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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

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

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“It’s probably the most interesting presidential election I’ve seen in my lifetime,” I said to an American friend the moment I arrived to Washington. My friend was upset. “For you it’s interesting,” he said. “For us it’s painful.”

“What you’ve just said rings a bell,” I said. “This is exactly, word for word, what I keep saying to foreign journalists who come to Israel to write a story.” Covering politics in Israel is like covering a professional wrestling fight: the rivals exchange numerous hits, shout at each other, humiliate each other, disregard every rule, but in most cases the outcome is known in advance.

Covering politics in Israel is like covering a professional wrestling fight...in most cases the outcome is known in advance.

Americans are supposed to play their political game in a cooler way. At least, this is the impression a foreign correspondent get when he lands here, directly from the boiling quarrels of the Middle East. 

I had the opportunity to cover almost all the U.S. presidential campaigns since Jimmy Carter’s victory over Gerald Ford in 1974. I loved it—I loved the town halls and the rallies in remote places, where people are kind and willing to answer every clueless question from a foreign reporter; I loved the access to the candidates, weeks and months before the secret service builds a wall between them and real life; I loved the hectic atmosphere, described so well in the “Making of the President” books by Theodore H. White; I loved to see how little-known candidates like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama evolve, grow, and flourish; and I enjoyed every chapter: the spins, the buzz, the role played by big money.

The election campaign seems to be different this time: It looks different; it sounds different. The key word is anger—anger dominated the selection process in both parties. Angry voters elected angry candidates. If a candidate was not angry enough—e. g. Jeb Bush—the voters judged him unfit for the job.

The election campaign seems to be different this time: It looks different; it sounds different. The key word is anger.

An accidental tourist like me pauses here for a long list of questions: how do we quantify anger? Is it limited to the ballots or can it evaporate at some point and turn into violent acts, as Donald Trump has insinuated time and again? Is it a reflection of the bitterness of specific, limited constituencies or is it something much more widespread, an outrage of a generation or a class of Americans who feel that they were betrayed by the political and business elite, by the establishment? How to explain the Trump phenomenon, the Sanders phenomenon? 

The obvious answer is the economic collapse of 2008: the people who fell victim to the 2008 crisis, who lost a home or a job or had to give up college for their children are now in revolt. Why now and not earlier? Because four years ago they were struggling to survive; they were busy. Politicizing emotions is a long process; sometimes it takes years.

Tip O'Neill, speaker of the house in the second half of the previous century, taught us that all politics is local. There is a lot of truth in it even today, but is it the whole truth? In the flat world of 2016, local politics are executed in a global way. All politics are local and global at the same time. Political actions spread from country to country like the Zika virus, using social media as carriers.

The young Sanders supporters I met in Brooklyn, during the last Democratic debate, were not much different from the young Israelis I met in Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011, when hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets. Those Israelis complained about similar things: high prices, loss of employment security, difficulty getting a decent job, and the ever-growing gap between expectations and reality. They were promised to live in the land of opportunity; the opportunity was not there—not for them.

Politicizing emotions is a long process; sometimes it takes years.

They complained bitterly about the banks and the major corporations. They became so big that the government has no choice but to subsidize them when they lose money. And the people who run them get huge salaries and bonuses on the expense of the shareholders and the general public. Israel used to be a social democratic society, with a strong middle class and a relatively narrow gap between rich and poor. Now the rich are very rich and get richer, and the less fortunate are left behind.

The protest was fueled by social media: another similarity between Tel Aviv and the young voters in Brooklyn and elsewhere. The brazenness, the bluntness, the rudeness of the social media culture affected the political discourse. It became less cordial and more personal. 

Israelis were not alone. The Arab Spring predated the Israeli Summer. Greece and Spain followed. Occupy Wall Street, a smaller, more radical protest movement, appeared on the streets of major American cities in the fall of 2011. It was inspired by the protests in the Arab countries and in Spain. The demonstrators faded away after a while, but they left their mark: political agendas have changed dramatically, governments fell, conventions were shuttered. It remains to be seen if and how they will contribute to social justice and equality.

In Israel, the demand for social justice captured a prominent place on the national agenda; several activists in the protest movement were elected to the Knesset; the rhetoric has changed, priorities didn't. Not really. Most Israelis were not prepared for a revolution, not even a moderate revolution, Bernie Sanders-style. 

I have no way to know what lies ahead for the American society. What I can see so far is a unique electoral season, characterized by unusual, almost bizarre candidates, their qualification for the job questionable, and a long, destructive battle over votes. For many Americans it is painful. People in other countries can only wonder: is it the best America is able to produce? 

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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.

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On the invitation of House Speaker Paul Ryan, who stated that “[t]he friendship between the United States and India is a pillar of stability in an important region of the world,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be addressing a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress on June 8. There have been five Indian prime ministers who’ve given such remarks: Jawaharlal Nehru (1949, to separate House and Senate gatherings), Rajiv Gandhi (1985), P.V. Narashima Rao (1994), Atal Bihari Vajpayee (2000) and Manmohan Singh (2005). Their speeches were reflective of the contemporary global context and the state of the U.S.-India relationship, but they did share some themes as well. Modi will likely emphasize that he is transforming India (as these other prime ministers asserted as well) and want to highlight the change he is bringing, but his speech might also echo some of these past themes. Below is a look back at what India’s prime ministers have said to Congress—a past glimpse that is also instructive in terms of how much the U.S.-India relationship has changed.

On October 13, 1949, two years of India’s independence (and a few days after the communists had taken over China), Jawaharlal Nehru addressed back-to-back meetings of the House and Senate. Declaring that “Nehru puts India on freedom’s side,” The New York Times noted in a front-page story that "Pandit Nehru expressed pride for India's past, hope for her future, but acute awareness of her present economic difficulties."

On June 13, 1985, Rajiv Gandhi, Nehru’s grandson who had won a major electoral victory the previous year, became the first Indian premier to address a joint meeting of Congress. In an above-the-fold story featuring a photo of a smiling Gandhi, Vice President George H.W. Bush and House Speaker Tip O’ Neill, The New York Times particularly remarked on the 40-year-old prime minister’s youthfulness and remarks on Afghanistan.

On May 18, 1994, a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and after having introduced a wave of economic reforms, P.V. Narasimha Rao addressed Congress. Ten days before that The New York Times featured a story on his finance minister Manmohan Singh and the reforms the two leaders were undertaking. Reflecting the relative disinterest in India in the U.S. at the time, the Times did not, however, cover Rao’s speech.

