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Five years have passed since the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia sparked revolts around the Arab world and the beginning of the Arab Spring. Despite high hopes that the Arab world was entering a new era of freedom, economic growth, and social justice, the transition turned out to be long and difficult, with the Arab world now in turmoil with revolutions, counter revolutions, wars, civil strife, and the worst refugee crisis of our times. The response to the Arab Spring and its aftermath has focused almost exclusively on political and security issues, and on the very divisive questions of national identity and political regimes. Economic and social questions have been put on the back burner.

On January 15, Global Economy and Development at Brookings hosted a discussion on a new book, "The Arab Spring Five Years Later," which explores the critical economic and social issues driving the Arab Spring agenda and the real economic grievances that must be addressed in order to achieve peace, stability, and successful political transitions as well as provides an approach to addressing those grievances.

Hafez Ghanem and Shinchi Yamanaka presented the key findings of the book, followed by a panel discussion. 

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• The Arab Spring Five Years Later: Toward greater inclusiveness

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• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

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• 20160115_arab_spring_transcript

Politics follows geopolitics, or so it has often seemed throughout history. When the Athenian democracy’s empire rose in the fifth century B.C.E., the number of Greek city-states ruled by democrats proliferated; Sparta’s power was reflected in the spread of Spartan-style oligarchies. When the Soviet Union’s power rose in the early Cold War years, communism spread. In the later Cold War years, when the United States and Western Europe gained the advantage and ultimately triumphed, democracies proliferated and communism collapsed. Was this all just the outcome of the battle of ideas, as Francis Fukuyama and others argue, with the better idea of liberal capitalism triumphing over the worse ideas of communism and fascism? Or did liberal ideas triumph in part because of real battles and shifts that occurred less in the realm of thought than in the realm of power?

These are relevant questions again. We live in a time when democratic nations are in retreat in the realm of geopolitics, and when democracy itself is also in retreat. The latter phenomenon has been well documented by Freedom House, which has recorded declines in freedom in the world for nine straight years. At the level of geopolitics, the shifting tectonic plates have yet to produce a seismic rearrangement of power, but rumblings are audible. The United States has been in a state of retrenchment since President Barack Obama took office in 2009. The democratic nations of Europe, which some might have expected to pick up the slack, have instead turned inward and all but abandoned earlier dreams of reshaping the international system in their image. As for such rising democracies as Brazil, India, Turkey, and South Africa, they are neither rising as fast as once anticipated nor yet behaving as democracies in world affairs. Their focus remains narrow and regional. Their national identities remain shaped by postcolonial and nonaligned sensibilities—by old but carefully nursed resentments—which lead them, for instance, to shield rather than condemn autocratic Russia’s invasion of democratic Ukraine, or, in the case of Brazil, to prefer the company of Venezuelan dictators to that of North American democratic presidents.

Meanwhile, insofar as there is energy in the international system, it comes from the great-power autocracies, China and Russia, and from would-be theocrats pursuing their dream of a new caliphate in the Middle East. For all their many problems and weaknesses, it is still these autocracies and these aspiring religious totalitarians that push forward while the democracies draw back, that act while the democracies react, and that seem increasingly unleashed while the democracies feel increasingly constrained.

It should not be surprising that one of the side effects of these circumstances has been the weakening and in some cases collapse of democracy in those places where it was newest and weakest. Geopolitical shifts among the reigning great powers, often but not always the result of wars, can have significant effects on the domestic politics of the smaller and weaker nations of the world. Global democratizing trends have been stopped and reversed before.

Consider the interwar years. In 1920, when the number of democracies in the world had doubled in the aftermath of the First World War, contemporaries such as the British historian James Bryce believed that they were witnessing “a natural trend, due to a general law of social progress.”[1] Yet almost immediately the new democracies in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland began to fall. Europe’s democratic great powers, France and Britain, were suffering the effects of the recent devastating war, while the one rich and healthy democratic power, the United States, had retreated to the safety of its distant shores. In the vacuum came Mussolini’s rise to power in Italy in 1922, the crumbling of Germany’s Weimar Republic, and the broader triumph of European fascism. Greek democracy fell in 1936. Spanish democracy fell to Franco that same year. Military coups overthrew democratic governments in Portugal, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. Japan’s shaky democracy succumbed to military rule and then to a form of fascism.

Across three continents, fragile democracies gave way to authoritarian forces exploiting the vulnerabilities of the democratic system, while other democracies fell prey to the worldwide economic depression. There was a ripple effect, too—the success of fascism in one country strengthened similar movements elsewhere, sometimes directly. Spanish fascists received military assistance from the fascist regimes in Germany and Italy. The result was that by 1939 the democratic gains of the previous forty years had been wiped out.

The period after the First World War showed not only that democratic gains could be reversed, but that democracy need not always triumph even in the competition of ideas. For it was not just that democracies had been overthrown. The very idea of democracy had been “discredited,” as John A. Hobson observed.[2] Democracy’s aura of inevitability vanished as great numbers of people rejected the idea that it was a better form of government. Human beings, after all, do not yearn only for freedom, autonomy, individuality, and recognition. Especially in times of difficulty, they yearn also for comfort, security, order, and, importantly, a sense of belonging to something larger than themselves, something that submerges autonomy and individuality—all of which autocracies can sometimes provide, or at least appear to provide, better than democracies. 

In the 1920s and 1930s, the fascist governments looked stronger, more energetic and efficient, and more capable of providing reassurance in troubled times. They appealed effectively to nationalist, ethnic, and tribal sentiments. The many weaknesses of Germany’s Weimar democracy, inadequately supported by the democratic great powers, and of the fragile and short-lived democracies of Italy and Spain made their people susceptible to the appeals of the Nazis, Mussolini, and Franco, just as the weaknesses of Russian democracy in the 1990s made a more authoritarian government under Vladimir Putin attractive to many Russians. People tend to follow winners, and between the wars the democratic-capitalist countries looked weak and in retreat compared with the apparently vigorous fascist regimes and with Stalin’s Soviet Union.

It took a second world war and another military victory by the Allied democracies (plus the Soviet Union) to reverse the trend again. The United States imposed democracy by force and through prolonged occupations in West Germany, Italy, Japan, Austria, and South Korea. With the victory of the democracies and the discrediting of fascism—chiefly on the battlefield—many other countries followed suit. Greece and Turkey both moved in a democratic direction, as did Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia. Some of the new nations born as Europe shed its colonies also experimented with democratic government, the most prominent example being India. By 1950, the number of democracies had grown to between twenty and thirty, and they governed close to 40 percent of the world’s population.

