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Ukraine faces critical challenges on a range of questions: shaping foreign and national security policies appropriate for a medium-sized country located between Europe and Russia; developing a strategy and policies to promote energy security and contribute to sustainable economic growth; and designing educational and cultural policies suitable for advancing the country’s European aspirations and its own national identity. The Ukraine 2020 Policy Dialogue—an initiative of the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation supported by the Democracy Grants Program of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv—convened four U.S.-Ukrainian task forces earlier this year to discuss these questions and develop policy recommendations for the Ukrainian and U.S. governments.

On September 28, the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings (CUSE) hosted a discussion of the recommendations developed by the Policy Dialogue. Panelists included four co-chairs of the Dialogue’s working groups: Edward Chow of the Center for Strategic and International Studies; William Miller of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Robert Nurick of the Atlantic Council; and Brookings Senior Fellow Steven Pifer. Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Angela Stent moderated the discussion. Copies of the Policy Dialogue recommendations were available. 

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In August, the White House announced the cancellation of the Moscow summit between Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, while still saying that U.S. relations with Russia remain a priority. By all accounts, the Snowden case appears to have further complicated already strained U.S.-Russia relations. With President Obama headed to St. Petersburg, Russia for the G20 summit on September 6 and 7, the likelihood of an Obama-Putin bilateral meeting remains unanswered and unlikely.

With an eye toward a possible bilateral meeting in St. Petersburg, Brookings experts Steven Pifer, Clifford Gaddy and Angela Stent address these developments and future prospects for the U.S.-Russia cooperation on issues like Syria and arms control.

Steven Pifer:

“I think people now see the reset as a failure. I actually think the reset succeeded, because the goal was not to get us to Nirvana with Russia, but to lift us out of the hole that we found ourselves in in 2008.”

Clifford Gaddy:

“Steve has said that the relations are not as bad, are at their worst since, you know, the fall of communism. I would probably say they probably are as bad.”

Angela Stent:

“It's not clear what the U.S.-Russian agenda is going forward. The things we would like to accomplish — more arms control, an agreement on missile defense, even, you know, more U.S. investment in Russia — the Russians don't seem to be interesting in responding. We do need to work together — and we will, still, on post-2014 Afghanistan, on Iran — but it's really unclear what an agenda would be going forward.”

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Leaders will head to the G-20 Summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, among renewed serious concern about the world economy. The turmoil that started with the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis has resulted in now almost five years of ongoing instability. The emerging market economies fared much better than the advanced economies and pulled out of the crisis already in 2009, but the slowdown we are now facing in 2012 is again global, demonstrating the interdependence in the world economy. The emerging market economies have stronger underlying trend growth rates, but they remain vulnerable to a downturn in the advanced economies. The center of concern is now squarely on Europe, with a recession threatening most European countries, even those that had reasonably good performances so far. After an encouraging start in 2012, the U.S. economy, while not close to a recession, is also showing signs of a slowdown rather than the hoped for steady acceleration of growth. And the slowdown is spreading across the globe.

At a time like this it would be desirable and necessary that the G-20 show real initiative and cohesion. The essays in this collection look at the challenge from various angles. There is concern that the G-20 is losing its sense of purpose, that cohesion is decreasing rather than increasing, and that policy initiatives are reactive to events rather than proactive. Let us hope that at this moment of great difficulty, the G-20 will succeed in giving the world economy a new sense of direction and confidence. It is much needed.

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Editor's Note: The "Scaling up in Agriculture, Rural Development and Nutrition" publication is a series of 20 briefs published by the International Food Policy Research Institute. To read the full publication, click here.

Taking successful development interventions to scale is critical if the world is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and make essential gains in the fight for improved agricultural productivity, rural incomes, and nutrition. How to support scaling up in these three areas, however, is a major challenge. This collection of policy briefs is designed to contribute to a better understanding of the experience to date and the lessons for the future.

Scaling up means expanding, replicating, adapting, and sustaining successful policies, programs, or projects to reach a greater number of people; it is part of a broader process of innovation and learning. A new idea, model, or approach is typically embodied in a pilot project of limited impact; with monitoring and evaluation, the knowledge acquired from the pilot experience can be used to scale up the model to create larger impacts. The process generally occurs in an iterative and interactive cycle, as the experience from scaling up feeds back into new ideas and learning.