On September 14, 2000, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, India’s first prime minister from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) addressed the U.S. Congress. His two years in power till then had seen India conduct nuclear tests, a crisis with Pakistan seen as a turning point in U.S.-India relations because the U.S. called out Pakistan for its actions, and a U.S. presidential visit to India after two decades. A jovial photo of the prime minister and President Clinton made the front page a couple of days later, but the speech itself did not get coverage in the newspaper of record.

On July 19, 2005, Manmohan Singh, who’d just reached a civil nuclear agreement with President Bush, addressed Congress. His visit—and that agreement—received front-page coverage, but the speech itself was not covered separately.

In his speech, Prime Minister Modi will likely stress the challenge that terrorism poses globally and regionally, and highlight U.S.-India the counter-terrorism cooperation. The last three Indian premiers have addressed this challenge as well.

President Obama reiterated U.S. support for Indian membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and encouraged other members to welcome Indian into the group. The U.S. and India have come a long way on a subject that has come up in every prime minister’s speech since Rajiv Gandhi.

Every prime minister has outlined their economic policy objectives and achievements—more recent ones, have highlighted the opportunity India represents. While this was the focus of Modi’s speech to the U.S.-India Business Council, expect this to be a subject he covers in his remarks to Congress as well.

Indian prime ministers have seen the U.S. as a crucial source of technology, and often made the case for technological assistance or transfers or collaboration.

There has also been the linkage between democracy and development in various ways: highlighting the development task India is undertaking in a democratic context, stressing that democracies are better placed over the long-run to innovate and develop equitably, and suggesting that the U.S. has an interest in helping India’s democratic experiment—now democratic engine—succeed.

Whether to address concerns in Congress, note the similarities between India and the U.S., or stress India’s multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious nature, each prime minister has talked about diversity, equality and freedom.

In their speeches, each of the prime ministers have noted the contributions of the growing numbers of Indian-Americans and non-resident Indians in the United States. Modi has made the diaspora a key focus; expect him to emphasize its role.

A week before his speech to Congress, Vajpayee famously asserted that “India and the USA are natural allies.” He’s not the only one to have noted the “natural” character of the relationship, though there’s been different reasoning behind that assertion or hope.

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. 

Keeping with tradition, we start the year with a compendium of forecasts for 2016 from our guest bloggers and ourselves.  At the end of the year, we will assess how we did (for last year’s forecasting performance, click here).

The prevailing sentiment about economic developments during 2016 is decidedly mixed. There are positive and negative views, sometimes from the same source. Here is a sampling:

On the negative side, “emerging economies will continue to disappoint;” “ODA will be squeezed by refugee costs (and climate change financing commitments);” “geopolitical tensions will remain;” “the dollar will be stronger with a severe impact on emerging economies;” and a range of idiosyncratic, political risks: weak governance and terrorist threats in Kenya; declining investor confidence and rising social strife in South Africa; corruption scandals in Brazil; and low oil prices coupled with domestic and geopolitical tensions in Russia.

On the positive side, “oil prices will remain low;” “the Islamic State will be defeated;” “the effect of monetary policy normalization will be very limited;” “food prices will remain low or fall, helping reduce global hunger;” “African countries will improve cereal yields;” “OECD countries will accept a record number of refugees and migrants;” “oil exporters will reform their economies;” and “peace agreements to end the wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen will be signed.”

An emerging theme is whether the disappointments in developing country growth in 2015 stem from idiosyncratic factors in specific countries—especially the BRICS, Turkey, and Indonesia—or whether those idiosyncratic factors, often associated with domestic political developments, are symptomatic of a broader issue of a slowing down of global convergence. Indeed, this theme of whether convergence remains a strong force that will continue to dominate developing country prospects, or a weak force that is all too easily offset by other factors, will likely remain one of the critical unknowns of 2016.

In summary, it is fair to say that with views as diverse as those we received, the picture for 2016 is complicated to say the least.

There is no analytical clarity in the global economy, despite forecasts from most major organizations (e.g., the IMF) that growth will be better in 2016 than in 2015 in every region except perhaps East Asia (although Asia will still probably record higher growth than anywhere else).

The fears generated by a slowing of one of the main engines of the global economy over the past decade, namely China, are palpable. The big story of 2016 is perhaps that it is an emerging economy, China, which is the major source of uncertainty over this year’s global outlook. While prospects for the major advanced economies—the USA, Europe, and Japan—are relatively stable, it is the developing world where there is the least clarity over the short- term outlook. Certainly, the volatility in global stock markets in the first days of the year suggests that volatility, risk aversion, and differences of views over short-term developments are all high as 2016 begins.

But there is at least one bright note. Almost certainly, prospects will improve for almost 200 million people who were living in countries that last year remained outside the scope of a normally functioning global economy. In Myanmar, Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran, economic conditions will improve as a result of recent political developments. In addition, in 2016 there will probably be at least 100 million more people joining the global middle class—those living in households with incomes of $10-100 a day (2005 PPP). Good news for them but a reminder that the task of moving towards a world with sustainable consumption and production patterns remains huge.

There was one consensus thread among our bloggers—all the Europeans appear consumed by the Euro 2016 soccer event (“Spain, France, or Germany will win”), while only one blogger dared to comment on the Olympics (that Brazil would do twice as well as in 2012). It seems that sports will be less complicated than economics in 2016.

Thursday, South Africa’s highest court found President Zuma guilty of violating the constitution as he refused to reimburse the large sum of money spent on improvements to his personal home. Between 2010 and 2014, the home located in the president’s rural hometown of Nkandla received improvement which cost an estimated $23 million. The improvements include a chicken coop, an amphitheater, a swimming pool, and a helipad. President Zuma has stated that the improvements were necessary to ensure his security and should consequently be paid for with taxpayers’ money. In 2014, public prosecutor Thuli Madonsela ruled that the president should repay part of the taxpayers’ money spent on the improvements of his personal home. In refusing to do so, he violated the country’s constitution “by not complying with a decision by the public protector, the national watchdog.” The court has given the National Treasury 60 days to determine the sum the president must repay. The opposition has stated that they will seek Zuma’s impeachment.

In other South African news, this week, the rand strengthen against the U.S. dollar and reached its highest value since December 8, 2015, the day before President Zuma fired former Finance Minister Nhlanla Nene. The strengthening of the rand was coupled with the strengthening of other Emerging Markets currencies. This hike follows the statement from Federal Reserve Chair Janey Yellen, reiterating the importance to raise U.S. interest rates cautiously, amid risks in the global economy. Investors—weighting prospects of higher U.S. borrowing costs—were holding off in acquiring emerging-market assets.