Was this the victory of an idea or the victory of arms? Was it the product of an inevitable human evolution or, as Samuel P. Huntington later observed, of “historically discrete events”?[3] We would prefer to believe the former, but evidence suggests the latter, for it turned out that even the great wave of democracy following World War II was not irreversible. Another “reverse wave” hit from the late 1950s through the early 1970s. Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, Ecuador, South Korea, the Philippines, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Greece all fell back under authoritarian rule. In Africa, Nigeria was the most prominent of the newly decolonized nations where democracy failed. By 1975, more than three-dozen governments around the world had been installed by military coups.[4] Few spoke of democracy’s inevitability in the 1970s or even in the early 1980s. As late as 1984, Huntington himself believed that “the limits of democratic development in the world” had been reached, noting the “unreceptivity to democracy of several major cultural traditions,” as well as “the substantial power of antidemocratic governments (particularly the Soviet Union).”[5]

But then, unexpectedly, came the “third wave.” From the mid-1970s through the early 1990s, the number of democracies in the world rose to an astonishing 120, representing well over half the world’s population. What explained the prolonged success of democratization over the last quarter of the twentieth century? It could not have been merely the steady rise of the global economy and the general yearning for freedom, autonomy, and recognition. Neither economic growth nor human yearnings had prevented the democratic reversals of the 1960s and early 1970s. Until the third wave, many nations around the world careened back and forth between democracy and authoritarianism in a cyclical, almost predictable manner. What was most notable about the third wave was that this cyclical alternation between democracy and autocracy was interrupted. Nations moved into a democratic phase and stayed there. But why?

The International Climate Improves

The answer is related to the configuration of power and ideas in the world. The international climate from the mid-1970s onward was simply more hospitable to democracies and more challenging to autocratic governments than had been the case in past eras. In his study, Huntington emphasized the change, following the Second Vatican Council, in the Catholic Church’s doctrine regarding order and revolution, which tended to weaken the legitimacy of authoritarian governments in Catholic countries. The growing success and attractiveness of the European Community (EC), meanwhile, had an impact on the internal policies of nations such as Portugal, Greece, and Spain, which sought the economic benefits of membership in the EC and therefore felt pressure to conform to its democratic norms. These norms increasingly became international norms. But they did not appear out of nowhere or as the result of some natural evolution of the human species. As Huntington noted, “The pervasiveness of democratic norms rested in large part on the commitment to those norms of the most powerful country in the world.[6]

The United States, in fact, played a critical role in making the explosion of democracy possible. This was not because U.S. policy makers consistently promoted democracy around the world. They did not. At various times throughout the Cold War, U.S. policy often supported dictatorships as part of the battle against communism or simply out of indifference. It even permitted or was complicit in the overthrow of democratic regimes deemed unreliable—those of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, and Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. At times, U.S. foreign policy was almost hostile to democracy. President Richard Nixon regarded it as “not necessarily the best form of government for people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.”[7] 

Nor, when the United States did support democracy, was it purely out of fealty to principle. Often it was for strategic reasons. Officials in President Ronald Reagan’s administration came to believe that democratic governments might actually be better than autocracies at fending off communist insurgencies, for instance. And often it was popular local demands that compelled the United States to make a choice that it would otherwise have preferred to avoid, between supporting an unpopular and possibly faltering dictatorship and “getting on the side of the people.” Reagan would have preferred to support the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the 1980s had he not been confronted by the moral challenge of Filipino “people power.” Rarely if ever did the United States seek a change of regime primarily out of devotion to democratic principles.

Beginning in the mid-1970s, however, the general inclination of the United States did begin to shift toward a more critical view of dictatorship. The U.S. Congress, led by human-rights advocates, began to condition or cut off U.S. aid to authoritarian allies, which weakened their hold on power. In the Helsinki Accords of 1975, a reference to human-rights issues drew greater attention to the cause of dissidents and other opponents of dictatorship in the Eastern bloc. President Jimmy Carter focused attention on the human-rights abuses of the Soviet Union as well as of right-wing governments in Latin America and elsewhere. The U.S. government’s international information services, including the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, put greater emphasis on democracy and human rights in their programming. The Reagan administration, after first trying to roll back Carter’s human-rights agenda, eventually embraced it and made the promotion of democracy part of its stated (if not always its actual) policy. Even during this period, U.S. policy was far from consistent. Many allied dictatorships, especially in the Middle East, were not only tolerated but actively supported with U.S. economic and military aid. But the net effect of the shift in U.S. policy, joined with the efforts of Europe, was significant.

The third wave began in 1974 in Portugal, where the Carnation Revolution put an end to a half-century of dictatorship. As Larry Diamond notes, this revolution did not just happen. The United States and the European democracies played a key role, making a “heavy investment . . . in support of the democratic parties.”[8] Over the next decade and a half, the United States used a variety of tools, including direct military intervention, to aid democratic transitions and prevent the undermining of existing fragile democracies all across the globe. In 1978, Carter threatened military action in the Dominican Republic when long-serving president Joaquín Balaguer refused to give up power after losing an election. In 1983, Reagan’s invasion of Grenada restored a democratic government after a military coup. In 1986, the United States threatened military action to prevent Marcos from forcibly annulling an election that he had lost. In 1989, President George H.W. Bush invaded Panama to help install democracy after military strongman Manuel Noriega had annulled his nation’s elections. 

Throughout this period, too, the United States used its influence to block military coups in Honduras, Bolivia, El Salvador, Peru, and South Korea. Elsewhere it urged presidents not to try staying in office beyond constitutional limits. Huntington estimated that over the course of about a decade and a half, U.S. support had been “critical to democratization in the Dominican Republic, Grenada, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, and the Philippines” and was “a contributing factor to democratization in Portugal, Chile, Poland, Korea, Bolivia, and Taiwan.”[9]

Many developments both global and local helped to produce the democratizing trend of the late 1970s and the 1980s, and there might have been a democratic wave even if the United States had not been so influential. The question is whether the wave would have been as large and as lasting. The stable zones of democracy in Europe and Japan proved to be powerful magnets. The liberal free-market and free-trade system increasingly outperformed the stagnating economies of the socialist bloc, especially at the dawn of the information revolution. The greater activism of the United States, together with that of other successful democracies, helped to build a broad, if not universal, consensus that was more sympathetic to democratic forms of government and less sympathetic to authoritarian forms.