The authors of the 20 policy briefs included here explore the experience of scaling up successful interventions in agriculture, rural development, and nutrition under five broad headings: (1) the role of rural community engagement, (2) the importance of value chains, (3) the intricacies of scaling up nutrition interventions, (4) the lessons learned from institutional approaches, and (5) the experience of international aid donors.

There is no blueprint for when and how to take an intervention to scale, but the examples and experiences described in this series of policy briefs offer important insights into how to address the key global issues of agricultural productivity, food insecurity, and rural poverty.

The challenge of rural poverty and food insecurity in the developing world remains daunting. Recent estimates show that “there are still about 1.2 billion extremely poor people in the world. In addition, about 870 million people are undernourished, and about 2 billion people suffer from micronutrient deficiency. About 70 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas, and many have some dependency on agriculture,” (Cleaver 2012). Addressing this challenge by assisting rural small-holder farmers in developing countries is the mandate of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), an international financial institution based in Rome.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development is a relatively small donor in the global aid architecture, accounting for approximately one-half of 1 percent of all aid paid directly to developing countries in 2010. Although more significant in its core area of agricultural and rural development, IFAD still accounts for less than 5 percent of total official development assistance in that sector.1 Confronted with the gap between its small size and the large scale of the problem it has been mandated to address, IFAD seeks ways to increase its impact for every dollar it invests in agriculture and rural development on behalf of its member states. One indicator of this intention to scale up is that it has set a goal to reach 90 million rural poor between 2012 and 2015 and lift 80 million out of poverty during that time. These numbers are roughly three times the number of poor IFAD has reached previously during a similar time span. More generally, IFAD has declared that scaling up is “mission critical,” and this scaling-up objective is now firmly embedded in its corporate strategy and planning statements. Also, increasingly, IFAD’s operational practices are geared towards helping its clients achieve scaling up on the ground with the support of its loans and grants.

This was not always the case. For many years, IFAD stressed innovation as the key to success, giving little attention to systematically replicating and building on successful innovations. In this regard, IFAD was not alone. In fact, few aid agencies have systematically pursued the scaling up of successful projects. However, in 2009, IFAD management decided to explore how it could increase its focus on scaling up. It gave a grant to the Brookings Institution to review IFAD’s experience with scaling up and to assess its operational strategies, policies and processes with a view to strengthening its approach to scaling up. Based on an extensive review of IFAD documentation, two country case studies and intensive interactions with IFAD staff and managers, the Brookings team prepared a report that it submitted to IFAD management in June 2010 and published as a Brookings Global Working Paper in early 2011 (Linn et al. 2011).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In 2015 the international community agreed on a set of ambitious sustainable development goals (SDGs) for the global society, to be achieved by 2030. One of the lessons that the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG s) has highlighted is the importance of a systematic approach to identify and sequence development interventions—policies, programs, and projects—to achieve such goals at a meaningful scale. The Chinese approach to development, which consists of identifying a problem and long-term goal, testing alternative solutions, and then implementing those that are promising in a sustained manner, learning and adapting as one proceeds—Deng Xiaoping’s “crossing the river by feeling the stones”—is an approach that holds promise for successful achievement of the SDGs.

Having observed the Chinese way, then World Bank Group President James Wolfensohn in 2004, together with the Chinese government, convened a major international conference in Shanghai on scaling up successful development interventions, and in 2005 the World Bank Group (WBG ) published the results of the conference, including an assessment of the Chinese approach. (Moreno-Dodson 2005). Some ten years later, the WBG once again is addressing the question of how to support scaling up of successful development interventions, at a time when the challenge and opportunity of scaling up have become a widely recognized issue for many development institutions and experts.

Since traditional private and public service providers frequently do not reach the poorest people in developing countries, social enterprises can play an important role in providing key services to those at the “base of the pyramid.”