This week, 17 Angolan activists were sentenced to jail time for rebellion against the government of Jose Eduardo dos Santos. The sentences ranged from two years to eight and a half years. Last June, the activists were arrested during a book club meeting focusing on Gene Sharp’s book titled From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation—a book on nonviolence and resistance to repressive regimes. Monday, the activists were charged and sentenced with acts of rebellion, planning mass action of civil disobedience, and producing fake passports, among other charges. Amnesty International has accused the Angolan court of wrongfully convicting the activists and using the judicial system to “silence dissenting views.”

Later in the week, in response to the jailing of the young activists, the Portuguese branch of hacking group Anonymous claimed the shutdown of 20 government websites, including that of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, among others. In a Facebook post claiming the attack, the group states, “The real criminals are outside, defended by the capitalist system that increasingly spreads in the minds of the weak.” The functionality of the websites has been restored.  

On Monday, March 28, the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) withdrew $472 million in aid from the government of Tanzania after the result of the last weekend’s disputed presidential election rerun in the semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar was announced. Incumbent President Ali Mohamed Shein of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party was declared the winner with 91.4 percent of the vote. However, the rerun was boycotted by the opposition Civic United Front party over the cancellation of last October’s election by the Zanzibar Electoral Commission. The commission claimed the October poll was fraudulent, while the opposition says the allegations of fraud were fabricated to thwart a victory by their candidate.

The MCC was planning a number of power and infrastructure projects in Tanzania, but its development assistance programming is conditional upon beneficiaries meeting certain standards of good governance. The MCC’s board of directors held a vote on Monday, in which they determined that Tanzania was no longer eligible to partner with the MCC given the election outcome. Although the loss of the MCC partnership is a sizable blow to the Tanzanian government, the Tanzanian finance minister appeared optimistic that the power projects would continue despite the MCC’s decision, as he stated: “We weren’t surprised at all because we were prepared for whatever the outcome. We will implement those projects using local sources of fund and the support of from other development partners.” Meanwhile, 10 out of the country’s 14 key western donors withdrew general budget support to Tanzania over the contested election.

With over 16 million people and nearly 8.6 million jobs, America's older industrial cities remain a vital-if undervalued-part of the economy, particularly in states where they are heavily concentrated, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. They also have a range of other physical, economic, and cultural assets that, if fully leveraged, can serve as a platform for their renewal.

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Across the country, cities today are becoming more attractive to certain segments of society. Meanwhile, economic trends-globalization, the demand for educated workers, the increasing role of universities-are providing cities with an unprecedented chance to capitalize upon their economic advantages and regain their competitive edge.

Many cities have exploited these assets to their advantage; the moment is ripe for older industrial cities to follow suit. But to do so, these cities need thoughtful and broad-based approaches to foster prosperity.

"Restoring Prosperity" aims to mobilize governors and legislative leaders, as well as local constituencies, behind an asset-oriented agenda for reinvigorating the market in the nation's older industrial cities. The report begins with identifications and descriptions of these cities-and the economic, demographic, and policy "drivers" behind their current condition-then makes a case for why the moment is ripe for advancing urban reform, and offers a five-part agenda and organizing plan to achieve it.

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New Jersey State Profile
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New York State Profile
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Ohio State Profile
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Pennsylvania State Profile 

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At a legislative conference in Cambridge, Ohio, Bruce Katz stressed the importance of cities and metro areas to the state's overall prosperity. Acknowledging the decline of Ohio's older industrial cities, Katz noted the area's many assets and argued for a focus on innovation, human capital, infrastructure, and quality communities as means to revitalize the region. 

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Louisville/Jefferson County is the principal city of America’s 42nd largest metropolitan area, a 13-county, bi-state region with a 2006 population estimated at 1.2 million. It is the largest city by far in Kentucky, but it is neither Kentucky’s capital nor its center of political power.

The consolidated city, authorized by voter referendum in 2000 and implemented in 2003, is home to 701,500 residents within its 399 square miles, with a population density of 4,124.8 per square mile.² It is either the nation’s 16th or its 26th largest incorporated place, depending on whether the residents of smaller municipalities within its borders, who are eligible to vote in its elections, are counted (as local officials desire and U.S. Census Bureau officials resist). The remainder of the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) population is split between four Indiana counties (241,193) and eight Kentucky counties (279,523). Although several of those counties are growing rapidly, the new Louisville metro area remains the MSA's central hub, with 57 percent of the population and almost 70 percent of the job base.

Centrally located on the southern banks of the Ohio River, amid an agriculturally productive, mineral rich, and energy producing region, Louisville is commonly described as the northernmost city of the American South. Closer to Toronto than to New Orleans, and even slightly closer to Chicago than to Atlanta, it remains within a day’s drive of two-thirds of the American population living east of the Rocky Mountains.

This location has been the dominant influence on Louisville’s history as a regional center of trade, commerce and manufacture. The city, now the all-points international hub of United Parcel Service (UPS), consistently ranks among the nation’s top logistics centers. Its manufacturing sector, though much diminished, still ranks among the strongest in the Southeast. The many cultural assets developed during the city’s reign as a regional economic center rank it highly in various measures of quality of life and “best places.”

Despite these strengths, Louisville’s competitiveness and regional prominence declined during much of the last half of the 20th Century, and precipitously so during the economic upheavals of the 1970s and ‘80s. Not only did it lose tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs and many of its historic businesses to deindustrialization and corporate consolidation, it also confronted significant barriers to entry into the growing knowledge-based economy because of its poorly-educated workforce, lack of R&D capacity, and risk-averse business culture.

In response, Louisville began a turbulent, two-decade process of civic and economic renewal, during which it succeeded both in restoring growth in its traditional areas of strength, most notably from the large impact of the UPS hub, and in laying groundwork for 21st century competitiveness, most notably by substantially ramping up university-based research and entrepreneurship supports. Doing so required it to overhaul nearly every aspect of its outmoded economic development strategies, civic relationships, and habits of mind, creating a new culture of collaboration.

