Search

9141. Making Waves: Aiding India's Next-Generation Aircraft Carrier

Author:
Ashley J. Tellis
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The United States and India have agreed to form a working group to explore the joint development of India's next-generation aircraft carrier. While the Indian Navy has already begun design work, wide-ranging cooperation with the United States has enormous potential and offers India the opportunity to acquire the most capable warship possible. Such collaboration would increase the Indian Navy's combat power and would resonate throughout the Asian continent to India's strategic advantage. The most valuable U.S. contributions are likely to materialize in the fight, possibly in the move, and hopefully in the integrate functions.
Topic:
Military Affairs and Asia
Political Geography:
United States, India, and Asia

9142. The Reckoning: Tunisia's Perilous Path to Democratic Stability

Author:
Anouar Boukhars
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
For Tunisia, 2014 was a year of historic milestones. But despite a new constitution and free elections that led to the peaceful transfer of power to the secular Nidaa Tounes party, the democratic consensus forged after the country's 2011 revolution remains fragile. The hard work of reconciling a deeply polarized society—one torn between Islamists and secularists, young and old, democrats and counterrevolutionaries, cosmopolitan coastal areas and the underdeveloped interior and south—still lies ahead.
Political Geography:
Tunisia

9143. From Greater Europe to Greater Asia? The Sino-Russian Entente

Author:
Dmitri V. Trenin
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The rupture between Russia and the West stemming from the 2014 crisis over Ukraine has wide-ranging geopolitical implications. Russia has reverted to its traditional position as a Eurasian power sitting between the East and the West, and it is tilting toward China in the face of political and economic pressure from the United States and Europe. This does not presage a new Sino-Russian bloc, but the epoch of post-communist Russia's integration with the West is over. In the new epoch, Russia will seek to expand and deepen its relations with non-Western nations, focusing on Asia. Western leaders need to take this shift seriously.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, and Europe

9144. The Egyptian Armed Forces and the Remaking of an Economic Empire

Author:
Shana Marshall
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The Egyptian military has gained unprecedented power since overseeing the ouster of two Egyptian presidents, Hosni Mubarak in 2011 and Mohamed Morsi in 2013. With its major political rivals sidelined, more than $20 billion in Gulf aid, and widespread domestic support for General-Turned-President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Egyptian Armed Forces (EAF) has restarted its defunct industrial operations, secured control over massive infrastructure projects, and inserted generals at virtually all levels of government. But political overreach and internal rivalries may prove obstacles to long-term EAF control.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Egypt

9145. Egypt's Nationalists Dominate in a Politics-Free Zone

Author:
Ashraf El-Sherif
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Salafism has been one of the most dynamic movements in Egypt since 2011. Dealt a difficult hand when Hosni Mubarak was ousted from the presidency, Egyptian Salafists have skillfully navigated the transition. Their entry into the political marketplace marked a historic shift toward a new political Salafism and sheds light on whether an Islamist movement can integrate into pluralistic modern politics. The ouster of Mohamed Morsi by a popularly backed military coup in 2013, however, dealt a debilitating blow to the Islamist project—and left deep cleavages within the Salafist movement.
Topic:
Islam and Politics
Political Geography:
Egypt

9146. The New Global Marketplace of Political Change

Author:
Thomas Carothers
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Western democratic powers are no longer the dominant external shapers of political transitions around the world. A new global marketplace of political change now exists, in which varied arrays of states, including numerous nondemocracies and non-Western democracies, are influencing transitional trajectories. Western policymakers and aid practitioners have been slow to come to grips with the realities and implications of this new situation.