In parallel with the recognition that scaling up matters, the development community is now also focusing on social enterprises (SEs), a new set of actors falling between the traditionally recognized public and private sectors. We adopt here the World Bank’s definition of “social enterprises” as a social-mission-led organization that provides sustainable services to Base of the Pyramid (BoP) populations. This is broadly in line with other existing definitions for the sector and reflects the World Bank’s primary interest in social enterprises as a mechanism for supporting service delivery for the poor. Although social enterprises can adopt various organizational forms—business, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and community-based organizations are all forms commonly adopted by social enterprises—they differ from private providers principally by combining three features: operating with a social purpose, adhering to business principles, and aiming for financial sustainability. Since traditional private and public service providers frequently do not reach the poorest people in developing countries, social enterprises can play an important role in providing key services to those at the “base of the pyramid.” (Figure 1)

Figure 1. Role of SE sector in public service provision

Social enterprises often start at the initiative of a visionary entrepreneur who sees a significant social need, whether in education, health, sanitation, or microfinance, and who responds by developing an innovative way to address the perceived need, usually by setting up an NGO, or a for-profit enterprise. Social enterprises and their innovations generally start small. When successful, they face an important challenge: how to expand their operations and innovations to meet the social need at a larger scale. 

Development partner organizations—donors, for short—have recognized the contribution that social enterprises can make to find and implement innovative ways to meet the social service needs of people at the base of the pyramid, and they have started to explore how they can support social enterprises in responding to these needs at a meaningful scale. 

The purpose of this paper is to present a menu of approaches for addressing the challenge of scaling up social enterprise innovations, based on a review of the literature on scaling up and on social enterprises. The paper does not aim to offer specific recommendations for entrepreneurs or blueprints and guidelines for the development agencies. The range of settings, problems, and solutions is too wide to permit that. Rather, the paper provides an overview of ways to think about and approach the scaling up of social enterprise innovations. Where possible, the paper also refers to specific tools that can be helpful in implementing the proposed approaches. 

Note that we talk about scaling up social enterprise innovations, not about social enterprises. This is because it is the innovations and how they are scaled up that matter. An innovation may be scaled up by the social enterprise where it originated, by handoff to a public agency for implementation at a larger scale, or by other private enterprises, small or large. 

This paper is structured in three parts: Part I presents a general approach to scaling up development interventions. This helps establish basic definitions and concepts. Part II considers approaches for the scaling up of social enterprise innovations. Part III provides a summary of the main conclusions and lessons from experience. A postscript draws out implications for external aid donors. Examples from actual practice are used to exemplify the approaches and are summarized in Annex boxes.

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I had been mulling a rebuttal to my colleague and friend Jon Rauch’s interesting—but wrong—new Brookings paper praising the role of “hacks, machines, big money, and back room deals” in democracy. I thought the indictments of Chris Christie’s associates last week provided a perfect example of the dangers of all of that, and so of why Jon was incorrect. But in yesterday’s L.A. Times, he beat me to it, himself defending the political morality (if not the efficacy) of their actions, and in the process delivering a knockout blow to his own position.

Bridgegate is a perfect example of why we need fewer "hacks, machines, big money, and back room deals" in our politics, not more. There is no justification whatsoever for government officials abusing their powers, stopping emergency vehicles and risking lives, making kids late for school and parents late for their jobs to retaliate against a mayor who withholds an election endorsement. We vote in our democracy to make government work, not break. We expect that officials will serve the public, not their personal interests. This conduct weakens our democracy, not strengthens it.

It is also incorrect that, as Jon suggests, reformers and transparency advocates are, in part, to blame for the gridlock that sometimes afflicts our American government at every level. As my co-authors and I demonstrated at some length in our recent Brookings paper, “Why Critics of Transparency Are Wrong,” and in our follow-up Op-Ed in the Washington Post, reform and transparency efforts are no more responsible for the current dysfunction in our democracy than they were for the gridlock in Fort Lee. Indeed, in both cases, “hacks, machines, big money, and back room deals” are a major cause of the dysfunction. The vicious cycle of special interests, campaign contributions and secrecy too often freeze our system into stasis, both on a grand scale, when special interests block needed legislation, and on a petty scale, as in Fort Lee. The power of megadonors has, for example, made dysfunction within the House Republican Caucus worse, not better.

Others will undoubtedly address Jon’s new paper at length. But one other point is worth noting now. As in foreign policy discussions, I don’t think Jon’s position merits the mantle of political “realism,” as if those who want democracy to be more democratic and less corrupt are fluffy-headed dreamers. It is the reformers who are the true realists. My co-authors and I in our paper stressed the importance of striking realistic, hard-headed balances, e.g. in discussing our non-absolutist approach to transparency; alas, Jon gives that the back of his hand, acknowledging our approach but discarding the substance to criticize our rhetoric as “radiat[ing] uncompromising moralism.” As Bridgegate shows, the reform movement’s “moralism" correctly recognizes the corrupting nature of power, and accordingly advocates reasonable checks and balances. That is what I call realism. So I will race Jon to the trademark office for who really deserves the title of realist!