Each of the three major partners in economic development radically transformed themselves and their relationships with one another. The often-paralyzing city-suburban divide of local governance yielded to consolidation. The business community reconstituted itself as a credible champion of broad-based regional progress, and it joined with the public sector to create a new chamber of commerce that is the region’s full-service, public-private economic development agency recognized as among the best in the nation. The Commonwealth of Kentucky embraced sweeping education reforms, including major support for expanded research at the University of Louisville, and a “New Economy” agenda emphasizing the commercialization of research-generated knowledge. Creative public-private partnerships have become the norm, propelling, for instance, the dramatic resurgence of downtown.

The initial successes of all these efforts have been encouraging, but not yet sufficient for the transformation to innovation-based prosperity that is the goal. This report details those successes, and the leadership, partnerships, and strategies that helped create them. It begins by describing Louisville’s history and development and the factors that made its economy grow and thrive. It then explains why the city faltered during the latter part of the 20th century and how it has begun to reverse course. In doing so, the study offers important lessons for other cities that are striving to compete in a very new economic era. 

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Chattanooga a few years ago faced what many smaller cities are struggling with today—a sudden decline after years of prosperity in the "old" economy. This case study offers a roadmap for these cities by chronicling Chattanooga's demise and rebirth.

Chattanooga is located in the southern end of the Tennessee Valley where the Tennessee River cuts through the Smoky Mountains and the Cumberland Plateau. The city’s location, particularly its proximity to the Tennessee River, has been one of its greatest assets. Today, several major interstates (I-24, I-59, and I-75) run through Chattanooga, making it a hub of transportation business. The city borders North Georgia and is less than an hour away from both Alabama and North Carolina. Atlanta, Nashville, and Birmingham are all within two hours travel time by car.

Chattanooga is Tennessee’s fourth largest city, with a population in 2000 of 155,554, and it covers an area of 143.2 square miles. Among the 200 most populous cities in the United States, Chattanooga—with 1,086.5 persons per square mile—ranks 190th in population density.2 It is the most populous of 10 municipalities in Hamilton County, which has a population of 307,896, covers an area of 575.7 square miles, and has a population density of 534.8 persons per square mile.

With its extensive railroads and river access, Chattanooga was at one time the “Dynamo of Dixie”—a bustling, midsized, industrial city in the heart of the South. By 1940, Chattanooga’s population was centered around a vibrant downtown and it was one of the largest cities in the United States. Just 50 years later, however, it was in deep decline. Manufacturing jobs continued to leave. The city’s white population had fled to the suburbs and downtown was a place to be avoided, rather than the economic center of the region. The city lost almost 10 percent of its population during the 1960s, and another 10 percent between 1980 and 1990. It would have lost more residents had it not been for annexation of outlying suburban areas.

The tide began to turn in the 1990s, with strategic investments by developing public-private partnerships—dubbed the “Chattanooga way.” These investments spurred a dramatic turnaround. The city’s population has since stabilized and begun to grow, downtown has been transformed, and it is once again poised to prosper in the new economy as it had in the old.

This report describes how Chattanooga has turned its economy around. It begins with a summary of how the city grew and developed during its first 150 years before describing the factors driving its decline. The report concludes by examining the partnerships and planning that helped spur Chattanooga’s current revitalization and providing valuable lessons to other older industrial cities trying to ignite their own economic recovery. 

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Part of the larger Northeast Ohio regional economy, the Akron metropolitan area is composed of two counties (Summit and Portage) with a population of just over 700,000, and is surrounded by three other metropolitan areas. Akron is located approximately 40 miles south of Cleveland, 50 miles west of Youngstown, and 23 miles north of Canton. The Cleveland metro area is a five-county region with a population of 2.1 million. The Youngstown metro area includes three counties, extending into Pennsylvania, and has a population of 587,000. Canton is part of a two-county metropolitan area with a population of 410,000.

The adjacency of the Akron and Cleveland Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) is an important factor in the economic performance of the Akron region. The interdependence of economies of the two MSAs is evidenced by the strong economic growth of the northern part of Summit County adjacent to the core county of the Cleveland metropolitan area. This part of Summit County beyond the city of Akron provides available land, access to the labor pools of the two metropolitan areas, and proximity to the region’s extensive transportation network.

Although affected by economic activity in the larger region, the fate and future of Akron and its wider region are not solely determined by events in these adjacent areas. While sharing broad economic trends with its neighbors, the Akron metro area has been impacted by a different set of events and has shown different patterns of growth from other areas in Northeast Ohio.

This study provides an in-depth look at Akron’s economy over the past century. It begins by tracing the industrial history of the Akron region, describing the growth of the rubber industry from the late 1800s through much of following century, to its precipitous decline beginning in the 1970s. It then discusses how the “bottoming out” of this dominant industry gave rise to the industrial restructuring of the area. The paper explores the nature of this restructuring, and the steps and activities the city’s business, civic, and government leaders have undertaken to help spur its recovery and redevelopment. In doing so, it provides a series of lessons to other older industrial regions working to find their own economic niche in a changing global economy. 

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On September 8, Brookings Senior Fellow Vanda Felbab-Brown participated in a Center for International Policy and Washington Office on Latin America event, “Using Militaries as Police in Latin America: A Discussion on Citizen Security and the Way Forward.” Felbab-Brown was joined on the panel by Adam Blackwell, secretary for multidimensional security at the Organization of American States; Richard Downie, executive vice president for global strategies at OMNITRU; and Adam Isacson, senior associate for regional security policy at the Washington Office on Latin America. Sarah Kinosian, lead researcher on Latin America at the Center for International Policy, moderated the event.

Felbab-Brown argued that police reform across Latin America over the past two decades has often been at best deficient or has failed outright. The lack of rule of law characterizes many countries in the region, including continually Mexico. Police forces are often not only corrupt, but highly abusive, and both police forces and military forces deployed for policing engage in major human rights violations. Even assumed exemplary experiments, such as the Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora (UPP) approach in Rio, have struggled to execute an effective handover from heavily-armed takeover forces to regular policing.

If governments choose to deploy their militaries in local policing roles, suboptimal as that is, the forces should adopt population-centric strategies, immediately develop concrete handover plans to police forces, and operate under a civilian coordinator. A key requirement for military forces is to respect human rights and due process and diligently prosecute perpetrators. Ultimately both police and military forces need to understand that their role is to protect society.

To some extent, Felbab-Brown argues, the resort to military forces for policing purposes is compounded by the lack of expeditionary police capacity by outside partners and donors, who overwhelmingly tend to deploy military forces for training policing. However, if the United States and outside donors want to make their policing assistance more effective, they should consider developing expeditionary police forces for such training purposes as well as a range of stabilization operations.

