Stanford Business School professor Jeffrey Pfeffer suggests that the U.S. should create a "government-funded research and consulting organization with a mandate to study, consult on, and promote people-centered management practices, primarily in small and medium-size enterprises," as South Korea has done. Pfeffer argues that our current practice -- retraining displaced workers after their firm has gone out of business or laid them off -- lets all of that labor sit idle while workers figure out where to find a job.

Instead, South Korea's New Paradigm Center works to iron out as many kinks as possible, improving competitiveness and keeping threatened businesses from succumbing to pressure from overseas. Pfeffer's statistics indicate that the center is succeeding. I do wonder how the Korean government controls access to the center's services and how long improved internal implementation and strategic planning can hold off macro pressures as more countries learn how to compete. But it does seem like Pfeffer is pointing us in the right direction. South Korea has discovered an effective interim step, it would seem -- one that could ease dislocation and perhaps even help some companies (or even industries) find a new niche in a changing market.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It seems like nary an advocate is planning to sit quietly on the sidelines during the presidential election season of 2008. On the global issues side, Impact 08 and One Vote are directly targeting the candidates; even more staid, research-driven institutions are packaging their ideas in a candidate-friendly format (see Opportunity 08).

Of course, these campaigns can only speak in generalities; they cannot endorse candidates or speak forcefully on their behalf. Perla Ni argues on the SSIR blog that this is not enough; nonprofits should challenge the current rules that ban them from speaking out about politics because nonprofits, after all, are the ones who deal with platform issues day in and day out.

In this election, in which the candidates are already heatedly debating complex issues such as universal health care, global warming, gay marriage, poverty, and farm subsidies, nonprofits need to weigh in. There’s a lot of confusion among the public as to which candidate’s policies are better. Nonprofits, who are battling these issues on the front lines every day, who are witness to which policies have failed and which policies have worked in the past, can help voters make critical decisions.

I’ve seen some of the democratic debates but I am still undecided, and I would love to hear from nonprofits that I trust on these issues. I’d love to hear what my local organic food co-op thinks about farm subsidies, or what the local homeless shelter thinks about John Edwards’ universal health policy. I’d love to hear from my local Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, which has been working on peace issues since the 1960s, about which candidate has the better foreign policy on the Middle East.

I confess that I had to confer with my colleague Tarek -- who has spent more time in the dangerous legal shoals that nonprofits must navigate if they want to get anywhere near a political candidate -- to clarify what nonprofits are and are not allowed to do in the political arena. It turns out that nonprofits can legally contribute a lot to political discussion, but the lines are so fuzzy that they run risks when they get close to politics. Fear of trespass accounts for the biggest blow to the quality of debate: though nonprofits could contribute in many of the instances that Ni cites, they probably won't because of the dire consequences to their work if they are accused of, or investigated for, politicization.

The lines the government has drawn between issue-driven nonprofit work and politics are debatable, to be sure. If nonprofits could put their full weight behind a candidate, that would change the dynamic of its work and might even hurt prospects for progress on the issue itself because of explicit political ties. But in the end, if nonprofits are working on a public policy issue and political candidates are the best means toward resolving a problem, it makes sense to give nonprofits a chance to be heard when the public must make a choice between approaches to that problem.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The GII has many times advocated for long-term investment in Africa, the kind that pays dividends in health, longevity and income as a way to help the poor gain a foothold in the global economy. But more traditional forms of investment seem to be gaining ground in parts of Africa: the sort that anticipates financial returns in relatively short order.

Business 2.0 included a spread on U.S. entrepreneurs starting and facilitating businesses in Rwanda as part of its "best business ideas in the world" feature in its August issue. From an American perspective, investments in Rwanda are formalized and trackable in a way that is too rare elsewhere on the continent:

Rob Fogler has a dream. He thinks hundreds of U.S. investors will sink money into burgeoning Kigali, a city of about 850,000. But as Fogler knows, even those aware of the opportunity here can't readily invest as individuals. "People always ask, 'I have $15,000, how can I invest in Rwanda?' The answer is, you can't." Not alone, anyway. The time required to manage an investment here prohibits most Americans from attempting solo ventures. That's why Fogler pools relatively small investments from wealthy Americans into funds large enough to buy into different sectors of Rwanda's economy. Fogler's first fund is aimed at backing businesses with high growth potential. His next fund, of $5 million to $10 million, is the one that's going after property. "The time," he says, "is right for real estate."

But Kenyans are moving away from traditional forms of investment (livestock, land) toward stock markets and formal investment instruments as well. The Washington Post tells of a recent shareholder meeting for KenGen -- Kenya's public power company -- held in Nairobi's largest soccer stadium to accommodate the 200,000 shareholders who attended.

Remarkable stuff. The great (and different) thing about such investments is that locals can provide direct feedback, if not by investing themselves, certainly by using or ignoring the products and services that get funded. That's different than the way aid projects normally work, in which success is rarely decided on such local terms.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 4:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Via the Chronicle's Give and Take blog, here's a comment from Charity Navigator's Trent Stamp:

Trent Stamp. president of Charity Navigator, uses the philanthropic efforts surrounding Hurricane Katrina to point out just how much money Americans throw at major nonprofit institutions — and how little they give to support causes like the Katrina rebuilding effort.