Editor's Note: On Thursday Brookings Visiting Fellow, Amb. Norm Eisen addressed the Italian Parliament to discuss ethics in government, highlighting efforts in the US to improve transparency and accountability. In the speech, Amb. Eisen argues that while ethics reform can be difficult, it is an absolutely essentially part of any democratic system.

As Prepared For Delivery

Signora Presidente Boldrini, Madam President Brasseur, honorevoli Parlamentari, fellow panelists and distinguished guests, buon pomerigo. Thanks for inviting me to address the urgent subject of ethical standards in political life. It is an honor to be here in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, in this beautiful and ancient city, to which we Americans owe so many elements of our system of government. And in my town of Washington, DC we also borrowed a lot of your architecture, so we owe you for that as well.

In exchange for all that, as a small form of repayment, I would like to offer some perspectives from the U.S. as you consider the adoption of a code of ethical conduct for the Italian Parliament.

Since we are in the Chamber of Deputies, the equivalent of our U.S. Congress’ House of Representatives, I will start with best practices in that body, based on years of my professional life—too many—spent addressing alleged violations of its codes of conduct, including as a defense lawyer and later as the co-founder of a government watchdog group.

And I think there are also important lessons to be drawn from the new, innovative code of conduct for White House officials we established while I served as the "Ethics Czar" of President Obama. At his direction I helped write that new code, the Obama "ethics pledge," and although I am biased I think it has been effective so far, knock wood, there have been no major White House scandals. So I will talk about the lessons of that code of conduct a bit as well. My reflections are those of a friend and partner nation with plenty of challenges of our own. So I approach the issue with genuine humility in sharing our successes and failures.

I. Government ethics while standing on one leg

So—what is our U.S. view of best practices for the contents of government codes of ethics? In the U.S. and dare I say internationally, there is a pretty well developed set of best practices. In our House of Representatives, for example, our equivalent of this Chamber of Deputies, Rule XXIII is the Code of Official Conduct. It provides rules in four core areas;

• one, for regulating conflicts of interest, that is, situations where personal interests or financial holdings may conflict with official parliamentary duties;
• two, for gifts, particularly those from lobbyists and other persons interested in parliamentary decisions;
• three, for outside employment of parliamentarians before, during and after government service, particularly with lobbyists, a situation which we call in the US the revolving door; and
• four, for parliamentarians’ proper use of official resources, that is, hiring, staff, budget, travel and such.

There is much more detail in our code of conduct, and a few other rules as well, but those four items—conflicts, gifts, employment and resources—are the key. These same four key areas are also at the center of our codes of conduct for employees of our executive branch, as codified in our statutes and regulations, as well as in the Obama ethics pledge.

I emphasize these four key items because, having helped draft one code of conduct, and having often delved into many other codes, I sometimes find that I lose the forest for the trees when working with these codes, that the priorities at least for me sometimes get lost in the detail. So I try to keep the core always in mind, though I should add that the content of any such code must of course be particularized for the circumstances of particular government bodies and jurisdictions. Thus our U.S. House code is five pages long, elaborating on those four core items, and the House Ethics Manual of official guidance for the code is 456 pages long. Our Obama ethics pledge we got onto one page, we were proud of that. And we made everyone read and sign that page. To be fair, we could do that because we built on and added to other rules which already existed, and we did have several pages of definitions and references attached to the pledge.

II. Enforcement and transparency

But a good code is only the beginning. In our U.S. experience, just as important as the code, maybe even more important, is its enforcement. And here is where I want to share some lessons drawn from U.S. challenges in recent years, and how we responded. I am going to add two more items to our check list: enforcement and transparency.

Candidly, even with our parliamentary code of conduct in the U.S., our enforcement has sometime lagged. That is in part because under our Constitution, the ultimate enforcers are the parliamentarians themselves, and so they can at times be understandably reluctant to sanction their colleagues and friends. It's human nature.