Diamond and others have noted how important it was that these “global democratic norms” came to be “reflected in regional and international institutions and agreements as never before.”[10] Those norms had an impact on the internal political processes of countries, making it harder for authoritarians to weather political and economic storms and easier for democratic movements to gain legitimacy. But “norms” are transient as well. In the 1930s, the trendsetting nations were fascist dictatorships. In the 1950s and 1960s, variants of socialism were in vogue. But from the 1970s until recently, the United States and a handful of other democratic powers set the fashion trend. They pushed—some might even say imposed—democratic principles and embedded them in international institutions and agreements.

Equally important was the role that the United States played in preventing backsliding away from democracy where it had barely taken root. Perhaps the most significant U.S. contribution was simply to prevent military coups against fledgling democratic governments. In a sense, the United States was interfering in what might have been a natural cycle, preventing nations that ordinarily would have been “due” for an authoritarian phase from following the usual pattern. It was not that the United States was exporting democracy everywhere. More often, it played the role of “catcher in the rye”—preventing young democracies from falling off the cliff—in places such as the Philippines, Colombia, and Panama. This helped to give the third wave unprecedented breadth and durability.

Finally, there was the collapse of the Soviet Union and with it the fall of Central and Eastern Europe’s communist regimes and their replacement by democracies. What role the United States played in hastening the Soviet downfall may be in dispute, but surely it played some part, both by containing the Soviet empire militarily and by outperforming it economically and technologically. And at the heart of the struggle were the peoples of the former Warsaw Pact countries themselves. They had long yearned to achieve the liberation of their respective nations from the Soviet Union, which also meant liberation from communism. These peoples wanted to join the rest of Europe, which offered an economic and social model that was even more attractive than that of the United States. 

That Central and East Europeans uniformly chose democratic forms of government, however, was not simply the fruit of aspirations for freedom or comfort. It also reflected the desires of these peoples to place themselves under the U.S. security umbrella. The strategic, the economic, the political, and the ideological were thus inseparable. Those nations that wanted to be part of NATO, and later of the European Union, knew that they would stand no chance of admission without democratic credentials. These democratic transitions, which turned the third wave into a democratic tsunami, need not have occurred had the world been configured differently. That a democratic, united, and prosperous Western Europe was even there to exert a powerful magnetic pull on its eastern neighbors was due to U.S. actions after World War II.

The Lost Future of 1848

Contrast the fate of democratic movements in the late twentieth century with that of the liberal revolutions that swept Europe in 1848. Beginning in France, the “Springtime of the Peoples,” as it was known, included liberal reformers and constitutionalists, nationalists, and representatives of the rising middle class as well as radical workers and socialists. In a matter of weeks, they toppled kings and princes and shook thrones in France, Poland, Austria, and Romania, as well as the Italian peninsula and the German principalities. In the end, however, the liberal movements failed, partly because they lacked cohesion, but also because the autocratic powers forcibly crushed them. The Prussian army helped to defeat liberal movements in the German lands, while the Russian czar sent his troops into Romania and Hungary. Tens of thousands of protesters were killed in the streets of Europe. The sword proved mightier than the pen.

It mattered that the more liberal powers, Britain and France, adopted a neutral posture throughout the liberal ferment, even though France’s own revolution had sparked and inspired the pan-European movement. The British monarchy and aristocracy were afraid of radicalism at home. Both France and Britain were more concerned with preserving peace among the great powers than with providing assistance to fellow liberals. The preservation of the European balance among the five great powers benefited the forces of counterrevolution everywhere, and the Springtime of the Peoples was suppressed.[11] As a result, for several decades the forces of reaction in Europe were strengthened against the forces of liberalism.

Scholars have speculated about how differently Europe and the world might have evolved had the liberal revolutions of 1848 succeeded: How might German history have unfolded had national unification been achieved under a liberal parliamentary system rather than under the leadership of Otto von Bismarck? The “Iron Chancellor” unified the nation not through elections and debates, but through military victories won by the great power of the conservative Prussian army under the Hohenzollern dynasty. As the historian A.J.P. Taylor observed, history reached a turning point in 1848, but Germany “failed to turn.”[12] Might Germans have learned a different lesson from the one that Bismarck taught—namely, that “the great questions of the age are not decided by speeches and majority decisions . . . but by blood and iron”?[13] Yet the international system of the day was not configured in such a way as to encourage liberal and democratic change. The European balance of power in the mid-nineteenth century did not favor democracy, and so it is not surprising that democracy failed to triumph anywhere.[14] 

We can also speculate about how differently today’s world might have evolved without the U.S. role in shaping an international environment favorable to democracy, and how it might evolve should the United States find itself no longer strong enough to play that role. Democratic transitions are not inevitable, even where the conditions may be ripe. Nations may enter a transition zone—economically, socially, and politically—where the probability of moving in a democratic direction increases or decreases. But foreign influences, usually exerted by the reigning great powers, often determine which direction change takes. Strong authoritarian powers willing to support conservative forces against liberal movements can undo what might otherwise have been a “natural” evolution to democracy, just as powerful democratic nations can help liberal forces that, left to their own devices, might otherwise fail. 

In the 1980s as in the 1840s, liberal movements arose for their own reasons in different countries, but their success or failure was influenced by the balance of power at the international level. In the era of U.S. predominance, the balance was generally favorable to democracy, which helps to explain why the liberal revolutions of that later era succeeded. Had the United States not been so powerful, there would have been fewer transitions to democracy, and those that occurred might have been short-lived. It might have meant a shallower and more easily reversed third wave.[15] 

Democracy, Autocracy, and Power

What about today? With the democratic superpower curtailing its global influence, regional powers are setting the tone in their respective regions. Not surprisingly, dictatorships are more common in the environs of Russia, along the borders of China (North Korea, Burma, and Thailand), and in the Middle East, where long dictatorial traditions have so far mostly withstood the challenge of popular uprisings.

But even in regions where democracies remain strong, authoritarians have been able to make a determined stand while their democratic neighbors passively stand by. Thus Hungary’s leaders, in the heart of an indifferent Europe, proclaim their love of illiberalism and crack down on press and political freedoms while the rest of the European Union, supposedly a club for democracies only, looks away. In South America, democracy is engaged in a contest with dictatorship, but an indifferent Brazil looks on, thinking only of trade and of North American imperialism. Meanwhile in Central America, next door to an indifferent Mexico, democracy collapses under the weight of drugs and crime and the resurgence of the caudillos. Yet it may be unfair to blame regional powers for not doing what they have never done. Insofar as the shift in the geopolitical equation has affected the fate of democracies worldwide, it is probably the change in the democratic superpower’s behavior that bears most of the responsibility.