9147. Guarantees, Subsidies, or Paying for Success? Choosing the Right Instruments to Catalyze Private Investment in Developing Countries

Author:
Owen Barder
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Governments, donors, and public sector agencies are seeking productive ways to 'crowd in' private sector involvement and capital to tackle international development challenges. The financial instruments that are used to create incentives for private sector involvement are typically those that lower an investment's risk (such as credit guarantees) or those that lower the costs of various inputs (such as concessional loans, which subsidise borrowing).
Topic:
Development and Government

9148. The Cost and Cost-Effectiveness of Alternative Strategies to Expand Treatment to HIV-Positive South Africans: Scale Economies and Outreach Costs

Author:
Mead Over, Gesine Meyer-Rath, Daniel J. Klein, and Anna Bershteyn
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The South African government is currently discussing various alternative approaches to the further expansion of antiretroviral treatment (ART) in public-sector facilities. Alternatives under consideration include the criteria under which a patient would be eligible for free care, the level of coverage with testing and care, how much of the care will be delivered in small facilities located closer to the patients, and how to assure linkage to care and subsequent adherence by ART patients. We used the EMOD-HIV model to generate 12 epidemiological scenarios. The EMOD-HIV model is a model of HIV transmission which projects South African HIV incidence and prevalence and ARV treatment by age group for alternative combinations of treatment eligibility criteria and testing. We treat as sunk costs the projected future cost of one of these 12 scenarios, the baseline scenario characterizing South Africa's 2013 policy to treat people with CD4 counts less than 350. We compute the cost and benefits of the other 11 scenarios relative to this baseline. Starting with our own bottom-up cost analyses in South Africa, we separate outpatient cost into non-scale-dependent costs (drugs and laboratory tests) and scale-dependent cost (staff, space, equipment and overheads) and model the cost of production according to the expected future number and size of clinics. On the demand side, we include the cost of creating and sustaining the projected incremental demand for testing and treatment. Previous research with EMOD-HIV has shown that more vigorous recruitment of patients with CD4 counts less than 350 appears to be an advantageous policy over a five-year horizon. Over 20 years, however, the model assumption that a person on treatment is 92 percent less infectious improves the cost-effectiveness of higher eligibility thresholds over more vigorous recruitment at the lower threshold of 350, averting HIV infections for between $1,700 and $2,800 (under our central assumptions), while more vigorous expansion under the current guidelines would cost more than $7,500 per incremental HIV infection averted. Granular spatial models of demand and cost facilitate the optimal targeting of new facility construction and outreach services. Based on analysis of the sensitivity of the results to 1,728 alternative parameter combinations at each of four discount rates, we conclude that better knowledge of the behavioral elasticities would be valuable, reducing the uncertainty of cost estimates by a factor of 4 to 10.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Africa

9149. The Impact of Gavi on Vaccination Rates: Regression Discontinuity Evidence

Author:
Amanda Glassman, Charles Kenny, Justin Sandefur, and Sarah Dykstra
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Since 2001, an aid consortium known as Gavi has accounted for over half of vaccination expenditure in the 75 eligible countries with an initial per capita GNI below $1,000. Regression discontinuity (RD) estimates show aid significantly displaced other immunization efforts and failed to increase vaccination rates for diseases covered by cheap, existing vaccines. For some newer and more expensive vaccines, i.e., Hib and rotavirus, we found large effects on vaccination and limited fungibility, though statistical significance is not robust. These RD estimates apply to middle-income countries near Gavi's eligibility threshold, and cannot rule out differential effects for the poorest countries.

9150. Fiscal Policy, Inequality, and the Ethnic Divide in Guatemala

Author:
Nora Lustig, Maynor Cabrera, and Hilcías E. Morán
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Guatemala is one of the most unequal countries in Latin America and has the highest incidence of poverty. The indigenous population is more than twice as likely to be poor than the nonindigenous group. Fiscal incidence analysis based on the 2009-2010 National Survey of Family Income and Expenditures shows that taxes and transfers do almost nothing to reduce inequality and poverty overall or along ethnic and rural-urban lines. Persistently low tax revenues are the main limiting factor. Tax revenues are not only low but also regressive. Consumption taxes are regressive enough to offset the benefits of cash transfers: poverty after taxes and cash transfers is higher than market income poverty.
Political Geography:
Latin America