For example, from about 1998 to 2004, there was a seven-year truce in filing complaints in our House of Representatives. The government watchdog organization I co-founded helped end that in 2004 by writing a complaint together with a brave but lonely member of Congress who was willing to file it with the House Ethics Committee. The resulting investigation resulted in the discipline of the member investigated, and ultimately helped lead to his party losing majority control of the body.

Out of all of that came a new enforcement tool in 2008, in our House of Representatives, that I strongly recommend to you: the creation of a new, independent entity, the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). This is a nonpartisan fact-finding body that investigates allegations from any source, including whistleblowers who might otherwise be afraid to step forward. OCE then recommends action to the parliamentarians who constitutionally maintain the ultimate decision-making power. Most importantly, the OCE referrals become public, allowing press, civil society and voter accountability. As a result, I believe, since the creation of the OCE for our House in 2008, there have been a significantly higher number of meritorious investigations there than in our Senate, which does not have a comparable body. The total is about 46 OCE referrals and about 20 House disciplinary actions versus just four letters of admonition by our Senate in that period. To be fair the Senate is a smaller body—but not that much smaller!

That last aspect of OCE enforcement—transparency, and the accountability it brings from media, NGOs and the public—is the sixth and final point I want to emphasize. In our U.S. parliamentary ethics system we have many transparency mechanisms: asset disclosures that our parliamentarians file, disclosures that lobbyists must make about their activities, information in campaign finance filings, and more.

To explain the value of transparency, I would like to close by turning to one of our Obama White House ethics transparency innovations. Starting in 2009, we for the first time put on the Internet virtually all visitor records of those coming to the White House. It used to be that just to get a handful of these records you had to file litigation and wait for years to know who was coming to the White House, who they were meeting with and what the subject of the meeting was. Now millions of Obama White House visitor records are online, each with a dozen or so basic categories of information: the name of the visitor, the person visited, the subject of the meeting and so on.

Why is that important? I began by referencing the Obama White House's record in avoiding major scandal. I think there are a number of reasons for that, including the President's own integrity and the new code of conduct we put into place. But an important part of that success story has also been the fact that records of White House meetings go on the Internet for everyone to see. That transparency brings accountability from the press, civil society and the public. That transparency and accountability has in turn powerfully reinforced the code of conduct: it has discouraged people from having meetings they shouldn't have, and if you don't have the meeting, you can't get in trouble for it.

So the U.S. view in one sentence: regulate conflicts, gifts, employment, and resource use, with strong enforcement and above all transparency. Thanks again for inviting me to share the U.S. perspective. Grazie!

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As the sixth anniversary of Citizens United v. FEC approaches on January 21, both experts and ordinary citizens believe the United States is confronting a campaign finance crisis. Citizens United and related court cases have unleashed a flood of dark money that many believe could drown our democracy. It is estimated that over $5 billion will be spent on the 2016 presidential race—more than 3 times the amount spent in 2008 (already the most expensive election cycle in history). A comprehensive poll conducted by the New York Times and CBS News in the spring of 2015 showed that 84 percent of adults—including 90 percent of Democrats and 80 percent of Republicans—believe that money has too much influence in American political campaigns. Even the richest Americans agreed: 85 percent of adults making $100,000 or more share that same belief.

There has been much handwringing about this state of affairs. But there has been too little public attention paid to finding solutions. On the sixth anniversary of Citizens United, the Governance Studies program at Brookings hosted current and former government officials, lobbyists, donors, advocates, and other experts to discuss how to resolve the campaign finance crisis. They focused on innovative reform efforts at the federal, state, and local levels which offer the hope of addressing the problem of big money in politics.

Panelists will included:

Cheri Beasley, Associate Justice, North Carolina Supreme Court
Daniel Berger, Partner, Berger & Montague, P.C.
John Bonifaz, Co-Founder and President, Free Speech for People
Norman L. Eisen, U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic (2011-2014); Special Assistant and Special Counsel to the President (2009-2011); Visiting Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Bruce Freed, Founder and President, Center for Political Accountability
Steve Israel, Member, U.S. House of Representatives (D-NY)
Roger Katz, Chair, Government Oversight Committee, Maine State Senate (R)
Allen Loughry, Justice, Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia
Chuck Merin, Executive Vice President, Prime Policy Group; Lobbyist
Connie Morella, Ambassador to OECD (2003-2007); Member, U.S. House of Representatives (R-Md., 1987-2003)
Jeffrey Peck, Principal, Peck Madigan Jones; Lobbyist
Nick Penniman, Executive Director, Issue One
Trevor Potter, Commissioner, Federal Election Commission (1991-1995; Chairman,1994)
John Pudner, Executive Director, Take Back Our Republic
Ann Ravel, Commissioner, Federal Election Commission (Chairwoman, 2015)
Timothy Roemer, Ambassador to India (2009-2011); Member, U.S. House of Representatives (D-Ind., 1991-2003); member 9/11 Commission; Senior Strategic Advisor to Issue One
John Sarbanes, Member, U.S. House of Representatives (D-Md.)
Claudine Schneider, Member, U.S. House of Representatives (R-R.I.,1981-1991)
Peter Schweizer, President, Government Accountability Institute
Zephyr Teachout, CEO, Mayday PAC
Lucas Welch, Executive Director, The Pluribus Project
Fred Wertheimer, Founder and President, Democracy 21
Tim Wirth, Member, U.S. Senate (D-Colo.,1987-1993); Member, U.S. House of Representatives (D-Colo.,1975-1987)
Dan Wolf, Chair, Committee on Steering and Policy, Massachusetts State Senate (D)

Click here for a full agenda.

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• The campaign finance crisis in America and how to fix it - Part 1
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• The campaign finance crisis in America and how to fix it - Part 3
• The campaign finance crisis in America and how to fix it - Part 4

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• The campaign finance crisis in America and how to fix it: A solutions summit (Part 2)
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• The campaign finance crisis in America and how to fix it: A solutions summit (Part 4)

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Last week, over 100 experts from across the U.S. came together at the Brookings Institution on the sixth anniversary of the Citizens United decision to analyze its disastrous consequences and how to repair them. The room was as diverse as it was packed. Two dozen current and former members of Congress, representatives of the executive and judicial branches, both state and federal, attended. They sat side-by-side with business leaders and lobbyists, activists and scholars. Conservatives and Tea Party leaders mingled with liberals and progressives. All were united by their agreement that the current system is broken—and their determination to fix it.

Several points of consensus emerged from the half day event.

First, we are facing a crisis due to the flood of money that is drowning American democracy. For example, Congressman Steve Israel expanded on his recent New York Times op-ed describing why he his quitting Congress. He related his experience of calling potential campaign donors from a small cubicle off the Capitol grounds—a practice referred to as “call time.” Invoking images from The Wolf of Wall Street, Congressman Israel compared the practice to “selling penny stocks, only it’s shares of democracy that are being traded.” The result is voter disillusionment– voters increasingly feeling like their voices are not heard because they cannot make large political contributions. Author Peter Schweizer, President of the Government Accountability Institute, argued that businesses suffer under this system as well. From his perspective, “Businesses … are targeted by politicians in the search for cash,” in a type of extortion by which politicians use their influence to benefit only those who can pay up. The Executive Director of Take Back our Republic, John Pudner, argued that the campaign finance system is the single greatest threat to national security—if domestic interests can purchase influence in our system, international interests can figure out a way to do so as well.

Ambassador Eisen with Congressman Steve Israel (D-NY 3) 

Second, there is hope for a fix. There are a wide range of innovative solutions at hand, many of which have already been successfully deployed at the state and local levels. Commissioner and outgoing Chair Ann Ravel of the Federal Election Commission laid out a reform agenda for that organization. John Bonifaz of Free Speech for People advocated for a 28^th amendment allowing for campaign spending limits, reminding the audience, “We have done this before in our nation’s history; 27 times before. Seven of those times to overturn egregious Supreme Court rulings.” Fred Wertheimer urged strategies to capitalize on the small donor revolution that technology has ushered in, as well as a renewed push for public finance. Judges and legislators from states across the union discussed how public finance and other remedies are working at the state and local levels. Still others advocated solutions including a pledge that would commit politicians to ethical fundraising standards and campaign finance reform agendas when in office; reform in the Federal Election Commission to allow greater enforcement authority; corporate governance policies that require publically held companies to openly disclose political contributions and be accountable to their shareholders; and many, many more specific solutions to tackle the problem from all sides.