The most important factor for security efforts is citizen support. Marginalization, exclusion, and abuse from policing forces—be they police or military ones—have often prevented local populations from cooperating with law enforcement units and buying into rule of law: security or insecurity is co-produced as much as by citizens as by the police or military.

2016 is shaping up to be a potentially critical year for Afghanistan. ISIS is rising there, the Taliban is gaining ground, the stability of the Afghan government is deteriorating by the day, and national elections are coming in October. The US, China, Pakistan, and the Afghan government are currently holding talks aimed at bringing the Taliban to the table to try negotiate an end to the war.

Of those countries, it's Pakistan that is the most significant. Pakistan has probably the most influence of anyone over whether those talks will succeed in getting the Taliban to agree to sit down and negotiate a peace agreement with the Afghan government. But there's a lot more going on with the peace talks that are perhaps the country's best or only remaining hope.

To understand how this works and why it matters, I spoke to Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow in the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institution and an expert on Afghanistan. What follows is a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for clarity and length.

Jennifer Williams: Could you start by just explaining how Pakistan has been involved in the conflict between the Taliban and Afghanistan historically?

Vanda Felbab-Brown: That goes back to the creation of independent Pakistan, with issues having to do with the Pashtun minority in Pakistan, which is also the majority population of Afghanistan, and irredentist claims by Afghan Pashtun politicians, as well as the Cold War rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States, who at different times supported either Pakistan or Afghanistan and played the two against each other.

Then you have the Taliban emerging in the 1990s, and Pakistan fully supports the Taliban: They help equip it, they provide intelligence, advisers, and during the Taliban era when they ruled country, Pakistan is one of only three countries that recognize the Taliban regime.

They continued supporting the Taliban throughout the past decade, and US-Pakistan relations became very fraught and complicated. It's never been easy. Pakistanis sometimes use the expression that the United States treats Pakistan like a condom: uses it when they need it then discards it when they are finished with it. It's a fairly common saying in Pakistan, especially in the military. So there is a sense of betrayal on the part of the United States, untrustworthiness, that it's an exploitative relationship on the part of the US toward Pakistan.

I should also say that Pakistan has long supported many Islamic extremist groups as part of its asymmetric policy toward India, and some of these groups have now mutated, or they slipped Pakistan's full control.

Even with respect to the Afghan Taliban, there is a lot of support from the Pakistani state intelligence services and military to the Afghan Taliban. At the same time, Pakistan has been under enormous US and international pressure to act against them, and so they will take the occasional action against the Afghan Taliban as well. But those actions are mostly seen as halfhearted, incomplete window dressing.

JW: So what role is Pakistan playing today? I know that they just had the four-party talks and that Pakistan has been insisting that these talks take place in Pakistan. Are they trying to speak for the Taliban?

VFB: I'm not sure that it's a fair characterization that they are speaking for the Taliban. Certainly the Afghan government, including in the latest talks, often insinuates or alleges that Pakistan speaks for the Taliban. But they clearly do not.

The relationship between the Taliban and Pakistan is hardly smooth and perfect. Many members of the Afghan Taliban deeply resent the level of Pakistani interference, even as the group has been supported by Pakistan. There is a lot of Afghan Pashtun nationalism also among the Taliban that deeply resents the influence and attempts at control by the Pakistani state.

Part of the key issue in the relationship is that although Pakistan supports the Afghan Taliban, and although it has historically supported other extremist groups, it does not have perfect control. And arguably, its control is diminishing. And so they posture, they do their double game. They want to appear strong, and so they posture that they have much greater control than they have, but at the same time they deny that they have any nefarious role.

In reality, they are playing both sides against the middle, and they often have much less capacity to control and rein in the extremist groups, including the Afghan Taliban, than many assume. The widespread criticism of Pakistan is one of its duplicity and its nefarious activity and its lack of willingness to act against the Afghan Taliban. Those are true, but they are also coupled with limits to their capacity. They are riding a tiger that they cannot control fully.

So they have been hosting these four-way talks that involve them, the US government, the Afghan government, and the Chinese government. The Afghan government is desperate to achieve some sort of negotiated deal with the Taliban. It feels under tremendous pressure, the military is taking a pounding from the Taliban, and the government lacks legitimacy.

The US has similar views on the notion that the way out of the predicament in Afghanistan is a negotiated deal. The Chinese also like the idea. They have their own influence in Pakistan. China would very much like to say that they finally achieved what the US failed to do over the past decade, that they will bring peace to Afghanistan, and that they will do it by enabling the negotiations.

Pakistan is responsive to China. Their relationship with China is much stronger than their relationship with the United States. They often tell the US that China is their old friend, that China is the country that hasn't betrayed them, unlike the United States. China has promised massive economic development in Pakistan at $40 billion. The Pakistanis often say to the US that the Pakistan-China relationship is "greater than the Himalayas and deeper than the ocean." Very flowery.

JW: What's the relationship like between the Afghan government and Pakistan today?

VFB: The crucial man there really is the Pakistani chief of the army staff Raheel Sharif; no relation to [Prime Minister] Nawaz Sharif. I think that there is sort of goodwill and motivation right now, even on the army staff — but that is juxtaposed with, again, the limits of control even the chief has. With almost clockwork regularity you have a round of negotiations in Pakistan or you have a meeting between Raheel Sharif and [Afghan President Ashraf] Ghani, and the next day a bomb goes off in Kabul and people die, or the Indian consulate is attacked.

All those ploys are meant to destroy any beginning of a more positive relationship and have been very effective in subverting the process. The same goes on between Pakistan and India. Meanwhile, Ghani is taking an enormously risky strategy with respect to the negotiations. It's vastly unpopular in Afghanistan, and many, many Afghans hate Pakistan and blame it for all of their troubles.

They use Pakistan as the explanation of everything that ever goes wrong in Afghanistan. And the Pakistanis are responsible for a lot, but there's much, much blame and responsibility that lies on Afghan politicians and Afghan people.

So Ghani's outreach and engagement with Pakistan is extremely unpopular. He's spending an extreme amount of political capital, and does not have support from his partner in the government, Abdullah Abdullah, and the northern Tajik factions that hate Pakistan with great vitriol. So the more Pakistan is unable to deliver things like the Haqqani network, reducing or stopping its attacks in Kabul, the more politically impossible for Ghani the process will be.

JW: So what does that mean in terms of the stability of Afghanistan's unity government?