If that superpower does not change its course, we are likely to see democracy around the world rolled back further. There is nothing inevitable about democracy. The liberal world order we have been living in these past decades was not bequeathed by “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” It is not the endpoint of human progress.

There are those who would prefer a world order different from the liberal one. Until now, however, they have not been able to have their way, but not because their ideas of governance are impossible to enact. Who is to say that Putinism in Russia or China’s particular brand of authoritarianism will not survive as far into the future as European democracy, which, after all, is less than a century old on most of the continent? Autocracy in Russia and China has certainly been around longer than any Western democracy. Indeed, it is autocracy, not democracy, that has been the norm in human history—only in recent decades have the democracies, led by the United States, had the power to shape the world.

Skeptics of U.S. “democracy promotion” have long argued that many of the places where the democratic experiment has been tried over the past few decades are not a natural fit for that form of government, and that the United States has tried to plant democracy in some very infertile soils. Given that democratic governments have taken deep root in widely varying circumstances, from impoverished India to “Confucian” East Asia to Islamic Indonesia, we ought to have some modesty about asserting where the soil is right or not right for democracy. Yet it should be clear that the prospects for democracy have been much better under the protection of a liberal world order, supported and defended by a democratic superpower or by a collection of democratic great powers. Today, as always, democracy is a fragile flower. It requires constant support, constant tending, and the plucking of weeds and fencing-off of the jungle that threaten it both from within and without. In the absence of such efforts, the jungle and the weeds may sooner or later come back to reclaim the land.

[1] Quoted in Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 17.

[2] Quoted in John Keane, The Life and Death of Democracy (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009), 573.

[3] Huntington, Third Wave, 40.

[4] Huntington, Third Wave, 21.

[5] Samuel P. Huntington, “Will More Countries Become Democratic?” Political Science Quarterly 99 (Summer 1984): 193–218; quoted in Larry Diamond, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (New York: Times Books, 2008), 10.

[6] Huntington, Third Wave, 47.

[7] Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 196.

[8] Diamond, Spirit of Democracy, 5.

[9] Huntington, Third Wave, 98.

[10] Diamond, Spirit of Democracy, 13.

[11] Mike Rapport, 1848: Year of Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 2009), 409.

[12] A.J.P. Taylor, The Course of German History: A Survey of the Development of German History Since 1815 (London: Routledge, 2001; orig. publ. 1945), 71.

[13] Rapport, 1848, 401–402.

[14] As Huntington paraphrased the findings of Jonathan Sunshine: “External influences in Europe before 1830 were fundamentally antidemocratic and hence held up democratization. Between 1830 and 1930 . . . the external environment was neutral . . . hence democratization proceeded in different countries more or less at the pace set by economic and social development.” Huntington, Third Wave, 86.

[15] As Huntington observed, “The absence of the United States from the process would have meant fewer and later transitions to democracy.” Huntington, Third Wave, 98.

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• Is Democracy in Decline? The Weight of Geopolitics

A Q&A with Dennis Lower, president and CEO, Cortex Innovation Community

As leaders scan the landscape for strong examples of innovation districts, their tour is hardly complete without learning of the Cortex Innovation Community—an innovation district in the heart of St. Louis. We sat down with Dennis Lower, president and CEO of the Cortex Innovation Community to learn what kinds of interventions and instruments are driving their success.

What is the Cortex Innovation Community?

Cortex is the region’s largest innovation hub, generating 3,800 tech-related jobs and over $500 million in investment in the last 14 years. It’s located close to downtown and built on the intellectual assets and resources of St. Louis’ leading universities, a premier health care provider, and the Missouri Botanical Garden. The focal point is the 200 acres of old industrial land that one time separated these institutions but that now stitches them together. At full build-out, Cortex will likely generate $2 billion of development and create 13,000 jobs.

What sets Cortex apart from other innovation districts?

Of course, every district is distinctive and unique, building off its local character, culture, and assets. What sets Cortex apart, I would argue, is that we literally have billions of dollars of academic, cultural, and recreational assets in the neighborhoods that surround the district, which other places simply do not have.

We are bookended by two universities—Washington University and St. Louis University—each a magnet for international students and each with a reputation for research and academic excellence. Washington University, for example, was one of five consortium members funded by the National Institutes of Health to map the human genome. These universities, together with the University of Missouri-St. Louis, are the academic bedrock of our local innovation ecosystem.

Recent demographic analysis tells us we are now the most diverse employment environment in the region no matter how you slice it, including by age, ethnicity, and educational attainment.

Another Cortex advantage is the neighborhood that surrounds us. In addition to historic housing, the Grand Center arts district is to the east, to the west is Forest Park, which contains the St. Louis Zoo, fine arts and history museums, two golf courses, the St. Louis Science Center, abundant walking and biking trails, and the internationally renowned Botanical Garden. Restaurant corridors are to the north and south. I tell you all this to say that Cortex is where innovation, tech, culture, and community collide—and people are hungry for this mix.

Cortex Innovation Community is also a tax-exempt 501(c)3 that oversees the design and development of the innovation district. What makes your nonprofit unique in managing this district?

Cortex has been designated the master developer to transform an old industrial district into a center for innovation and commercialization. We are in a particularly advantageous position because the state and the city have granted the 501(c)3 powers of eminent domain, the power to abate taxes, and the power to approve or reject building plans. From a traditional economic development perspective, these powers have been critical in overcoming obstacles that land speculators sometimes put in our way. We have not had to use this power very often, fortunately. Only a handful of properties were acquired under the threat of eminent domain, and we reached an impasse only twice, sending us to court to purchase those properties. We take this responsibility seriously and only use eminent domain powers sparingly. We have a good reputation with the public as a result.

Can you describe one accomplishment you are particularly proud of?

We knew that to jump-start an innovation district it was essential to build entrepreneurial density. We developed an unorthodox strategy of sorts in that we built a concentration of innovation assets all within a block of each other. Today, we have six innovation centers, each with its own community and programming: the Center for Emerging Technologies, a traditional technical assistance incubator for information technology, bioscience, and consumer/manufacturing products; the BioGenerator, an accelerator with shared wet lab space and $3 million of shared core lab equipment; TechShop, a premier maker work space for prototyping and creating; the Cambridge Innovation Center–St. Louis, a co-working office and lab startup space); Venture Café–St. Louis, a shared public space for the startup community to meet weekly with 8 to 12 unconventional breakout educational sessions; and IdeaLabs/MedLaunch, a unique university graduate/undergraduate incubator that develops new technology to solve clinical problems. This strategy is working beyond our wildest expectations. It’s the “secret sauce” for supercharging our district’s innovation ecosystem. 