“Harvard’s endowment is now $35-billion. It grew by $6-billion last year alone,” Mr. Stamp writes on Trent Stamp’s Take. “Coincidentally, $6-billion is how much was given by all the charities in the world to Hurricane Katrina relief. This amount, equivalent to what Harvard’s endowment grew in one year, was the largest one-time philanthropic outlay in the history of the world.”

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 1:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Via On Philanthropy (who didn't include a link to the survey results, unfortunately, costing me valuable seconds to google the report), we learn of a new study from Millennium Promise and CareerBuilder.com. The findings point to a core belief of American employees that our corporate philanthropic resources should be devoted to alleviating poverty, particularly in Africa:

Almost three-quarters of American employees think their companies should help people living in extreme poverty around the world, according to the new Millennium Promise/CareerBuilder.com Global Giving Survey. The 6,823 private-sector American employees surveyed by Harris Interactive overwhelmingly embraced philanthropic activities by employers, listing extreme poverty and Africa as high priorities.

“The survey is wonderful news. American workers believe it’s important for their companies to contribute to solving global problems, especially in Africa,” said Dr. Jeffrey D. Sachs, President and Co-Founder of Millennium Promise. “America’s companies have wonderful technologies, dedicated workers, and the extraordinary opportunity to make a major contribution to the end of poverty. Companies that get involved will help to build peace, prosperity, and yes, future markets.”

Seventy-two percent of workers said their companies should help people living in extreme poverty around the world if they have the resources to do so, and the vast majority 60% -- think that Africa needs the most corporate aid. More than a third of employees surveyed said they were more inclined to work for a company that contributes to charities than to one that doesn’t.

I was struck by the fact that the findings still point to a big conflict for some Americans between helping those in poverty overseas and handling our own problems domestically. While I don't have a personal conflict about this -- I've long advocated for a comprehensive approach to these problems -- I have to admit there are times when our domestic issues make it difficult to argue the case for working around the world. This week, as we mark the 2-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast, Americans are reminded of our domestic perils. Additional news about increases in the number of Americans -- and American children -- without health insurance can make the problems of Africans seem far away.
Photo by Flickr user Tracy O used by Creative Commons license.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Interesting news -- sad really, but not unexpected -- from Advertising Age about the decline in sales of big American brands around the global marketplace. In a study conducted by GfK Roper, US blue chip brands such as Kodak, Coke and Colgate are taking a beating overseas, and Roper's Jennifer James says, "Our foreign policy has contributed."

This was the thing that wasn't ever supposed to happen. America was going to stay strong in the marketplace even as we embarrassed ourselves in the marketplace of ideas. WMDs? Nobody was going to care, as long as there were American movies and Coke commercials, then our foreign policy could continue to strike oddly dissonant notes, right?

Wrong, apparently. While I'm not prepared to buy completely into the idea that George Bush and the Iraq War are torpedoing worldwide sales of Coke, I do think that the well-documented declining attitude around the world toward America -- largely based on our adventures in Iraq, but also other behaviors such as torture, and well, torture is probably plenty -- was bound to bleed over into other things. I can't find a link right now to a New Yorker piece I read several years ago about the youth of Iran still secretly indulging in decadent western flourishes -- literally sporting Gucci under their burkas -- because they found our culture enticing even as they were compelled to join weekly "death to America" rallies. We were holding onto these folks by the skin of our teeth, with our consumerism the final, tenuous link. Make enough mistakes, enough enemies, and enough victims, and that will break.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My love/hate relationship with Tom Friedman (the whole of which is entirely in my head, mind you) continues apace. His at times maddening fondness for anecdotes often gets him into trouble when he goes on to inevitably draw sweeping conclusions. (Flat!) But his hunger for the next surprising anecdote makes him a more avid researcher than your average columnist and a readier resource for interesting raw material. Sometimes Friedman's stories really are intriguing, as is today's.

Friedman continues his tireless pre-book (I'm convinced) exploration of how America can "go green." A few paragraphs into today's column, Friedman hits on a principle that, for this blog's purposes, is a core problem for advocates of environmental advocacy: "If energy efficiency depends on people remembering to do 20 things on a checklist, it’s not going to happen at scale." The solution, as usual, lies with the incentive structure -- in this case specifically with energy suppliers, who as of now are rewarded for creating and selling more watts, rather than getting their customers to use less.

Who's going to convince any business to sell less of their product? What's particularly intriguing about Friedman's story today is that it details how a supplier -- rather than an environmental advocate -- is pushing for a regulatory environment that would invert its incentive structure. Duke Energy has a very promising idea:

“The way it would work is that the utility would spend the money and take the risk to make its customers as energy efficient as possible,” [Jim Rogers of Duke Energy] explained. That would include installing devices in your home that would allow the utility to adjust your air-conditioners or refrigerators at peak usage times. It would include plans to incentivize contractors to build more efficient homes with more efficient boilers, heaters, appliances and insulation. It could even include partnering with a factory to buy the most energy-efficient equipment or with a family to winterize their house.

“Energy efficiency is the ‘fifth fuel’ — after coal, gas, renewables and nuclear,” said Mr. Rogers. “Today, it is the lowest-cost alternative and is emissions-free. It should be our first choice in meeting our growing demand for electricity, as well as in solving the climate challenge.”

