The 2016 presidential election confronts the U.S. electorate with political choices more fundamental than any since 1964 and possibly since 1932. That statement may strike some as hyperbolic, but the policy differences between the two major parties and the positions of candidates vying for their presidential nominations support this claim.

A victorious Republican candidate would take office backed by a Republican-controlled Congress, possibly with heightened majorities and with the means to deliver on campaign promises. On the other hand, the coattails of a successful Democratic candidate might bring more Democrats to Congress, but that president would almost certainly have to work with a Republican House and, quite possibly, a still Republican Senate. The political wars would continue, but even a president engaged in continuous political trench warfare has the power to get a lot done.

Candidates always promise more than they can deliver and often deliver different policies from those they have promised. Every recent president has been buffeted by external events unanticipated when he took office. But this year, more than in half a century or more, the two parties offer a choice, not an echo. Here is a partial and selective list of key issues to illustrate what is at stake.

The Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare or the ACA, passed both houses of Congress with not a single Republican vote. The five years since enactment of the ACA have not dampened Republican opposition.

The persistence and strength of opposition to the ACA is quite unlike post-enactment reactions to the Social Security Act of 1935 or the 1965 amendments that created Medicare. Both earlier programs were hotly debated and controversial. But a majority of both parties voted for the Social Security Act. A majority of House Republicans and a sizeable minority of Senate Republicans supported Medicare. In both cases, opponents not only became reconciled to the new laws but eventually participated in improving and extending them. Republican members of Congress overwhelmingly supported, and a Republican president endorsed, adding Disability Insurance to the Social Security Act.  In 2003, a Republican president proposed and fought for the addition of a drug benefit to Medicare.

The current situation bears no resemblance to those two situations. Five years after enactment of Obamacare, in contrast, every major candidate for the Republican presidential nomination has called for its repeal and replacement. So have the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and Majority Leader in the Senate.  

Just what 'repeal and replace' might look like under a GOP president remains unclear as ACA critics have not agreed on an alternative. Some plans would do away with some of the elements of Obamacare and scale back others. Some proposals would repeal the mandate that people carry insurance, the bar on 'medical underwriting' (a once-routine practice under which insurers vary premiums based on expected use of medical care), or the requirement that insurers sell plans to all potential customers. Other proposals would retain tax credits to help make insurance affordable but reduce their size, or would end rules specifying what 'adequate' insurance plans must cover.

Repeal is hard to imagine if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2016. Even if repeal legislation could overcome a Senate filibuster, a Democratic president would likely veto it and an override would be improbable. 

But a compromise with horse-trading, once routine, might once again become possible. A Democratic president might agree to Republican-sponsored changes to the ACA, such as dropping the requirement that employers of 50 or more workers offer insurance to their employees, if Republicans agreed to changes in the ACA that supporters seek, such as the extension of tax credits to families now barred from them because one member has access to very costly employer-sponsored insurance.

In sum, the 2016 election will determine the future of the most far-reaching social insurance legislation in half a century.

Social Security faces a projected long-term gap between what it takes in and what it is scheduled to pay out. Every major Republican candidate has called for cutting benefits below those promised under current law. None has suggested any increase in payroll tax rates. Each Democratic candidate has proposed raising both revenues and benefits. Within those broad outlines, the specific proposals differ.

Most Republican candidates would cut benefits across the board or selectively for high earners. For example, Senator Ted Cruz proposes to link benefits to prices rather than wages, a switch that would reduce Social Security benefits relative to current law by steadily larger amounts: an estimated 29 percent by 2065 and 46 percent by 2090. He would allow younger workers to shift payroll taxes to private accounts. Donald Trump has proposed no cuts in Social Security because, he says, proposing cuts is inconsistent with winning elections and because meeting current statutory commitments is 'honoring a deal.' Trump also favors letting people invest part of their payroll taxes in private securities. He has not explained how he would make up the funding gap that would result if current benefits are honored but revenues to support them are reduced. Senator Marco Rubio has endorsed general benefit cuts, but he has also proposed to increase the minimum benefit. Three Republican candidates have proposed ending payroll taxes for older workers, a step that would add to the projected funding gap.

Democratic candidates, in contrast, would raise benefits, across-the-board or for selected groups—care givers or survivors. They would switch the price index used to adjust benefits for inflation to one that is tailored to consumption of the elderly and that analysts believe would raise benefits more rapidly than the index now in use. All would raise the ceiling on earnings subject to the payroll tax. Two would broaden the payroll tax base.

As these examples indicate, the two parties have quite different visions for Social Security. Major changes, such as those envisioned by some Republican candidates, are not easily realized, however. Before he became president, Ronald Reagan in numerous speeches called for restructuring Social Security. Those statements did not stop him from signing a 1983 law that restored financial balance to the very program against which he had inveighed but with few structural changes. George W. Bush sought to partially privatize Social Security, to no avail. Now, however, Social Security faces a funding gap that must eventually be filled. The discipline of Trust Fund financing means that tax increases, benefit cuts, or some combination of the two are inescapable. Action may be delayed beyond the next presidency, as current projections indicate that the Social Security Trust Fund and current revenues can sustain scheduled benefits until the mid 2030s. But that is not what the candidates propose. Voters face a choice, clear and stark, between a Democratic president who would try to maintain or raise benefits and would increase payroll taxes to pay for it, and a Republican president who would seek to cut benefits, oppose tax increases, and might well try to partially privatize Social Security.

On no other issue is the split between the two parties wider or the stakes in their disagreement higher than on measures to deal with global warming. Leading Republican candidates have denied that global warming is occurring (Trump), scorned evidence supporting the existence of global warming as bogus (Cruz), acknowledged that global warming is occurring but not because of human actions (Rubio, Carson), or admitted that it is occurring but dismissed it as not a pressing issue (Fiorina, Christie). Congressional Republicans oppose current Administration initiatives under the Clean Air Act to curb emission of greenhouse gases.

Democratic candidates uniformly agree that global warming is occurring and that it results from human activities. They support measures to lower those emissions by amounts similar to those embraced in the Paris accords of December 2015 as essential to curb the speed and ultimate extent of global warming.

Climate scientists and economists are nearly unanimous that unabated emissions of greenhouse gases pose serious risks of devastating and destabilizing outcomes—that climbing average temperatures could render some parts of the world uninhabitable, that increases in sea levels that will inundate coastal regions inhabited by tens of millions of people, and that storms, droughts, and other climatic events will be more frequent and more destructive. Immediate actions to curb emission of greenhouse gases can reduce these effects. But no actions can entirely avoid them, and delay is costly.  Environmental economists also agree, with little partisan division, that the way to proceed is to harness market forces to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” 

The division between the parties on global warming is not new. In 2009, the House of Representatives narrowly passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act. That law would have capped and gradually lowered greenhouse gas emissions. Two hundred eleven Democrats but only 8 Republicans voted for the bill. The Senate took no action, and the proposal died.

Now Republicans are opposing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, a set of regulations under the Clean Air Act to lower emissions by power plants, which account for 40 percent of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. The Clean Power Plan is a stop-gap measure. It applies only to power plants, not to other sources of emissions, and it is not nationally uniform. These shortcomings reflect the legislative authority on which the plan is based, the Clean Air Act. That law was designed to curb the local problem of air pollution, not the global damage from greenhouse gases. Environmental economists of both parties recognize that a tax or a cap on greenhouse gas emissions would be more effective and less costly than the current regulations, but superior alternatives are now politically unreachable.

Based on their statements, any of the current leading Republican candidates would back away from the recently negotiated Paris climate agreement, scuttle the Clean Power Plan, and resist any tax on greenhouse gas emissions. Any of the Democratic candidates would adhere to the Clean Power Plan and support the Paris climate agreement. One Democratic candidate has embraced a carbon tax. None has called for the extension of the Clean Power Plan to other emission sources, but such policies are consistent with their current statements.

The importance of global policy to curb greenhouse gas emissions is difficult to exaggerate. While the United States acting alone cannot entirely solve the problem, resolute action by the world’s largest economy and second largest greenhouse gas emitter is essential, in concert with other nations, to forestall climate catastrophe.

If the next president serves two terms, as six of the last nine presidents have done, four currently sitting justices will be over age 86 and one over age 90 by the time that presidency ends—provided that they have not died or resigned.

The political views of the president have always shaped presidential choices regarding judicial appointments. As all carry life-time tenure, these appointments influence events long after the president has left office. The political importance of these appointments has always been enormous, but it is even greater now than in the past. One reason is that the jurisprudence of sitting Supreme Court justices now lines up more closely than in the past with that of the party of the president who appointed them. Republican presidents appointed all sitting justices identified as conservative; Democratic presidents appointed all sitting justices identified as liberal. The influence of the president’s politics extends to other judicial appointments as well.

A second reason is that recent judicial decisions have re-opened decisions once regarded as settled. The decision in the first case dealing with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), NFIB v. Sibelius is illustrative.

When the ACA was enacted, few observers doubted the power of the federal government to require people to carry health insurance. That power was based on a long line of decisions, dating back to the 1930s, under the Constitutional clause authorizing the federal government to regulate interstate commerce. In the 1930s, the Supreme Court rejected an older doctrine that had barred such regulations. The earlier doctrine dated from 1905 when the Court overturned a New York law that prohibited bakers from working more than 10 hours a day or 60 hours a week. The Court found in the 14^th Amendment, which prohibits any state from ‘depriving any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law,’ a right to contract previously invisible to jurists which it said the New York law violated. In the early- and mid-1930s, the Court used this doctrine to invalidate some New Deal legislation. Then the Court changed course and authorized a vast range of regulations under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.  It was on this line of cases that supporters of the ACA relied.

Nor did many observers doubt the power of Congress to require states to broaden Medicaid coverage as a condition for remaining in the Medicaid program and receiving federal matching grants to help them pay for required medical services.

To the surprise of most legal scholars, a 5-4 Supreme Court majority ruled in NFIB v. Sibelius that the Commerce Clause did not authorize the individual health insurance mandate. But it decided, also 5 to 4, that tax penalties could be imposed on those who fail to carry insurance. The tax saved the mandate. But the decision also raised questions about federal powers under the Commerce Clause. The Court also ruled that the Constitution barred the federal government from requiring states to expand Medicaid coverage as a condition for remaining in the program. This decision was odd, in that Congress certainly could constitutionally have achieved the same objective by repealing the old Medicaid program and enacting a new Medicaid program with the same rules as those contained in the ACA that states would have been free to join or not.

NFIB v. Sibelius and other cases the Court has recently heard or soon will hear raise questions about what additional attempts to regulate interstate commerce might be ruled unconstitutional and about what limits the Court might impose on Congress’s power to require states to implement legislated rules as a condition of receiving federal financial aid. The Court has also heard, or soon will hear, a series of cases of fundamental importance regarding campaign financing, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, abortion rights, the death penalty, the delegation of powers to federal regulatory agencies, voting rights, and rules under which people can seek redress in the courts for violation of their rights.

