President Barack Obama's April 17 debut before the hemisphere's main gathering of democratically elected leaders offers an important test of his administration's commitment to longstanding bipartisan support for democracy abroad. So far, the signals are not encouraging.

No doubt, the president inherits an unfortunate legacy on this front. President George W. Bush's over-the-top freedom agenda was seen by many as a veiled attempt, by military means or otherwise, to assert U.S. hegemony. At best, it was an overly ambitious and ham-handed effort to boost prospects for political reform in every corner of the world.

The more pragmatic Mr. Obama will take a different, more muted approach, bending U.S. advocacy on human rights to other concerns. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apparently suggested that in her February visit to Beijing, where she signaled to the Communist Party's leaders that the United States would not let human rights get in the way of other priorities. But how far will this pragmatism go? Are we entering a new era in which the rights of the hundreds of millions of people who still live under authoritarian rule are relegated to third-tier status in the U.S. agenda?

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the good news is that most citizens not only have a secure voice and vote in how they are governed, but live in increasingly free societies. Freedom of the press is robust, civil society is active and independent judiciaries are slowly consolidating. Threats to these critical components of any democratic society emanate less from a restless military and more from heavily armed criminals who create havoc in once safe neighborhoods and target investigative journalists and honest judges with "plata o plomo" - money or lead.

There are, however, a few exceptions to this generally positive trend. Venezuela, under Hugo Chavez's tutelage, has deteriorated badly on several indicators of democratic life and is no longer invited to the Community of Democracies, a global association of governments committed to fundamental practices of democracy and human rights. Not far behind is Nicaragua which, under Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, is reverting to old-style tactics of repressing the opposition and clamping down on dissent. Other states worth watching closely are Ecuador and Bolivia which, as they undertake dramatic reform to incorporate once marginalized groups, are vulnerable to civil conflict.

And then there is Cuba. Raul Castro will not be at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago because Cuba does not adhere to the inter-American system's fundamental principles of democracy and human rights. That is as it should be. But Mr. Obama will face considerable pressure from his colleagues to fudge this bright line by engaging, rather than isolating Cuba, as they and nearly every other country has done. Indeed, the White House has already begun moving in this direction by easing restrictions on family travel and remittances to the island. Much more can and should be done in the coming months to continue this process of rapprochement between Washington and Havana. But lifting Cuba's suspension as a member of the Organization of American States (OAS), as many are advocating, would be a step too far.

The governments of the region, as they emerged from years of military dictatorship in the 1980s, agreed to lock arms and resist any attempt to overthrow civilian constitutional rule. This joint approach has served the region well when such countries as Peru, Paraguay, Guatemala and Haiti faced political turmoil. The commitment to core democratic standards, expressed through the Inter-American Democratic Charter, is central to the region's identity and compares well to the European model of integration based on common democratic values and forms of government.

All this progress is at risk if the region's governments decide to lift Cuba's suspension as a member of the OAS without preconditions. Unless the Castro regime takes serious steps toward meeting the region's basic human rights standards, including rights to free speech, fair elections and due process for political prisoners, it should not be considered for renewed membership. The Obama Administration, which appears determined to open new paths of dialogue with difficult countries like Cuba, Iran and Syria, must be careful not to lower the bar so far that its own neighborhood loses its distinct identity as a community of democratic states.

President Obama, thus, should walk a fine line at the Summit gathering. He needs to lead by example by implementing human rights reforms at home while reminding his colleagues they share a common responsibility to follow and promote universal democratic standards. This must include encouraging the Castro government to adopt genuine political reforms before it can be welcomed back to the OAS, as well as strengthening the region's collective defense of democracy in backsliding states. Anything less would surely set the human rights cause back for the region, and the world.

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

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

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

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In advance of President Obama’s trip to Panama later this week, Brookings experts Richard Feinberg, Ted Piccone, and Harold Trinkunas discuss expectations for the Seventh Summit of the Americas. Obama will arrive holding a strong hand given recent policy changes that have addressed historic obstacles, such as relations with Cuba. However, a slowing regional economy and U.S.-Venezuela tensions may yet cast a shadow over the proceedings.

Read the transcript » (PDF)

Improved United States-Latin America relations

“The United States is going into this next Summit of the Americas in a somewhat improved position compared to the summits in both Cartagena in 2012 and in Trinidad in 2009, where there was a considerable amount of friction among the countries on issues related to Cuba, to counter narcotics policy, to immigration policy. Broadly speaking, I think the Obama administration has done something incredible on each of these fronts, which the countries will recognize and which will help clear the air.”  —Harold Trinkunas

Friction with Venezuela?

“There are 35 countries. At any given time, there's going to be some friction. At the last summit, the Argentines raised the Malvinas issue.  At previous summits, the Bolivians raised the outlets of the sea issue. So there's always a little bit of this. But whether or not [Venezuela] dominates the summit is an issue largely for the Latin Americans to decide. And my guess is the Latin Americans in general will not want to follow Maduro over the cliff. I don't even think that the Cubans will want Maduro to take the summit over the cliff. So therefore, I think we have this sort of tremendous irony in which the country that adds -- that dampens the dissident voices of ALBA will actually be Cuba, because Cuba wanted to demonstrate that it can be a constructive voice in regional diplomacy, that they're not just the force of disruption and therefore, the U.S. all these years was right to keep them out because they would just be disruptive if you let them in. They've already demonstrated they're a mature country that can engage constructively.”  —Richard Feinberg

Dialogue with Cuba

“It's in our interest, U.S. national interest, to have this dialogue process with our close neighbor, Cuba. And to, frankly, bring them back towards the inter-American community, where they've been missing for all these years. [The U.S. rapprochement with Cuba] is also going to raise the question of shifting attention to the role of the rest of the region vis-à-vis Cuba; that it's not just the United States. It's actually the other countries in the hemisphere that could help Cuba come along, as I said, modernize, update its economy, and hopefully at some point, engage more formally in the inter-American system.”  —Ted Piccone

Sub-regional groupings

“This is a much more diverse hemisphere than we saw 20 years ago... In fact, we may see that there's sort of a broad agreement on general themes and then much more sub-regional groupings that work on issues like the Northern Triangle, for example, or Caribbean Energy Security, which was an initiative of the vice president last year.”  —Harold Trinkunas

Summit side events with the private sector and civil society

“You have the leaders representing the executive branches of their governments, but you also have the CEO Summit. Seven hundred corporate executives will be there. There will be interaction between the leaders and the corporate executives...It's indicative of the rise of the private sector and the corporate sector in Latin America as part of a dynamic growing region economically.