Third, and perhaps the most important takeaway from the event, was that those fixes are in political reach. Expert after expert, all from vastly different backgrounds and political orientations, argued that we are much closer to achieving these solutions than we think. The entire program was evidence of that—the size, diversity, and passion of the attendees mirroring a nation of voters who are demanding their representatives do what’s necessary to fix our broken campaign finance system. In the concluding panel, Congressman John Sarbanes predicted, “I think the public is going to demand this. That’s why the time is now. The broad public has arrived at a moment where they are demanding a response to the way they feel. If they don’t get it from some of the solutions we’re proposing, because we don’t educate them that those solutions are there, they’re going to grab a pitchfork and they’re going to go somewhere else. But there’s plenty of evidence that the public will not be denied some remedy to the way they feel.”

The full audio of the event, which includes further discussion of many solutions and the reasons why they are so necessary, can be found on the event page. By clicking there, you can see all the featured speakers, and many more experts participated from the audience floor. Give a listen and you will see why it was such a remarkable day, and why change is nearer that you may think.

On June 20, I moderated a conversation on the future of the Department of Veterans Affairs with Secretary Robert McDonald. When he took office almost two years ago, Secretary McDonald inherited an organization in crisis: too many veterans faced shockingly long wait-times before they received care, VA officials had allegedly falsified records, and other allegations of mismanagement abounded.

Photo: Paul Morigi

Since he was sworn into office, Secretary McDonald has led the VA through a period of ambitious reform, anchored by the MyVA program. He and his team have embraced three core strategies that are securing meaningful change. They are important insights for all government leaders, and private sector ones as well.

1. Set bold goals

Secretary McDonald’s vision is for the VA to become the number one customer-service agency in the federal government. But he and his team know that words alone won’t make this happen. They developed twelve breakthrough priorities for 2016 that will directly improve service to veterans. These actionable short-term objectives support the VA’s longer term aim to deliver an exceptional experience for our veterans. By aiming high, and also drafting a concrete roadmap, the VA has put itself on a path to success.

2. Hybridize the best of public and private sectors

To accomplish their ambitious goal, VA leadership is applying the best practices of customer-service businesses around the nation. The Secretary and his colleagues are leveraging the goodwill, resources, and expertise of both the private and public sector. To do that, the VA has brought together diverse groups of business leaders, medical professionals, government executives, and veteran advocates under their umbrella MyVA Advisory Committee. Following the examples set by private sector leaders in service provision and innovation, the VA is developing user-friendly mobile apps for veterans, modernizing its website, and seeking to make hiring practices faster, more competitive, and more efficient. And so that no good idea is left unheard, the VA has created a "shark tank” to capture and enact suggestions and recommendations for improvement from the folks who best understand daily VA operations—VA employees themselves.

3. Data, data, data

The benefits of data-driven decision making in government are well known. As led by Secretary McDonald, the VA has continued to embrace the use of data to inform its policies and improve its performance. Already a leader in the collection and publication of data, the VA has recently taken even greater strides in sharing information between its healthcare delivery agencies. In addition to collecting administrative and health-outcomes information, the VA is gathering data from veterans about what they think . Automated kiosks allow veterans to check in for appointments, and to record their level of satisfaction with the services provided.

The results that the Secretary and his team have achieved speak for themselves:

• 5 million more appointments completed last fiscal year over the previous fiscal year
• 7 million additional hours of care for veterans in the last two years (based on an increase in the clinical workload of 11 percent over the last two years)
• 97 percent of appointments completed within 30 days of the veteran’s preferred date; 86 percent within 7 days; 22 percent the same day
• Average wait times of 5 days for primary care, 6 days for specialty care, and 2 days for mental health are
• 90 percent of veterans say they are satisfied or completely satisfied with when they got their appointment (less than 3 percent said they were dissatisfied or completely dissatisfied).
• The backlog for disability claims—once over 600,000 claims that were more than 125 days old—is down almost 90 percent.

Thanks to Secretary McDonald’s continued commitment to modernization, the VA has made significant progress. Problems, of course, remain at the VA and the Secretary has more work to do to ensure America honors the debt it owes its veterans, but the past two years of reform have moved the Department in the right direction. His strategies are instructive for managers of change everywhere.

Fred Dews and Andrew Kenealy contributed to this post.