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1012. Billions More for International Institutions? The ABCs of the General Capital Increases (GCI)
- Author:
- Todd Moss, Sarah Jane Staats, and Julia Barmeier
- Publication Date:
- 06-2010
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- The international financial institutions dramatically increased their lending in 2008–09 to help developing countries cope with the global financial crisis and support economic recovery. Today, these organizations are seeking billions of dollars in new funding. The IMF, which only a few years ago was losing clients and shedding staff, expanded by $750 billion last year. The World Bank and the four regional development banks for Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America are asking to increase their capital base by 30 to 200 percent. A general capital increase (GCI) for these development banks is an unusual request. A simultaneous GCI request is a once-in-a-generation occurrence.
- Topic:
- International Relations, International Monetary Fund, Financial Crisis, and World Bank
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Europe, Asia, and Latin America
1013. A New Kind of Balkans Drama
- Author:
- Daniel Serwer
- Publication Date:
- 06-2010
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- United States Institute of Peace
- Abstract:
- The Balkans face more trouble in Kosovo as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina unless the United States and European Union take dramatic steps to get both back on track towards EU membership. In Bosnia, the international community needs to reconstitute itself as well as support an effort to reform the country's constitution. In Kosovo, Pristina and Belgrade need to break through the barriers to direct communication and begin discussions on a wide range of issues. This brief proposes specific diplomatic measures to meet these needs.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, International Relations, Diplomacy, and Ethnic Conflict
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia, and Balkans
1014. The End of ODA (II): The Birth of Hypercollective Action
- Author:
- Jean-Michel Severino and Olivier Ray
- Publication Date:
- 07-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- The development business has become much more complex in the past decade, with actors proliferating and collaboration fragmenting. This trend is characteristic of the change from collective action to what the authors term hypercollective action. Such a shift brings new energy and resources to international development, but also more difficulty managing global public policy. Severino and Ray use the lessons of the Paris Declaration—the first large-scale effort to coordinate hypercollective action—as a starting point for envisioning a new conceptual framework to manage the complexity of current international collaboration. They offer concrete suggestions to improve the management of global policies, including new ways to share information, align the goals of disparate actors, and create more capable bodies for international collaboration.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Development, Globalization, International Cooperation, and International Political Economy
1015. Estimates of Fundamental Equilibrium Exchange Rates, May 2010
- Author:
- William R. Cline and John Williamson
- Publication Date:
- 06-2010
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics
- Abstract:
- This policy brief updates our estimates of fundamental equilibrium exchange rates (FEERs) to the latest issue of the World Economic Outlook (WEO) published by the International Monetary Fund in April 2010 (IMF 2010a). It is part of what has now become an annual cycle drawing out what we believe to be the implications of the IMF's forecasts for the pattern that exchange rates need to take if the world is to approach a reasonably satisfactory medium-run equilibrium position. This year we also published an interim report (Cline and Williamson 2010), partly drawing on the October 2009 WEO but essentially examining the implications of the pattern of market exchange rates as of January 1, 2010 for how misaligned currencies were at that time, assuming that the FEERs estimated in June 2009 were correct. In this publication we have estimated the FEERs anew on the basis of revisions in the methods employed and new data presented in the April 2010 WEO, after incorporating adjustments to the IMF forecast needed to take account of recent changes in exchange rates and especially the euro.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Economics, International Monetary Fund, and Monetary Policy
1016. Conference report: New Power Relations in Latin America and their Global Influence
- Author:
- Augusto Varas
- Publication Date:
- 03-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Norwegian Centre for Conflict Resolution
- Abstract:
- Significant changes have taken place in the distribution of political power in Latin American countries over the past decade, at both national and hemispheric level. A growing trend toward trans-regionalisation is evident in the political and trade relations of these countries. Changes in regional power dynamics have been further hastened as Latin American countries have distanced themselves from the United States. Moreover, the weakness of US hemispheric policy, resulting from the loss of strategic regional influence, has been compounded by the political and ideological changes in Latin America over the past decade.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Foreign Policy, Globalization, Political Economy, and Power Politics
- Political Geography:
- United States and Latin America
1017. 'Human Securitising' the Climate Security Debate
- Author:
- Lorraine Elliott
- Publication Date:
- 03-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS)
- Abstract:
- Efforts to understand the connection between climate change and national, regional and international security have fuelled something of a climate security industry, evidenced in a range of reports from governments, international organisations, and non-governmental organisations. In much of this, particularly those works produced by defence agencies and individual governments, the focus has been on threats to national security through civil unrest and violence that derive from competition for resources, access to environmental services, and the unregulated movement of people in the face of ecosystem collapse. This paper reinstates a human security approach.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Security, Political Violence, and Climate Change
1018. Introduction
- Author:
- Victor D. Cha
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
- Institution:
- Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
- Abstract:
- George Orwell, in a famous essay in 1945, described sport as “"war minus the shooting." Exaggerated as this description may sound, Orwell observed a seemingly obvious relationship between sport and politics that has not systematically been studied. Given all our theories about how nation-states interact in international relations, this gap in the literature is somewhat astounding, especially since sport is an activity engaged in by all of the world's population-across territorial, cultural, religious, and ethnic boundaries. Keeping in mind the many purposes of sport in the international arena, this issue's Forum brings together authors who advance our knowledge of the relationship between sport and politics. The authors of this Forum hold different opinions of the utility and role of sport in international affairs, but they do agree on one thing: the potential influence of sport on the nation-state. Sport, as Orwell opined, may lack the shooting of a full-blown war. But sport, like war, may be just as intense and just as defining for the character of a country and for relations among states.
- Topic:
- International Relations and Politics
- Political Geography:
- United States
1019. Civil-Military Relations: Theory and Practice
- Author:
- Joseph J. Collins
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- PRISM
- Institution:
- Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
- Abstract:
- Civil-military relations are a hardy perennial in the study of politics, international relations, and interagency policymaking. In the Clinton era, we worried about a military too big for its camouflaged britches and a potential "crisis" in civil-military relations. Compounding the strife was statistical proof that the officer corps increasingly self-identified as Republicans. In the post-9/11 era, we worried about an overly reticent military leadership whose professional expertise was muffled by civilians, who allegedly micromanaged military plans and operations. Much of the recent analysis reads like a political version of People magazine with larger than life admirals and generals-Anthony Zinni, William Fallon, and David Petraeus, for example- jousting with cabinet officers and making "power plays." Retired officers have created their own controversies, endorsing political candidates and even calling for the resignation of cabinet officers. Often absent from these vivid articles are an analysis of the theoretical foundations of civil-military relations or accurate data on what the military actually thinks and believes. Two new books do a great job in filling in some of those blanks. Both books came from officers associated, as I was years ago, with the Department of Social Sciences at West Point. All three of the authors are from the Military Academy's "second graduating class," alumni officers who came back to teach at the Academy and then returned to the Army to reinforce its corps of Soldier-thinkers.
- Topic:
- International Relations
1020. (Information) Revolution in One Country
- Author:
- Anthony Olcott
- Publication Date:
- 06-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
- Abstract:
- Speaking in China on November 16, 2009, President Barack Obama said, “I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable. They can begin to think for themselves” [video—transcript]. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quoted most of the same phrase two months later in her own ringing endorsement of Internet freedom, delivered in a speech at the Washington, DC, Newseum on January 21, 2010.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Globalization, International Security, and Power Politics
- Political Geography:
- China and Washington