VFB: The unity government is extremely strained. "Unity" it isn't. The Pakistani negotiation angle is just too big for the strain. It might be strategically important. It might be a very significant element in getting any negotiation going, but it's also extremely politically costly, and the longer it doesn't produce anything, the more politically costly and unsustainable it will be.

In October, there are supposed to be parliamentary elections and district elections in Afghanistan, and, more important, this loya jirga [a national assembly of Afghan elders]. And unless there is some sort of major breakthrough by the summer, a lot of the negotiations and political process with both the Taliban and Pakistan will be put on ice, because it will just be politically impossible in the context of the loya jirga and the elections.

So they really have until the summer to make some sort of breakthrough, and then you will have months of morass and extreme political instability in Afghanistan, but it will also not be conducive in any way to improving either the relationship with Pakistan or the negotiations.

JW: How does Pakistan fit into the rise of ISIS in Afghanistan? What's the relationship there? And how might this affect the peace negotiations?

VFB: The rise of ISIS-Khorasan is one of the most interesting developments. It complicates the negotiations for the Taliban. They oppose the negotiations, and they're a big problem for Mullah Mansour and those who want to negotiate. They enable defections, make them easy, and make them costly.

At the same time, it is interesting because ISIS does not have the same linkages to Pakistan that the Afghan Taliban had, even though ISIS includes many defectors from the Taliban. They quite specifically reject what they call the "yoke" that Pakistan has put on the Afghan Taliban, and they call the Afghan Taliban leadership traitors because of the close relationship with Pakistan.

Moreover, ISIS-Khorasan also has quite a few members of various Pakistani extremist groups like Lashkar-e Taiba and members of TTP [Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan]. So there is also a lot of resentment and hostility toward Pakistan.

I think the rise of ISIS might make Pakistan be cooperative to some extent, but on the other hand, I think it will also reinforce in the mind of many Pakistan security controllers that it's important to cultivate the Afghan Taliban as friends against the bigger danger of ISIS.

JW: Now that ISIS-Khorasan has directly targeted Pakistan, the consulate in Jalalabad, do you think Pakistan will take action?

VFB: I think they'll take action against ISIS and groups like Tehrik-e Taliban. I don't think it will produce more resolve to go after the Afghan Taliban. That's my view. Others are hoping that they will finally accept the realities and really believe that they have to fight all of the insurgents, all of the terrorists, and that they cannot differentiate among them. I am not persuaded that that will, in fact, happen.

JW: So what does this all mean for the prospects for peace? Are you hopeful at all?

VFB: I think the peace negotiations are important, but I am skeptical that anything will happen quickly.

I think that if by summer the Taliban has been willing to join the negotiating table, that will be an important breakthrough, but nothing will be agreed. The summer will be very bloody, and then there will be the political [wrangling] associated with the loya jirga and the elections.

In my view, even if the Taliban comes to the negotiating table, we are looking at years of negotiations, and certainly no breakthrough before 2017 and likely much longer.

And so the question is whether we, the United States, are prepared to stand by with Afghanistan for that long and whether the Afghans will have the resolve. So it's really important that the military and the police fight as hard as they can, because the weaker they fight, the more they defect, the more intimidated they are, the more brain drain that flows from Afghanistan, the stronger the Taliban is viewed and the more intransigent they will be in the negotiations. Now the negotiations will be very much about the military battlefield as much as they will about what's happening at the table for a long time.

This interview was originally published by Vox.

Editor’s Note: The following chapter is part of the report, "After the Drug Wars," published in February 2016 by the London School of Economics and Political Science's Expert Group on the Economics of Drug Policy.

Even as the administration of Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto has scored important reform successes in the economic sphere, its security and law enforcement policy toward organized crime remains incomplete and ill-defined. Despite the early commitments of his administration to focus on reducing drug violence, combating corruption, and redesigning counternarcotics policies, little significant progress has been achieved. Major human rights violations related to the drug violence, whether perpetrated by organized crime groups or military and police forces, persist – such as at Iguala, Guerrero, where 43 students were abducted by a cabal of local government officials, police forces and organized crime groups. This has also been seen in Tatlaya and Tanhuato, Michoacán, where military forces have likely been engaged in extrajudicial killings of tens of people. Meanwhile, although drug violence has abated in the north of the country, such as in Ciudad Juárez, Monterrey and Tijuana, government policies have played only a minor role. Much of the violence reduction is the result of the vulnerable and unsatisfactory narcopeace – the victory of the Sinaloa or Gulf Cartels. 

The July 2015 spectacular escape of the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and the world’s most notorious drug trafficker – Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo – from a Mexican high-security prison was a massive embarrassment for the Peña Nieto government. Yet it serves as another reminder of the deep structural deficiencies of Mexico’s law enforcement and rule-of law system which persists more than a decade after Mexico declared its war on the drug cartels.

The Peña Nieto administration often pointed to the February 2014 capture of El Chapo as the symbol of its effectiveness in fighting drug cartels and violent criminal groups in Mexico. The Peña Nieto administration’s highlighting of Chapo’s capture was both ironic and revealing: ironic, because the new government came into office criticizing the anti-crime policy of the previous administration of Felipe Calderón of killing or capturing top capos to decapitate their cartels; and revealing, because despite the limitations and outright counterproductive effects of this high-value-targeting policy and despite promises of a very different strategy, the Peña Nieto administration fell back into relying on the pre-existing approach. In fact, such high-value-targeting has been at the core of Pena Nieto’s anti-crime policy. Moreover, Chapo’s escape from Mexico’s most secure prison through a sophisticated tunnel (a method he had also pioneered for smuggling drugs and previously used for escapes) showed the laxity and perhaps complicity at the prison, and again spotlighted the continuing inadequate state of Mexico’s corrections system.

Read the full chapter here.

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The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) will boost earnings for over 18 million low-income working families in the U.S. by more than $30 billion this year. This survey finds that the EITC provided a $737 million boost to the Chicago regional economy in 1998, and lifted purchasing power in the city of Chicago by an average of $2 million per square mile. Large numbers of Low-income working families lived not only in inner-city Chicago neighborhoods, but also in smaller cities throughout the region like Aurora, Joliet, Elgin and Waukegan. The survey concludes by describing steps that state and local leaders could take to build on existing efforts to link working families to the EITC, such as increasing resources for free tax preparation services, helping EITC recipients to open bank accounts, and expanding and making refundable the Illinois state EITC.

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Executive Summary

Chicago rebounded from four decades of population loss in the 1990s, and Census 2000 provides a snapshot of that recovery.