Throughout the hemisphere, the acceptance of Civil Society as a concept, as an actor, adds depth to democracy. Democracy is not just elections or that's important, but an active, vibrant Civil Society. And that's what you'll see at the Civil Society meeting. And President Obama personally we're told will interact with Civil Society leaders, as will other leaders present there.”  —Richard Feinberg

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On April 10th and 11th, the heads of state and government from nearly every state in the Americas will meet in Panama City for the Seventh Summit of the Americas. The leaders present in Panama preside over a region that has advanced far and fast on key political and economic indicators since the first of these meetings was held in Miami in 1994. At the Miami Summit, the legacy of the Cold War was very much present, and the specter of war, military dictatorship, armed revolution, financial crises, and political instability still hung in the air. 

In 2015, the region is by and large more democratic, economically prosperous, free from war, and the last insurgency in the region—Colombia’s—is winding down as peace is discussed between the government and its opponents at talks hosted by Havana. The beginning of a rapprochement between the United States and Cuba in December 2014 broke down one of the last remaining obstacles to an event that is truly inclusive of every country in the Western Hemisphere. 

In comparison to the rest of the world—where in the past year we have witnessed terrorist attacks in Paris, war in Ukraine, insurgency in Yemen, and saber-rattling around the South China Sea—the Western Hemisphere appears to be relatively better off. While there are a small number of countries that face challenging circumstances, especially among the fragile states of the Caribbean basin, these problems mostly threaten local rather than regional order. Given this picture, what lessons can we learn from the Western Hemisphere, and from U.S. policy towards the region, as we contemplate how best to improve global order?

Drawing the right lessons from history

The Americas have a long history of developing regional norms that promote the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Since the founding of the Panamerican Union in 1890, which transformed into the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1948, the countries of the hemisphere have embedded these norms of peace into their multilateral institutions. While frequently criticized, it is important to remember that the OAS has presided over the elimination of inter-state conflict in the Americas. 

Today, Latin American states resolve territorial disputes at the International Court of Justice rather than on the battlefield. The last war in the region, between Peru and Ecuador in 1995, occurred two decades ago. Given how rare militarized disputes are at home, Latin American soldiers frequently serve as peacekeepers in United Nations missions around the world. Latin Americans have become good at peacemaking and peacekeeping, something that other regions of the world would do well to emulate.

When it comes to domestic politics, most leaders in the region now understand the political and economic principles that contribute to stability. Governments have become much better about economic governance, which means that as South America’s economy cools off this year, fiscal problems will be manageable and localized rather than region-wide and existential, a sharp contrast with the 1980s and 1990s. 

Leaders in the region have learned that promoting polarization for short-term political advantage is all too likely to produce instability, coups, and revolution. To minimize the risk that domestic political violence might reoccur in the future, states in the region have self-consciously examined the legacy of their authoritarian pasts, using innovative processes such as truth and reconciliation commissions—initially in Argentina in 1983—but also drawing on traditional courts to prosecute perpetrators of past abuses.  

In the 21st century, successful coups d’état have become rare, and when they do occur, as was the case in Honduras in 2009, the region collaborates to ensure a return to democracy. Here again is an area where Latin America has led the way through policies that reduce the likelihood of domestic conflicts that threaten internal stability or global order.

The importance of revisiting unworkable U.S. policies 

At this Summit in Panama, President Barack Obama will be able to credibly claim that he has listened to his Latin American counterparts and has begun to change policies that had become obstacles to improving regional order. At the 2009 and 2012 Summits (they occur every three years), U.S. policies on drugs, immigration, and Cuba had made President Obama the target of growing criticism from other leaders. In fact, many governments had made it clear that they would not attend the 2015 Summit if Cuba was not invited. 

Since 2012, the Obama administration has taken steps to address these concerns. It has taken executive action to reform immigration policy, signaled greater openness to drug policy liberalization by states such as Uruguay, and initiated a historic normalization of relations with Cuba. In each of these areas, the United States has shifted from policies that were largely unilateral towards its neighbors to policies that emphasize collaboration and partnership. This reflects U.S. learning that unilateralism produces blowback, strengthens its political adversaries in the region, and undermines its interests in the long run. This is a lesson worth considering as we think about our policies towards troubled regions of the world.

The risk of forgetting lessons learned

Yet not all countries and all politicians have remembered these lessons, and some of them have learned the wrong ones. In Argentina, macroeconomic stability is at risk due to a feud between the government and its international creditors. The result is a country cut off from international capital markets at a time when its economy is suffering the effect of declining commodity prices. Venezuela faces a deep crisis that has at its heart the highly polarizing politics practiced by the governing party and an unreasoning attachment to an unworkable economic model. Key countries such as Brazil have lost interest in hemisphere-wide institutions, as indicated by their refusal to appoint an ambassador to the OAS or pay their membership dues. And the region as a whole has become so attached to multilateralism and politics by consensus that is has forgotten how to work together when individual member states deviate from regional norms of democracy and human rights, as is occurring today in Venezuela.

