On April 17, Indonesians will go to the polls to vote in the country’s fifth general election since 1998 when their country’s transition to democratic rule began. Once again, the upcoming election will be a match-up between the two men who ran against each other five years ago: incumbent President Joko Widodo (commonly called Jokowi)…

At a conference in Marrakech, Morocco this week, 164 of the 193 members of the United Nations adopted the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration. Negotiations to create the ambitious agreement began two years ago, but the Trump Administration withdrew at the end of 2017, declaring that the Compact would “undermine the sovereign…

Much has been written about de-industrialization; the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States as imports from and other low-income countries rise. But “de-institutionalization” may be more disruptive in the long term. While manufacturing jobs in the U.S. might return as wages rise in low-income countries, technologies like 3-D printing advance, and trade barriers…

Unemployment is a growing challenge around the world, though it is not a full-blown crisis yet. However, when the crisis comes, it is likely to erupt among urban youth. While heading off such a calamity will not be easy, the global benefits of doing so would be great. As productive and socially responsible adults, the…

For people in the West, Myanmar appears to be a mess. Yet, for many in Asia, it still beckons as a land of opportunity. Western media remain focused on the ethnic cleansing operation against the Muslim Rohingya community launched by the government's armed forces in the wake of sporadic attacks from late 2015 by a…

During my visit to Myanmar in mid-November, the latest of many since 2010, I witnessed new layers of complexity in the historical and political forces contributing to the Rohingya crisis. While the plight of the Rohingya population has galvanized international opinion, it has reinforced nationalist sentiment within a large segment of the Myanmar population and…

Lex Rieffel, nonresident senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program, and Jonathan Stromseth, senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program, discuss the humanitarian crisis facing the Rohingya in Myanmar, also known as Burma. Rieffel and Stromseth provide background on the Rohingya, the events occurring in Southeast Asia, and recommend policy solutions to ease…

Reporters on the scene are saying that 300,000 or more members of the Rohingya community (of Muslim faith) in Buddhist-majority Myanmar have fled across the border into Muslim-majority Bangladesh in the past two weeks. The refugees have been describing to reporters a litany of human rights abuses: homes burned, women raped, men beheaded, and more. …

President Obama's announcement last month that earlier this year a “U.S. counterterrorism operation” had killed two hostages, including an American citizen, has become a fresh occasion for questioning the rationales for continuing attacks from unmanned aerial vehicles aimed at presumed, suspected, or even confirmed terrorists. This questioning is desirable, although not mainly for hostage-related reasons…

A strong Manichean streak runs through American perceptions of the outside world. That streak involves a habit of seeing all conflict and instability in binomial terms, a presumption that one of the perceived two sides is good and the other bad, and an urge to weigh in on the presumptively good side. The influence that…

A dominant reaction to the framework agreement on Iran's nuclear program, based especially on the State Department's fact sheet about the deal, is that it is remarkably detailed and thorough. The lead article in the New York Times described the agreement as “surprisingly specific and comprehensive.” Immediate reaction in much of the Israeli press was…

Much of the latest discourse about a prospective nuclear agreement with Iran—with commentary on whether future U.S. presidents could renege on an agreement, on whether an agreement would be binding or non-binding, and so forth—reflects misconceptions on why nations observe international agreements to which they are party, and misconceptions even of the very nature of…

Re-arranging bureaucracies has long been a favorite Washington way of pretending to make improvements. It is a handy recourse in the absence of good ideas to make real improvement. Revising a wiring diagram is the sort of change that can be made visible to the outside world. It does not require reaching consensus about significant…

The current U.S. administration has wrapped up U.S. involvement in a mistaken war in Iraq (albeit on a schedule set by the previous administration, and with subsequent reintroduction of some U.S. military personnel into Iraq), has wound down U.S. involvement in a war in Afghanistan that had metamorphosed from a counterterrorist operation into a nation-building…

The draft that the Obama administration submitted to Congress to authorize the use of military force against ISIS seems to be pleasing almost no one, and that was bound to be. Some of the strongest early criticism is coming from doves, including people who support Mr. Obama on most other issues, but hawks are complaining…

The nation's current attempt at catharsis through a gargantuan report prepared by the Democratic staff of a Senate committee exhibits some familiar patterns. Most of them involve treating a government agency as if it were Dorian Gray's portrait, which can take on all the hideous marks of our own transgressions while we present ourselves as…

Americans, following a long tradition of finding monsters overseas to destroy, are now focusing their attention and their energy on a relatively new one: the group variously known as ISIS or ISIL or the Islamic State. The group has become a major disruptive factor in the already disrupted internal affairs of Iraq and Syria, and…

The Obama administration's proposal to spend $500 million on training and equipping “appropriately vetted elements of the moderate Syrian armed opposition” leaves unanswered some of the same questions that always have surrounded proposals to give lethal aid to Syrian rebels. Some of those questions involve the challenges in determining who qualifies as a “moderate.” “Vetting”…

In 2004 and 2005, American homebuilders created over two million new housing units per year, including mobile homes. Then housing construction plummeted to under 600,000 new units per year, a record fall of 70 percent, and home prices fell drastically too.Housing will not help lead the U.S. economy out of this recession, as it has…

During the past two decades, most large American cities have lost population, yet some have continued to grow. Does this trend foreshadow the “death” of our largest cities? Or is urban decline a temporary phenomenon likely to be reversed by high energy costs? This ambitious book tackles these questions by analyzing the nature and extent…