Chicago's rebound derives in large part from significant immigration flows, which have made the city one of the nation's most racially and ethnically diverse. Immigrants from Mexico now account for nearly half the city's foreign-born population, for example, yet Chicago also remains one of the foremost U.S. gateways for workers and families from Eastern Europe. Such inflows have made Chicago more youthful, and they are responsible for the residential and commercial revitalization of many of the city's neighborhoods. However, most new foreign-born residents are settling in the suburbs rather than the city, as they are in a number of other U.S. metropolitan areas.

Chicago made progress on income and poverty during the last decade, and all racial/ethnic groups experienced gains in homeownership. Yet in many respects the city still exemplifies our nation's residential and economic separation by race. Blacks, Hispanics, and whites live in largely segregated neighborhoods. Annual household incomes for blacks trail those for whites by more than $20,000. And families with children face particular challenges—more than a third live below or near the poverty line, and more than one in five Chicago children live in a family with no adult workers. In the time since Census 2000 was conducted, moreover, unemployment in the city has risen, and economic differences by race and class are likely magnified today.

Along these lines and others, then, Chicago in Focus: A Profile from Census 2000 concludes that:

• Chicago's population "rebounded" during the 1990s, but the region's outer suburbs are booming. Census 2000 reports the story: For the first decade since the 1950s, the City of Chicago saw its population increase, by 112,000 residents. Neighborhoods on the city's southwest and northwest sides grew rapidly with the addition of immigrant populations. At the same time, though, Chicago's suburbs added roughly seven residents for every net new resident in the city. Most of the growth was in the outer suburbs; wide areas of suburban Cook County and inner DuPage County lost population over the decade. As a result, the economic center of the region is shifting outward. Fewer than half of the region's workers commute to the city for their jobs, and a growing number of Chicago residents drive alone to work in the suburbs.

• The city owes much of its population growth and unrivaled diversity to new arrivals from abroad. While most Midwestern cities are home to a predominantly black/white population, Chicago boasts high racial and ethnic diversity. Whites, blacks, and Hispanics each make up at least a quarter of the city's population. This unique mix reflects Chicago's continued status as one of the nation's important immigrant gateways. The city added 160,000 new residents from abroad in the 1990s. Nearly half came from Mexico, and significant numbers also came from Eastern Europe and Asia. This diversity is not uniformly dispersed, however. Chicago's blacks and Hispanics, and blacks and whites, often live in very separate sections of the city.

• The city's residents are relatively young, but most have lived in Chicago for several years. Baby Boomers aged 35 to 54 are by far the nation's largest age cohorts, but people in their late 20s represent Chicago's largest age group. But Chicago is not a transient place. The city's youth belies the fact that nearly 85 percent of its residents have lived there for more than five years, one of the highest rates among the Living Cities. Despite a slight decline in the number of married couples with children living in the city during the 1990s, Chicago still has a higher share of these "nuclear" families than most other large cities. Whether these families remain in the city will influence Chicago's population trajectory in the current decade.

• Chicago's families made broad economic gains in the 1990s, though some residents—African Americans, in particular—still face hardships. Unlike many other U.S. cities in the 1990s, Chicago managed to retain its middle class, and the ranks of lower-income households declined modestly. Median household income in Chicago grew at a rate twice the national average. Poverty, especially for children, declined. Yet Chicago's black community faces continued economic challenges. Median household income for blacks was just $29,000 in 2000, versus $37,000 for Hispanics and $49,000 for whites. Chicago has the sixth highest black poverty rate among the 23 Living Cities. The ranks of the "working poor"—families with incomes below 150 percent of poverty—are significant. Behind these economic differences lies a racial education gap; only 13 percent of black adults in Chicago hold bachelor's degrees, compared to 42 percent of whites.

• Chicago maintains a unique mix of homeowners and renters. Forty-four percent of households in Chicago own their own homes, a rate lower than that for most large cities. Differences in homeownership between minorities and whites, however, are less stark here than in many other cities. Nearly 40 percent of racial and ethnic minority households are homeowners, and all groups—especially Hispanics—made significant gains in the 1990s. Rents rose during the decade, and median prices are similar to those in growing cities like Dallas, Phoenix, and Portland. But because Chicago's households tend to be larger, and more likely to rent, cost burdens remain a significant issue in Chicago. To be precise, roughly 225,000 households in Chicago devote at least 30 percent of their incomes to rent.

By presenting the indicators on the following pages, Chicago in Focus: A Profile from Census 2000 seeks to give readers a better sense of where Chicago and its residents stand in relation to their peers, and how the 1990s shaped the city, its neighborhoods, and the entire Chicago region. Living Cities and the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy hope that this information will prompt a fruitful dialogue among city and community leaders about the direction Chicago should take in the coming decade.

Chicago Data Book Series 1
Chicago Data Book Series 2

The city of Chicago is increasing retrofits by using stimulus dollars to expand the opportunity for energy efficient living to low-income residents of large multi-family rental buildings. To aid this target demographic, often left underserved by existing programs, the city’s new Multi-Family Energy Retrofit Program introduces an innovative model for retrofit delivery that relies on private sector financing and energy service companies.

Chicago’s new Multi-Family Energy Retrofit Program draws on multi-sector collaboration, with an emphasis on private sector involvement supported by public and nonprofit resources. Essentially, the program applies the model of private energy service companies (ESCOs), long-used in the public sector, to the affordable, multi-family housing market. In this framework, ESCOs conduct assessments of building energy performance, identify and oversee implementation of cost-effective retrofit measures, and guarantee energy savings to use as a source of loan repayment.

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The Center for Neighborhood Technology, a Chicago-area nonprofit promoting urban sustainability, has a long-run vision of a Chicagoland building energy-efficiency system, which, if started up quickly, would help to effectively deploy relevant stimulus dollars in the near-term. Its activities focus on ramping up existing weatherization and retrofit programs in the short-term to take best advantage of current stimulus dollars while at the same time building the institutional capacity to launch and sustain a new regional initiative aimed at coordinating energy efficiency information, financing, and service delivery for the seven-county region over the long-term.

The Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) is using ARRA and other resources to work toward a long-run vision of a sustainable regional energy efficiency system. CNT envisions a centrally-coordinated initiative— either through a new stand-alone entity or a formalized network—to manage the financing, marketing, performance monitoring and certification, information provision, supply chain development, and customer assistance required to efficiently scale up the delivery of retrofit services for all types of buildings across the Chicago region.