Because energy efficiency is, in effect, a resource, he added, in order for utilities to use more of it, “efficiency should be treated as a production cost in the regulatory arena.” The utility would earn its money on the basis of the actual watts it saves through efficiency innovations. (California’s “decoupling” systems goes partly in this direction.)

At the end of the year, an independent body would determine how many watts of energy the utility has saved over a predetermined baseline and the utility would then be compensated by its customers accordingly.

“Over time,” said Mr. Rogers, “the price of electricity per unit will go up, because there would be an incremental cost in adding efficiency equipment — although that cost would be less than the incremental cost of adding a new power plant. But your overall bills should go down, because your home will be more efficient and you will use less electricity.”

Though I'm sometimes skeptical of Friedman's firm belief that the global marketplace will converge (flatten, if we must) and solve our intractable conflicts and economic problems (or remake the system entirely so they go away), there are two things about today's column that are particularly convincing.

First, Friedman is not calling for a mass change of mindset, a cultural shift toward energy conservation in the vein of "An Inconvenient Truth." Too often, advocates for energy efficiency expect Americans to keep the issue top of mind simply because it is so important. Rather, the idea Friedman's lays out integrates energy efficiency into daily life, into the systems we use to supply our power, pay our bills and turn a profit now.

Second, the proposal from Duke Energy addresses head-on the fact that however many energy-efficient light bulbs advocates can convince Americans to use, the effect will be minimal until policy changes can reward efficiency while enabling energy suppliers to grow and turn a profit.

Now if only Tom Friedman can maintain such rigorous standards for his next story.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 9:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I love love love David Shribman's Sunday column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about the "Narratives of the nattering classes." Shribman lets you glimpse behind the machine that gives us our stale stereotypes about everyone in Washington so we can safely own and dismiss them:

Hillary Rodham Clinton is rigid, cautious and steely private. Barack Obama is dangerously inexperienced. John Edwards is a narcissistic hypocrite. Joseph R. Biden Jr. can't express a thought in less than 25 minutes. Christopher J. Dodd is making sense but nobody's paying attention.

But, then again, Rudolph W. Giuliani is hot-tempered and not particularly solicitous of civil liberties. Mitt Romney is a flip-flopping opportunist. John S. McCain III is a doomed defender of the Iraq war. Sam Brownback is a hopeless religious conservative. Mike Huckabee, too, except that he's lost a lot of weight, has a wicked sense of humor and, because of his second-place finish in the recent (utterly meaningless) Iowa Straw Poll, might not be the dead-man-walking everyone thought he was.

That's the 2008 race in a nutshell, and if the candidates (and the press) aren't careful, that's about all that's going to be written, thought and said about the whole thing. This isn't the first time an entire presidential campaign has been distilled down to the simplistic. Remember John F. Kerry? He was a phony Vietnam War hero who couldn't make up his mind about the Iraq war. And Bob Dole? An old guy with a World War II injury stuck in a World War II reverie with a World War II view of life.

The greatest danger any of the 2008 candidates face is to be caught in a narrative not their own, to have every misstep and every remark forced into an established storyline that brooks no change. Mitt Romney's father, Gov. George Romney of Michigan, is the classic prisoner of a narrative. Mention his name to even the most sophisticated member of the political class and, in a peculiarly cruel version of word association, the phrase "brainwashed on Vietnam'' will spill from the lips. George Romney's 1968 campaign was sunk when he used the word "brainwashed'' in connection with the war.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is too experienced, Sen. Barack Obama too raw. Listening to Democrats give their Goldilocks view of the 2008 presidential campaign must make voters wonder: Will any candidate be just right for the White House?

"Senator Obama does represent change. Senator Clinton has experience. Change and experience," New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Sunday, making a balancing gesture with his hands. "With me, you get both."

Bloggers in particular hate this and I agree wholeheartedly. Somewhere between helping people understand what's happening in the world around them, many journalists go a step too far and push a conventional wisdom, free of actual comprehension, on their readers/listeners/viewers. Shribman tells this story by way of confession:

I mention all this because I have sinned myself -- the job of a political correspondent is to commit this sin of creating a narrative from time to time, just not to make a bloody habit of it. Creating a narrative is how humans make sense of a complex, confusing world. But being a prisoner of a narrative is how humans surrender observation and thought for the sake of simplicity.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 3:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You may or may not have already discovered that the Global Health Council posts a quarterly newsletter for communications professionals working in the field. The newsletter covers communications efforts, message development on global health topics, a calendar of upcoming events and new tools for communicators.

This issue focuses on shortages in the health care workforce in particular, with an eye toward how communicators can help audiences understand the issue. The newsletter's writers acknowledge that right away we run up against a lot of complexity. In an article on "Making What We Do Compelling to Our Audience," Bruce Curran offers an interesting twist on the idea that all you really need is a compelling story to sell your issue:

To get the message out we should not be striving to make what is complex and difficult compelling, rather we should be trying to make what is compelling relevant to the complex topic and to our audience.