So while the recent history of the Americas offers insights into policies that contribute to a peaceful and stable regional order, it also illustrates that these achievements are not irreversible. Let us hope that future generations do not have the relearn these lessons anew. At this and future Summits, there must be a commitment to preserving the gains made in peace, democracy, human rights, and economic prosperity, but also a new emphasis on developing workable mechanisms to address deviations from the norms and practices that have contributed to making the Americas a relative safe and orderly region of the world.

For more information, check out Emily Miller's post on U.S. priorities at the Seventh Summit of the Americas.

President Obama arrived in Panama for the seventh Summit of the Americas with a clear mission: restore the feel-good atmosphere of his first regional summit in Trinidad. There he received plaudits as the first African-American president, a post-unilateralist leader for a more multipolar world. Six years later, and with a complicated record to defend, he had to work harder for the ovations. But his administration’s efforts paid off, and he left Panama a winner. The President’s decision to remove Cuba from the dreaded U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism is further demonstration that Obama is convinced that U.S. interests in Cuba are best served through constructive engagement and not onerous sanctions. Now he must persuade Congress.

First and foremost, the Panama Summit will be remembered for cementing the historic process of normalization of ties between the United States and Cuba launched by Presidents Obama and Raúl Castro on December 17. The Panama meeting offered a chance not only for the rest of the region to ratify Obama’s overture to Castro, but to close the books on the Cold War and open a new chapter in inter-American relations. Bill Clinton led the way on this track in the 1990s, but the train got derailed in the 2000s under George W. Bush. The ghosts of Washington’s heavy-handed past, on matters such as the war on drugs, immigration, counter-terrorism, and the hangover of the “Washington consensus,” returned to haunt Obama’s second summit in Cartagena in 2012. The White House was determined to re-set course before sitting through another series of harangues against the sins of the past by delivering important progress on several policy fronts in the months leading up to Panama. 

No issue was more representative of U.S. bullying in the region than the decades-old embargo against Cuba. When the region’s presidents said they would not come to Panama unless Cuba was invited as a full participant, the White House was forced to fish or cut bait. Correctly, President Obama chose to fish. The breakthrough of December 17 was rewarded with widespread praise by his counterparts and by publics in both the United States and Cuba. The president’s main task for Panama, then, was to deliver a winning message for the first face-to-face meeting in over five decades of hostilities.

Source: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

No image better captures the competing narratives of the deep historical differences between the United States and Cuba than the one above. The elder Raúl Castro, who does not have to worry about his state-controlled media, plugs his ears to drown out the clamor of journalists asking questions after the two leaders’ first meeting, while the younger Obama is ready to engage the press, a customary stance for leaders in a democracy.

The contrast between old and new continued in the plenary where Obama gave a focused presentation  about moving beyond “the old grievances that had too often trapped us in the past” to a future based on shared responsibility and mutual respect. “We’re looking to the future and to policies that improve the lives of the Cuban people.”

Castro, on the other hand, multiplied his allotted eight minutes of remarks to 48 (to make up for the six summits Cuba was not invited to, he joked) to recount a long litany of transgressions by previous U.S. governments dating back to 1800. He reminded the audience of Washington’s overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Guatemala in 1954 as the precursor to Cuba’s own popular revolution and invoked his brother Fidel in blaming global poverty on the aggressions of colonial and imperialist powers. Remarkably, however, Castro specifically absolved President Obama from any responsibility for such actions, an important gesture that opens the door for more progress. “President Obama is an honest man…I admire his humble origins,” Castro said, and urged others to support his efforts to eliminate the embargo. Castro also said Cuba was prepared to work with the United States on such issues as climate change, terrorism, drug trafficking, organized crime, and poverty eradication.

With the removal of Cuba from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, and the last-minute softening of U.S. rhetoric toward Cuba’s chief ally, Venezuela, the Americas may be entering an unprecedented era of peace and cooperation. That leaves respect for democracy and human rights as the chief area of conflict between the United States and Cuba (and a few other countries).

Here again, the contrast between the behavior of pro- and anti-government Cuban activists emerged in sharp relief in Panama. Highly aggressive actions by “official” Cuban nongovernmental organizationss against dissidents from Cuba and Miami, including physical and verbal insults and attacks, were completely out of tune with the modern era of inclusion and respect of independent civil society voices at such meetings. Their orchestrated disruptions of what should have been a robust but civil debate laid bare the real threat Cuba’s rulers face—from its own public tired of the regime’s broken economic system and closed politics—and the heavy challenge they face in opening economically while maintaining political control. President Obama spoke to this issue when he told the press: “On Cuba, we are not in the business of regime change. We are in the business of making sure the Cuban people have freedom and the ability to…shape their own destiny.” The primary way to do this, Obama added, is through “persuasion” and not sanctions. Cuba’s behavior “does not implicate our national security in a direct way,” foreshadowing this week’s decision to de-list Cuba from the terrorism sponsor category.

Cuban officials claim they are practicing a form of popular democracy that is just as legitimate as representative democracy. But few honestly believe this can be squared with core universal norms like free speech and association. For his part, Castro acknowledged that “[w]e could be persuaded of some things; of others we might not be persuaded.” Patience, he added, is needed, signaling yet again that progress toward normalizing relations will be slow. He then proceeded to instruct his closest assistants to “follow the instructions of both Presidents,” a telling reminder of the continued resistance to change from his own bureaucracy. Obama will now have to persuade his colleagues in Congress that Cuba is no longer the threat it was in the past.

Introduction

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

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

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President Barack Obama’s visit to the George Herbert Walker Bush Library in College Station, Texas this week highlights the crucial role of America’s volunteer traditions in addressing critical issues at home and abroad. The two presidents will commemorate the 20^th anniversary of the Points of Light movement, championed by the 41^st president, and advance the United We Serve initiative of President Obama.

Michelle Nunn, CEO of Points of Light Institute and daughter of former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn noted in Huffington Post that “demand, idealism and presidential impact are leading American volunteerism to its…most important stage – the movement of service to a central role in our nation’s priorities.”