Throughout U.S. history, the American people have granted nine appointed judges the power to decide whether the actions taken by elected legislators are or are not consistent with a constitution written more than two centuries ago. As a practical matter, the Court could not maintain this sway if it deviated too far from public opinion. But the boundaries within which the Court has substantially unfettered discretion are wide, and within those limits the Supreme Court can profoundly limit or redirect the scope of legislative authority. The Supreme Court’s switch in the 1930s from doctrines under which much of the New Deal was found to be unconstitutional to other doctrines under which it was constitutional illustrates the Court’s sensitivity to public opinion and the profound influence of its decisions.

The bottom line is that the next president will likely appoint enough Supreme Court justices and other judges to shape the character of the Supreme Court and of lower courts with ramifications both broad and enduring on important aspects of every person’s life.

***

The next president will preside over critical decisions relating to health care policy, Social Security, and environmental policy, and will shape the character of the Supreme Court for the next generation. Profound differences distinguish the two major parties on these and many other issues. A recent survey of members of the House of Representatives found that on a scale of ‘liberal to conservative’ the most conservative Democrat was more liberal than the least conservative Republican. Whatever their source, these divisions are real.  The examples cited here are sufficient to show that the 2016 election richly merits the overworked term 'watershed'—it will be the most consequential presidential election in a very long time.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI, or “the Innovation Center”) recently announced an initiative called Comprehensive Primary Care Plus (CPC+). It evolved from the Comprehensive Primary Care (CPC) initiative, which began in 2012 and runs through the end of this year. Both initiatives are designed to promote and support primary care physicians in organizing their practices to deliver comprehensive primary care services. Comprehensive Primary Care Plus has some very promising components, but also misses some compelling opportunities to further advance payment for primary care services.

The earlier initiative, CPC, paid qualified primary care practices a monthly fee per Medicare beneficiary to support practices in making changes in the way they deliver care, centered on five comprehensive primary care functions: (1) access and continuity; (2) care management; (3) comprehensiveness and coordination; (4) patient and caregiver engagement; and, (5) planned care and population health. For all other care, regular fee-for-service (FFS) payment continued. The initiative was limited to seven regions where CMMI could reach agreements with key private insurers and the Medicaid program to pursue a parallel approach. The evaluation funded by CMMI found quality improvements and expenditure reductions, but savings did not cover the extra payments to practices.

Comprehensive Primary Care Plus uses the same strategy of conducting the experiment in regions where key payers are pursuing parallel efforts. In these regions, qualifying primary care practices can choose one of two tracks. Track 1 is very similar to CPC. The monthly care management fee per beneficiary remains the same, but an extra $2.50 is paid in advance, subject to refund to the government if a practice does not meet quality and utilization performance thresholds.

The Promise Of CPC+

Track 2, the more interesting part of the initiative, is for practices that are already capable of carrying out the primary care functions and are ready to increase their comprehensiveness. In addition to a higher monthly care management fee ($28), practices receive Comprehensive Primary Care Payments. These include a portion of the expected reimbursements for Evaluation and Management services, paid in advance, and reduced regular fee-for-service payments. Track 2 also includes larger rewards than does Track 1 for meeting performance thresholds.

The combination of larger per beneficiary monthly payments and lower payments for services is the most important part of the initiative. By blending capitation (monthly payments not tied to service volume) and FFS, this approach might achieve the best of both worlds.

Even when FFS payment rates are calibrated correctly (discussed below), the rates are pegged to the average costs across practices. But since a large part of practice cost is fixed, it means that the marginal cost of providing additional services is lower than the average cost, leading to incentives to increase volume under FFS. The lower payments reduce or eliminate these incentives. Fixed costs, which must also be covered, are addressed through the Comprehensive Primary Care Payments. By involving multiple payers, practices are put in a better position to pursue these changes.

An advantage of any program that increases payments to primary care practices is that it can partially compensate for a flaw in the relative value scale behind the Medicare physician fee schedule. This flaw leads to underpayment for primary care services. Although the initial relative value scale implemented in 1992 led to substantial redistribution in favor of evaluation and management services and to physicians who provide the bulk of them, a flawed update process has eroded these gains over the years to a substantial degree.

In response to legislation, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are working correct these problems, but progress is likely to come slowly. Higher payments for primary care practices through the CPC+ can help slow the degree to which physicians are leaving primary care until more fundamental fixes are made to the fee schedule. Indeed, years of interviews with private insurance executives have convinced us that concern about loss of the primary care physician workforce has been a key motivation for offering higher payment to primary care physicians in practices certified as patient centered medical homes.

Two Downsides

But there are two downsides to the CPC+.

One concerns the lack of incentives for primary care physicians to take steps to reduce costs for services beyond those delivered by their practices. These include referring their patients to efficient specialists and hospitals, as well as limiting hospital admissions. There are rewards in CPC+ for lower overall utilization by attributed beneficiaries and higher quality, but they are very small.

We had hoped that CMMI might have been inspired by the promising initiatives of CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield and the Arkansas Health Care Improvement initiative, which includes the Arkansas Medicaid program and Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield. Under those programs, primary care physicians are offered substantial bonuses for keeping spending for all services under trend for their panel of patients; there is no downside risk, which is understandable given the small percentage of spending accounted for by primary care. The private and public payers also support the primary care practices with care managers and with data on all of the services used by their patients and on the efficiency of providers they might refer to. These programs appear to be popular with physicians and have had promising early results.

The second downside concerns the inability of physicians participating in CPC+ to participate in accountable care organizations (ACOs). One of CMMI’s challenges in pursuing a wide variety of payment innovations is apportioning responsibility across the programs for beneficiaries who are attributed to multiple payment reforms. As an example, if a beneficiary attributed to an ACO has a knee replacement under one of Medicare’s a bundled payment initiatives, to avoid overpayment of shared savings, gains or losses are credited to the providers involved in the bundled payment and not to the ACO. As a result, ACOs are no longer rewarded for using certain tools to address overall spending, such as steering attributed beneficiaries to efficient providers for an episode of care or encouraging primary care physicians to increase the comprehensiveness of the care they deliver.

Keeping the physician participants in CPC+ out of ACOs altogether seems to be another step to undermine the potential of ACOs in favor of other payment approaches. This is not wise. The Innovation Center has appropriately not established a priority ranking for its various initiatives, but some of its actions have implicitly put ACOs at the bottom of the rankings. Recently, Mostashari, Kocher, and McClellan proposed addressing this issue by adding a CPC+ACO option to this initiative.

In an update to its FAQ published May 27, 2016 (after out blog was put into final form), CMMI eased its restriction somewhat by allowing up to 1,500 of the 5000 practices expected to participate in CPC+ to also participate in Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) ACOs. But the prohibition continues to apply to Next Gen ACOs, the model that has created the most enthusiasm in the field. If demand for these positions in MSSP ACOs exceeds 1,500, a lottery will be held. This change is welcome but does not really address the issue of disadvantaging ACOs in situations where a beneficiary is attributed to two or more payment reform models. CMMI is sending a signal that CPC+, notwithstanding its lack of incentives concerning spending outside of primary care, is a powerful enough reform that diverting practices away from ACOs is not a problem. ACOs are completely dependent on primary care physician membership to function, meaning that any physician practices beyond 1,500 that enroll in CPC+ will reduce the size and the impact of the ACO program. CMMI has never published a priority ranking of reform models, but its actions keep indicating that ACOs are at the bottom.

The Innovation Center should be lauded for continuing to support improved payment models for primary care. Its blending of substantial monthly payments with lower payments per service is promising. But the highest potential rewards come from broadening primary care physicians’ incentives to include the cost and quality of services by other providers. CMMI should pursue this approach.

Editor's note: This piece originally appeared in Health Affairs Blog.

Event Information

An American Enterprise Institute-Brookings/USC Schaeffer Initiative Event
 

For most of the last five decades, the most-discussed finding by the Medicare trustees has been the insolvency date, when Medicare’s trust fund would no longer be able to pay all of the program’s costs. Last year’s report projected that the hospital insurance trust fund would be depleted by 2030 – just 14 years from now. The report also predicted a more immediate and controversial event: the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), famously nicknamed “death panels,” would be required to submit proposals to reduce Medicare spending in 2018, with the reductions taking place in 2019. Do we remain on this path to automatic Medicare cuts next year?

The American Enterprise Institute and the Schaeffer Initiative for Innovation in Health Policy, a collaboration between the USC Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics and the Brookings Institution, hosted a discussion of the new 2016 trustees report on June 23. Medicare’s Chief Actuary Paul Spitalnic summarized the key findings followed by a panel of experts who discussed the potential consequences of the report for policy actions that might be taken to improve the program’s fiscal condition. You can join the conversation at #MedicareReport.

Video

• Introduction and keynote address
• Panel discussion

Audio

• The 2016 Medicare Trustees Report: One year closer to IPAB cuts?

Event Materials

• AEI TR16 final
• 20160623_medicaretrusteesreport_transcript

Event Information

President Barack Obama took office in early 2009 with an ambitious foreign policy agenda for the Americas. In April of that year, his keynote remarks at the fifth Summit of the Americas emphasized the United States’ new course of seeking equal partnership and collaboration in the region.

On June 29, the Latin America Initiative at Brookings and the Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF) brought together experts from the region to discuss the significance of this renewed hemispheric partnership and featured a keynote address from Arturo Valenzuela, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs. Panelists included: Craig Kelly, principal deputy assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the U.S. Department of State; Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue; Luis Enrique Berrizbeitia, executive vice-president of the Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF); and Kevin Casas-Zamora, senior fellow at Brookings. They took a closer look at the idea of partnership in the region, reviewed the progress that has been made, explored opportunities that exist for the future and discussed the realities of developing collaborative policies in the region across a wide range of topics, including energy and climate change. The discussion also revisited the policy recommendations made by Brookings‘s Partnership for the Americas Commission.

Video

• A Confident and Strong Latin America
• Adaptable Latin America Policy
• Four Pillars of U.S. Strategy
• Need a Strong U.S. Relationship with Brazil

Audio

• Latin America and the Obama Administration: A New Partnership?

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20100629_americas_partnership

Introduction

President Obama has proposed expanding the Peace Corps and building a global network of volunteers, “so that Americans work side-by-side with volunteers from other countries.” Achieving this goal will require building on the success of the Peace Corps with a new combination of public and private initiatives designed to expand opportunities for volunteers to address critical global problems such as poverty, contagious diseases, climate change, and conflict.