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As expected, the latest data from the Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey (ACS) confirm that the worst U.S. economic downturn in decades exacerbated trends set in motion years before, by multiplying the ranks of America’s poor. Between 2007 and 2009, the national poverty rate rose from 13 percent to 14.3 percent, and the number of people below the poverty line jumped by 4.9 million. Yet because the economic impact of the Great Recession was highly uneven across the nation, the map of U.S. poverty shifted in important ways over the past couple of years, with implications for both national and local efforts to alleviate poverty.

An analysis of poverty in the nation’s 100 largest metro areas, based on recently released data from the 2009 American Community Survey, indicates that:

The number of poor people in large metro areas grew by 5.5 million from 1999 to 2009, and more than two-thirds of that growth occurred in suburbs.  By 2009, 1.6 million more poor lived in the suburbs of the nation’s largest metro areas compared to the cities.

Between 2007 and 2009, the poverty rate increased in 57 of the 100 largest metro areas, with the largest increases clustered in the Sun Belt.  Florida metro areas like Bradenton and Lakeland, and California metro areas like Bakersfield, Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, and Modesto, each experienced increases in their poverty rates of more than 3.5 percentage points.

Poverty increased by much greater margins in 2009 than 2008, with cities and suburbs experiencing comparable rates of growth in the recession’s second year.  Between 2008 and 2009, cities and suburbs gained 1.2 million poor people, together accounting for about two-thirds of the national increase in the poor population that year.

Several metro areas saw city poverty rates increase by more than 5 percentage points, while many suburban areas experienced increases of 2 to 4 percentage points between 2007 and 2009.  The city of Allentown, PA saw a 10.2 percentage-point increase in its poverty rate, followed by Chattanooga, TN with an increase of 8.0 percentage points.  Sun Belt metro areas were among those with the largest increases in suburban poverty, including Lakeland, FL and Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA.

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Ninety-three years ago yesterday, the Boston police force went on strike, leaving the city unprotected while the state scrambled to find replacements. Governor Calvin Coolidge’s declaration of support for the city—he said that “There is no right to strike against the public safety, anywhere, anytime”—established his national reputation that ultimately led to the presidency.

Public outrage at labor actions that compromise public safety has historically been a bipartisan affair.  Coolidge was a Republican but his actions earned the respect of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, who hailed his re-election as Massachusetts governor as “a victory for law and order.” Nearly 20 years later, President Franklin Roosevelt shared his view that a strike by public employees of any sort is “unthinkable and intolerable.”

The impacts of the Chicago teacher strike that began today may not be as immediately obvious as the looting and vandalism that descended on Boston in 1919, but they are just as serious. Research from a large, urban school district found that teacher absenteeism has a negative impact on student learning in math.

But a strike doesn't leave students with substitute teachers—it leaves them without any school at all. Research on summer learning loss shows that being out of school has a disproportionate effect on low-income students. One recent study found that “while all students lose some ground in mathematics over the summer, low-income students lose more ground in reading, while their higher-income peers may even gain.” In other words, the consequence of being out of school is to increase the already unacceptably large achievement gap between low-income students and their affluent peers.

The American labor movement has made important contributions in areas ranging from workplace safety to child labor to employment discrimination. There are good reasons to believe that the public ought to accept higher coal prices resulting from a strike to protect the lives of miners. But the public should not tolerate damage to the education of disadvantaged students resulting from a strike over disagreements about teachers’ salaries, benefits, job security, and method of evaluation.

The Chicago Teachers Union’s differences with the city over how the public schools ought to be run may well be legitimate. But those battles should be fought in the court of public opinion and ultimately at the ballot box, not through strikes that come largely at the expense of poor children.

Last month, a team from the Metropolitan Policy Program, along with a delegation from the city of Chicago, traveled to Mexico City as part of the Global Cities Economic Partnership (GCEP). Launched at a 2013 event sponsored by the Global Cities Initiative (GCI), this novel partnership aims to expand growth and job creation in both cities  by building on complementary economic assets and opportunities.

Together with representatives from World Business Chicago, the Illinois governor’s office, and members of Chicago’s tech startup scene (organized by TechBridge), the Brookings team arrived in Mexico City just as, after a 20 year debate, reforms to devolve greater autonomy and powers to the largest metropolitan area in the Western Hemisphere were finalized.  Central to that reform is Mexico City’s enhanced ability to plan and implement its own economic development policy, underscoring the growing importance of city-regions assuming roles once solely the province of state and national governments: fostering trade, investment, and economic growth.

Chicago and Mexico City illustrate this trend through the GCEP. Emerging from a GCI analysis that identified unique economic, demographic and and social connections between the cities, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera established a novel city-to-city collaboration. Since signing the agreement, government, business, and civic leaders in both cities have been experimenting with new approaches to jointly grow their economies.  They have tried to foster more trade and investment within shared industry clusters; link economic development support services; and leverage similar strengths in research, innovation, and human capital.

This trip to Mexico City focused on one of GCEP’s early outcomes, a formal partnership between Chicago tech business incubator 1871 and Mexico City incubator Startup Mexico (SUM) that facilitates the early internationalization of firms in both cities. Both organizations advanced the creation of a residency program that will enable entrepreneurs from both incubators to have a presence in each other’s markets.

The GCEP approach of city-to-city global engagement has inspired other GCI participants to try their own models, forming economic alliances to ease global navigation and engagement. San Antonio, Phoenix, and Los Angeles also crafted agreements with Mexico City, each focused on different opportunities built off their distinctive economic assets and relationships. Portland and Bristol have investigated how to leverage their comparable “green city” reputations in the U.S. and U.K., connecting mid-size firms in their unique sustainability clusters for collaboration on research and joint ventures. Similarly, San Diego and London are testing how to promote synergies among companies, academic centers, investors, and workers in their shared life sciences subsectors such as cell and gene therapy.

Home to half of the world’s population, cities generate about three quarters of the world’s GDP, and now serve as the hubs for the growth in global flows of trade, capital, visitors, and information. The future prosperity and vitality of city-regions demands finding new approaches that take full advantage of these global connections.  

The Global Cities Economic Partnership emerged from work supported by the Global Cities Initiative: A Joint Project of Brookings and JPMorgan Chase. Brookings recognizes that the value it provides is in its absolute commitment to quality, independence, and impact. Activities supported by its donors reflect this commitment and the analysis and recommendations are solely determined by the scholar

Image courtesy of Maura Gaughan