TRADE
October 14, 2008
"Economic Realities Must Guide Africa's Constitutional Reform Efforts"
News
By Beth Maclin, Communications Assistant
"African countries need new constitutional orders to cope with modern economic challenges, Calestous Juma said at a recent lecture....A major challenge is based in the constitutions and laws left behind for the newly liberated countries. 'What was being negotiated as independence was really an exercise in constitutional continuity from the colonial period through independence,' Juma said....While there is enormous pressure on African countries to focus on economic programs, they are unable to because the governmental framework left behind did not integrate the economic role of the colonizer into the new role of president."
October 8, 2008
"The High Cost of Incompetent Governance"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative
In times like this -- global economic crisis -- the dominance of exclusively oil-fueled economies in the Arab World expose a regional lack of competent governance.
October 2008
China into Africa: Trade, Aid, and Influence
Book
By Robert Rotberg, Director, Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution
“Two myths have been concocted by the West on Africa: that the Western impact on Africa has been benign while China’s record in Africa has only been negative. The truth in both areas is more complex. This volume, China into Africa, brings out the complexity of the China story in Africa and illustrates why more balanced assessments are needed on Africa’s relations with the world”
--Kishore Mahbubani
Dean, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore
September 12, 2008
Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements: Winner of Research Paper Competition
Announcement
We are pleased to announce that Larry Karp (University of California, Berkeley) and Jinhua Zhao (Michigan State University) have been chosen as the winners of the open research paper competition of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements. Their paper, "A Proposal for the Design of the Successor to the Kyoto Protocol", was selected based on its innovative and realistic approach to post-2012 global climate policy.
July/August 2008
"Separatism's Final Country"
Journal Article, Foreign Affairs, issue 4, volume 87
By Richard N. Rosecrance, Adjunct Professor; Senior Fellow, International Security Program; Director, Project on U.S.-China Relations and Arthur A. Stein
"Muller argues that ethnonationalism is the wave of the future and will result in more and more independent states, but this is not likely. One of the most destabilizing ideas throughout human history has been that every separately defined cultural unit should have its own state. Endless disruption and political introversion would follow an attempt to realize such a goal. Woodrow Wilson gave an impetus to further state creation when he argued for "national self-determination" as a means of preventing more nationalist conflict, which he believed was a cause of World War I...."
AP Photo
June 17, 2008
"Japan and African States Discuss Future Partnership"
Op-Ed, Online Publication
By Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa
Japan announced it will double its aid to Africa over the next five year at the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV) held in Yokohama on May 28–30, 2008....TICAD IV marked a clear departure from previous development conferences, which focused largely on Africa’s immediate crises and challenges, such as corruption and poor governance. Instead, it stressed the importance of human resource development (including higher education and vocational training), industrial development, infrastructure, and trade.
July-August 2008
"Size Matters"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, The American Interest, issue 6, volume 3
By Richard N. Rosecrance, Adjunct Professor; Senior Fellow, International Security Program; Director, Project on U.S.-China Relations
"As the American political system hurtles toward its quadrennial encounter with the oracle of democracy, it is worth our while to take stock of the country's place in a world beset by bewilderingly rapid change. (Heaven knows none of the candidates will bother to do this.) I want to suggest that an old yet generally neglected subject remains particularly relevant: the relationship between the size of political units and the effective scale of systems of economic production and exchange. Another way to describe this relationship is by recourse to the hoary scholarly phrase "political economy", a term of art that has unfortunately gone out of style...."
AP Photo
June 11, 2008
"Balancing Asia's Rivals"
Op-Ed, The Korea Times
By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
"...Bush leaves behind a better legacy in Asia. American relations with Japan and China remain strong, and he has greatly enhanced the United States' ties with India, the world's second most populous country....Improved relations between India and the U.S. can structure the international situation in a manner that encourages such an evolution in Chinese policy, whereas trying to isolate China would be a mistake.
Handled properly, the simultaneous rise of China and India could be good for all countries."
June 2008
"The Truth about Food"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Prospect, issue 147
By Robert Paarlberg, Former Research Fellow, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project/Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, 2007-2008
"...it is a mistake to see high prices as a proxy for actual hunger. Most of the world's hungry citizens do not get their food from the world market, and most who rely on the world market are not poor or vulnerable to hunger."
AP Photo
April 7, 2008
"India's Key Foreign Policy Issues"
Policy Brief
By Xenia Dormandy, Former Senior Associate, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
In recent years, India's military, diplomatic and economic energies have expanded far beyond Nehru's Non-Aligned position. But what does that mean for India, its region, and the United States?