This rings of "social math" to me -- it's not wise to either overwhelm with a mound of facts and figures on the one hand or underwhelm with a simple-minded story on the other. Later in Curran's article, he gives a great example of how one person's story can shed light on a bigger issue without dumbing it down. In this case, the issue is Sudan's lack of doctors:

Daniel Madit Thon Duop left the Sudan over 20 years ago as a teenager to obtain an education and someday return to help his country. Recently, he and 14 other young physicians have returned to Southern Sudan to start working in the south’s severely damaged health sector. Normally the addition of 15 doctors would not seem significant, but in a country where there are only 50 doctors for nearly 10 million people, that is a 30 percent increase in capacity. The simplicity of the story makes a point without getting tied up in the complexity of the development issue.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On the morning of September 11, 2001, a friend and colleague called to tell me that she would not be coming to the meeting scheduled for 10 AM at our offices because "we were at war." I had been watching the same dreadful scenes as she, but had reached a different conclusion: we had been attacked, yes; but war is something different. When the then-President of the Aspen Institute belatedly gathered the staff of our DC office and delivered the same message as my friend, I cringed. Maybe it was the years of Susan Bales/ George Lakoff style research that we had commissioned, but my first reaction was: these are criminals, not warriors. And framing the issue as "war" constrained our options for response, right from the beginning.

Framing terrorists as criminals was frequently and derisively dismissed by advocates of the Iraq war - especially during election campaigns. But it has never been completely absent from the public debate. Now comes retired General Wes Clark - tough to characterize as a military-hating peacenik - with a nicely reasoned case for distinguishing combatants from criminals.

Is it too late to turn back and re-frame? As many of us directionally challenged folks just back from long vacation trips know, every mile down the wrong road means that much longer before we are on the right path.

Posted by David Devlin-Foltz at 5:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Late in 2003, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation asked the GII to gather together a panel of experts and start some serious thinking about the factors that make advocacy successful. At the time, the foundation was engaged in very little advocacy funding, and they were hoping to identify something like a formula -- the foundation in those days was still closer to its roots as a project of Microsoft's founders than now -- for making the very risky business of advocacy philanthropy a little more of a sure thing.

We made it clear that there isn't a magic formula for success. This holy grail of advocacy simply didn't exist. What we did find in conversations with foundation program officers, media experts, communications specialists and others was a few factors that increased the chances of success for an organization and its grantmakers.

These key factors went through a lot of conversations and a good deal of rigorous editing and became the DNA of Continuous Progress, the GII's two-track guides to planning and evaluating advocacy campaigns to give them the best chance at success.

The foreign policy advocacy guides were launched last year and were quickly followed by a domestic version. Then, we decided to launch an initiative to help organizations and grantmakers better understand and implement the lessons and advice found in Continuous Progress.

Throughout this time, the idea of evaluation -- and a whole constellation of ideas around using our advocacy as a learning, building and growing enterprise -- has itself grown. More organizations and their foundation partners are talking about changing the way they do traditional advocacy, and including key concepts like capacity-building goals (instead of just policy goals), open lines of communication between grantmakers and grantees, agreed-upon benchmarks, indicators and evaluation plans, and more.

The latest evidence of this comes from an op-ed published last week in the Chronicle of Philanthropy by William and Flora Hewlett Foundation President Paul Brest and James Irvine Foundation President James Canales. Reviewing two recent, very frank reports about large efforts by the two foundations that had not reached their goals, the presidents offered a rundown of lessons that, frankly, sound like they come from Continuous Progress. Here are the lessons from the Hewlett project, annotated with links to our guides:

• All participants must be clear from the outset about goals, strategies, and indicators of progress. The neighborhood improvement project was started without a clear definition of what success would look like.

• Foundations must work hard to establish candid and respectful relationships with the diverse people and organizations that are essential to achieving community change. When tensions arose in this project, participants often couldn't find a way to talk productively about their differences and work through them together.

• Everyone can gain by committing to learn throughout the entire project. While the effort was infused with evaluations of the process to bring about change from the start, tools to evaluate results were added only toward the end, when it was too late to affect the course of the effort.

The op-ed by Hewlett and Canales is titled "Let's Stop Reinventing Potholes." That is the philosophy behind Continuous Progress, and much of the work that has informed the GII throughout its life. Nothing can guarantee success, but it doesn't take a foundation president to figure out that we have a better chance of gaining something from our advocacy -- our policy goal, critical increases in capacity, or at least valuable knowledge -- if we work together, and commit to learning along the way.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The International Herald Tribune reported yesterday that CARE is taking a big step on the contentious issue of food aid, "walking away from about $45 million a year in federal funding, saying American food aid is not only plagued with inefficiencies, but may hurt some of the very poor people it aims to help."

CARE had been, until this announcement, the biggest beneficiary of the practice of "monetization," in which "the U.S. government buys the goods from American agribusiness, ships them overseas on mostly American-flagged carriers and then donates the goods to the aid groups. The groups sell the products in poor countries and use the money to fund their anti-poverty programs there."

Many aid groups participate in monetization, which, its defenders argue, helps a lot of poor people by increasing the funds that charities have to work with -- despite being inefficient and suppressing local agriculture by flooding the market with U.S. products sold well below cost. Monetization's defenders "say they will not stop converting American food into money unless Congress replaces the lost revenues with cash."