Venture Café: one of the six innovation centers that weekly draws together over 500 entrepreneurs from all technology sectors.

Can you highlight one particularly interesting innovation or invention coming out of Cortex? 

Let me highlight two. We have over 200 companies in Cortex—there’s too much innovation happening here to highlight only one!

First, we have a medical device company that is changing the way infectious diseases are diagnosed. Its products can rapidly detect bacterial infections, determine if the infection is resistant to a range of antibiotics, and provide clinicians with patient-specific guidance to treat infections quickly and accurately. Their first product can diagnose urinary tract infections in just three hours.

And then we have a company tackling the biggest challenge in agriculture today—preventing insects, diseases, and weeds from destroying food crops. This company is developing a cost-effective technology to produce and topically deliver RNAi for agricultural crops. Put simply, this technology helps plants develop desired genetic traits without the use of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. This could be transformative.

Many people have asked us how innovation districts are supporting inclusive growth. There is a concern that innovation districts are focusing on innovation to the exclusion of employment of city residents, who may not possess the skills or education the district’s businesses are seeking.

We look at inclusion as an integral part of our work and mission at Cortex. We currently have six inclusion initiatives and will soon introduce two more. One of those is the development of a magnet high school in the St. Louis Public School District, the Collegiate School for Medicine and Biosciences. Working closely with the school district’s superintendent and an important group of institutional and civic leaders, we have been developing an urban high school centered on one of the major strengths of our Cortex sponsors—bioscience. We recruited our first class in 2013, providing instruction in a small, temporary school, and in 2015 moved to a permanent location that can support 400 students.

The students come from all across the region, representing the largest spread of zip codes of any regional public school. Currently, 53 percent of the students are African American, 23 percent are Asian, and 22 percent are white, representing a great mix. Last year’s proficiency testing in math and English revealed that we ranked first across the entire public school system. I find this particularly gratifying because a number of incoming freshmen were not performing at grade level. What this tells us is given the opportunity, creative teaching approaches, and a supportive structure, these kids will excel quickly. With our incoming 9th grade class this August, we will have a full complement of freshmen to seniors, graduating our first class in 2017.

Perhaps one of these students will find the next cure for cancer. To me, this illustrates an important part of our district’s DNA—to grow and cultivate innovation talent for the future.

Washington is again paralyzed and pulling back on clean energy economic development. Deficit politics and partisanship are firmly entrenched and the raft of federal financial supports made available through the 2009 stimulus law and elsewhere is starting to expire.

No wonder it’s hard to imagine—especially if you’re sitting in the nation’s capital—how the next phase of American clean energy industry growth will be financed or its next generation of technologies and firms supported.

And yet, one source of action lies hidden in plain sight. With federal clean energy activities largely on hold, a new paper we are releasing today as part of the Brookings-Rockefeller Project on State and Metropolitan Innovation argues that U.S. states hold out tremendous promise for the continued design and implementation of smart clean energy finance solutions and economic development.

Specifically, we contend that the nearly two dozen clean energy funds (CEFs) now running in a variety of mostly northern states stand as one of the most important clean energy forces at work in the nation and offer at least one partial response to the failure of Washington to deliver a sensible clean energy development approach.

To date, over 20 states have created a varied array of these public investment vehicles to invest in clean energy pursuits with revenues often derived from small public-benefit surcharges on electric utility bills. Over the last decade, state CEFs have invested over $2.7 billion in state dollars to support renewable energy markets, counting very conservatively.  Meanwhile, they have leveraged another $9.7 billion in additional federal and private sector investment, with the resulting $12 billion flowing to the deployment of over 72,000 projects in the United States ranging from solar installations on homes and businesses to wind turbines in communities to large wind farms, hydrokinetic projects in rivers, and biomass generation plants on farms. 

In so doing, the funds stand well positioned—along with state economic development and other officials—to build on a pragmatic success and take up the challenge left by the current federal abdication of a role on clean energy economic development.

Yet here is the rub: For all the good the funds have achieved, project-only financing—as needed as it is—will not be sufficient to drive the growth of large and innovative new companies or to create the broader economic development taxpayers demand from public investments.  Also needed will be a greater focus on the deeper-going economic development work that can help spawn whole new industries. 

All of which points to the new brand of fund activity that our paper celebrates and calls for more of. 

In recent years, increasingly ambitious efforts in a number of states have featured engagement on at least three major fronts somewhat different from the initial fund focus: (1) cleantech innovation support through research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) funding; (2) financial support for early-stage cleantech companies and emerging technologies, including working capital for companies; and (3) industry development support through business incubator programs, regional cluster promotion, manufacturing and export promotion, supply chain analysis and enhancement, and workforce training programs.

These new economic development efforts—on display in California, Massachusetts, New York, and elsewhere—show the next era of state clean energy fund leadership coming into focus. States are now poised to jumpstart a new, creative period of expanded clean energy economic development and industry creation, to complement and build upon individualistic project financing. 

Such work could not be more timely at this moment of federal gridlock and market uncertainty.

Along these lines, then, our paper advances several recommendations for moving states more aggressively into this new period of clean energy economic development. We suggest that:

• States should reorient a significant portion (at least 10 percent of the total portfolio) of state CEF money to clean energy-related economic development

• States, as they reorient portions of their CEFS to economic development, should better understand the market dynamics in their metropolitan regions.  They need to lead by making available quality data on the number of jobs in their regions, the fastest-growing companies, the critical industry clusters, gaps in the supply chain for those industries, their export potential, and a whole range of economic development and market indicators

• States also should better link their clean energy funds with economic development entities, community development finance institutions (CDFIs), development finance organizations and other stakeholders who could be ideal partners to develop decentralized funding and effective economic development programs

In addition, we think that Washington needs to recognize the strength and utility of the CEFs and actively partner with them:

• The federal government should consider redirecting a portion of federal funds (for instance, from federal technology support programs administered by the Department of Energy and other programs meant for federal-state cooperation) to provide joint funding of cluster development, export programs, workforce training, and other economic development programs  through matching dollars to state funds that now have active economic development programs, and to provide incentives to states without such programs to create them

• The federal government should create joint technology partnerships with states to advance each state’s targeted clean energy technology industries, by matching federal deployment funding with state funding.