The bipartisan nature of America’s vibrant service movement is also reflected in the landmark Kennedy-Hatch Serve America Act signed into law by President Obama earlier this year and pending Global Service Fellowship legislation introduced by Senators Feingold and Voinovich.

In a recent Brookings Global Views policy brief, “International Volunteer Service: A Smart Way to Build Bridges,” Lex Rieffel, Kevin Quigley and I articulate policy options for the new administration to advance President Obama’s call for engaging service on the global level. President Obama’s speech in Cairo on June 4 called for turning “dialogue into interfaith service, so bridges between peoples lead to action – whether it is combating Malaria in Africa, or providing relief for a natural disaster.”

Following the president’s Cairo speech, the administration assembled a laudable Global Engagement Initiative across the administration to implement and track results in scaling up initiatives of service and interfaith action. The potency of coupling American service with foreign assistance was documented in Indonesia and Bangladesh through successive Terror Free Tomorrow polls showing increased favorable ratings for our nation and decreased support for terrorism.

The Building Bridges Coalition has organized an impressive array of over 210 organizations dedicated to expanding American volunteerism internationally, as part of a new “Service World” policy coalition gearing up for the 50^th anniversary of the Peace Corps. This new “international service 2.0” incorporates NGOs and faith-based groups, universities and corporations as new development actors advocating multilateral service and achieving impacts on issues ranging from Malaria to peacebuilding and climate change.

A Foundation Strategy Group report commissioned by Brookings and Pfizer, “Volunteering for Impact” assessed best practices in the increasing array of international corporations engaging volunteers such as IBM’s Corporate Service Corps, GE Volunteers and Pfizer’s Global Health Fellows.

Around the globe, initiatives such as Cross Cultural Solutions and an emerging global service and peacebuilding alliance in hot spots from Kenya to Mindanao are giving substance to the president’s call in Cairo. The collaboration of Presidents Clinton and G.H.W. Bush on humanitarian assistance after the tsunami, and this week’s service dedication with the Obama administration and former President Bush, bode well for the bipartisan extension of our nation’s noble voluntary service traditions in the international context where they are urgently needed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr. guided the Peace Corps from its inception in 1961 (when it was a nascent vision of service and citizen diplomacy) to establish a renowned track record of success over the past half century, in which more than 200,000 volunteers and trainees have served in 139 countries.

The legacy of Shriver’s leadership with the Peace Corps and later with the Office on Economic Opportunity and Special Olympics has reached and changed millions of lives—of both those empowered and those who served—from impoverished communities across rural and urban America to huts and villages in developing nations throughout the world. Yet one of the greatest gifts he leaves us is the foundation to build on those accomplishments to scale-up service as a direly needed “soft power” alternative to establish international understanding and collaboration in a volatile world. As Sarge put it, so simply but powerfully: “Caring for others is the practice of peace.”

Sarge Shriver’s unquenchable idealism today is being advanced by a new generation of social entrepreneurs such as Dr. Ed O’Neil, founder of OmniMed and chair of the Brookings International Volunteering Project health service policy group. With the help of Peace Corps volunteers and USAID-supported Volunteers for Prosperity, O’Neil has fielded an impressive service initiative in Ugandan villages that has expanded the capacity and reach of local health-service volunteers engaged in malaria prevention and education on basic hygiene. 

Timothy Shriver, who succeeded his parents, Sarge and Eunice, at the helm of the Special Olympics, speaks eloquently on the move of a second generation from politics to building civil society coalitions promoting soft power acts of service and love, one at a time. This impulse is echoed in the Service World policy platform which hundreds of NGOs and faith-based groups, corporations and universities have launched to scale-up the impact of international service initiatives. This ambitious undertaking was first announced by longtime Shriver protégé former Senator Harris Wofford at a Service Nation forum convened on the morning of President Obama’s Cairo speech in which he called for a new wave of global service and interfaith initiatives.

I had the privilege of serving as a national director of the VISTA program inspired by Shriver and  to work alongside Senator Wofford and John Bridgeland, President George W. Bush’s  former White House Freedom Corps director, who have co-chaired the Brookings International Volunteering Project policy team. Along with Tim Shriver, they have ignited the Service World call to action, together with Michelle Nunn of Points of Light Institute, Steve Rosenthal of the Building Bridges Coalition, Kevin Quigley of the National Peace Corps Association and many others.

The Obama administration and Congress would best honor the life and legacy of Sarge Shriver by calling for congressional hearings and fast- tracking agency actions outlined in the Service World platform and naming the global service legislation after him. Coupled with innovative private-sector and federal agency innovations, the legislation would authorize Global Service Fellowships, link volunteer capacity-building to USAID development programs such as  Volunteers for Prosperity, and double the Peace Corps to reach a combined goal of 100,000 global service volunteers annually—a goal first declared by JFK.

Those who promote opportunity and service as vehicles to advance peace and international collaboration will continue to draw inspiration from Sargent Shriver’s indefatigable quest for social justice―from the time he talked then-Senator John F. Kennedy into intervening in the unjust jailing of Martin Luther King, Jr. to his refusal to accept wanton violence and impoverished conditions in any corner of the world.

Information on offering online tributes to the Shriver family and donations in lieu of flowers requested by the family of Sargent Shriver can be found at www.sargentshriver.org .

In late October at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP) headquarters in Bangkok, a multi-stakeholder coalition was launched to promote the role of youth and civil society in advancing post-2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The youth initiatives, fostering regional integration and youth service impact in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and counterpart regions of Northeast and South Asia, will be furthered through a new Asia-Pacific Peace Service Alliance. The alliance is comprised of youth leaders, foundations, civil society entities, multilateral partners and U.N. agencies. Together, their initiatives illustrate the potential of youth and multi-stakeholder coalitions to scale impacts to meet SDG development targets through youth service and social media campaigns, and partnerships with multilateral agencies, nongovernmental organizations, corporations and research institutes.

