such scaling-up pathways constitutes a meaningful theory of change that offers hope for effective implementation of the new global sustainable development targets.

Fortunately, over the last decade, development analysts and agencies have increasingly focused on the question of how to scale up impact of successful development interventions. Leading the charge, the World Bank in 2004, under its president Jim Wolfensohn, organized a high-level international conference in Shanghai in cooperation with the Chinese authorities on the topic of scaling up development impact and published the associated analytical work. However, with changes in the leadership at the World Bank, the initiative passed to others in the mid-2000s, including the Brookings Institution, ExpandNet (a group of academics working with the World Health Organization), Management Systems International (MSI), and Stanford University. They developed analytical frameworks for systematically assessing scalability of development initiatives and innovations, analyzed the experience with more or less successful scaling-up initiatives, including in fragile and conflict-affected states, and established networks that bring together development experts and practitioners to share knowledge.

By now, many international development agencies (including GIZ, JICA, USAID, African Development Bank, IFAD and UNDP), foundations (including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation) and leading development NGOs (including Heifer International, Save the Children and the World Resources Institute), among others, have focused on how best to scale up development impact, while the OECD recently introduced a prize for the most successful scaling-up development initiatives. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is perhaps the most advanced among the agencies, having developed a systematic operational approach to the innovation-learning-scaling-up cycle. In a collaborative effort with the Brookings Institution, IFAD reviewed its operational practices and experience and then prepared operational design and evaluation guidelines, which can serve as a good example for other development agencies. The World Bank, while yet to develop a systematic institution-wide approach to the scaling-up agenda, is exploring in specific areas how best to pursue scaled-up impact, such as in the areas of mother and child health, social enterprise innovation, and the “science of delivery.”

Now that the international community has agreed on the SDGs and the Addis Agenda, and is closing in on an agreement in Paris on how to respond to climate change, it is the right time to bridge the “missing middle” by linking the sustainable development and climate targets with effective scaling-up methodologies and practices among the development actors. In practical terms, this requires the following steps:

• Developing shared definitions, analytical frameworks, and operational approaches to scaling up among development experts;
• Developing sectoral and sub-sectoral strategies at country level that link short- and medium-term programs and interventions through scaling-up pathways with the longer-term SDG and climate targets;
• Introducing effective operational policies and practices in the development agencies in country strategies, project design, and monitoring and evaluation;
• Developing multi-stakeholder partnerships around key development interventions with the shared goal of pursuing well-identified scaling-up pathways focused on the achievement of the SDGs and climate targets;
• Developing incentive schemes based on the growing experience with “challenge funds” that focus not only on innovation, but also on scaling up, such as the recently established Global Innovation Fund; and
• Further building up expert and institutional networks to share experience and approaches, such as the Community of Practice on Scaling Up, recently set up by MSI and the Results for Development Institute.

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Technology unimaginable at the time of the nation’s founding now poses stark challenges to America’s core constitutional principles. Policymakers and legal scholars are closely examining how constitutional law is tested by technological change and how to preserve constitutional principles without hindering progress. In Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change (Brookings Institution Press, 2011), Governance Studies Senior Fellow Benjamin Wittes and Nonresident Senior Fellow Jeffrey Rosen asked a diverse group of leading scholars to imagine how technological developments plausible by the year 2025 could stress current constitutional law. The resulting essays explore scenarios involving information technology, genetic engineering, security, privacy and beyond.

On December 13, the Governance Studies program at Brookings hosted a Judicial Issues Forum examining the scenarios posed in Constitution 3.0 and the challenge of adapting our constitutional values to the technology of the near future. Wittes and Rosen offered key highlights and insights from the book and was joined by two key contributors, O. Carter Snead and Timothy Wu, who discussed their essays.

After the program, panelists took audience questions.

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• Constitution 3.0: Freedom, Technological Change and the Law

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• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

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Change is a complicated thing in Cuba. On the one hand, many Cubans remain frustrated with limits on economic and political opportunity, and millennials are emigrating in ever rising numbers. On the other, there is more space for entrepreneurship, and Havana is full of energy and promise today.

The island’s emerging private sector is growing—and along with it, start-up investment costs. Three years ago, Yamina Vicente opened her events planning firm, Decorazón, with a mere $500 in cash. Today she estimates she would need $5,000 to compete. New upscale restaurants are opening: Mery Cabrera returned from Ecuador to invest her savings in Café Presidente, a sleek bistro located on the busy Avenue of the Presidents. And lively bars at establishments like 304 O’Reilly feature bright mixologists doing brisk business.

Photo credit: Richard Feinberg.

Havana’s hotels are fully booked through the current high season. The overflow of tourists is welcome news for the thousands of bed-and-breakfasts flowering throughout the city (many of which are now networked through AirBnB). While most bed-and-breakfasts used to be one or two rooms rented out of people’s homes, Cubans today are renovating entire buildings to rent out. These are the green shoots of what will become boutique hotels, and Cubans are quitting their low-paying jobs in the public sector to become managers of their family’s rental offerings.

Another new sign: real estate agencies! Most Cubans own their own homes—really own them, mortgage-free. But only recently did President Raúl Castro authorize the sales of homes, suddenly giving Cubans a valuable financial asset. Many sell them to get cash to open a new business. Others, to immigrate to Miami.

WiFi hot spots are also growing in number. Rejecting an offer from Google to provide Internet access to the entire island, the Cuban government instead set up some 700 public access locations. This includes 65 WiFi hot spots in parks, hotels, or major thoroughfares, where mostly young Cubans gather to message friends or chat with relatives overseas.

Economic swings

2015 was a good year for the Cuban economy, relatively speaking. Growth rose from the disappointing 2 percent in recent years to (by official measures) 4 percent. The Brazilian joint venture cigarette company, Brascuba, reported a 17 percent jump in sales, and announced a new $120 million investment in the Mariel Economic Development Zone. Shoppers crowded state-run malls over the holiday season, too. 

Photo credit: Richard Feinberg.

Consumers still report chronic shortages in many commodities, ranging from beer to soap, and complain of inflation in food prices. Alarmed by the chronic crisis of low productivity in agriculture, the government announced tax breaks for farmers in 2016. The government is already forecasting a slower growth rate for 2016, attributed to lower commodity prices and a faltering Venezuelan economy. It’s likely to fall back to the average 2 percent rate that has characterized the past decade.

Pick up the pace

Cuban officials are looking forward to the 7th Conference of the Cuban Communist Party (CCP) in mid-April. There is little public discussion of the agenda, however. Potential initiatives include a new electoral law permitting direct election of members of the national assembly (who are currently chosen indirectly by regional assemblies or by CCP-related mass organizations); a timetable for unification of the currency (Cubans today must deal with two forms of money); some measures to empower provincial governments; and the development of a more coherent, forward-looking economic development strategy.

[T]here are now two brain drains: an internal brain drain, as government officials abandon the public sector for higher incomes in the growing private sector; and emigration overseas.

But for many younger Cubans, the pace of change is way too slow. The talk of the town remains the exit option. Converse with any well-educated millennial and they’ll tell you that half or more of their classmates are now living abroad. Indeed, there are now two brain drains: an internal brain drain, as government officials abandon the public sector for higher incomes in the growing private sector; and emigration overseas to the United States, but also to Spain, Canada, Mexico.

The challenge for the governing CCP is to give young people hope in the future. The White House has signaled that President Obama may visit Cuba this year. Such a visit by Obama—who is immensely popular on the island—could help. But the main task is essentially a Cuban one.

Richard Feinberg’s forthcoming book, “Open for Business: Building the New Cuban Economy,” will be published by Brookings Press later this year.