We examine alternative service models, both domestic and foreign, and offer recommendations to the Obama Administration for harnessing the energy and skills of Americans eager to engage in volunteer work in foreign countries as part of a multilateral mobilization effort and smart power diplomacy.

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President Obama’s speech at West Point, outlining the way forward on Afghanistan and Pakistan, was followed three days later by two important events underscoring the president’s view that “our security and leadership does not come solely from the strength of our arms.” He conveyed a new smart power view of security that “derives from our people [including] … Peace Corps volunteers who spread hope abroad, and from the men and women in uniform who are part of an unbroken line of sacrifice …”

On December 4, General Anthony Zinni, USMC (Ret.), former commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), addressed an audience celebrating the tenth anniversary of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy (ICRD). He pointedly noted that hard power alone cannot fight terrorism; economic and social factors of terrorist populations should be addressed. He further noted that empowering faith-based approaches “is a tremendous asset to inform the ways we mediate and find common ground … to figure out what the other side of smart power means.”

Recognizing that educational reform is critical, ICRD to date has empowered about 2,300 Pakistani madrassas administrators and teachers with enhanced pedagogical skills promoting critical thinking among students, along with conflict resolution through interfaith understanding. Evidence of success is mounting as the program fosters local ownership reasserting Islam’s fundamental teachings of peace and historical contributions to the sciences and institutions of higher learning—a rich history that was misappropriated by extremists who took over a significant number of madrassas using rote learning laced with messages of hate.

Earlier the same day, President Obama’s newly minted Peace Corps Director Aaron Williams, himself a former Dominican Republic Peace Corps volunteer, received high marks from former Senator Harris Wofford—a JFK-era architect of the Peace Corps—and hundreds of NGOs and volunteer leaders at the “International Volunteer Day Symposium.”

Director Williams has embraced a new “global service 2.0” style leadership committed to championing Peace Corps volunteers alongside a growing corps of NGO, faith-based, new social media and corporate service initiatives. Wofford, who co-chairs the Building Bridges Coalition team with former White House Freedom Corps Director John Bridgeland, spoke about the present moment as a time to “crack the atom of citizen people power through service.”

The notion of a “smart power surge” through accelerated deployment of people power through international service, interfaith engagement, and citizen diplomacy should be quickly marshaled at a heightened level to augment the commander-in-chief’s hard power projection strategies outlined at West Point. 

According to successive Terror Free Tomorrow polling, such strategies of service and humanitarian engagement by the United States have been achieving sustainable results in reducing support for terrorism following the tsunami and other disasters from Indonesia to Pakistan and Bangladesh. Lawmakers should take note of these findings, along with the evidence-based success of Johnston’s ICRD Madrassas project (which, inexplicably, has not received federal support to date, in spite of its evidence of marked success in giving Pakistani children and religious figures critical tools that are urgently need to be scaled up across the country to wage peace through enlightened madrassas education and interfaith tolerance).

A growing coalition of now over 400 national organizations is amassing a “Service World” platform for 2010. They have taken a page out of the incredibly successful Service Nation platform, which Barack Obama and John McCain both endorsed, creating a “quantum leap” in domestic service through fast track passage of the Kennedy Serve America Act signed into law by the president last spring. Organizers hope to repeat this quantum leap on the international level through a “Sargent Shriver Serve the World Act,” and through private-sector partnerships and administration initiatives adapting social innovation to empower service corps tackling issues like malaria, clean water, education and peace.  

With the ICRD Pakistan success, a rebounding Peace Corps and the Building Bridges Coalition’s rapid growth of cross-cultural solutions being evaluated by Washington University, the pathway to “the other side of smart power” through service, understanding and acceptance, is being vividly opened.

A Brookings Global Views paper further outlines how multilateral collaboration can be leveraged with other nations in this emerging “global force for good.” It is a good time to reflect on all this as we approach the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps next year in Ann Arbor, where on October 14, 1960 President John F. Kennedy inspired students to mount a new global service.  

President Obama’s call to global engagement in Cairo in June, which ignited the announcement of Service World later that same morning, now demands a response from every citizen who dares to live up to JFK’s exhortation to “ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country,” along with our young men and women preparing for engagement at West Point.  

Over 200 delegates from 50 countries gather this week in Washington for the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship. The summit hosts entrepreneurs to teach and learn innovative ways to strengthen professional and social relationships between the U.S. and the Islamic world. During his first major address to the Muslim world, delivered in Cairo last June, President Obama pledged to increase engagement through entrepreneurship, exchange programs and multilateral service initiatives.

Volunteer-led development initiatives have begun to act on Obama’s call for citizen diplomacy and private-sector engagement. The Initiative on International Volunteering and Service at Brookings and the Building Bridges Coalition have fueled an emerging legislative initiative that calls for increasing the role of international volunteers in the U.S. diplomatic agenda and development programs. This Service World Initiative has drawn from Brookings research outlining options to advance the president’s call for multilateral service.

As seen last year, for the first time in history, the majority of the world’s population lived in urban areas. And this trend is accelerating at an unprecedented rate. By 2050, urban dwellers are expected to make up about 70 percent of Earth’s total population. These informed 21st century urban citizens demand 24-7 connectivity, smart electric grids, efficient transportation networks, safe food and water, and transparent social services. All these demands place a huge strain on existing city infrastructures and the global environment. Most affected by this rapid urban boom, are the emerging markets. So how do we tackle this development dilemma?

One way is for highly-skilled experts, from a range of countries, to volunteer their time in emerging markets to help improve economic development, government services and stimulate job growth. This type of pro-bono program has many benefits. It benefits the urban areas in these emerging markets by leveraging intelligence, connecting systems and providing near-term impact on critical issues such as transportation, water, food safety, education and healthcare. It benefits the expert volunteers by fostering their teamwork skills, providing a cultural learning experience, and broadening their expertise in emerging markets.

IBM, which chairs the Building Bridges Coalition’s corporate sector, hosts a range of volunteer-led global entrepreneurship programs that improve economic stability for small- and medium-sized businesses, increase technology in emerging markets and open doors for the next generation of business and social leaders. This program connects high-talent employees with growing urban centers around the world and fosters the type of leadership to help IBM in the 21st century.

Recently, IBM sent a group of experts to Ho Chi Minh City as part of its Corporate Service Corps, a business version of the Peace Corps. This was the first Corporate Service Corps mission to be made up of executives, and the first to help a city in an emerging market analyze its challenges holistically and produce a plan to manage them. As a result, the city has now adopted a 10-year redevelopment plan that includes seven pilot programs in areas ranging from transportation to food safety. IBM will also help the city set up academic programs to prepare young Vietnamese to launch careers in technology services. IBM will continue this program throughout the next couple years to evolve the next set of global business and cultural hubs utilizing the volunteer hours of some of its most seasoned experts.

The Presidential Summit this week will further Obama’s call to “turn dialogue into interfaith service, so bridges between peoples lead to action.” The policy initiative of the Building Bridges Coalition, coupled with entrepreneurial innovations such as IBMs, can foster greater prosperity and service between the U.S. and our global partners.

Suzy Khimm reports on a proposal from the Bipartisan Policy Center that would establish a framework for reaching a grand bargain on deficit reduction in 2013. In short, the BPC proposes that Congress and the president in the lame duck session would agree to a procedural framework for guiding enactment of major spending and tax reforms in 2013. In enacting the framework, Congress and the president would also avert going over the fiscal cliff. In exchange, Congress and the president would make a small down payment on deficit reduction in the lame duck, and would authorize a legislative “backstop” of entitlement cuts and elimination of tax expenditures that would become law if Congress and the president failed in 2013 to enact tax and spending reforms.

The procedural elements of the BPC’s proposal bear some attention. The BPC’s not-quite-yet-a-catchphrase is “accelerated regular order.” Although it sounds like a nasty procedural disease, it’s akin to the fast-track procedures established in the Congressional Budget Act and in several other statutes. In short, the framework proposed by the BPC would instruct the relevant standing committees in 2013 to suggest to the chamber budget committees entitlement and tax reforms that would sum to $4 trillion dollars in spending cuts and new revenues (assuming extension of the Bush tax cuts). The House and Senate budget panels would each report a grand bargain bill for their chamber’s consideration that would be considered (without amendment) by simple majority vote after twenty hours of debate. Failure to meet the framework’s legislated deadlines would empower the executive branch to impose entitlement savings and to eliminate tax expenditures to meet the framework’s target.

Loyal Monkey Cage readers will recognize that the BPC proposal resembles in many ways the procedural solution adopted in the Deficit Control Act in August of 2011. But there are at least two procedural differences from the 2011 deficit deal. First, rather than a super committee, the BPC envisions “regular order,” meaning that the standing committees—not a special panel hand-selected by party-leaders—would devise the legislative package. Like the August deficit deal, the BPC proposal then offers procedural protection for the package by banning the Senate filibuster and preventing changes on the chamber floors (hence, an accelerated regular order). Second, rather than a meat-axe of sequestration that imposes only spending cuts, the BPC offers a “backstop,” giving what I take to be statutory authority to the executive branch to determine which tax expenditures to eliminate and which entitlement programs to cut back.

These differences from 2011 are subtle, but the BPC believes that they would improve the odds of success compared to the failed Super-committee plus sequestration plan. As a BPC staffer noted:

"One of the reasons the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction failed, in our view, was because only 12 lawmakers were setting policy for the entire Congress,” said Steve Bell, Senior Director of BPC’s Economic Policy Project. “The framework we propose today would both ensure an acceleration of regular budget order in the House and Senate, and it would involve all committees of relevant jurisdiction.”

This is an interesting argument worth considering. Still, I’m not so sure that accelerated regular order would improve the prospects for an agreement.

First, it strikes me that the real barrier to a grand bargain hasn’t been the Senate’s filibuster rule. The super committee was guaranteed a fast-track to passage, but that still didn’t motivate the parties to reach an agreement. The more relevant obstacle in 2011 and 2012 has been the bicameral chasm between a Republican House and a Democratic Senate. To be sure, eliminating the need for a sixty-vote cloture margin would smooth the way towards Senate passage. But we could easily imagine that the 60th senator (in 2013, perhaps a GOP senator like Lisa Murkowski) might be willing to sign onto a deal that would still be too moderate to secure the votes of House Republicans (assuming no change in party control of the two chambers). As we saw over the course of the 112th Congress, House passage required more than the consent of the House median (an ideologically moderate Republican) and more than the support of a majority of the GOP conference. The big deals in the 112th Congress only passed if they could attract the votes of roughly 90% of the House GOP conference. Expedited procedures can protect hard-fought compromises from being unraveled on the chamber floors but by themselves don’t seem sufficient to generate compromise in the first place.