• The states and the federal government, more generally, should look to “decentralize” financing decisions to local entities with street knowledge of their industries, relying on more “development finance” authorities that have financed traditional infrastructure and now could finance new clean energy projects and programs

In sum, our new paper proposes a much greater focus in U.S. clean energy finance on “bottom up,” decentralized clean initiatives that rely on the states to catalyze regional economic development in regions. Such an approach—which reflects the emergence of an emerging “pragmatic caucus” in U.S. economic life—is currently demanded by federal inaction. However, it might also be the smartest, most durable way to develop the clean energy industries of the future without the partisan rancor and obtuseness that has stymied federal energy policy. State clean energy funds—having funded thousands of individual projects—bring significant knowledge to bear as they focus now on building whole industries. For that reason, the funds’ transition from project development to industry creation should be nurtured and supported.

State clean energy funds (CEFs) have emerged as effective tools that states can use to accelerate the development of energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. These clean energy funds, which exist in over 20 states, generate about $500 million per year in dedicated support from utility surcharges and other sources, making them significant public investors in thousands of clean energy projects.

However, state clean energy funds’ emphasis on a project finance model—which directly promotes clean energy project installation by providing production incentives and grants/rebates—is by itself not enough to build a statewide clean energy industry. State clean energy funds also need to pay attention to other critical aspects of building a robust clean energy industry, including cleantech innovation support through research and development funding, financial support for early-stage cleantech companies and emerging technologies, and various other industry development efforts.

As it happens, some of these state clean energy funds are already supporting a broader range of clean energy-related economic development activities within their states. As more and more states reorient their clean energy funds from a project finance-only model in order to encompass broader economic development activities, clean energy funds can collectively become an important national driver for economic growth.

To become true economic development engines in clean energy state clean energy funds should:

• Reorient a significant portion of their funding toward clean energy-related economic development
• Develop detailed state-specific clean energy market data
• Link clean energy funds with economic development entitites and other stakeholders in the emerging industry
• Collaborate with other state, regional, and federal efforts to best leverage public and private dollars and learn from each other's experiences

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• Download the Full Paper

With Washington adrift and the United Nations climate change panel again calling for action, the search for new clean energy finance solutions continues.  

Against this backdrop, the Metro Program has worked with state- and city-oriented partners to highlight such responses as repurposing portions of states’ clean energy funds and creating state green banks.  Likewise, the Center for American Progress just recently highlighted the potential of securitization and investment yield vehicles, called yield cos. And last week an impressive consortium of financiers, state agencies, and philanthropies announced the creation of the Warehouse for Energy Efficiency Loans (WHEEL) aimed at bringing low-cost capital to loan programs for residential energy efficiency. WHEEL is the country’s first true secondary market for home energy loans—and a very big deal. 

Another big deal is the potential of bond finance as a tool for clean energy investment at the state and local level. That’s the idea advanced in a new paper released this morning that we developed with practitioners at the Clean Energy Group and the Council for Development Finance Authorities.

Over 100 years, the nation’s state and local infrastructure finance agencies have issued trillions of dollars’ worth of public finance bonds to fund the construction of the nation’s roads, bridges, hospitals, and other infrastructure—and literally built America. Now, as clean energy subsidies from Washington dwindle, these agencies are increasingly willing to finance clean energy projects, if only the clean energy community will embrace them.

So far, these authorities are only experimenting. However, the bond finance community has accumulated significant experience in getting to scale and knows how to raise large sums for important purposes by selling bonds to Wall Street. Accordingly, the clean energy community—working at the state and regional level—should leverage that expertise. The challenge is for the clean energy and bond finance communities to work collaboratively to create new models for clean energy bond finance in states, and so to establish a new clean energy asset class that can easily be traded in capital markets.

Along these lines, our new brief argues that state and local bonding authorities, clean energy leaders, and other partners should do the following: 

• Establish mutually useful partnerships between development finance experts and clean energy officials at the state and local government levels
• Expand and scale up bond-financed clean energy projects using credit enhancement and other emerging tools to mitigate risk and through demonstration projects
• Improve availability of data and develop standardized documentation so that the risks  and rewards of clean energy investments can be better understood
• Create a pipeline of rated and private placement deals, in effect a new clean energy asset class, to meet the demand by institutional investors for fixed-income clean energy securities

State and local bond finance represents a powerful but underutilized tool for future clean energy investment.

For 100 years, the nation’s state and local infrastructure finance agencies have issued trillions of dollars’ worth of public finance bonds to fund the construction of the nation’s roads, bridges, hospitals, and other infrastructure—and literally built America. Now, as clean energy subsidies from Washington dwindle, these agencies are increasingly willing to finance clean energy projects, if only the clean energy community will embrace them.

So far, these authorities are only experimenting. However, the bond finance community has accumulated significant experience in getting to scale and knows how to raise large amounts for important purposes by selling bonds to Wall Street. The challenge is therefore to create new models for clean energy bond finance in states and regions, and so to establish a new clean energy asset class that can easily be traded in capital markets. To that end, this brief argues that state and local bonding authorities and other partners should do the following:

• Establish mutually useful partnerships between development finance experts and clean energy officials at the state and local government levels
• Expand and scale up bond-financed clean energy projects using credit enhancement and other emerging tools to mitigate risk and through demonstration projects
• Improve the availability of data and develop standardized documentation so that the risks and rewards of clean energy investments can be better understood
• Create a pipeline of rated and private placement deals, in effect a new clean energy asset class, to meet the demand by institutional investors for fixed-income clean energy securities

Downloads

• Report
• Press Release

Note: FBI Director James Comey recommended this week that no criminal charges be pressed against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. And Attorney General Loretta Lynch has formally closed the Department of Justice’s investigation. But congressional Republicans—who called Comey to testify before the House Oversight committee yesterday—insist that Clinton’s conduct jeopardized U.S. national security.

As I wrote back in February, when it was revealed that 22 of the emails in question were deemed too classified to be made public: “Hillary's emails (even if they were released) could not do anything more than confirm or repudiate what has already been widely investigated.” I called for distinguishing mistakes from crimes and argued that Clinton’s use of a private email server never put America’s security at risk. 

Due to the renewed relevance of that post, it is re-posted below.