Rental housing is increasingly recognized as a vital housing option in the United States. Government policies and programs continue to grapple with problematic issues, however, including affordability, distressed urban neighborhoods, concentrated poverty, substandard housing stock, and the unmet needs of the disabled, the elderly, and the homeless. In R evisiting Rental Housing, leading housing researchers…

U.S. stock markets are gyrating on news of an apparent credit crunch generated by defaults among subprime home mortgage loans. Such frenzy has spurred Wall Street to cry capital crisis. However, there is no shortage of capital – only a shortage of confidence in some of the instruments Wall Street has invented. Much financial capital…

The Bush Administration recently launched a new "National Strategy to Reduce Congestion on America's Transportation Network." This new policy deals with both air and ground travel, but focuses mainly on highway traffic congestion. But does this strategy show an understanding of what really causes traffic congestion and what might be done effectively in response?According to…

"'Summertime, and the drivin' is easy" ought to be the theme song for drivers in our nation's capital region. Traffic is lighter here in the summer for three reasons: School buses are off the roads, Congress is often out of session and many Washingtonians are on vacation. Yet summer is also a time when road…

Congested roads waste commuters' time, cost them money, and degrade the environment. Most Americans agree that traffic congestion is the major problem in their communities—and it only seems to be getting worse. In this revised and expanded edition of his landmark work Stuck in Traffic, Anthony Downs examines the benefits and costs of various anticongestion…

Advocates of growth management and smart growth often propose policies that raise housing prices, thereby making housing less affordable to many households trying to buy or rent homes. Such policies include urban growth boundaries, zoning restrictions on multi-family housing, utility district lines, building permit caps, and even construction moratoria. Does this mean there is an…

Traffic congestion is essentially a regional phenomenon requiring regional approaches to mitigate its impacts. This brief examines the governance options necessary to act regionally and the conditions required to implement such policies. Currently, the reauthorization of the federal transportation spending bill (TEA-21) presents a unique opportunity to build on previous reforms and increase the decision-making…

Contents Introduction The Real Problem Coping With the Mobility Problem The Principle of Triple Convergence Triple Convergence and Other Proposals How Population Growth Can Swamp Transportation Capacity Low-Density Settlements Possible Improvements Conclusion Rising traffic congestion is an inescapable condition in large and growing metropolitan areas across the world, from Los Angeles to Tokyo, from Cairo…

American markets, once a model of competition for the world, have experienced a growing concentration of economic power in a few large corporations. The rise of corporate economic—and political—power has emerged as one of the most important issues of our time. It is destined to be a key point of debate in the coming U.S.…

By the end of 2019, more people will have cast a vote than ever before. Nearly 2 billion voters in 50 countries around the world will have headed to the polls to elect their leaders. At the same time, data show that citizens' trust in governments is weak and political polarization is growing almost everywhere.…

The ambitious 15-year agenda known as the Sustainable Development Goals, adopted in 2015 by all members of the United Nations, contains a pledge that “no one will be left behind.” This book aims to translate that bold global commitment into an action-oriented mindset, focused on supporting specific people in specific places who are facing specific…

Pouring several colors of paint into a single bucket produces a gray pool of muck, not a shiny rainbow. Similarly, when it comes to discussions of financing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), jumbling too many issues into the same debate leads to policy muddiness rather than practical breakthroughs. For example, the common “billions to trillions”…

A central theme of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) is a pledge “that no one will be left behind.” Since the establishment of the SDGs in 2015, the importance of this commitment has only grown in political resonance throughout all parts of the globe. Yet, to drive meaningful results, the mantra needs to be matched…

When it comes to economic development, positive change is typically gradual and only noticeable over long periods of time; by contrast negative developments—economic crises—are often rapid and spectacular. This creates a biased narrative that focuses on negative news, while positive trends go unnoticed because they are less dramatic. In this blog, amid an atmosphere of…

Since at least Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations in 1776, economists have asked why certain places grow, prosper, and achieve a higher standard of living compared to other places. Ever since growth started to accelerate following the industrial revolution, it has been characterized by, above all, unevenness across places within countries. Appalachia, the Italian “Mezzogiorno,”…

World leaders are gathering in New York this week to attend the first major stocktaking summit on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). When the SDGs were agreed by all countries in 2015, they were intended to help countries accelerate their transition to more sustainable paths by 2030, with sustainability understood to include economic, environmental, and…

This is the second in a two-part series of episodes from the Brookings-Blum Roundtable, an annual forum for global leaders, entrepreneurs, and policy practitioners to discuss innovative ideas and to pursue initiatives to alleviate global poverty. In this episode, Merrell Tuck-Primdahl, director of communications for the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings, speaks with…

Vacant positions and high turnover across the federal bureaucracy have been a perpetual problem since President Trump was sworn into office. Upper-level Trump administration officials (“the A Team”) have experienced a turnover rate of 85 percent — much higher than any other administration in the past 40 years. The struggle to recruit and retain qualified…

The extraordinary authority of the U.S. presidency has no parallel in the democratic world. Today that authority resides in the hands of one man, Donald J. Trump. But rarely, if ever, has the nature of a president clashed more profoundly with the nature of the office. From the moment of his inauguration, Trump has challenged…