Second, and related, I’m somewhat skeptical that the small size of the super committee precluded a viable agreement. By balancing parties and chambers, the group was (in theory) a microcosm of the full Congress. If true, then delegating to the super committee was more akin to delegating to a mini-Congress. Perhaps the BPC’s idea of allowing the standing committees to generate proposals would broaden legislators’ willingness to buy-in to a final agreement. More likely, I suspect that the framework would produce a House bill perched on the right and a Senate bill left of center (since the filibuster ban would reduce Democrats’ incentives to produce a bipartisan bill). That leaves the bicameral chasm still to be bridged, suggesting that accelerated regular order might not bring Congress all that much closer to a bipartisan agreement in 2013. Consent of party leaders remains critical for an agreement.

Third, the BPC proposal is unclear on the precise nature of the legislative backstop. But would either party agree in advance to the framework if they didn’t know whose ox would be gored by the administration when it exercised its power to reform entitlements and eliminate tax expenditures? Perhaps delegating such authority to the executive branch would allow legislators to avoid voters’ blame, making them more likely to vote for the framework. (That said, it’s somewhat ironic that the BPC’s embrace of accelerated regular order flows from its desire to broaden the set of legislators whose fingerprints are visible on the grand bargain.) Regardless, the prospects for cuts in entitlement programs could lead both parties to favor kicking the can down the road again before it actually explodes.

Fast-track procedures have a decent track record in facilitating congressional action. (Steve Smith and I have extolled their virtues elsewhere.) But the most successful of these episodes involve narrow policy areas (such as closing obsolete military bases) on which substantial bipartisan agreement on a preferred policy outcome is already in place. Expecting a procedural device to do the hard work of securing bipartisan agreement may be asking too much of Congress’s procedural tool kit in a period of divided and split party control.

Today could have been the day when Senate Democrats went nuclear – reining in minority party abuse of the filibuster with a simple majority vote.  That would have been my Super Bowl.  Instead, the Senate is poised to adopt a bipartisan set of modest (many say, meager) changes to the Senate’s cloture rule.   More like the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, I say.

As many have noted (for starters, Ezra Klein here and Jonathan Bernstein here), the proposed changes to the Senate’s Rule 22 fall far short of what reformers had hoped for.  Much blame has been heaped on Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, and on a few senior Democrats, highlighting their resistance to abandoning the Senate’s sixty-vote threshold for bringing the chamber to a vote.  The reforms are modest, largely finding ways of speeding up the Senate once both parties have agreed on the matter at hand (for instance on the way to advancing a measure to the floor or after cutting off debate on a nomination).  Even if the changes may seem to many like small potatoes, I think there’s more to be gleaned from the Senate’s brush with reform.

First, take a little, give a little.  Today’s rule changes remind us that there is no free lunch when it comes to Senate reform.  That hurdle is built into Rule 22, given its requirement that 67 senators consent to a vote on efforts to reform Rule 22.  In the absence of majority willing to bear the costs of asserting the majority’s right to change its rules, Senate reform is necessarily bipartisan and incremental.  Reforms must secure the consent of the minority, or be packaged with changes judged equally important to the opposition.  (Recall that even when reformers reduced cloture to 60 votes in 1975, they paid a price: 67 votes would still be required to end debate on changing Rule 22.)  Today’s reforms allow a majority to circumvent filibusters of motions to proceed to legislative measures.  In return, the majority pays a price each time: The minority is guaranteed votes on two amendments, whereas previously recent leaders might have precluded all amendments by immediately “filling the tree.”  To be sure, this potentially dilutes the value of the rule change for the majority.   But concessions are dictated by the Senate’s inherited rules.  (And, of course, nothing is that simple when it comes to Senate rules; the majority may yet fill the tree, at least after the disposition of the minority’s amendments.)

Second, I suspect we might be underestimating the importance of a non-debatable motion to proceed for the majority party in a period of partisan polarization.  Judging from the increase in filibusters on the motions to proceed in recent years, minority parties have fought hard to keep bills off the floor that they oppose on policy or political grounds.   So long as the motion to proceed could be filibustered, majority and minority parties shared agenda-setting powers.  Today’s change grants the majority a slightly stronger hand in choosing the chamber agenda.  To be sure, the minority can still filibuster the bill and amendments beyond those newly guaranteed, but the reform undermines the minority’s ability to throw the majority off course.  Take immigration policy, for example.  Filibusters of the motion to proceed have kept the DREAM Act off the Senate floor in recent years.  Minority influence over the Senate’s agenda is diminished with today’s reform.

Third, these are leader-driven reforms, shaped by the unique burdens carried by the majority and (sometimes) minority leaders.  For example, the reforms speed up post-cloture debate on some judicial and executive branch nominations, and allow the chamber to hurry onto cloture votes on motions to proceed to legislative business when the minority offers a modicum of support.  No surprise that these housekeeping changes elicit little enthusiasm.   These changes don’t make it any easier for a majority to break sizable minority opposition.  And they potentially make it harder for rank and file senators to exploit the rules in pursuit of their own policy goals.  But from leaders’ perspectives, the reforms rein in the excesses of rank and file dissent when a bipartisan group is ready to move ahead.  As one Senate Democrat aide confided, “that’s all Reid ever really wanted.”

Finally, this episode highlights the limitation of the Constitutional option and other “reform-by-ruling” strategies.  There appears to have been a majority or near-majority support for securing only very limited reform of Rule 22.  Senators seem unwilling to use the tactic for a major overhaul of the Senate’s cloture rule—in part because of the fear of minority retaliation, in part because the filibuster rule likely serves as the foundation of senators’ power.   To be sure, Harry Reid aggressively used reform-by-ruling in the fall of 2011 to secure smaller changes to Rule 22 (as did Robert Byrd in the 1980s).  But we have to reach back nearly forty years to the 1975 reforms to find a Senate majority willing to go nuclear to impose major changes to Rule 22.  (Even then, reformers proceeded without the support of the majority leader, Mike Mansfield.)  Perhaps senators see the consequences of weakening Rule 22 in a different light when the parties polarize over policy problems and solutions, with senators nervous about curtailing extended debate when the tables turn on their majority.  Regardless, so long as majorities will only form to impose  minor reform by majority vote, those majorities will be forced to live under supermajority rules that daily frustrate their policy and political agendas.

And in the Senate’s world, those frustrating days can last for weeks!

Sen. Harry Reid has gone ahead with the so-called "nuclear option" to attempt to change Senate filibuster rules on some executive branch nominations, passing the rule change with a 52-48 vote. In their Vital Statistics on Congress report, Brookings Senior Fellow Thomas Mann and AEI Resident Scholar Norman Ornstein provide data on the number of attempted Senate cloture votes taken from 1979 to 2012, the 96th to 112th Congresses. The chart below demonstrates the average attempted cloture vote taken by party when that party was in the minority.

For more data on both attempted and successful cloture votes sine 1919, look up table 6-7 in Vital Stats (PDF).

Senior Fellow Sarah Binder, a leading expert on Congress and congressional history who called, in 2010, the Senate filibuster a "mistake," offered a recent analysis of Senate cloture votes, writing that "Counting cloture votes remains an imperfect — but still valid — method of capturing minority efforts to block the Senate."

More recently, Binder wondered whether "Democrats have the guts to go there and, if so, whether that compels any Republicans to stand down."

Editors’ Note: We need to do better with the long-term instruments of counterterrorism, write Raymond Odierno and Michael O’Hanlon. That includes efforts within our own societies to promote social cohesion. This article originally appeared on USA Today.

In the aftermath of the Brussels tragedy, many good ideas are being floated to improve defenses against terrorists who are poised to strike. Belgium needs more resources for police work, including staking out suspects. Europe needs terrorist watch lists that are better automated and integrated. Police forces and national intelligence agencies need to work together more effectively, readjusting the point at which traditional police work ends and counterterrorism raids begin. We need to use technology such as closed-circuit TV, as well as simpler but time-tested methods like bomb-smelling dogs, more effectively in unhardened public places like subway stops and the external lobbies of airports.

The above are immediate and short-term measures. They are crucial. They are also insufficient. We need to continue to go after Islamic State's finances, too, leading a worldwide effort to restrict its sources of revenue and ability to store and move funds around. Beyond these actions, we need to do better with the long-term instruments of counterterrorism. These include the use of social media and other counter-messaging against the so-called caliphate. But they also include efforts within our own societies and especially those in Europe to promote social cohesion. Within many countries the inability to develop programs encouraging assimilation of immigrants, and of the home-born disaffected, has led to substantial pockets of disenfranchised citizens, a large majority being Muslim.

At least on issues concerning Muslim-majority communities, the United States can help point the way. We are fortunate, largely to the credit of our nation's Muslims who join our society in full and pursue the American dream, to have relatively few problems with Islamist extremism. Of course, there are exceptions, but on the whole, Muslim-American communities are our single greatest domestic allies in the struggle against extremism at home. They help provide information on would-be terrorists in their midst; they do not typically shelter, aid or condone the thinking of such extremists. Most of all, acting as loyal citizens, they provide role models and hopeful visions to their young, reducing the odds that the 20-somethings who seem to wind up the main culprits in most attacks abroad will feel the same urge within the United States. Because our own terror watch lists have gotten better since 9/11, and because of the hard work of border and immigration agencies, we are also often able to limit the movements of suspected terrorists to the United States from abroad.

None of this is to sound complacent. More than 70 individuals were arrested on American soil last year on suspicion of interest in supporting Islamic State or otherwise conducting extremist activity, and we suffered the San Bernardino tragedy.

Beyond matters of culture and assimilation, specific programs here contribute as well. In Montgomery County, Maryland, a coalition of faith leaders, school officials and law enforcement officers collaborate to try to identify and help would-be radicals before they turn to dangerous ways. In Ohio, fire departments try to reach into difficult neighborhoods and recruit workers. They recognize that their role in society can be less polarizing to some disaffected than would, say, certain types of police outreach, but that by extending the presence of the government into places where it is not always welcome, they can tamp down the temptations of some to turn to violence.

Many places in Britain are doing the same thing. Britain is a sort of bridge to Europe on this issue, like on many others—not having the apparent problems of say Molenbeek, the enclave in Brussels from which recent attackers have originated, but also having more concentrations of recent immigrants from the Middle East than does the United States. Aware of this situation, British authorities also try to extend the state's connections with shaky neighborhoods in ways that seek to engender trust in the state and better community rapport. Sometimes this can rely on police, who in the United Kingdom are usually unarmed. However, at other times, less traditional instruments, or less potentially imposing symbols of state authority, can be better. Again, fire departments come to mind, as do work programs that foster a sense of community involvement and cohesion (while also providing a paycheck). Sometimes armies can help, depending on their roles and reputations in given societies. Any of these can improve the government's image in key neighborhoods, while also helping create the kinds of communications between community leaders and authorities that produce intelligence leads when things start to go off the tracks.

