China’s ratcheting up their state secrets laws. That’s never a good sign. NYT article. There is an amusingly awful definition of state secrets being promulgated: they are “information that, if disclosed, would damage China’s security or interests in political, economic, defense and other realms.” Presumably the story that the Chinese had 14 year olds on their […]
Countries with divided democratic government that have to pay off constituencies to hold together coalitions often run up government debt and put at risk not only sovereign creditworthiness, but also economic performance. I have in mind Italy, Japan, Israel and Brazil. India, alas, is the posterchild of this phenomenon. By contrast, governments which alternate between parties or at […]
In some countries, political will is not enough. This is because they don’t have the institutions to implement whatever anti-corruption political will there might be. Fighting corruption requires investigations, arrests, prosecutions, and incarceration in a prison with guards that can’t be paid off. Some countries lack some or all of these things. Guatemala poses an […]
As the Congo is so often thrust into the spotlight, we find ourselves immersed in talks of rape and conflict, but one key that is ofter missing in dialog is that of education. “We cannot talk of peace, economic development and a future for the Democratic Republic of Congo if the government and donors do […]
I’ve received a few requests recently for my data sources, so I thought I’d highlight Eric Green’s latest post at Change.org. Here, he has compiled an excellent list of data sources for global health. In particular, he highlights the open data initiative at the World Bank, which was launched last Tuesday, compiling more than 2,000 […]
Speculation over the likely fraudulent results of Sudan’s April 11-15 elections continues, with a particular focus on what the re-election of incumbent President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir will mean for southern Sudan’s upcoming referendum on independence. Sudan’s 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that mandated these elections also includes the condition that in January 2011, southern Sudan […]
Finally! See this from Juliet Eilperin at the WaPo and this from the “Boston Globe.” Plus, here’s the press release from the Department of the Interior. Interior Secretary Salazar said: “With this decision we are beginning a new direction in our Nation’s energy future, ushering in America’s first offshore wind energy facility and opening a […]
I’ve been pondering the similarities between the Arizona immigration law and the new Israeli policy of forcefully removing from the West Bank Palestinians who lack appropriate documentation. Apparently, so has Juan Cole. He wrote earlier this week: The Israeli law resembles the one recently enacted in Arizona in one respect. Recently-arrived European Jews are demanding […]
The Washington Diplomat gets D.C.-based foreign diplomats to talk in a surprising amount of detail about how Facebook and Twitter fit into their public diplomacy strategies here.
Foreign Policy Magazine offers two unique views of global food in its latest issue. In a feature called “The List”, FP‘s Annie Lowrey highlights five global “Food Fights” or disputes linked to food production, trade, safety or national pride. In a photo essay titled, “An Ode to Farming”, FP presents 27 “images of agriculture [from] […]
Yesterday I participated in a conference on Turkish foreign policy held at the State University of New York’s Levin Institute for International Relations and Commerce in New York City. The event was co-sponsored by SUNY’s Office of International Programs (the office that also operates the innovative and wildly successful dual diploma program between SUNY and […]
My head is spinning from the latest developments in the long-running soap opera of climate and energy legislation in the US Senate. Plus, I am finally reading How Democratic Is the American Constitution? and I’m even more depressed now than when I wrote this post, SPQR. Basically, we can never be a real democracy – you […]
An article in today’s New York Times describes the electricity woes of Pakistanis, who are becoming increasingly frustrated with frequent power outages and restrictive new energy-saving measures. Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, has assured Pakistan that the United States “will continue to [put more emphasis on energy issues] up to absolute limits […]
Government debt is mounting all across the developed world. While Emerging Market countries such as China have low debt levels, and Brazil and India are beginning to grow out of their debts, the next crisis (or even the second half of this one) could be a fiscal shock — perhaps even a government bond default — in the industrialized […]
On April 15, 2010 Oxfam released a new report, “Now, The World Is Without Me”: An investigation of sexual violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The report, which was commissioned by Oxfam and conducted by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, is an extensive study of rape victims in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The […]