I think CARE made the right decision. A bedrock principle of good development is to "do no harm." If an organization must finance the good it does by first doing harm, perhaps it ought to take a hard look at its priorities. Even if aid organizations can do a lot of good with the income they receive from monetization, there is still a pernicious side-effect: the process prioritizes their own goals, forcing the poor to depend on their programs rather than enhancing the ability of the poor to be self-sufficient. Plus, it plays right into the farm lobby's hands:

Peter Matlon, an agricultural economist based in Nairobi and a managing director of the Rockefeller Foundation, said converting American commodities into cash for development was a case of "the tail wagging the dog," with domestic farm policies in the United States shaping hunger-fighting methods abroad.

Bravo, CARE.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The always-sassy Slate boasts some inspired ideas to help political candidates appeal to the do-it-yourself handicraft constituency, Republicans and Democrats alike. In their words, "Forget NASCAR dads and security moms—it's the craft vote that can no longer be ignored."

RepubliCraft No. 1: Department of Homeland Security Blanket
Endorsed by the White House and Fox News, this colorful scrap quilt is a guide to our ever-changing security alert levels. Each level is labeled with embroidery to distinguish a DHS Blanket from a gay-pride flag. (Note: Blanket is not a safety device. In case of a terrorist attack, DHS Blanket will not protect you.)
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DemoCraft No. 3: Righteous Recycler's Bin
Everybody recycles these days. Heck, it's easy to throw cans, bottles, and newspapers into a city-issued plastic bin. But if you really believe in recycling, you'll make the actual recycling bin out of recyclable materials. Finally, a way to outrecycle your neighbor! A chance to give your greener-than-thou attitude real legitimacy. (Warning: Zealous trash collectors may take this bin by mistake. Make backups.)

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I lingered all day Monday over Sam Dealey's column chiding Save Darfur for over-stating the numbers of dead in Darfur. In An Atrocity that Needs No Exaggeration, Time Magazine reporter Dealey cites several reasons why such an overstatement would be a problem. (Save Darfur was sued by pro-Sudanese business leaders in the UK over the use of a mortality statistic about double what the majority of experts agree is the number of victims in Darfur.) These reasons include:

Exaggerated death tolls also make it difficult for relief organizations to deliver their services. Khartoum considers the inflated numbers to be evidence that all groups that deliver aid to Darfur are actually adjuncts of the activist groups that the regime considers its enemies, and thus finds justification for delaying visas, refusing to allow shipments of supplies and otherwise putting obstacles in the way of aid delivery.

Lastly, mortality one-upmanship by advocacy groups threatens to inure the public to both current and future catastrophes. If 400,000 becomes the de facto benchmark for action, other bloody conflicts around the globe — in Sri Lanka, Colombia, Somalia — seem to pale in comparison. Ultimately, the inflated claims fuel a death race in which aid and action are based not on facts but on which advocacy group yells the loudest.

Still, I didn't love the tone he took with his column. It seemed more righteous than it needed to be, and did surely overstate the potential impact of Save Darfur using a number which though at the highest end of estimates, was still inside the range of estimates of the dead in Darfur. I decided not to write about it.

Then today's letters to the editors made me rethink my decision. Lili Arkin writes that Khartoum hardly bothers with excuses when thwarting aid efforts, so the idea that Save Darfur's high number somehow played in to this is moot. Further, she writes that Sam Dealey's claim "that the Save Darfur Coalition’s use of 400,000 dead in its advertising “hampered aid-delivery groups, discredited American policy makers and diplomats and harmed efforts to respond to future humanitarian crises” is surely a much more inflated and damaging claim than anything stated by the Save Darfur Coalition."

Meanwhile, Richard Brightman of Minnesota notes that Minneapolis's recent bridge collapse has received hundreds of hours of press coverage when the loss of life -- huge to the victims and their families -- is still less than 15. Brightman concludes "So excuse me, Mr. Dealey, if I have trouble accepting Khartoum’s being upset that the number of deaths resulting from their policies is not 400,000, but 200,000. You would take humanity out of this human tragedy that by any number must be stopped."

These letter writers helped me clarify the uneasiness I was feeling reading Dealey's piece. There are lots of critiques I'll gladly offer about the way advocates do their work and communicate with their constituency. I do have concerns about the way genocide opponents find themselves comparing death statistics as if to say, "my genocide is worse than yours." Genocide is genocide. Let's work together to find a way to end it.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Photo of Mount Rushmore courtesy of Brian Moore, used under a Creative Commons license.
Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics -- now living at the New York Times -- asks what the president really does to impact people's daily lives. The comment thread is a gold-mine of thoughtful insights into the importance of the presidency. I was struck by how many people agreed with Dubner's thesis that the president -- whoever he is -- doesn't really matter that much. Dubner's argument is that for every action the president takes, "a million strong reactions" are waiting to occur, effectively cancelling out the president's ability to make any kind of sweeping changes that would impact your life, or mine. Dubner posits a different theory:

I would argue that it’s worth thinking about our system of democratic capitalism as a market like many others, not so different from the stock market. These are complex, dynamic systems in which one decision triggers many others, in which an equilibrium is constantly being sought, in which sudden movements up or down are interpreted as catastrophic in the short run but which prove, in the long run, to be minor corrections in a fairly stable system that’s organically evolving.