U.S. presidential candidates are not talking much about these kinds of issues. But efforts to build social cohesion are not at odds with what some of them are advocating in response to Brussels. Greater police presence in jurisdictions like Molenbeek, intelligence surges and reforms, and also stronger actions against Islamic State in the Middle East and beyond are needed, to be sure. But such measures are not, in themselves, adequate.

Building social cohesion is difficult, of course, and often the strides forward are slow to come and hard to measure. It usually must happen at the city level. It is usually manpower-intensive work. It is always painstaking. Sometimes, of course, it simply fails. But without a reinvigorated emphasis on building social cohesion, in which cities and other jurisdictions learn from each other and share best practices to tie their communities more strongly together, we will not succeed in this crucial challenge of our times.

In the face of seemingly weekly terrorist attacks and reports that Islamic State affiliates are growing in number, political leaders are under pressure to take tougher action against ISIS and other violent extremist threats. Removing terrorists from the battlefield and from streets remains critical—President Obama announced last week that the United States will send 250 more special operations forces to Syria, for one, and other military, intelligence, and law enforcement efforts will be important. According to one assessment, the United States has spent $6.4 billion on counter-ISIS military operations since August 2014, with an average daily cost of $11.5 million. As a result of these and related efforts, the territory the Islamic State controls has been diminished and its leadership and resources degraded.

The more challenging task, however, may be preventing individuals from joining the Islamic State or future groups in the first place and developing, harnessing, and resourcing a set of tools to achieve this objective. Violent extremism is most likely to take root when communities do not challenge those who seek to radicalize others and can’t offer positive alternatives. Prevention is thus most effectively addressed by the communities themselves—mayors, teachers, social workers, youth, women, religious leaders, and mental health professionals—not national security professionals, let alone national governments. But it’s easier said than done for national governments to empower, train, and resource those communities. 

Political leaders around the globe are increasingly highlighting community engagement and the role of communities more broadly in a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy. States, however, continue to struggle with how to operationalize and sustain these elements of the strategy. 

Show us the money

First, there is the funding shortfall. Too many national governments continue not to provide local governments and communities with the resources needed to develop tailored community engagement programs to identify early signs of and prevent radicalization to violence. To take just one example of the disparity, the $11.5 million per day the United States spends on its military presence in Iraq is more than the $10 million the Department of Homeland Security was given this year to support grassroots countering violent extremism (CVE) efforts in the United States, and nearly twice as much as the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism received this year to support civil society-led CVE initiatives across the entire globe. Although a growing number of countries are developing national CVE action plans that include roles for local leaders and communities, funding for implementation continues to fall short. Norway and Finland are two notable examples, and the situation in Belgium was well-documented following the March attacks in Brussels.

Prevention is thus most effectively addressed by the communities themselves...not national security professionals, let alone national governments.

At the international level, the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF)—established in 2014 and modeled on the Global AIDS Fund to enable governments and private entities to support grassroots work to build resilience against violent extremism—has struggled to find adequate funding. GCERF offers a reliable and transparent mechanism to give grants and mentoring to small NGOs without the taint of government funding. Yet, despite the fact that “CVE” has risen to near the top of the global agenda, GCERF has only been able raise some $25 million from 12 donors—none from the private sector—since its September 2014 launch. This includes only $300,000 for a “rapid response fund” to support grassroots projects linked to stemming the flow of fighters to Iraq and Syria—presumably a high priority for the more than 90 countries that have seen their citizens travel to the conflict zone. The GCERF Board just approved more than half of the $25 million to support local projects in communities in the first three pilot countries—Bangladesh, Mali, and Nigeria. GCERF’s global ambitions, let alone its ability to provide funds to help sustain the projects in the three pilots or to support work in the next tranche of countries (Burma, Kenya, and Kosovo) are in jeopardy unless donors pony up more resources to support the kind approach—involving governments, civil society, and the private sector—that is likely needed to make progress on prevention over the long-term.

Go grassroots

Second, national governments struggle with how best to involve cities and local communities. Governments still have a traditional view of national security emanating from the capital. Although a growing number of governments are encouraging, and in some cases providing, some resources to support city- or community-led CVE programs, they have generally been reluctant to really bring sub-national actors into conversations about how to address security challenges. Some capitals, primarily in Western Europe, have created national-level CVE task forces with a wide range of voices. Others, like the United States, have stuck with a model that is limited to national government—and primarily law enforcement—agencies, thus complicating efforts to involve and build durable partnerships with the local actors, whether mayors, community leaders, social workers, or mental health officials, that are so critical to prevention efforts. 

Some members of the target communities remain skeptical of government-led CVE initiatives, sometimes believing them to be a ruse for intelligence gathering or having the effect of stigmatizing and stereotyping certain communities. As debates around the FBI’s Shared Responsibilities Committees show, there are high levels of mistrust between the government—particularly law enforcement—and local communities. This can complicate efforts to roll out even well-intentioned government-led programs aimed at involving community actors in efforts to prevent young people from joining the Islamic State. The trouble is, communities are largely dependent on government support for training and programming in this area (with a few exceptions). 

To their credit, governments increasingly recognize that they—particularly at the national level—are not the most credible CVE actors, whether on- or off-line, within the often marginalized communities they are trying to reach. They’re placing greater emphasis on identifying and supporting more credible local partners, instead, and trying to get out of the way. 

Invest now, see dividends later

On the positive side of the ledger, even with the limited resources available, new (albeit small-scale) grassroots initiatives have been developed in cities ranging from Mombasa to Maiduguri and Denver to Dakar. These are aimed at building trust between local police and marginalized groups, creating positive alternatives for youth who are being targeted by terrorist propaganda, or otherwise building the resilience of the community to resist the siren call of violent extremism. 

Perhaps even more promising, new prevention-focused CVE networks designed to connect and empower sub-national actors—often with funds, but not instructions, from Western donors—are now in place. These platforms can pool limited resources and focus on connecting and training the growing number of young people and women working in this area; the local researchers focused on understanding local drivers of violent extremism and what has worked to stem its tide in particular communities; and mayors across the world who will gather next month for the first global Strong Cities Network summit. Much like GCERF, these new platforms will require long-term funding—ideally from governments, foundations, and the private sector—to survive and deliver on their potential. 

Somewhat paradoxically, while the United States (working closely with allies) has been at the forefront of efforts to develop and resource these platforms overseas and to recognize the limits of a top-down approach driven by national governments, similar innovations have yet to take root at home. More funding and innovation, both home and abroad, can make a huge difference. For example, it could lead to more community-led counter-narrative, skills-building, or counselling programs for young people at risk of joining the Islamic State. It could also help build trust between local police and the communities they are meant to serve, lead to more training of mainstream religious leaders on how to use social media to reach marginalized youth, as well as empower young filmmakers to engage their peers about the dangers of violent extremism. And national prevention networks that aren’t limited to just government officials can help support and mentor communities looking to develop prevention or intervention programs that take local sensitivities into account. Without this kind of rigorous effort, the large sums spent on defeating terrorism will not pay the dividends that are badly needed. 

Event Information

Puerto Rico is the latest, but probably not the last, case of a local government confronting financial strains that call into question its ability to meet its obligations to bondholders while providing services to its taxpaying constituents. Puerto Rico is, of course, a special case because it is a territory, not a state or municipality. Will Puerto Rico’s problems have ripple effects for the $3.7 trillion U.S. municipal bond market? What about the resolution of Detroit's bankruptcy? How will state and local governments and the courts weigh the interests of pensioners, employees, taxpayers and bondholders when there isn't enough money to go around?

On Tuesday, July 12, the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at Brookings webcasted the keynote address from the 5th annual Municipal Finance Conference, delivered by the sitting governor of Puerto Rico, Hon. Alejandro García Padilla. After Governor Padilla’s remarks on Puerto Rico’s future, Hutchins Center Director David Wessel moderated a panel on the politics and practice of municipal finance in the post-Detroit and post-Puerto Rico era.

Join the conversation and tweet questions for the panelists at #MuniFinance.

Video

• Keynote address by Alejandro García Padilla
• Panel: The muni market in the post-Detroit and post-Puerto Rico era
• Changing patterns in household ownership of municipal debt
• Municipal borrowing costs and state policies for distressed municipalities
• Municipal finance structure and Chapter 9 creditor priorities
• Term limits and municipal borrowing costs
• Why has regional income convergence in the U.S. declined?
• State strategies for detecting fiscal distress in local governments
• Pensions and other post-employment benefits

Transcript

• Download the uncorrected transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• Garcia Padilla Slides
• 20160712_munifinance_puertorico_detroit_transcript

In "Why Aging and Working Makes us Happy in 4 Charts," Carol Graham describes a research paper in which she and co-author Milena Nikolova examine determinants of subjective well-being beyond traditional income measures. One of these is the relationship between age and happiness, a chart of which resembles, remarkably, a smile.

As Graham notes:

There is a U-shaped curve, with the low point in happiness being at roughly age 40 around the world, with some modest differences across countries. It seems that our veneration of (or for some of us, nostalgia, for) youth as the happiest times of our lives is overblown, the middle age years are, well, as expected, and then things get better as we age, as long as we are reasonably healthy (age-adjusted) and in a stable partnership.

The new post has three additional charts that showcase other ways to think about factors of happiness.

Created within a year of each other, the World Bank and the United Nations were born out of a shared response to the Second World War. The war created a constituency willing to invest resources and ideals in a system of multilateral cooperation. In the words of one of their architects, these institutions were to create a “New Deal for a new world.”

Today we face another period of global disorder. The number of armed conflicts worldwide has tripled from four to 11 since 2007. 2014 was the most lethal year since the end of the Cold War, according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. In the same year, the total number of deaths from terrorism increased by 80 percent, to close to 37,000, the largest yearly increase in the last 15 years, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace.

The fallout is clear. The number of people affected by humanitarian crises has almost doubled in the past decade, with 125 million people requiring humanitarian assistance. Displacement is at a post-World War II high with 60 million people around the world forced from their homes, often within their own countries. Roughly two-thirds of U.N. peacekeepers today and almost 90 percent of personnel in U.N. Special Political Missions are working in and on countries where there is little peace to keep.

Responding to this challenge, the U.N. and its member states led major reviews in 2015 of the tools and approaches used to respond to conflict. These reviews looked at peacekeeping operations, the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security, and the U.N.’s peacebuilding architecture.

These reviews underscored that while humanitarian assistance can mitigate suffering, and peacekeepers can stabilize situations, they alone cannot create lasting peace, development, and prosperity. 