The “Asia-Pacific Forum on Youth Volunteerism to Promote Participation in Development and Peace” at UN ESCAP featured a new joint partnership of the U.S. Peace Corps and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) as well as USAID support for the ASEAN Youth Volunteering Program. With key leadership from ASEAN youth entitles, sponsor FK Norway, Youth Corps Singapore and Peace Corps’ innovative program in Thailand, the forum also furthered President Obama’s goal of Americans serving “side by side” with other nations’ volunteers. The multi-stakeholder Asia-Pacific alliance will be powered by creative youth action and a broad array of private and public partners from Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, Australia, Korea, China, Mongolia, Japan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, the U.S. and other nations.

During the event, Dr. Shamshad Akhtar, ESCAP executive secretary, pointed out that “tapping youth potential is critical to shape our shared destiny, as they are a source of new ideas, talent and inspiration. For ESCAP and the United Nations, a dynamic youth agenda is vital to ensure the success of post-2015 sustainable development.”

Dr. Surin Pitsuwan, former ASEAN secretary-general, called for a new Asia-wide multilateralism engaging youth and civil society.  In his remarks, he drew from his experience in mobilizing Asian relief and recovery efforts after Cyclone Nargis devastated the delta region of Myanmar in May 2008. Surin, honorary Alliance chairman and this year’s recipient of the Harris Wofford Global Citizenship Award, also noted the necessity of a “spiritual evolution” to a common sense of well-being to redress the “present course of possible extinction” caused by global conflicts and climate challenges. He summoned Asia-Pacific youth, representing 60 percent of the world’s young population, to “be the change you want to see” and to “commit our youth to a useful cause for humanity.”

The potential for similar upscaled service efforts in Africa, weaving regional integration and youth volunteering impact, has been assessed in Brookings research and policy recommendations being implemented in the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). Recommendations, many of which COMESA and ASEAN are undertaking, include enabling youth entrepreneurship and service contributions to livelihoods in regional economic integration schemes, and commissioning third-party support for impact evidence research.

A good example of successful voluntary service contributions from which regional economic communities like ASEAN can learn a lot is the current Omnimed pilot research intervention in Uganda. In eastern Ugandan villages, 1,200 village health workers supported by volunteer medical doctors, Uganda’s Health Ministry, Peace Corps volunteers and Global Peace Women are addressing lifesaving maternal and child health outcomes furthering UNICEF’s campaign on “integrated health” addressing malaria, diarrheal disease and indoor cooking pollution. The effort has included construction of 15 secure water sources and 1,200 clean cook stoves along with randomized controlled trials.

Last week, the young leaders from more than 40 nations produced a “Bangkok Statement” outlining their policy guidance and practical steps to guide volunteering work plans for the new Asia-Pacific alliance. Youth service initiatives undertaken in “collective impact” clusters will focus on the environment (including clean water and solar villages), health service, entrepreneurship, youth roles in disaster preparedness and positive peace. The forum was co-convened by ESCAP, UNESCO, the Global Peace Foundation and the Global Young Leaders Academy.

Volunteerism remains a powerful tool for good around the world. Young people, in particular, are motivated by the prospect of creating real and lasting change, as well as gaining valuable learning experiences that come with volunteering. This energy and optimism among youth can be harnessed and mobilized to help meet challenges facing our world today and accomplish such targets as the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

On June 14, young leaders and development agents from leading non-governmental organizations (NGOs), faith-based organizations, corporations, universities, the Peace Corps, and United Nations Volunteers came together at the Brookings Institution to answer the question on how to achieve impacts on the SDGs through international service.

This was also the 10th anniversary gathering of the Building Bridges Coalition—a multi-stakeholder consortium of development volunteers— and included the announcement of a new Service Year Alliance partnership with the coalition to step up international volunteers and village-based volunteering capacity around the world.

Brookings Senior Fellow Homi Kharas, who served as the lead author supporting the high-level panel advising the U.N. secretary-general on the post-2015 development agenda, noted the imperative of engaging community volunteers to scale up effective initiatives, build political awareness, and generate “partnerships with citizens at every level” to achieve the 2030 goals.  

Kharas’ call was echoed in reports on effective grassroots initiatives, including Omnimed’s mobilization of 1,200 village health workers in Uganda’s Mukono district, a dramatic reduction of malaria through Peace Corps efforts with Senegal village volunteers, and Seed Global Health’s partnership to scale up medical doctors and nurses to address critical health professional shortages in the developing world. 

U.N. Youth Envoy Ahmad Alhendawi of Jordan energized young leaders from Atlas Corps, Global Citizen Year, America Solidaria, International Young Leaders Academy, and universities, citing U.N. Security Council Resolution 2250 on youth, peace, and security as “a turning point when it comes to the way we engage with young people globally… to recognize their role for who they are, as peacebuilders, not troublemakers… and equal partners on the ground.”

Service Year Alliance Chair General Stanley McChrystal, former Joint Special Operations commander, acclaimed, “The big idea… of a culture where the expectation [and] habit of service has provided young people an opportunity to do a year of funded, full-time service.” 

Civic Enterprises President John Bridgeland and Brookings Senior Fellow E.J. Dionne, Jr. led a panel with Seed Global Health’s Vanessa Kerry and Atlas Corps’ Scott Beale on policy ideas for the next administration, including offering Global Service Fellowships in United States Agency for International Development (USAID) programs to grow health service corps, student service year loan forgiveness, and technical support through State Department volunteer exchanges. Former Senator Harris Wofford, Building Bridge Coalition’s senior advisor and a founding Peace Corps architect, shared how the coalition’s new “service quantum leap” furthers the original idea announced by President John F. Kennedy, which called for the Peace Corps and the mobilization of one million global volunteers through NGOs, faith-based groups, and universities.