What to make of the recent report that 22 emails from Hillary Clinton's private server, written while she was secretary of state during the first Obama term, contain such highly classified material that they cannot be released to the public? Republicans have seized on the latest news to argue that Hillary Clinton was careless or even reckless in her treatment of national secrets. They’ve thereby challenged her credentials and judgment as she pursues the presidency.

Clinton has acknowledged some mistakes in the use of a personal email account and server when she led the State Department, but her campaign has dismissed the latest news as evidence of a U.S. government classification system run amok that often slaps a top secret label on even the most innocuous of information. 

With the emails at issue now classified, it’s hard to understand the basis for this dispute very well. Who are we to believe? Most people are probably falling back on their preconceived views about Hillary, but it would be nice to find a more objective way to assess the latest news—especially as primary voting season begins.

A hypothetical

I can't be sure what's going on here either. But there have been reports that some of the sensitive emails might have involved the use of drones in certain parts of the world where the U.S. government has chosen not to announce or publicize its use of that technology. 

Let's explore that, on the hunch that it may be what's behind the latest brouhaha. For years, there has been a great deal of media coverage of how unmanned aerial systems, including armed ones, have been used in the broader war on terror. If there ever were any real secrets here, they have been very badly kept. Certainly, Hillary's emails (even if they were released) could not do anything more than confirm or repudiate what has already been widely investigated, in this country and around the world. It seems quite unlikely that she was so careless as to describe any technical aspects of those drones or to otherwise risk the leakage of information that was truly still secret (in the sense that word is normally used in the English language, rather than the way the U.S. government employs it when making classification determinations).

Hillary's emails (even if they were released) could not do anything more than confirm or repudiate what has already been widely investigated.

Imagine a situation in which the United States government wished to use force as part of a broader military operation that Congress had already approved in broad contours, going back to the 2001 Authorization on the Use of Military Force that followed the 9/11 attack. But the employment of force in a particular place was seen as politically sensitive—less so in the United States, where Congress had already authorized the conflict, but in a foreign country, where the government at issue was not willing or able to publicly support America's use of military force on its territory. This could be a situation where the foreign government in question actually had few qualms about the U.S. action, but did still not wish to be associated with them—in fact, it may have wanted the license to complain about them publicly, both to its own public and other nations. It wanted, in other words, to have its cake and eat it too.

In this situation, whether the U.S. decision to accept such constraints on its action was wise or not, it would not be allowable for an American public official to discuss the policy. The actual use of armed force would occur through covert elements of the U.S. government, and under domestic laws governing such activities. 

We would have twisted ourselves into knots to avoid displeasing a foreign government that otherwise might make a huge stink about our using American military power on its territory—and might even retaliate against us in some way if the information were publicly confirmed. Everyone in that country, the United States, and other places would have a strong suspicion of what we were actually doing, but there would be no official confirmation. It's not exactly plausible deniability. Call it implausible deniability, in fact.

In such a situation, as a top official in the United States, Hillary Clinton would perhaps have been an architect of the policy (or have inherited it from a previous presidency). Either way, she would be expected to abide by it, and treat the information as highly sensitive. If she did not do so, that was indeed a mistake on her part.

Distinguishing mistakes from crimes

But if this thought experiment bears any resemblance to what actually is behind those 22 emails, one more thing should also be clear—no major national secret was at risk of getting out because of Secretary Clinton's misjudgment. Her email practice was potentially a mistake, but no high crime, and America's security was never put at risk.

Of course, it's still up to voters to decide how to weigh this potential issue in the panoply of so many others that influence their choices for president. Even if I’m right in my guess about what's going on here, I don’t claim to be in a position to answer that question for anyone.

When she gives her speech tonight at the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton will of course be at a crucial point in her campaign for the presidency. Her fellow Democrats—including her running mate Senator Tim Kaine, as well as Michael Bloomberg—have roundly criticized her Republican opponent Donald Trump this week. Vice President Biden and President Obama usefully offered a counterpoint to the dark worldview we saw from Mr. Trump last week in Cleveland. And former President Bill Clinton, as well as first lady Michelle Obama, told us about Clinton’s longstanding dedication to women and children, the less fortunate, and the nation as a whole. As a parent of a child on the autism spectrum, I have seen and deeply appreciated this side of Clinton myself.

Now, it is up to Clinton to sketch out a positive vision for her own presidency. In so doing, she must strike a balanced tone—acknowledging and tapping the energy (and at times anger) of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and their wing of the Democratic Party—while also reaching out to independents and moderate Republicans to whom she should appeal (given her past and her politics, and most of all, her opponent), but who at present tend not to think favorably of her.

Against this complex backdrop, I would offer only a few suggestions for her upcoming speech:

• On the state of the world, we need a nuanced view. Yes, there are big problems. Yes, ISIS is a greater threat than President Obama has sometimes acknowledged. On balance, however, things are troubled but not bad. Democracy has taken a hit in recent years, and the world’s economy has struggled in many ways for a decade, and Russia and China have caused considerable problems of late. But taking a larger perspective, the international order still has many strong points. Our alliances are strong. Despite recent setbacks, a higher percentage of people around the world live in democratic countries and above the poverty line this century than ever before. Child mortality globally is way down. U.S.-India relations are better than ever, as are America’s ties to other key rising powers like Indonesia. The U.S. military is indeed very strong (as retired General David Petraeus and I write in a forthcoming Foreign Affairs article), even if there is much to do to make it even better.


• We do need to do better in fighting ISIS. Ideas on how to attack it in Syria and Libya, among other places, will be key, even if details will necessarily need to await 2017. And while I think President Obama has done better in dealing with Russia and China than commonly understood, Obama has not explained his strategies for handling these powers very well to the United States. Clinton can help.


• The fading middle-class economic dream in the United States remains the central issue of this campaign. It explains the rise of Sanders and Trump better than any other single factor or phenomenon. Clinton’s views on economics are good but they come across as a bit piecemeal, borrowing from Sanders on a few key points like the minimum wage and trade but somewhat lacking her own key stamp. Above all other issues, I hope she concentrates on this tonight.


• We have not heard much about Benghazi or about Clinton’s email problems this week. To be sure, many Republicans have inflated these issues beyond all reason. But Clinton should still apologize for her mistakes to the country, without overdoing it. As best I can tell, she put no true national secrets or American personnel at risk in her emails, and while Benghazi was a tragedy that might have been preventable, no one can be perfect in times like these. We don’t typically excoriate our military commanders for mistakes that tragically may cost American lives in a given tactical operation, recognizing that such setbacks happen in war. That is not to excuse the lack of proper attention to Libya and Benghazi by the U.S. government back in 2011 and 2012, only to put it in perspective.