Responding to this challenge requires a new global partnership to prevent violent conflict, reduce humanitarian need, and sustain peace. This partnership must reaffirm our commitment to humanity and chart a course for change, as the secretary-general has called for in his recent report for the World Humanitarian Summit.

Taking place just before the World Humanitarian Summit, the ministerial meeting of the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (IDPS) in Stockholm is a key moment at which the principles of the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States, in particular the TRUST and FOCUS components, could be used to provide a foundation for this effort.

Peacebuilding and statebuilding, however, are political. Technical instruments must be aligned with and informed by a political strategy owned by national governments and developed in consultation with its people. This is as true at the global level as it is in each country.

The first step is normative. In 2015, through the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, member states committed to a future that aims to leave no one behind. The International Dialogue, the New Deal, and the g7+ were important foundations, asserting the links between development and peace captured in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). However, the SDGs are universal. Goal 16 on just, peaceful, and inclusive societies is an ambition of all countries, not only those identified internationally as conflict-affected, and other goals—for example SDG 1 on ending poverty and SDG 10 on reducing inequality—are critical to peace in conflict-affected states. A statement at Stockholm should be made clarifying the linkages between the specific focus of the New Deal and the universal goals of the SDGs (and their affiliated processes).

The second is ownership. Peace and development are first and foremost a national responsibility. The New Deal provides a framework that brings together multilateral and bilateral partners of conflict-affected countries. However, it has functioned primarily as a tool for the targeting of aid, not its management. To achieve the SDGs in 2030 we need to equip national partners with the tools to address the drivers of conflict. That is where a revitalized New Deal can play an important role. While the SDGs are now the overarching framework, making more significant progress on the TRUST and FOCUS components of the New Deal will be essential contributions to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Commitments to ownership, the use of country systems, and mobilization of national resources should be restated and given life in Stockholm.

The last is resources. Resolving conflict requires multi-year financing addressing the drivers of conflict rather than short-term responses.  While official development assistance (ODA) to conflict-affected countries has increased over the last dozen years or so, in 2013, peacebuilding support to legitimate politics, security, and justice systems represented only 16 percent (or $6.8 billion) of the $42 billion in gross development assistance for 31 conflict-affected countries (see Figure 1). At a very moment of global crisis, as of January 1, 2016 and for the first time in its history, the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund will not reach its $100 million annual allocation target endorsed by the secretary-general and donors. Stockholm needs to demonstrate a commitment to peacebuilding and statebuilding that goes beyond words, and commit to more resources devoted to conflict-affected countries and more resources targeting the drivers of conflict.

The U.N. has been a supporter of the New Deal from the beginning, recognizing it as a model for partnership between conflict-affected states and their development partners. A political, prioritized strategy for peacebuilding and statebuilding is necessary to support full implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in conflict-affected states. The New Deal provides inspiration for such a strategy. The question for Stockholm is whether inspiration alone will be sufficient.

Note: Special thanks goes to Jago Salmon for his contributions. This blog reflects the views of the author only and does not reflect the views of the Africa Growth Initiative. Similarly, the views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations.

Event Information

Thailand has been under military rule since May 2014, when General Prayuth Chan-Ocha and the Royal Thai Army seized power after deposing democratically elected Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. Current Prime Minister Prayuth has systematically postponed elections on the grounds of prioritizing order and drafting a new constitution to restore democracy. Since the coup, Thai authorities have used the murky lèse-majesté law to curtail opposition to the monarchy, while the country’s economy has languished.

On February 24, the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at Brookings hosted an event to explore the root causes of Thailand’s political crisis, the implications of an upcoming royal succession, and the possibilities for the road ahead. The event was moderated by Senior Fellow Richard Bush.  Panelists included Duncan McCargo, professor of political science at the University of Leeds, Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Don Pathan, an independent security analyst based in Thailand.

 Please follow the conversation on Twitter at #ThaiPolitics

Audio

• Kingdom at a crossroads: Thailand’s uncertain political trajectory

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160224_thailand_political_crisis_transcript

Editors' Note: Al-Shabab’s operational capacities and intimidation power have grown in the past year, writes Vanda Felbab-Brown. Many of Kenya’s counterterrorism policies have been counterproductive, and counterinsurgency efforts by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) have at best stagnated. This piece was originally published by The Cipher Brief.

April 2 marked one year since the Somali terrorist group al-Shabab attacked the Garissa University in Kenya and killed 148 people, galvanizing Kenya to intensify its counterterrorism efforts. Yet al-Shabab’s operational capacities and intimidation power have grown in the past year. Many of Kenya’s counterterrorism policies have been counterproductive, and counterinsurgency efforts by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) have at best stagnated. State building in Somalia is only creeping, with service-delivery by the federal government and newly formed states mostly lacking. Politics continues to be clan-based, rapacious, and discriminatory, with the forthcoming 2016 elections in Somalia thus far merely intensifying political infighting.

Al-Shabab: A rejuvenation

Despite internal and external threats to its effective functioning, al-Shabab is on the upswing again. It has carried out dozens of terrorist attacks within Somalia, including against hotels used by government officials as workspaces and housing, and on beaches and in markets throughout the country. It has raised fear among the population and hampers the basic government functionality and civil society mobilization.

In February 2016, al-Shabab, for the first time, succeeded in smuggling a bomb onboard a flight from Mogadishu. Disturbingly, it has been retaking cities in southern Somalia, including the important port of Merka. It has also overrun AMISOM bases and seized weapons and humvees: one such attack on a Kenyan forward-operating base was likely the deadliest ever suffered by the Kenyan military. Al-Shabab’s operational capacity has also recovered from the internal rifts between its anti-foreign-jihadi, pro-al-Qaida, pro-ISIS, and Somalia-focused factions.

Not all the power jockeying has been settled, and not all leadership succession struggles have been resolved. Moreover, an ISIS branch independent of and antagonistic to al-Shabab is trying to grow in Somalia and has been battling al-Shabab (in a way that parallels the ISIS-Taliban tangles in Afghanistan). Nonetheless, al-Shabab is once more on the rise and has recovered its financing from charcoal, sugar, and other smuggling in southern Somalia, and from taxing traffic and businesses throughout its area of operation, including in Mogadishu.

Although the terrorist violence is almost always claimed by al-Shabab, many of the attacks and assassinations are the work of politicians, businessmen, and clans, intimidating rivals or seeking revenge in their disputes over land and contracts. Indeed, with the clock ticking down to the expected 2016 national elections in Somalia, much of the current violence also reflects political prepositioning for the elections and desire to eliminate political rivals.

Kenya and AMISOM: Don’t sugarcoat it

In contrast to the upbeat mood among al-Shabab, AMISOM efforts have at best been stalled. With the training of Somali national forces going slowly and the force still torn by clan rivalries and shackled by a lack of military enablers, the 22,000-strong AMISOM continues to be the principal counterinsurgency force. Counterterrorism attacks by U.S. drone and special operations forces complicate al-Shabab’s operations, but do not alter the balance of power on the ground. In its ninth year now, and having cost more than U.S.$1 billion, AMISOM continues to be barricaded in its bases, and many of Somalia’s roads, even in areas that are supposedly cleared, are continually controlled by al-Shabab. In cities where AMISOM is nominally in charge, al-Shabab often rules more than the night as AMISOM conducts little active patrolling or fresh anti-Shabab operations even during the day. Rarely are there formal Somali forces or government offices to whom to hand over the post-clearing “holding and building” efforts. There is little coordination, intelligence sharing, or joint planning among the countries folded under the AMISOM heading, with capabilities vastly uneven. The principle benefit of the Burundi forces in Somalia, for example, is that they are not joining the ethnic infighting developing in their home country.

Ethiopia and Kenya still support their favorite Somali proxies. For Kenya, the key ally is Sheik Ahmed “Madobe,” a former high-level al-Shabab commander who defected to create his Ogadeni anti-Shabab militias, Ras Kamboni, and who in 2015 got himself elected president of the newly-formed Jubaland state. Along with Madobe and other Ogadeni powerbrokers, Kenyan Defense Forces control the Kismayo port. Like al-Shabab, they allegedly illegally tax smuggled sugar, charcoal, and other goods through the port and southern Kenya. In addition to these nefarious proceeds on the order of tens to hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars, Kenya’s other interests in Somalia often clash with those of Ethiopia and the Somali national government, including over projecting power off Somali coast and strengthening local warlords and militias who promise to keep Ogadeni mobilization in Kenya down.

At home, Kenya’s counterterrorism activities have been not only parochial, but often outright counterproductive. Post-Garissa dragnets have rounded up countless Kenyan ethnic Somalis and Somali immigrants and refugees. Entire communities have been made scapegoats. For a while, the Kenyan government tried to shut down all Somali hawala services based in Kenya as well as to expel Somali refugees and shut down their camps. Accusations of torture, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings by Kenyan Defense Forces, the police, and other security agencies are widespread. Meanwhile, despite U.S. counterterrorism training and assistance such as through the Security Governance Initiative, debilitating corruption plagues Kenya’s security forces and agencies.

Somalia’s government: Old and new mires

The Somali federal government and the newly formed state-level administrations mostly falter in delivering services that Somali people crave. Competition over state jobs and whatever meager state-sponsored resources are available continue to be mired in clan rivalries and discrimination. Unfortunately, even newly formed (Jubaland, Southwest, and Galmudug) and still-forming states (Hiraan and Middle Shabelle) have not escaped rapacious clan politics. Dominant clans tend not to share power and resources with less numerous ones, often engaging in outright land theft, such as in Jubaland. Civil society contributions have been marginalized. Such misgovernance and clan-based marginalization, as well as more conservative religious politics, are also creeping into Somaliland and Puntland, the two more stable states. Throughout Somalia and in Northeast Kenya, al-Shabab is skillfully inserting itself into clan rivalries and mobilizing support among those who feel marginalized.

The expected 2016 national elections further intensify these clan and elite political rivalries. The hope that the elections could take the form of one man, one vote was once again dashed, with the promise that such elections will take place in 2020. Instead, the 2016 electoral process will reflect the 4.5 model in practice since 2004, in which the four major clans get to appoint the same proportion of the 275 members of the lower chamber and the minority clans will together be allotted half the MP positions that each major clan gets. This system has promoted discriminatory clan rivalries and elite interests. The 54 members of the upper chamber will be appointed by Somalia’s states, including the newly formed and forming states. This arrangement requires that the state formation process is finished well before the elections, but also problematically increases the immediate stakes in the state formation. Finalizing the provisional constitution and getting it approved by a referendum—another key item of the Vision 2016 agreed to by the Somali government and international donors—is also in question.

Perhaps the greatest progress has been made in devolving power from Mogadishu through the formation of subnational states. But there is a real risk that rather than bonding Somalis with state structures as the international community long hoped for and prescribed, the power devolution to newly formed states will instead devolve discriminatory and rapacious politics.

