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381. How Shareholder Reforms Can Pay Foreign Policy Dividends

Author:
James J. Shinn and Peter Gourevitch
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Corporate governance—the rules that govern the relationship between managers and shareholders—belongs on the foreign policy agenda of American decision-makers. The vigorous debates underway about corporate governance, both at home and abroad, present an opportunity for the United States to advance its foreign policy goals of enhancing free trade and financial stability.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Economics, Government, Industrial Policy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

382. Sustaining a Revolution: A Policy for Crop Engineering

Author:
David Victor and C. Ford Runge
Publication Date:
05-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Controversy, even fear, of new foods is not new. The tomato was widely regarded as poisonous in the United States and northern Europe as late as the 1830s, due to its relationship to the night-shade family of plants. There was such concern that in 1820, the state of New York banned their consumption. Tomatoes even had their own “Frankenfood” label: “wolf 's peaches.”
Topic:
Development, Environment, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

383. Democratizing U.S. Trade Policy

Author:
Pat Choate and Bruce Stokes
Publication Date:
11-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Storm clouds signaling trouble with American trade policy have been gathering for some time. In the early 1990s, Congress barely approved creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and only strenuous efforts by the Clinton administration and the business community ensured passage of legislation creating the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the late 1990s, President Clinton twice failed to obtain congressional renewal of his trade-negotiating authority. The massive demonstrations during the meeting of the world's trade ministers in Seattle in 1999 reflected a widespread public unease with the impact of trade policy on a range of issues, from clear-cutting practices in the forests of Indonesia to the price of AIDS drugs in southern Africa. Today, public opinion polls consistently demonstrate that, although the American public supports freer trade in theory, it often has profound reservations about trade liberalization in practice. And the current global economic slowdown may only further polarize public opinion on trade issues.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, Indonesia, South America, and North America

384. The United States and Southeast Asia: A Policy Agenda for the New Administration

Author:
Robert A. Manning and J. Robert Kerrey
Publication Date:
07-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Southeast Asia presents the United States with both an important challenge and an opportunity. American leadership and enlightened action in Southeast Asia in the critical period ahead will almost certainly help stabilize a region undergoing troubling political and economic turbulence. Absent our leadership, democratizing states may founder and economic conditions in a majority of the region's countries will likely worsen. It is in the interest of the people of the United States that we choose the first course. The July 1997 collapse of the Thai baht, which triggered a regional crisis that threatened to destabilize world financial markets, was a chilling reminder of Southeast Asia's importance; the 1999 East Timor crisis is another tragic event that caught the United States unprepared. The 1990–91 Cambodia peace process, on the other hand, was a sterling example of how American leadership can make a difference. We believe the new administration has an opportunity for a fresh start to shape a coherent, proactive approach to the region. As Secretary of State Colin Powell prepares for his visit to the area during the July meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), and as the administration considers President Bush's first trip to Asia for the October summit of the leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group (APEC) in Shanghai, this is a timely moment to review the situation in Southeast Asia.
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, and Southeast Asia

385. U.S.-Cuban Relations in the 21st Century: A Follow-On Chairman's Report

Author:
Julia Sweig and Walter Mead
Publication Date:
02-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
In the last quarter of 1998, following the visit to Cuba of Pope John Paul II, the Council on Foreign Relations convened an Independent Task Force to assess U.S. policy toward Cuba in the post–Cold War era. The Task Force represents a bipartisan group of former State Department officials, congressional staff, labor leaders, and students of Latin American affairs and U.S. foreign policy from a cross section of think tanks, academic and religious institutions, businesses, trade unions, and government agencies. In a chairman's report issued in January 1999, the Task Force recommended a number of steps to strengthen civil society in Cuba, expand people-to-people contact between Cubans and Americans, and “contribute to rapid, peaceful, democratic transition in Cuba while safeguarding the vital interests of the United States.”
Political Geography:
United States and Cuba

386. A Financial Architecture for Middle-Class-Oriented Development

Author:
Walter Russell Mead and Sherle R. Schwenninger
Publication Date:
10-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The Case For Middle-Class-Oriented Development International financial architecture works best when it serves social goals that command widespread support and legitimacy. Without neglecting the more conventional goal of allowing the greatest possible global flow of capital with the least risk of financial crisis, the primary goal of international financial reform, for both economic and political reasons, ought to be to promote middle-class-oriented development around the world.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

387. A New Beginning: Recasting the U.S.-Japan Economic Relationship

Author:
Bruce Stokes
Publication Date:
07-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The time is ripe for a bold new initiative to recast the U.S.-Japan economic partnership for the 21st century. A new Japan is emerging. Foreign investment is on the rise. Tokyo is deregulating and restructuring its economy. A new generation of Japanese entrepreneurs and venture capitalists has arrived on the stage.
Topic:
Economics and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, Israel, East Asia, Asia, and North Africa

388. Economic Crisis and Corporate Reform in East Asia

Author:
Meredith Woo-Cumings
Publication Date:
06-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The Asian financial crisis of 1997–98 involved, among other things, a failure of regulation. Some believe this failure is endemic to global capitalism, and others believe it was profoundly local and idiosyncratic, emanating from regulatory flaws in the affected countries, stretching an arc from Thailand and Indonesia to Korea and Japan. There is also a debate about the nature of the regulation that failed. Some argue that the crisis emanated from a surfeit of nettlesome regulations and endemic industrial policy; others claim it happened for want of effective regulations and (even) industrial policy. Across the hypotenuse of these disagreements, however, stretches a universal recognition that regulatory infrastructure and institutions do matter and that they must play a major role in the way we think about economic development. After the miracle years in East Asia, “good governance” has become the Spirit of the Age.
Topic:
Economics and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, Indonesia, Israel, East Asia, Asia, Korea, and Thailand

389. The Paradox of Free Market Democracy: Indonesia and the Problems Facing Neoliberal Reform

Author:
Amy L. Chua
Publication Date:
06-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
This paper will situate the recent problems in Indonesia in a more general framework that I will call the paradox of free-market democracy. The basic thesis I will advance is as follows. In Indonesia, as in many developing countries, class and ethnicity overlap in a distinctive and potentially explosive way: namely, in the form of a starkly economically dominant ethnic minority—here, the Sino-Indonesians. In such circumstances, contrary to conventional wisdom, markets and democracy may not be mutually reinforcing. On the contrary, the combined pursuit of marketization and democratization in Indonesia may catalyze ethnic tensions in highly determinate and predictable ways, with potentially very serious consequences, including the subversion of markets and democracy themselves. The principal challenge for neoliberal reform in Indonesia will be to find institutions capable of grappling with the problems of rapid democratization in the face of pervasive poverty, ethnic division, and an historically resented, market-dominant “outsider” minority.
Topic:
Economics and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, Israel, and East Asia

390. China, Nuclear Weapons, and Arms Control: A Preliminary Assessment

Author:
Robert A. Manning, Ronald Montaperto, and Brad Roberts
Publication Date:
04-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Historically, U.S. nuclear strategists and arms control experts have paid little attention to the People's Republic of China (PRC). China has not been a major factor in the U.S. nuclear calculus, which has remained centered on U.S.-Russian nuclear arsenals as the principal framework for arms control and arms reductions. Yet today China is the only one of the five de jure nuclear weapons states qualitatively and quantitatively expanding its nuclear arsenal.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, and Nuclear Weapons
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, Europe, and Asia