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2631. Earnings Insurance for Germany

Author:
Gary Burtless and Holger Schaefer
Publication Date:
07-2002
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
For more than a decade, Germany has suffered high rates of unemployment and very slow employment growth. Workers who have lost their jobs face unusually long spells of unemployment, in part because the adverse incentives of the German unemployment compensation system provide strong impetus for unemployed workers to remain jobless.
Topic:
Government and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe and Latin America

2632. Global Challenges: Beating the Odds

Author:
P.J. Simmons
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The global to-do list has never been more daunting. New arteries for transport, trade, finance, and communications require constantly updated rules. Freer, faster movement across borders necessitates filters to separate terrorists from traders and levees to contain infectious disease, pollution, invasive species, and financial disruption. Once-sovereign responsibilities such as poverty, child labor, and human rights shift to become international moral concerns. Technologies of literally world-shaking power—capable of destroying humans en masse, altering Earth's ecology, or upsetting atmospheric stability—create a set of truly global issues.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Civil Society, and Government

2633. Mythmaking in the Rule of Law Orthodoxy

Author:
Frank Upham
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
As governments and donor agencies struggle over questions of aid and international development, a growing consensus is emerging regarding the connections between poor governance and underdevelopment. An increasing number of initiatives, from the U.S. Millennium Challenge Account to the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), explicitly link improving governance with pursuing sustainable development and poverty alleviation. Lack of pluralism and transparency, inefficient bureaucracies, and underdeveloped public institutions contribute to corruption, reduce governmental responsiveness to citizens' needs, stifle investment, and generally hamper social and economic development. A frequent donor favorite on the laundry list of “good governance” reforms advocated for developing countries is rule of law reform. The new development model contends that sustainable growth is impossible without the existence of the rule of law: a set of uniformly enforced, established legal regimes that clearly lays out the rules of the game.
Topic:
Democratization, Development, and Government
Political Geography:
Africa and United States

2634. Do Judicial Councils Further Judicial Reform? Lessons from Latin America

Author:
Linn Hammergren
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
JUDICIAL REFORM EFFORTS IN LATIN AMERICA, and by extension worldwide, seem to fall easily prey to magic bullets. In the past two decades, reformers in the region and aid providers from North America and Western Europe have seized upon a whole series of entry points for judicial reform—including model codes, accusatory criminal justice systems, court administration reforms, information technology, alternative dispute resolution, legal services, and constitutional courts. Sometime during the late 1980s, as the issue of judicial independence came to receive more serious attention, judicial councils joined the list, and nearly a dozen countries adopted them. It was not until the late 1990s that questions about their utility began to emerge. Although Latin America is beginning to reexamine its love affair with the councils, the model has been gaining ground in other regions. Western Europeans, who invented the mechanism, have been suffering their own doubts. This has not prevented their joining with U.S. reformers in recommending it to postcommunist nations in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The cautionary lessons from Latin America's several-decade experiment with judicial councils have not yet been analyzed and disseminated. This essay is a start in that direction.
Topic:
Democratization and Government
Political Geography:
America, Europe, France, South America, Latin America, and Central America

2635. Foreign Direct Investment: Does the Rule of Law Matter?

Author:
John Hewko
Publication Date:
04-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM within the international development community is that foreign direct investment (FDI) is an important component of economic growth and prosperity in transitional and developing countries and that a crucial, if not decisive, factor in enticing such investment is a stable, consistent, fair, and transparent legal and judicial system. As a recent World Bank publication concluded: The massive move by developing and transition countries toward market economies necessitated the adoption of strategies for the encouragement of private investment, domestic and foreign. Naturally, there was a general realization that such an objective could not be achieved without modifying and, sometimes, completely overhauling the legal and institutional framework and firmly establishing the rule of law, thereby creating the necessary climate of stability and predictability.
Topic:
Emerging Markets, Government, and International Trade and Finance

2636. Russia's Decline and Uncertain Recovery

Author:
Thomas E. Jr. Graham
Publication Date:
05-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
For much of the first decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the issue of reform—of transition to free-market democracy—dominated discussions of Russia in Russia itself and in the West. Russian president Boris Yeltsin advocated reform; Western governments declared their support and offered their assistance. This was particularly true of the U.S. government. President Clinton's administration came into office in 1993 determined to assist Russia in its transformation into “a normal, modern state—democratic in its governance, abiding by its own constitution and by its own laws, market-oriented and prosperous in its economic development, at peace with itself and the rest of the world,” as deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott, the chief architect of the U.S. administration's Russia policy, was wont to put it.
Topic:
Economics and Government
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Europe, Asia, and Soviet Union

2637. Responding to the Threat of Smallpox Bioterrorism: An Ounce of Prevention Is Best Approach

Author:
Veronique de Rugy and Charles V. Peña
Publication Date:
04-2002
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The threat of direct terrorist attack against the United States proved to be real. And the subsequent anthrax cases point to the possibility of a future bioterrorist attack, including use of the deadly smallpox virus. The nature of terrorism is such that it is impossible to accurately predict the probability of such an attack, but the potential consequences are catastrophic. Therefore, it is a serious threat that deserves serious attention.
Topic:
Foreign Policy and Government
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

2638. Fighting the War against Terrorism: Elite Forces, Yes; Conscripts, No

Author:
Doug Bandow
Publication Date:
04-2002
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The United States possesses the most powerful military on earth, one that has proved its potency in ousting the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. Yet, even as the military was gearing up to perform so well, some people were calling for a return to conscription or, more dramatically, for institution of mandatory national service for all young people.
Topic:
Foreign Policy and Government
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Europe, and Taliban

2639. Old Folly in a New Disguise

Author:
Gary T. Dempsey
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Since September 11, 2001, there have been calls from various quarters to embrace nation building as a tool for combating terrorism. The logic behind the idea is that “good” states do not do “bad” things, so Washington should build more “good” states. That idea, however, relies on several dubious assumptions—for example, that embarking on multiple nation-building missions will reduce the potential for anti-American terrorism. If anything, nation building is likely to create more incentives, targets, and opportunities for terrorism, not fewer. The nation-building idea also draws on false analogies with the past. For example, some people assert that Europe's experience under the Marshall Plan can be readily duplicated in a whole host of countries and that, with enough economic aid, trained bureaucrats, and military force of arms, “bad” states anywhere can be transformed into open, self-sustaining, peaceful states.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Government, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
United States, America, Europe, and Washington

2640. Cosmopolitan Cities and Nation States: Open Economics,Urban Dynamics, and Government in East Asia

Author:
Thomas P. Rohlen
Publication Date:
02-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
This essay is about the pivotal role cities play in the current pattern of social, cultural, and political change in East Asia. Its starting premise is that the postwar era of nation state building and state-led change is ending and a different era—one that centers on global capitalism and new technological capacities—has been steadily emerging in the region over the last several decades. At the vortex of these new forces we find big, successful cities. In such cities, the forces of capitalism, cultural cosmopolitanism, and new technologies combine critically in a turbulent and heady new mix. As a result, while the effectiveness of state initiatives decreases, and government is under pressure to reform, privatize, and decentralize, the dynamic (and typically coastal) cities of East Asia are the center of powerful economic and cultural forces for change, and the source of alternative political agendas. Simultaneously, due to their rapid expansion, these cities have also become the locus of giant new problems for public management.
Topic:
Government, International Political Economy, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
East Asia and Asia