President Obama is right to keep at it in Afghanistan, argues a new policy brief by Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow and director of research for the Brookings Foreign Policy program.

Some have criticized the president’s decision to maintain a significant troop presence there (5,500 troops), instead of following through on the planned military withdrawal. But Afghanistan remains very important to American security, O’Hanlon contends, and the situation in the country is far from hopeless in spite of recent setbacks. We should reinvigorate American efforts in Afghanistan, he argues—not returning to levels seen in previous years, but ramping up somewhat from our current posture.

O’Hanlon calls Obama’s resolve in Afghanistan commendable, but writes that he and his administration are still making mistakes on U.S. policy toward the war-torn country. He advises that Washington make two specific changes to its military strategy in Afghanistan:

1. Allow U.S. and NATO airpower to target the Islamic State and the Taliban (currently, they can only fight those groups if directly attacked). The narrow rules of engagement constraining foreign forces were intended to push Afghan armed forces to defend their territory themselves. While a worthy goal, O’Hanlon says, these rules often prevent us from attacking ISIS (though the targeting strategy towards the group may be changing) as well as the Taliban. They also impose unrealistically high demands on Afghan forces and make too fine a distinction between an array of aligned extremist groups operating in the country.
2. Expand U.S. force presence from the current 5,500 troops to around 12,000 for a few years. In O’Hanlon’s opinion, our current numbers are not enough to work with fielded Afghan forces, and skimping on ground forces has contributed to security challenges in places like Helmand, for instance, which experienced new setbacks in 2015. More broadly, leaders in Washington and Brussels should stress the value of a long-term NATO-Afghanistan partnership, rather than emphasizing an exit strategy. This will signal Western resolve to the Taliban and other groups. While the next commander in chief should set the United States on a gradual path toward downsizing American troops in Afghanistan, he believes it would be a mistake for Obama to do so in the short term.

The long haul

O’Hanlon also argues that the United States needs to take a longer-term perspective on key political and economic issues in Afghanistan. On the economic front, there seems to be little thinking about an agricultural development plan for Afghanistan, associated infrastructure support, and land reform, among other challenges. On the political front, conversations often tend to focus on shorter-term issues like organizing parliamentary elections, reforming the Independent Election Commission, or modifying the current power-sharing arrangement. In the process, conversations about foundational political strategy focusing on Afghan institutions and the health of its democracy get short-changed. The parliament is in need of reforms, for instance, as is the political party system (which should encourage Afghans to group around ideas and policy platforms, rather than tribes and patronage networks).

O’Hanlon concludes that the situation in Afghanistan today, while fraught, is understandable given the Taliban’s resilience and NATO’s gradual withdrawal of 125,000 troops. We should not be despondent, he writes—rather, we should identify specific strategies that can help improve the situation. At the end of the day, Afghans must make the big decisions about the future of their country. But as long as the United States and its partners are still providing tremendous resources—and as long as security threats emanating from South Asia continue to threaten the United States—leaders in Washington should use their influence wisely.

On May 9, Filipinos elected a new president, Rodrigo Duterte. The long-time mayor of Davao City is the first Philippine president to hail from the southern islands of the archipelago. There, he established a “can-do” reputation on the back of brutal crackdown on crime, which won him the sobriquet “the Punisher.” During his controversial, profanity-laced campaign (his comments on rape, for instance, are truly regrettable), the tough-talking, cavalier eventual winner was described as the “Donald Trump of the Philippines.” He established that his priorities would be to confront crime, drugs, and corruption with a firm hand. Indeed, during a televised debate, Duterte claimed he was even prepared to kill his own children if they were involved in drugs.

Getting the Philippines out of its funk

Duterte’s success reflects a mood in Philippine society today. The Philippines has been a beacon of democracy in Southeast Asia for some time. Long before the Arab Spring or “Reformasi” (the massive social movement that brought down Suharto’s 32-year rule in Indonesia in 1998), the “People’s Revolution” against the Marcos regime in 1986 fired the imagination. 

Yet until very recently, the Philippines had not reaped any economic dividends from democratization. For many years following the “People’s Revolution,” the Philippine economy lurched along, plagued by endemic corruption and incompetent leadership. So deep was the malaise, the country became known as the new “sick man of Asia.” The lack of economic opportunity drove its women—among the most highly educated in the world—to seek employment abroad as housemaids and domestic helpers (remittances from these sources account for 10 percent of GDP). The issue is in fact a larger one, as there is a growing educated class frustrated with the lack of opportunity and upward social mobility. It is this mood that Duterte has tapped into.

[T]here is a growing educated class frustrated with the lack of opportunity and upward social mobility.

It remains to be seen though, now that he has won, if Duterte can “walk the talk.” The fact is that Duterte’s anti-establishment credentials and populist positions on poverty and corruption run sharply athwart an oligarchy that has long been an entrenched part of Philippine society. 

Despite impressive economic growth rates over the last few years under the Benigno Aquino III administration, the Philippines has been beset by a growing wealth disparity. To get at this problem, Duterte will have to have to leave behind his provincial mindset to govern at the national level, where these problems are amplified. Specifically, he will have to deal with a rent-seeking culture and a powerful aristocracy that controls huge chunks of the economy. It will take more than tough talk and populism to create a more equitable distribution of wealth and opportunity.

In the neighborhood

It is still too early to say, but indications are that foreign policy issues will probably not be a priority for Duterte, with two exceptions (neither of which are of his own choosing). Given his unpredictability, few would venture to say with any certainty how he might act on them. 

First, Duterte will have to handle the fallout from the arbitration tribunal rulings on the Philippine case against China’s massive claims in the South China Sea. Most observers agree that from the 15 items awaiting the tribunal’s decision, the majority will be ruled in favour of the Philippines. This would constitute a moral victory for Manila, but would also pose potential problems for the new government in terms of relations with China. Probably mindful of this, Duterte has already spoken of his readiness to engage in dialogue with China on the South China Sea. More to the point, given his likely emphasis on domestic economic issues, it is quite possible that Duterte will pursue a more pragmatic policy towards Beijing with an eye to Chinese investments in infrastructure development. On the other hand, true to character, Duterte also declared that he would set out on his own jet ski to the South China Sea to plant the Philippine flag. Populist posturing aside, at issue is whether Duterte’s unpredictability will jeopardize Manila’s current alignment with fellow ASEAN claimant, Vietnam, or its ongoing support for American efforts to exercise freedom of navigation rights in the South China Sea in response to China’s expansive claims.

Second, Duterte will be in office when the Philippines assumes the chairmanship of ASEAN in 2017. On the occasion of its 50th anniversary (ASEAN was formed in 1967), the Association would be looking to the Philippines, a founder-member, to demonstrate much-needed regional leadership. At stake is nothing less than the unity of ASEAN, which of late has come under increasing strain because of the South China Sea disputes. Duterte said very little about ASEAN during his campaign. Yet one thing should be clear. Given the complex challenges that the region is likely to face in the coming year, Duterte would be well-advised that the imperative of ASEAN unity will require more diplomatic nous and less saber-rattling bravado.

Editors’ Note: International relations almost never progress in a linear fashion. In this excerpt from a new Brookings India briefing book titled “India-U.S. Relations in Transition,” Tanvi Madan examines some of the high-impact but low-probability events that may affect the relationship in the future: so-called “black swans.”

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter recently said that the U.S.-India defense partnership would become “an anchor of global security.” But in an increasingly uncertain world, the partnership between these two large and relatively stable democracies can also potentially be a critical anchor of stability more broadly. Here are some black swans—low-probability, high-impact and, in hindsight, predictable events—that could exacerbate regional and global uncertainty and instability, and affect both countries’ interests and, potentially, their relationship. 

• Regional Assertiveness: What might be the impact of greater Chinese or Russian assertiveness—even aggression? How might Russian actions against Ukraine, Georgia, or even a NATO member change not just U.S. calculations, but India’s as well? How will it affect their bilateral relationship? What about a China-U.S. confrontation over Taiwan or in the South China Sea? Or Chinese action against a country like Vietnam, with which India has close ties and which the United States is increasingly engaging? What if there is a sudden or serious deterioration of the situation in Tibet, perhaps in the context of a leadership transition? 
• Chaos in India’s West: What happens if there is political uncertainty in Saudi Arabia, a country with which the United States has close—albeit tense—ties, and which is India’s largest oil supplier and home to millions of Indian citizens? How will the United States and India react if Iran, after all, decides to acquire nuclear weapons? What about the chain reaction either of these scenarios would set off in the Middle East? Closer to India, what if Afghanistan relapses into a total civil war? Or if there is a sharp downturn in stability within Pakistan, with the establishment challenged, the threat of disintegration, and challenges posed by the presence of nuclear weapons? 
• Shocks to the Global Economy: What if a confluence of circumstance leads to a major spike in oil prices? What will the impact be of a major economic crisis in China, not just on the global economy or Chinese domestic stability, but also in terms of how Beijing might react externally? How will the United States and India deal with this scenario? And what if the eurozone collapses under the weight of refugee flows, Britain’s threatened exit, or national financial crises? 
• The Epoch-Defining Security Shock: Both the United States and India have suffered major attacks relatively recently—the United States on September 11, 2001 and India on November 26, 2008. But what if there is another major terrorist attack in either country or on the two countries’ interests or citizens elsewhere? Or a major cyber incident that takes down critical infrastructure? 
• Environmental Challenges: What if rising sea levels cause a catastrophe in Bangladesh resulting in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, crossing over into India? And then there are the various climate change-related challenges that can perhaps be considered “white swans”—more-certain events, whose effects can be more easily estimated. 

In addition, one could think of domestic black swans in each country and some in the bilateral context. These might include dramatic domestic political developments, or a spark causing a major backlash against immigrants in the United States or American citizens in India. 

As the U.S.-India partnership has developed, and India’s regional and global involvements have increased, the U.S.-India conversation—and not just the official one—has assumed greater complexity. This will help the two countries tackle black swans in the future. So will the further institutionalization of discussions on global and regional issues of the sort already underway. Amid the day-to-day priorities, there should be room for discussing contingencies for black swans in dialogues between the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State and the Indian Foreign Secretary, in the two countries’ dialogue on East Asia, and in discussions between the two policy planning units.

A recent article in The Guardian caught my eye: “Report accuses government of increasing inequalities in developing countries by financing academies at the expense of state schools.” The report, conducted by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, was an attack on U.K. aid money being linked to private education providers since the rapid increase in such schools may be contributing to sub-standard education. In particular, they cited the U.K. government’s investments in the Nairobi-based and for-profit Bridge International Academies.