Eventually the commenters assert that Dubner's specific point was that which person is president doesn't really individuals and their lives.

To me, this is a fascinating argument because in a strange way it cuts to the core of our society's existence and a lot of the guiding principles of foreign policy recently. If we didn't believe that the presidency mattered, we wouldn't go and vote. (About 40% of the population takes this to heart.) Similarly, if people in other countries believed their selection didn't matter, they wouldn't risk death and bodily injury to cast a vote. And I'd like to think we wouldn't put the lives of thousands of our troops on the line to ensure that they had the opportunity to select a leader.

Dubner cites the "Great Man" theory of history as a reason why people think their president is more important to them than he or she really is. If anything, evaluating presidents through a foreign policy lens is more like to trigger such a response. Great foreign policy only reaches such a level when it is really amazing. Franklin Roosevelt's prosecution of the second World War was great foreign policy. Implementing the Marshall Plan was great foreign policy. Even President Nixon -- whose presidency was doubtlessly flawed in more ways possible to count -- garners praise for his foreign policy. "Great Man" theory probably makes more of foreign policy than many other presidential factors, while it could be argued that foreign policy is especially susceptible to Dubner's query about the impact presidents have on the lives of ordinary citizens.

But let's think again about that. We are living now through a good example of a president's foreign policy impacting the lives of ordinary Americans. Dubner -- to insulate himself, I believe -- cites families with loved ones fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan as people whose lives are directly impacted by a president's policy. What about illegal immigrants who stood to gain mightily from the president's support of an overhaul of immigration policy? What about the millions of Americans who pay what they pay for home heating oil and gas for their cars and trucks because of policies set by this White House, including energy legislation currently in force. One commenter raised the question of the bully pulpit as a signifier of the president's impact in our lives. US opinion about terrorism, about democracy-promotion abroad, about genocide in Darfur, about the UN as an institution, and much more is affected by the president's choice of words. American global agriculture/trade policy is largely run by the White House. Combined with the every-five-year reauthorization of the farm bill, the White House builds a system for shielding many American farmers from the vagaries of a truly global marketplace, and keeping much cheaper food from foreign suppliers off the shelves, potentially harming foreign economies while benefiting our own, if only for the short term.

Domestically, there are other considerations. Thousands of students attend different schools, or attend schools with declining federal funding, or don't attend classes in music and arts, because of policies put in place connecting school performance to federal funding as part of the president's signature domestic achievement of his first term, the No Child Left Behind law.

Does the president matter to you?

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Agnieszka Tennant, writing for Christianity Today, picks up on a somewhat kooky, but interesting, idea from William Langewiesche, a reporter for The Atlantic Monthly.

Langewiesche argues two basic points: First, when poor nations acquire nuclear weapons, they're acting rationally -- and traditional, rational measures of deterrence will be effective. Second, the real danger (surprise, surprise) comes from non-state actors who could steal or build a nuclear weapon and can't be deterred. These actors would have to undertake a series of risky, expensive operations to get a hold of a nuclear weapon, though, and "The solution to nuclear theft is informal relationships."

In The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor, Langewiesche attempts to disarm fears of nuclear doom. He does it by pointing out that international hostilities—especially ones that involve the development of nuclear weapons—are far from stupid.

A nuclear-free world is not realistic, Langewiesche argues; poorer countries will inevitably join the group of countries we like to think are more responsible in stockpiling nukes. North Korea and Iran are just the beginning.

Politicians may paint some developing nations as evil, but their production of nuclear weapons signals to Langewiesche that they're making rational choices. Nuclear weapons are the wisest investment cash-strapped countries can make. The biggest bang for their buck. And, oddly, there's hope in that.

There is hope in the fact that poor countries are rational actors whose leaders are simply trying to get "bang for their buck" and claim a place on the world stage. But I don't find much hope in the side-effects of proliferation among poor countries: more fissile material scattered around the world in places with poor infrastructure, poor security and weak institutions.

The appropriate counter, argues Langewiesche (and Tennant), is to build a network of informal relationships that can tip governments off when a theft or transfer of nuclear materials is imminent. Tennant goes so far as to say that these could be civilians -- the same well-intentioned people who work as aid volunteers, English teachers and micro-loan officers, perhaps.

This last bit seems naive -- it's hard to imagine volunteers, eager though they may be -- filling the CIA's shoes where it has struggled. I'm reminded of William Easterly's stories of well-intentioned efforts to go and "fix Africa." But the instinct to rethink the way we construe our security is smart. Government agencies should think creatively about re-tooling our non-proliferation tools to meet growing threats, rather than past ones.

Citizens for Global Solutions has proposed NPT 2.0, an update to the treaty that defines international efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons. An updated NPT would help, but it would have to recognize the role of individuals, not just as threats, but as solutions too.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(Image: courtesy of The Washington Post; tagline: courtesy of The Daily Show.)

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Everyone is getting on the smart power train these days, it seems. Michael Gerson (former policy advisor and speechwriter to President Bush) would not readily use that term, I'm guessing, but he certainly argues for the concept.

Gerson's recent column for the Washington Post holds the Millennium Challenge Corporation up as one of America's much-needed "tools of influence other than the tools of war." Gerson calls the MCC "grown-up foreign aid" that offers "tangible rewards for reform." And "when we have [these tools]," Gerson argues, "they should not be carelessly discarded."