The multi-stakeholder volunteering model was showcased by Richard Dictus, executive coordinator of U.N. Volunteers; Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet; USAID Counselor Susan Reischle; and Diane Melley, IBM vice president for Global Citizenship. Melley highlighted IBM’s 280,000 skills-based employee volunteers who are building community capacity in 130 countries along with Impact 2030—a consortium of 60 companies collaborating with the U.N.—that is “integrating service into overall citizenship activities” while furthering the SDGs.

The faith and millennial leaders who contributed to the coalition’s action plan included Jim Lindsay of Catholic Volunteer Network; Service Year’s Yasmeen Shaheen-McConnell; C. Eduardo Vargas of USAID’s Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives; and moderator David Eisner of Repair the World, a former CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service. Jesuit Volunteer Corps President Tim Shriver, grandson of the Peace Corps’ founding director, addressed working sessions on engaging faith-based volunteers, which, according to research, account for an estimated 44 percent of nearly one million U.S. global volunteers

The key role of colleges and universities in the coalition’s action plan—including  linking service year with student learning, impact research, and gap year service—was  outlined by Dean Alan Solomont of Tisch College at Tufts University; Marlboro College President Kevin Quigley; and U.N. Volunteers researcher Ben Lough of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

These panel discussion directed us towards the final goal of the event, which was a multi-stakeholder action campaign calling for ongoing collaboration and policy support to enhance the collective impact of international service in achieving the 2030 goals.

This resolution, which remains a working document, highlighted five major priorities:

1. Engage service abroad programs to more effectively address the 2030 SDGs by mobilizing 10,000 additional service year and short-term volunteers annually and partnerships that leverage local capacity and volunteers in host communities.
2. Promote a new generation of global leaders through global service fellowships promoting service and study abroad.
3. Expand cross-sectorial participation and partnerships.
4. Engage more volunteers of all ages in service abroad.
5. Study and foster best practices across international service programs, measure community impact, and ensure the highest quality of volunteer safety, well-being, and confidence.

Participants agreed that it’s through these types of efforts that volunteer service could become a common strategy throughout the world for meeting pressing challenges. Moreover, the cooperation of individuals and organizations will be vital in laying a foundation on which governments and civil society can build a more prosperous, healthy, and peaceful world.

Dear Members of the Senate,

As you know, the Senate has debated the merits of the filibuster and related procedural rules for over two centuries. Recently, several senators who are advocating changes to Senate Rule XXII have renewed this discussion. We write this letter today to clarify some of the common historical and constitutional misperceptions about the filibuster and Rule XXII that all too often surface during debates about Senate rules.

First, many argue that senators have a constitutional right to extended debate. However, there is no explicit constitutional right to filibuster.^[1] In fact, there is ample evidence that the framers preferred majority rather than supermajority voting rules. The framers knew full well the difficulties posed by supermajority rules, given their experiences in the Confederation Congress under the Articles of Confederation (which required a supermajority vote to pass measures on the most important matters). A common result was stalemate; legislators frequently found themselves unable to muster support from a supermajority of the states for essential matters of governing. In the Constitution, the framers specified that supermajority votes would be necessary in seven, extraordinary situations -which they specifically listed (including overriding a presidential veto, expelling a member of the Senate, and ratifying a treaty). These, of course, are all voting requirements for passing measures, rather than rules for bringing debate to a close.

Second, although historical lore says that the filibuster was part of the original design of the Senate, there is no empirical basis for that view. There is no question that the framers intended the Senate to be a deliberative body. But they sought to achieve that goal through structural features of the chamber intended to facilitate deliberation -such as the Senate's smaller size, longer and staggered terms, and older members. There is no historical evidence that the framers anticipated that the Senate would adopt rules allowing for a filibuster. In fact, the first House and the first Senate had nearly identical rule books, both of which included a motion to move the previous question. The House converted that rule into a simple majority cloture rule early in its history. The Senate did not.

What happened to the Senate's previous question motion? In 1805, as presiding officer of the Senate, Vice President Aaron Burr recommended a pruning of the Senate's rules. He singled out the previous question motion as unnecessary (keeping in mind that the rule had not yet routinely been used in either chamber as a simple majority cloture motion). When senators met in 1806 to re-codify the rules, they deleted the previous question motion from the Senate rulebook. Senators did so not because they sought to create the opportunity to filibuster; they abandoned the motion as a matter of procedural housekeeping. Deletion of the motion took away one of the possible avenues for cutting off debate by majority vote, but did not constitute a deliberate choice to allow obstruction. The first documented filibusters did not occur until the 1830s, and for the next century they were rare (but often effective) occurrences in a chamber in which majorities generally reigned.

Finally, the adoption of Rule XXII in 1917 did not reflect a broad-based Senate preference for a supermajority cloture rule. At that time, a substantial portion of the majority party favored a simple majority rule. But many minority party members preferred a supermajority cloture rule, while others preferred no cloture rule at all. A bargain was struck: Opponents of reform promised not to block the rule change and proponents of reform promised not to push for a simple majority cloture rule. The two-thirds threshold, in other words, was the product of bargaining and compromise with the minority. As has been typical of the Senate's past episodes of procedural change, pragmatic politics largely shaped reform of the Senate's rules.

We hope this historical perspective on the origins of the filibuster and Rule XXII will be helpful to you as matters of reform are raised and debated. Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can provide additional clarification.

Very truly yours,

Sarah Binder
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution
Professor of Political Science, George Washington University

Gregory Koger
Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Miami

Thomas E. Mann
W. Averell Harriman Chair & Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution

Norman Ornstein
Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

Eric Schickler
Jeffrey & Ashley McDermott Endowed Chair & Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley

Barbara Sinclair
Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics Emerita, University of California, Los Angeles

Steven S. Smith
Kate M. Gregg Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences & Professor of Political Science, Washington University

Gregory J. Wawro
Deputy Chair & Associate Professor of Political Science, Columbia University

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It seems the Senate could have a really hot summer. Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has reportedly threatened to “go nuclear” this July—meaning that Senate Democrats would move by majority vote to ban filibusters of executive and judicial branch nominees. According to these reports, if Senate Republicans block three key nominations (Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Thomas Perez at Labor, and Gina McCarthy at EPA), Reid will call on the Democrats to invoke the nuclear option as a means of eliminating filibusters over nominees.