• It would be good to hear some nice words about Republicans too, in an effort to reach across the aisle and defuse some of the anger in American politics today. I don’t mean just to compliment Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, but also to note the importance of people like Pete Domenici and Warren Rudman in fiscal policy and deficit reduction (and more recently, John Boehner and Paul Ryan); George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole in the Americans with Disabilities Act; the Republican Congress of the 1990s in welfare reform; George H.W. Bush again as well as people like Christie Todd Whitman in environmental policy; George W. Bush on PEPFAR/AIDS and also on stressing inclusivity while avoiding anti-Muslim rhetoric after the 9/11 attacks; and good GOP governors or former governors like Mitch Daniels, John Kasich, and Jeb Bush in fostering economic growth as well as education reform across much of the country. To Democrats angry with the current Republican presidential ticket, as well as much of the current congressional leadership, this may seem like bending over backwards to appease the opposition. But in fact, the above folks are not the opposition that Clinton needs to defeat now; they are responsible, constructive, patriotic members of the other main political party in the United States. They are not the enemy, and by reaching out to them, Clinton can improve her odds of beating the person who is now very much the adversary—not only of the Democratic ticket, but of much of this country’s finest bipartisan traditions and accomplishments.

I’ll be rooting for all the above (and also hoping to get to bed before midnight). Please bring it on, Hillary!

To achieve the desired outcomes of the Sustainable Development Goals as well as the global targets from the Paris COP21 Climate Summit by 2030, governments will have to find ways to meet the top-down objectives with bottom-up approaches. A systematic focus on scaling up successful development interventions could serve to bridge this gap, or what’s been called the “missing middle.” However, the question remains how to actually address the challenge of scaling up.

When Arna Hartmann, adjunct professor of international development, and I first looked at the scaling up agenda in development work in the mid-2000s, we concluded that development agencies were insufficiently focused on supporting the scaling up of successful development interventions. The pervasive focus on one-off projects all too often resulted in what I’ve come to refer to as “pilots to nowhere.” As a first step to fix this, we recommended that each aid organization carry out a review to be sure to focus effectively on scaling up. 

The institutional dimension is critical, given their role in developing and implementing scaling up pathways. Of course, individuals serve as champions, designers, and implementers, but experience illustrates that if individuals lack a strong link to a supportive institution, scaling up is most likely to be short-lived and unsustainable. “Institutions” include many different types of organizations, such as government ministries and departments, private firms and social enterprises, civil society organizations, and both public and private external donors and financiers.

The Brookings book “Getting to Scale: How to Bring Development Solutions to Millions of Poor People” explores the opportunities and challenges that such organizations face, on their own or, better yet, partnering with each other, in scaling up the development impact of their successful interventions.

Over the past decade I have worked with 10 foreign aid institutions—multilateral and bilateral agencies, as well as big global non-governmental organizations—helping them to focus systematically on scaling up operational work and developing approaches to do so. There are common lessons that apply across the board to these agencies, with one salutary example being the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) which has tackled the scaling up agenda systematically and persistently.

Following are eight takeaway lessons I gleaned from my work with IFAD:

1. Look into the “black box” of institutions. It is not enough to decide that an institution should focus on and support scaling up of successful development interventions. You actually need to look at how institutions function in terms of their mission statement and corporate strategy, their policies and processes, their operational instruments, their budgets, management and staff incentives, and their monitoring and evaluation practices. Check out the Brookings working paper that summarizes the results of a scaling up review of the IFAD.
2. Scaling needs to be pursued institution-wide. Tasking one unit in an organization with innovation and scaling up, or creating special outside entities (like the Global Innovation Fund set up jointly by a number of donor agencies) is a good first step. But ultimately, a comprehensive approach must be mainstreamed so that all operational activities are geared toward scaling up.
3. Scaling up must be championed from the top. The governing boards and leadership of the institutions need to commit to scaling up and persistently stay on message, since, like any fundamental institutional change, effectively scaling up takes time, perhaps a decade or more as with IFAD.
4. The scaling up process must be grown within the institution. External analysis and advice from consultants can play an important role in institutional reviews. But for lasting institutional change, the leadership must come from within and involve broad participation from managers and staff in developing operational policies and processes that are tailored to an institution’s specific culture, tasks, and organizational structure.
5. A well-articulated operational approach for scaling up needs to be put in place. For more on this, take a look at a recent paper by Larry Cooley and I that reviews two helpful operational approaches, which are also covered in Cooley’s blog. For the education sector, the Center for Universal Education at Brookings just published its report “Millions Learning,” which provides a useful scaling up approach specifically tailored to the education sector.
6. Operational staffs need to receive practical guidance and training. It is not enough to tell staff that they have to focus on scaling up and then give them a general framework. They also need practical guidance and training, ideally tailored to the specific business lines they are engaged in. IFAD, for example, developed overall operational guidelines for scaling up, as well as guidance notes for specific area of engagement, including livestock development, agricultural value chains, land tenure security, etc.  This guidance and training ideally should also be extended to consultants working with the agency on project preparation, implementation, and evaluation, as well as to the agency’s local counterpart organizations.
7. New approaches to monitoring and evaluation (M&E) have to be crafted. Typically the M&E for development projects is backward looking and focused on accountability, narrow issues of implementation, and short-term results. Scaling up requires continuous learning, structured experimentation, and innovation based on evidence, including whether the enabling conditions for scaling up are being established. And it is important to monitor and evaluate the institutional mainstreaming process of scaling up to ensure that it is effectively pursued. I’d recommend looking at how the German Agency for International Development (GIZ) carried out a corporate-wide evaluation of its scaling up experience.
8. Scaling up helps aid organizations mobilize financial resources. Scaling up leverages limited institutional resources in two ways: First, an organization can multiply the impact of its own financial capacity by linking up with public and private agencies and building multi-stakeholder coalitions in support of scaling up. Second, when an organization demonstrates that it is pursuing not only one-off results but also scaled up impact, funders or shareholders of the organization tend to be more motivated to support the organization. This certainly was one of the drivers of IFAD’s successful financial replenishment consultation rounds over the last decade.

By adopting these lessons, development organizations can actually begin to scale up to the level necessary to bridge the missing middle. The key will be to assure that a focus on scaling up is not the exception but instead becomes ingrained in the institutional DNA. Simply put, in designing and implementing development programs and projects, the question needs to be answered, “What’s next, if this intervention works?”