Whatever the causes, anti-Americanism makes it more difficult to gather support for a range of policies, from opposing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to protecting civilians in Darfur. There is an urgent need for American initiatives that build trust and respect in the world.

Yet Congress has chosen this moment to gut one of the most innovative and effective American outreach efforts since the Peace Corps.

It makes sense that Gerson, who probably helped make the MCC a reality, is sticking by a solid idea and arguing that we need to fund it and wait for it to achieve solid execution. Gerson quotes John Danilovich, who directs the MCC: "'Why,'” he asked, “'do they want to undermine a foreign policy lever which is actually working?'”

Also interesting is Gerson's account of America's self-inflicted public diplomacy problems:

Some of this damage is self-inflicted, resulting from the obscenities of Abu Ghraib and the apparently permanent limbo of Guantanamo Bay. American support for Israel is a source of global anger, especially in societies that believe the Jewish state should be located at the bottom of the Mediterranean. World opinion is impatient, not only for America to abandon Iraq but for America and NATO to leave Afghanistan. And some of this resentment reflects a very different historical moment from 2002. It is easy for a nation to gain sympathy as a victim, harder when acting in its own interests.

There's no way to know -- and Gerson was probably not in a position to affect these policies -- but it makes one wonder how much of the administration shares his views about self-inflicted wounds to America's reputation.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

US Army photo by Dexter D. Clouden.
There will be, I predict, a rise in articles about America's war in Afghanistan -- even as we're struggling to win in Iraq and seem to be senselessly engaging in sabre-rattling with Iran.

This weekend an interesting item about Afghanistan appeared in the Washington Post. Nathaniel Fick's Fight Less, Win More discusses how counterinsurgency training in Afghanistan is slow in coming. He outlines the idea of counterinsurgency, talking specifically about the idea that success happens when "the people of Afghanistan consent to the legitimacy of their government and stop actively and passively supporting the insurgency."

I would venture that the American public -- busy worrying about the unsteadiness in the home mortgage industry, people with guns and lead paint in their children's toys -- isn't really paying attention to the contours of our strategy in Afghanistan.

Indeed, a Gallup poll from earlier this month reveals a public seemingly pleased with the war in Afghanistan.

That's why I don't think they know what's happening there, why Nathaniel Fick's advice is so critical and why we seem to be in danger of losing the "good war."

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Guest worker programs are emerging as a cornerstone of good migration policy. Take a look at Spain's temporary worker program, allowing Senegalese to fill labor shortages in Spain while seeking to dissuade them from making a dangerous, illegal trip on the open ocean:

The program, promoted by the Spanish and Senegalese governments, aims to bring hundreds of workers to Spain this year with renewable one-year visas and jobs. Workers on one-year permits may have their contracts extended, at which point they have the right to bring over their immediate family. Ultimately, officials here say, the plan is to bring in thousands of immigrants through the program.

Opponents of similar proposals to make room for much-needed guest workers in the U.S. often claim that guest workers, once here, will never leave. Spain will be a good test case then.

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I remember having an "aha" moment while sitting in Microeconomics 101 my freshman year of college. I knew, vaguely, that political leaders often settle for less than ideal economic policies; I had assumed that was because they were corrupt, inept or both. But the logic of economic incentives offered another possibility: good economic policies often have concentrated costs and diffuse benefits: the vast majority of people benefit just a little, while a few lose out very noticeably (and loudly). If a government is accountable (and let's hope it is), chances are it can't help listening much more to the well-organized few who are willing to fight passionately to keep their benefits at the expense of most people.

This is basic economic theory, but it's such a powerful explanation for the struggle that all democracies face. The ivory tower search for ideal policies quickly seemed less relevant as I spent time working on the political and organizational challenges to getting decent policies, let alone ideal ones.

But as much as the sheer absurdity of another bloated farm bill irks me, our democratic process in the U.S. generally works very well. Inefficiencies are alive and well (how would CATO stay in business otherwise?), but the U.S. has one of the oldest, most mature democracies in the world. We've worked a lot of the kinks out.

On the other hand, developing democracies have a much steeper hill to climb. In India, for instance, political parties that secure more than half of the population's votes don't even get around to stating positions on policies; rather, their entire platform is clarifying how many jobs the state will grant, and to whom. (See Edward Luce's fantastic book, "In Spite of the Gods.") Naturally, this doesn't leave much room for the sort of economic reform that would actually help raise many poor people (rather than the chosen few employed by the government) out of poverty.

All that musing to say, kudos to the Center for International Private Enterprise for putting together a handbook that addresses not just what a political party aspiring to do the right thing should do, but how.

In many countries, parties remain organizations of slogans and personalities, which limits their ability to be true representatives of their constituents and undermines their capacity to develop good policies, strengthen democratic institutions, and provide economic opportunities. As democracies face increasing pressure to deliver social services and prospects for economic advancement, political parties often find themselves at the center of the debate.

How can political parties address citizens' frustration with the political process? How can they ensure that processes of democratic governance work? What can be done so that countries' economies begin to experience sustainable growth and that citizens see real improvements in their quality of life?