Jon Bernstein offered a thoughtful reaction to Reid’s gambit, noting that Reid’s challenge is to “find a way to ratchet up the threat of reform in order to push Republicans as far away from that line as possible.” Jon’s emphasis on Reid’s threat is important (and is worth reading in full).  Still, I think it’s helpful to dig a little deeper on the role of both majority and minority party threats that arise over the nuclear option.

Before getting to Reid’s threat, two brief detours. First, a parliamentary detour to make plain two reasons why Reid’s procedural gambit is deemed “nuclear.” First, Democrats envision using a set of parliamentary moves that would allow the Senate to cut off debate on nominations by majority vote (rather than by sixty votes). Republicans (at least when they are in the minority) call this “changing the rules by breaking the rules,” because Senate rules formally require a 2/3rds vote to break a filibuster of a measure to change Senate rules. The nuclear option would avoid the formal process of securing a 2/3rds vote to cut off debate; instead, the Senate would set a new precedent by simple majority vote to exempt nominations from the reach of Rule 22. If Democrats circumvent formal rules, Republicans would deem the move nuclear. Second, Reid’s potential gambit would be considered nuclear because of the anticipated GOP reaction: As Sen. Schumer argued in 2005 when the GOP tried to go nuclear over judges, minority party senators would “blow up every bridge in sight.” The nuclear option is so-called on account of the minority’s anticipated parliamentary reaction (which would ramp up obstruction on everything else).

A second detour notes simply that the exact procedural steps that would have to be taken to set a new precedent to exempt nominations from Rule 22 have not yet been precisely spelled out.  Over the years, several scenarios have been floated that give us a general outline of how the Senate could reform its cloture rule by majority vote. But a CRS report written in the heat of the failed GOP effort to go nuclear in 2005 points to the complications and uncertainties entailed in using a reform-by-ruling strategy to empower simple majorities to cut off debate on nominations. My sense is that using a nuclear option to restrict the reach of Rule 22 might not be as straight forward as many assume.

That gets us to the place of threats in reform-by-ruling strategies. The coverage of Reid’s intentions last week emphasized the importance of Reid’s threat to Republicans: Dare to cross the line by filibustering three particular executive branch nominees, and Democrats will go nuclear. But for Reid’s threat to be effective in convincing GOP senators to back down on these nominees, Republicans have to deem Reid’s threat credible. Republicans know that Reid refused by go nuclear last winter (and previously in January 2009), not least because a set of longer-serving Democrats opposed the strategy earlier this year. It would be reasonable for the GOP today to question whether Reid has 51 Democrats willing to ban judicial and executive branch nomination filibusters. If Republicans doubt Reid’s ability to detonate a nuclear device, then the threat won’t be much help in getting the GOP to back down. Of course, if Republicans don’t block all three nominees, observers will likely interpret the GOP’s behavior as a rational response to Reid’s threat. Eric Schickler and Greg Wawro in Filibuster suggest that the absence of reform on such occasions demonstrates that the nuclear option can “tame the minority.”  Reid’s threat would have done the trick.

As a potentially nuclear Senate summer approaches, I would keep handy an alternative interpretation.  Reid isn’t the only actor with a threat: given Republicans’ aggressive use of Rule 22, Republicans can credibly threaten to retaliate procedurally if the Democrats go nuclear.  And that might be a far more credible threat than Reid’s. We know from the report on Reid’s nuclear thinking that “senior Democratic Senators have privately expressed worry to the Majority Leader that revisiting the rules could imperil the immigration push, and have asked him to delay it until after immigration reform is done (or is killed).” That tidbit suggests that Democrats consider the GOP threat to retaliate as a near certainty. In other words, if Republicans decide not to block all three nominees and Democrats don’t go nuclear, we might reasonably conclude that the minority’s threat to retaliate was pivotal to the outcome. As Steve Smith, Tony Madonna and I argued some time ago, the nuclear option might be technically feasible but not necessarily politically feasible.

To be sure, it’s hard to arbitrate between these two competing mechanisms that might underlie Senate politics this summer.  In either scenario—the majority tames the minority or the minority scares the bejeezus out of the majority—the same outcome ensues: Nothing. Still, I think it’s important to keep these alternative interpretations at hand as Democrats call up these and other nominations this spring. The Senate is a tough nut to crack, not least when challenges to supermajority rule are in play.

UPDATE 4: Sarah Binder explores the questions, "Why did the Senate go nuclear now, and what will be the consequences for future majorities eager to further curtail the filibuster?"

UPDATE 2: Sarah Binder writes that "this is big" in another new post on Monkey Cage blog, "Boom! What the Senate will be like when the nuclear dust settles." 

UPDATE: Sarah Binder has a new post on Monkey Cage blog, in which she explains why GOP targeting of the D.C. circuit may not be as unprecedented as some think and why it would be difficult to parse out "acceptable" filibusters from those that aren't. "We'll learn soon enough," Binder writes, "if Democrats have the guts to go [nuclear] and, if so, whether that compels any Republicans to stand down."

Over the past few weeks, Senate Republicans have filibustered President Obama's three nominees to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, claiming alternatively that Obama was trying to pack the court and characterizing the court's caseload as lighter than other circuits. News reports now say that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is considering changing the filibuster rule for some executive and judicial nominees, the so-called "nuclear option.

In 2010, Brookings Senior Fellow Sarah Binder, an expert on Congress and congressional history, testified to the Senate that "the filibuster was created by mistake."

