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18171. Security Sector Reform Monitor: Timor-Leste

Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
The third edition of the Security Sector Reform (SSR) Monitor: Timor-Leste acknowledged that the national justice system continues to face major obstacles, even though recent strategic planning and initial efforts to improve access to justice have showed promising signs for future justice system development (see The Centre for International Governance Innovation [CIGI], 2011). Two increasingly serious challenges to the justice system — and also the broader security sector — are the political intervention in the justice system and the lack of accountability for both past crimes and more recent crimes associated with the 2006 internal crisis.
Topic:
Security, Crime, and Law Enforcement
Political Geography:
Southeast Asia

18172. Cooperating to Build Peace: The UN-EU Inter-Institutional Complex

Author:
Thierry Tardy
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) are both key institutions in the peacebuilding realm. The UN has, since the end of the Cold War, embraced post-conflict peacebuilding as one of its core activities, and most of its sixteen current peacekeeping operations include a peacebuilding component. Likewise, the EU has become an increasingly important institution of peace consolidation in all its aspects, both through the role of the European Commission and more recently that of the intergovernmental Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). Post-conflict peacebuilding is an all-encompassing activity, which takes place at the nexus of security and development and that requires a wide range of policy responses. This theoretically places the UN and the EU in favourable positions, as institutions that aspire to develop a holistic approach, and to cover the entire continuum of conflict management. The simultaneous involvement of these two institutions in post-conflict peacebuilding poses the question of their respective policies in different terms. From Bosnia-Herzegovina or Kosovo to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) or Chad, through military cooperation or UN-led but European Commission-financed civilian programmes, questions arise as to the interaction between two different types of actors, the nature and depth of inter-institutional relations, the division of tasks and the level of mutual reinforcement or redundancy.
Topic:
Security, Peace Studies, and United Nations
Political Geography:
Europe

18173. The CSDP after Lisbon: Lost Opportunities or Changed Interests?

Author:
Antti Kaski
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The purpose of the European Union's Lisbon Treaty was to enhance the unity of the member states' foreign policies and the coherence of the external action of the European Union (EU). As manifested recently by the lack of unity and delayed action in the wake of the Arab revolutions, the EU still has considerable work to do before it can claim to have become a global heavyweight in foreign and security policy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Regional Cooperation, and Regime Change
Political Geography:
Europe, Arabia, and Lisbon

18174. Green growth as necessity and liability: The political economy of a low-carbon energy systems transformation in the European Union

Author:
Mark Huberty
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
In the last decade, energy systems transformation has become the new and unheralded frontier of European deepening. Starting in 1996, the European Union mandated the liberalization and integration of national energy systems, put a price on greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation, established binding targets for renewable energy adoption, mandated the breakup of state energy monopolies, and sponsored the creation of EU-level regulatory and standards-setting bodies for energy infrastructure and markets. Most recently, the Europe 2020 program has established enforceable goals for the integration, liberalization, and decarbonization of the European electricity supply system, and ambitious but aspirational targets in energy efficiency.
Topic:
Climate Change, Energy Policy, Markets, and Infrastructure
Political Geography:
Europe

18175. Leading Without Followers: How Politics and Market Dynamics Trapped Innovations in Japan's Domestic "Galapagos" ICT Sector

Author:
Kenji E. Kushida
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
Despite global leadership by Japanese firms in sectors such as automobiles, precision equipment, and various high tech components, Japanese firms in the telecommunications sector have followed a persistent pattern of leading without followers. While leading the domestic market to ever-high levels of sophistication, sometimes beyond that of most other advanced industrial countries, Japanese ICT companies have retreated dramatically from international telecommunications-related markets. Moreover, in technology after technology, Japanese ICT firms invest heavily, undertake extensive R, and for network technologies, deploy infrastructure rapidly, only to find that global technological trajectories shift in a different direction. While globally successful Japanese industries were able to use their domestic market as a springboard into international markets, Japan's telecommunications sector became decoupled from global markets, trapping Japanese firms in the domestic market.
Topic:
Globalization, Industrial Policy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Japan and Israel