No handbook is going to make this easy to do, but CIPE is targeting its efforts where there is real need for creative thinking and a shortage of expertise. I hope they can help political parties around the world improve the quality of debate and -- eventually -- people's lives.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A strong defense of the UN this morning from the Nixon Center's Paul Saunders, responding to an op-ed last week from Ivo Daalder and PNAC-co-founder Robert Kagan. Kagan and Daalder are making an argument for a parallel world body to decide the next target for fun and exciting U.S. intervention. This idea -- a UN where we only let our friends in -- gets bounced around whenever the UN antagonizers aren't happy with something the UN is doing or is predicted to do. I remember hearing some grandee or another float the idea in Aspen at the first Aspen Ideas Festival in 2005. Saunders rightly pokes holes in the idea, noting both that while Kagan and Daalder say this no-fatties league of nations will be made up of "democracies," odds are they still wouldn't get blank checks on invasions if India and Brazil, for instance, are part of the club. Kagan and Daalder, Saunders concludes, really just want to pick and choose folks likely to let us get our way, say some friendly Europeans and maybe Japan:

This clearly did not work in Iraq and seems extremely unlikely to work in the future, especially if Europe is divided, as seems likely. Outside the United States and Europe, even many democracies would not necessarily welcome what some may see as a new form of colonialist intervention in their regional affairs. The Atlantic community and the "international community" are not identical.

Moreover, trying to create a "Concert of Democracies" inevitably invites a "Concert of Non-Democracies," which could be very damaging to American interests and values.

Posted by Tarek Rizk at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Princeton Lyman (who, incidentally, is GII's Advisory Board chair) and Patricia Dorff of CFR published an op-ed on Africa's strategic importance yesterday in the Washington Post. Building on their contributions to a new CFR book, "Beyond Humanitarianism: What We Need to Know About Africa and Why It Matters," Lyman and Dorff race through a heap of issues that aren't often considered in a typical Western outlook on Africa. (This one amazed me: "Currently, 15 percent of U.S. oil imports come from Africa, as much as from the Middle East.")

However, the authors do not argue that strategic considerations like Africa's voice in the WTO, its oil and gas reserves or its importance to the war on terror mean that we should take our eye off the continent's fundamental concern: poverty.

At the center of all Africa's issues and challenges lies the persistence of poverty. Africa is by far the poorest continent and marginal in the global trading system. Poverty adds to the potential for conflict, the vulnerability to terrorist influence, the pressures of illegal migration and the spread of disease; it constitutes a drain on worldwide aid resources. Thus, the humanitarian problems return to center stage in contemplating U.S. policy. But they cannot be treated as objects of charity, nor be satisfied with emergency aid for relief and postconflict emergencies, which have comprised much of America's recent increases in assistance.

The growing importance of Africa demands a much more focused, long-term, and carefully directed program of economic assistance and trade reform. The Bush administration has begun to move in that direction with the Millennium Challenge Account, and Congress has contributed with the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which opens the U.S. market to African exports. But much more needs to be done. Only when Africa is recognized for the growing importance it has for America will these shortcomings be overcome.

I agree with Lyman; there's a lot more to Africa than poverty, but poverty does seem to define Africans' choices much of the time. We're left with lots of questions about how to help Africa in a strategic, rather than simply charitable, way. But as Tarek and I wrote yesterday, those answers don't come easy.

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It's been easy -- lazy even -- to portray the Bush Administration's enthusiastic embrace of revisionism, shifting standards of "accountability," and parallel-universe dwelling as a moral failing. I've tried to avoid this.

However, a piece in today's USA Today really made me stop and scratch my head. I found it via Cursor.org. The article is titled Military trying to prevent surge in militant attacks. Here are the opening paragraphs:

The U.S. military is ordering airstrikes and taking other security measures to prevent insurgents from launching a "surge" of their own before next month's report to Congress on Iraq strategy.

Al-Qaeda and other militant groups could try to stage high-profile attacks that would make it more difficult for Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker to tell Congress that progress is being made under the new U.S. war strategy, which began in February.

"We are anticipating … that there will be a surge in enemy operations," said Lt. Col. Chris Garver, a U.S. military spokesman. "It would not surprise us at all if there were efforts by the enemies to make it look like this isn't working at all."

Parse with me LTC Garver's language: The surge is working. However, an effective effort by our enemies to kill as many people as possible would "make it look" like our surge isn't working.

I think it's probably time to say this slowly so even Lt. Col Garver can understand. And I hate to yell in print. But here goes: IF OUR ENEMIES SURGE BACK THEN OUR SURGE ISN'T WORKING AT ALL. THERE IS NO 'MAKE IT LOOK LIKE IT'S WORKING' OR NOT. IT WORKS OR IT DOESN'T.

MacArthur Genius and brilliant author George Saunders understands this, and has understood it since he proposed his plan for leaving Iraq more than three years ago. His plan involved running away quickly after killing the last person who wants to kill us while not accidentally killing any people who don't want to kill us therefore accidentally creating a new circle of people who want to kill us and also while looking down so as to avoid learning about more people who want to kill us, who we would then have to kill, etc. His conclusion is simple:

This exit strategy will demand a high level of coordination, dedication, and planning.

But our leaders have already shown the way by showing that, if one has a vision, and refuses to betray tha