We have many received wisdoms about the filibuster. However, most of them are not true. The most persistent myth is that the filibuster was part of the founding fathers’ constitutional vision for the Senate: It is said that the upper chamber was designed to be a slow-moving, deliberative body that cherished minority rights. In this version of history, the filibuster was a critical part of the framers’ Senate.

However, when we dig into the history of Congress, it seems that the filibuster was created by mistake. Let me explain.

The House and Senate rulebooks in 1789 were nearly identical. Both rulebooks included what is known as the “previous question” motion. The House kept their motion, and today it empowers a simple majority to cut off debate. The Senate no longer has that rule on its books.

What happened to the Senate’s rule? In 1805, Vice President Aaron Burr was presiding over the Senate (freshly indicted for the murder of Alexander Hamilton), and he offered this advice. He said something like this. You are a great deliberative body. But a truly great Senate would have a cleaner rule book. Yours is a mess. You have lots of rules that do the same thing. And he singles out the previous question motion. Now, today, we know that a simple majority in the House can use the rule to cut off debate. But in 1805, neither chamber used the rule that way. Majorities were still experimenting with it. And so when Aaron Burr said, get rid of the previous question motion, the Senate didn’t think twice. When they met in 1806, they dropped the motion from the Senate rule book.

Why? Not because senators in 1806 sought to protect minority rights and extended debate. They got rid of the rule by mistake: Because Aaron Burr told them to.

Once the rule was gone, senators still did not filibuster. Deletion of the rule made possible the filibuster because the Senate no longer had a rule that could have empowered a simple majority to cut off debate. It took several decades until the minority exploited the lax limits on debate, leading to the first real-live filibuster in 1837.

Binder makes additional insightful points about the origin and historical uses of the Senate filibuster in that testimony to the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.

She also calls attention to another of Obama's recent judicial nominees: Ronnie White for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, which is yet another window, she says, on the "evolving wars of advice and consent."

Binder also has data on whether Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Senate GOP have "played fair" on President Obama's nominees.

For additional analysis about the filibuster, see Binder's "What Senate cloture votes tell us about obstruction," in which she wrote:

Ultimately, the rise of the 60-vote Senate in a period of polarized parties signals that the minority party has mastered the art of blocking the majority. Sometimes, the minority leader drives the opposition in his conference; other times, he follows it. Regardless, what’s true of the tango is also true of the Senate: It takes two parties to make it look good. The minority party no doubt often feels that the majority leader is too quick to call for a vote, and its members might reasonably oppose cloture on that ground. However, my sense is that far more often, majority leaders resort to cloture when they find themselves unable to cajole the minority party to cooperate. As the Senate GOP conference fractures between pragmatists and ideologues, securing GOP consent will likely become even harder. Counting cloture votes remains an imperfect — but still valid — method of capturing minority efforts to block the Senate.

Get all of Sarah Binder's research and commentary about the Senate filibuster on her bio page.

The July 4th congressional recess’s pause in 2014’s record pace of judicial confirmations is a good time to explore the reason for the upsurge.

The 54 confirmations at 2014’s half-way point compare to 43 in all of 2013. What’s behind the increase? Some have said that the Senate’s November 2013 rules change—to allow a simple majority to end filibusters on most nominees—“has resulted in [the] sharp increase.” There is a lot of appeal (and even a little truth) to the claim, but beware the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy that if “B” follows “A”, “A” necessarily caused “B”.

There have been 61 confirmations since November 21. The rules change clearly enabled three of them. Late October and mid-November filibusters of three D.C. circuit appellate nominees were the immediate cause of the change, which in turn allowed their post-November confirmations.

Saying how many of the other post-November confirmations would have failed without the rules change is an exercise in informed speculation. Here’s one way to look at it: how many of those confirmations had enough negative votes to have sustained a filibuster under the old rule?

Invoking cloture—i.e., cutting off debate—under the old rule required 60 votes. Filibuster proponents were often able to prevent that by peeling off, if not 41 Nay votes, at least votes in the 30s, assuming not all 100 senators were present to vote. For this analysis, let’s set the bar at 34—the fewest number of votes that prevented a 60 vote cloture-invocation against any Obama nominee (most filibuster-sustaining votes were in the high 30’s and low 40’s).

Forty five of the 51 post-November district confirmations quite probably would have happened without the rules change. They had fewer than 34 Nays. And it’s hardly automatic that the six with at least 34 Nays would have been filibustered under the old rule. Senators can and do oppose a nominee but oppose filibustering her as well. Prior to the rules change, 12 district judges were confirmed even though they had at least 34 Nays. Only one of those needed a cloture vote to move to confirmation—33 voted against cloture and 44 voted against confirmation. (Cloture votes, a rarity before the rules change, have been routine since then, and they generally get around 30-40 negative notes. But these appear to be protest votes against the rules change, inasmuch as 27 of the 51 district confirmation had no Nays and another 14 had 20 or fewer Nays.)

So it’s reasonable speculation, but still speculation, that the rules change had no direct effect on district confirmations.

Circuit confirmations are a different story. The three D.C. nominees clearly owe their confirmations to the rules change. Three of the seven other circuit confirmations since November had well over 34 Nays (40, 43, and 45, in fact). One nominee had represented challengers to California’s since-overturned same-sex marriage ban; another, also a Californian, was nominated to a long-vacant seat that Republican senators claimed belonged in Idaho. The third, with 45 Nays, had authored Justice Department memos providing legal justifications for drone strikes against U.S. citizens. Successful filibusters against all three, under the old rule, seem quite plausible. (The other four post-rules-change nominees were confirmed with either no, or in one case, three negative votes.)

Bottom line: The rules change likely enabled at most twelve of the 61 post-rules change confirmations, and it more likely enabled only six.

The frenetic pace of 2014 confirmations is due mainly to Senate Democrats’ desire to secure as many as they can before the November elections and the possibility of losing control of the confirmation process.