I’ve worked on private education extensively throughout my career and do not believe there is anything wrong with private schools, but in this particular case I couldn’t agree more. But to be clear, it’s the funding strategy that’s the problem.

Private schooling is on the rise in a number of poor countries, and Pakistan—where my education research is focused—is no exception. The majority of these schools are no longer the elite institutions of yore, but low-cost alternatives fighting for survival in a highly competitive environment. These schools have mushroomed in response to increased parental demand and poor public alternatives, but also to the greater availability of teachers in the local labor market.

More importantly, research increasingly demonstrates that there is absolutely nothing wrong with private schools. There's a summary of this research available here; specific examples on India (more here) and Pakistan are also available.

Some key are takeaways from this research are:

• Private schools charge low fees (about $1 to$2 a month in Pakistan).
• The quality is almost certainly higher compared to government schools in the vicinity.
• At least in Pakistan, there is no significant segregation between public and private schools in terms of parental wealth, education, or caste.
• The most significant barrier to attendance in low-cost private schools is not cost—it’s distance. Put simply, there just aren’t enough of them around.

If there is a cheaper and better alternative to public schooling, shouldn’t we encourage children to shift and thus improve the quality of education for all?

Perhaps. But when the rubber from these well-intentioned aid policies hits the road of rural Pakistan, Kenya, or Ethiopia, a very different sort of model emerges. Instead of supporting private schooling, donors end up supporting private schools (or at best private school chains), which is an entirely different action with little theoretical backing. In fact, economic theory screams that governments and donors should almost never do that.

Donors say the problem is that the low-cost private school market is fragmented with no central authority that can be “contracted with.” No one has a good model on how to work with a competitive schooling sector with multiple small players—ironically, the precise market structure that, according to economics, leads to efficiency.

In reality, I suspect the problem goes deeper. Most low-cost private school owners don’t do well at donor conferences. They don’t know how to tell compelling human-interest stories about the good they do. But what they are excellent at is using local resources to ensure that their schools meet the expectations of demanding parents.

The first is a problem of accountability. Public schools are accountable, through a democratic system, to citizens of the country. Private schools are accountable to the parents. And donor-funded private school chains are account to the donors. While both citizen-led accountability and direct accountability to parents have problems, they are grounded in centuries of experience. It’s unlikely that donors in a foreign land, some of whom can’t visit the schools they fund for security reasons, can do better than either citizens or parents.

The second is a problem of market structure. When one private school or private school chain receives preferential treatment and funding, without allowing other private schools to apply for the same funds, the donor is picking winners (remember Solyndra?). The need for private schools as an alternative to government schools is insufficient justification for donors to put their thumbs on the scale and tilt the balance of power towards a pre-identified entity.

In a recent experiment, my colleagues and I gathered direct proof for this assertion. We gave untied grants to low-cost private schools with a twist. In certain villages, we randomly selected a single private school for the grant. In others, we gave the grant to every private school in the village. Our preliminary results show that in villages where we gave the grant to a single school, the school benefitted enormously from an increase in enrollment. Where we gave the grant to multiple private schools, the enrollment increase was split among schools. But only in the villages where we gave the grant to every school did test-scores for children increase.

What happened? When a single private school receives the grant, knowing that the other schools cannot react due to a lack of funds, they engage in “customer poaching” to increase their profits at the expense of others. Some have argued that Uber’s recent fundraising is precisely such an effort to starve competitors of funding.

When you equally support all private schools, customer poaching does not work, and the only way to increase profits and generate returns is to increase the size of the market, either through higher overall enrollments or through new quality offerings.

The first strategy supports pre-identified private schools and concentrates market power. The second, by providing opportunities for all private schools, improves education for children.

Sure, some private school chains and schools are making positive impact and deserve the support they can get. But funding such schools creates the wrong institutional structures and are more likely to lead to disasters than successes (Greg Mortensen and 3 cups of tea, anyone?).

In general, the Government’s responsibility towards the education of children is two-fold:

• Alleviate the market constraints that hold back private schooling without favoring one school over the other—letting parents decide who succeeds and who does not.
• Support and improve public schools to provide an alternative because there will always be children who cannot enroll in private schools, either because they are too expensive or because they are too far away, or because they don’t offer the instruction “basket” that some parents want.

In short, foreign aid should play no part in supporting private schools rather than private schooling.

The development community issued a collective sigh of relief last week when the U.S. Senate, after a seven-month delay, finally confirmed a new Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In addition to dealing with the many global development issues, Gayle Smith also has the task of making good on the Obama administration’s commitment to make USAID a preeminent 21st century development agency.

While a year might seem a short time for anyone to make a difference in a new government position, Gayle Smith assuming the lead in USAID should be seen more as the capstone of a seven-year tenure guiding U.S. global development policy.  She led the interagency process that produced the 2010 Presidential Policy Determination on Development (PDD), and has been involved in every administration development policy initiative since, including major reforms inside USAID.

The five items below are suggestions on how Smith can institutionalize and take to the next level reforms and initiatives that have been part of the development agenda of which she has been a principal architect.

The PPD lays out key elements for making our assistance programs more accountable, including “greater transparency” and “more substantial investment of resources in monitoring and evaluation.”

USAID staff have designed a well thought out Cost Program Management Plan to advance the public availability of its data and to fulfill the U.S. commitment to the International Assistance Transparency Initiative (IATI). What this plan needs is a little boost from the new administrator, her explicit endorsement and energy, and maybe the freeing-up of more resources so phases two and three to get more and better USAID data into the IATI registry can be completed by the end of 2016 rather than slipping over into the next administration. In addition, the fourth and final phase of the plan needs to be approved so data transparency is integrated into the planned Development Information Solution (DIS), which will provide a comprehensive integration of program and financial information. 

Meanwhile, in January 2011 USAID adopted an evaluation policy that was praised by the American Evaluation Association as a model for other government agencies. In FY 2014, the agency completed 224 evaluations. The new administrator could provide leadership in several areas that would raise the quality and use of USAID’s evaluations. She should weigh in on the sometimes theological debate over what type of evaluation works best by being clear that there is no single, all-purpose type of evaluation. Evaluations need to fit the context and question to be addressed, from most significant change (focusing solely on the most significant change generated by a project), to performance evaluation, to impact evaluation.   

Second, evaluation is an expertise that is not quickly acquired. Some 2,000 USAID staff have been trained, but mainly through short-term courses. The training needs to be broadened to all staff and deepened in content. This will contribute to a cultural change whereby USAID staff learn not just how to conduct evaluations, but how to value and use the findings.

Third, evaluations need to be translated into learning. The E3 Bureau (Bureau for Economic Growth, Education and Environment) has set the model of analyzing and incorporating evaluation findings into its policies and programs, and a few missions have bought evaluations into their program cycle. This needs to be done throughout the agency. Further, USAID should use its convening power to share its findings with other U.S. government agencies, other donors, and the broader development community.

Current USAID processes are considered rigid and time-consuming. This is not uncommon to large institutions, but in recent years the agency has been seeking more innovative, flexible instruments. The USAID Global Development Lab is experimenting with what is alternatively referred to as the Development Innovation Accelerator (DIA) or Broad Agency Announcement (BAA), whereby it invites ideas on a specific development problem and then selects the authors of the best, most relevant, to join USAID staff in co-creating solutions—something the corporate sector has been calling for—to be involved at the beginning of problem-solving. Similarly, the Policy, Planning, and Learning Bureau is in the midst of redesigning the program cycle to introduce adaptive management, allowing for greater collaboration and real-time response to new information and evolving local circumstances. Adaptive management would allow for more customized approaches and learning based on local context.

Again, the PPD calls for “innovation.” As with accountability, an expression of interest and support from the new administrator, and an articulation of the need to inculcate innovation into the USAID culture, could move these endeavors from tentative experiment to practice.

Gayle Smith has been immersed in guiding U.S. policy in unstable, fragile states. She knows the territory well and cares. The U.S. has been an active participant and leader in the New Deal for Fragile States. The New Deal framework is a thoughtful, comprehensive structure for moving fragile states to stability, but recent analyses indicate that neither members of the G7+ countries nor donors are following the explicit steps. They are not dealing with national and local politics, which are the essential levers through which to bring stability to a country, and are not adequately including civil society. Maybe the New Deal structures are too complicated for a country that has minimal governance. Certainly, there has been insufficient senior-level leadership from donors and buy-in from G7+ leaders and stakeholders. With her deep knowledge of the dynamics in fragile states, Smith could bring sorely needed U.S. leadership to this arena.

The PPD calls for “robust policy, budget, planning, and evaluation capabilities.” USAID moved quickly on these objectives, not just in restoring USAID former capabilities in evaluation, but also in policy and budget through the resurrection of the planning and policy function (Policy, Planning, and Learning Bureau, or PPL) and the budget function (Office of Bureau and Resource Management, or BRM). PPL has reestablished USAID’s former policy function, but USAID’s budget authority has only been partially restored.

Gayle Smith needs to take the next obvious step. Budget is policy. The integration of policy and budget is an essential foundation of evidence-based policymaking. The two need to be joined so these functions can support each other rather than operating in isolated cones. Budget deliberations are not just about numbers; policies get set by budget decisions, so policy and budget need to be integrated so budget decisions are informed by strategy and policy knowledge.

I go back to the model of the late 1970s when Alex Shakow was head of the Policy, Planning, and Coordination Bureau (PPC), which encompassed both policy and budget. Here you had in one senior official someone who was knowledgeable about policy and budget and understood how the two interact. He was the go-to-person the agency sent to Capitol Hill. He could deal with the range of issues that always unexpectedly arise during congressional committee hearings and markups. He could effectively deal with the State Department and interagency meetings on a broad sweep of policy and program matters. He could represent the U.S. globally, such as at the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and other international development meetings.

With the expansion of the development agenda and frequency of interagency and international meetings, such a person is in even greater need today. USAID needs three or four senior officials—administrator, deputy administrator, associate administrator, and the head of a joined-up policy/budget function —to cover the demand domestically and internationally for senior USAID leadership with a deep knowledge of the broad scope of USAID programs.    

The arguments for the need to reform U.S. food assistance programs are incontrovertible and have been hashed hundreds of times, so no need to repeat them here. But it is clearly in the interests of the tens of millions of people globally who each year face hunger and starvation for the U.S. to maximize the use of its resources by moving its food aid from an antiquated 1950s model to current market realities. There is leadership for this on the Hill in the Food for Peace Reform Act of 2015, introduced by Senators Bob Corker and Chris Coons. Gayle Smith could help build the momentum for this bill and contribute to an important Obama legacy, whether enactment happens in 2016 or under a new administration and Congress in 2017.

Gayle knows better than anyone the Obama development agenda. These ideas are humbly presented as an outside observer’s suggestions of how to solidify key administration aid effectiveness initiatives.