18176. Venture Capital and Clean Technology: Opportunities and Difficulties

Author:
Martin Kenney and Andrew Hargadon
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
In the last half - century, venture capitalists have financed many of the most important new U.S. technology-based firms and industries. Most recently, venture capital has been touted as a key investor and driver of a new clean technology future. This paper examines the characteristics of successful venture capital investing and the structure and dynamics of clean technology markets to predict whether venture capital is the best model for financing a clean technology transition. We identify the following three key characteristics of technologies and markets in which venture capital can be successfully invested. First, the firm's markets must be large and rapidly growing. Second, the firm's solutions must be scalable, with the particular characteristic that a firm's growth in revenue (and valuation) significantly outpaces the capital cost of achieving that growth. Third, there must be the potential for large and rapid payoff, as either a public stock offering or acquisition by another firm. In the U.S. clean technology market, with the exception of energy being a large market, in nearly all cases these characteristics do not hold. For these reasons, a venture capital model for funding clean technology innovation is unlikely to be successful and the imposition of venture capital goals on clean technology firms may even be harmful to their survival. The current Obama Administration's strategy of providing enormous loan guarantees to a few chosen venture capital ‐ financed firms is misguided because it is likely to truncate the chaotic business model search that characterizes the formation of new industries.
Topic:
Climate Change, Economics, Energy Policy, International Trade and Finance, and Markets

18177. Diffusing the Cloud: Cloud Computing and Implications for Public Policy

Author:
John Zysman, Kenji E. Kushida, and Jonathan Murray
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
Cloud Computing is rapidly emerging as the new information technology platform. It is, however, much more than simply a new set of technologies and business models. Cloud Computing is transforming how consumers, companies, and governments store information, how they process that information, and how they utilize computing power. It can be an engine of innovation, a platform for entrepreneurship, and driver of corporate efficiency. While an increasingly commonly term, confusion remains over what exactly constitutes Cloud Computing, how the markets are unfolding, and what forces will drive their evolution and diffusion. This paper provides an overview and conceptual tools for business leaders, policymakers, and non-specialist scholars to identify, distill, and easily understand the core aspects of how Cloud Computing service markets are developing, and how an array of policy issues will influence how this new computing platform unfolds across the world.
Topic:
Globalization, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Science and Technology

18178. Who Captures Value in Global Supply Chains?

Author:
Jyrki Ali-Yrkkö, Petri Rouvinen, Timo Seppälä, and Pekka Ylä-Anttila
Publication Date:
02-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
Available statistics tell us little about the economic consequences of increasing global dispersion of production processes. In order to shed light on the issue, we perform grass roots detective work to uncover the geography of value added in the case of a Nokia N95 smartphone circa 2007. The phone was assembled in Finland and China. In the case when the device was assembled and sold in Europe, the value-added share of Europe (EU-27) rose to 68%. Even in the case when it was assembled in China and sold in the United States, Europe captured as much as 51% of the value added, despite of the fact that it had rather little role in supplying the physical components. Our analysis illustrates that international trade statistics can be misleading; the capture of value added is largely detached from the physical goods flows. It is rather services and other intangible aspects of the supply chain that dominate. While final assembly – commanding 2% of the value added in our case – has increasingly moved offshore, the developed countries continue to capture most of the value added generated by global supply chains.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, Industrial Policy, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
Political Geography:
China, Europe, and Finland

18179. Barcode Empires: Politics, Digital Technology, and Comparative Retail Firm Strategies

Author:
Bartholomew C. Watson
Publication Date:
02-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
Like other service sectors, information technology has dramatically altered the growth and character of the retail trade sector in the affluent economies. Nevertheless, significant variation exists in the typical strategies of retail firms in different countries. This article explores this variation and proposes both an ideal type and an explanation. It argues that the problems of markets and hierarchies in retailing were set in motion by a series of political fights starting in the 1960s and 1970s. This demonstrates that once again that technical outcomes are not determined by the technology itself, but by social and political rules. Future technology platforms, such as e-commerce of mobile commerce, should be expected to follow similar political logics. As retailing firms spread around the globe, this has important implications for national competition policy.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Science and Technology, and Communications

18180. Structuring the Smartphone Industry: Is the Mobile Internet OS Platform the Key?

Author:
Martin Kenney and Bryan Pon
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
Until the introduction of the iPhone, cellular telephony and the Internet were essentially separate. The Internet was a PC-based service, while mobile telephony was conducted on a telephone. Though there were mobile products that provided communication services such as email, web access and other Internet services were either unavailable or inferior to those available on a PC. The “smartphone” category re defined by Apple meant the convergence of traditional mobile telephony, Internet services, and personal computing. As these sectors merge into a single device, formerly separate industry architectures and their constituent firms are being forced into direct competition. We test theories of industry architecture and technological platforms regarding their ability to explain the strategies of key entrants in navigating the transition. We analyze in detail the actions and strategies of four major competitors, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, and, more briefly, Research in Motion and HP/Palm, from the framework of technological platform theory. Our analysis suggests that currently some competitors are following traditional platform strategies, but that Google and Apple appear to have adopted strategies at odds with platform literature. We examine how the dynamics of this convergence may lead to a reconsideration of certain tenets of platform theory.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Markets, Science and Technology, and Communications