Telenovela

CAG Senior Research Fellow Tess del Rosario argues in her new book Scripted Clashes - A Dramaturgical Approaches to Three Philippines Uprisings that the three collective people power uprisings in the Philippines which occurred over a time period of fifteen years (1986-2001) are "dramaturgical productions", each one governed by an underlying "scrip". Following is Tess' take on some of the key points in the book:


The study of collective uprisings in the past has suffered from an intellectual tradition that tends to equate social protest with crowd behavior --- a form of sociopathology endemic in societies experiencing social breakdown. This book challenges that perspective.

In looking at the three people power uprisings in the Philippines which occurred over a time period of fifteen years (1986-2001), I employ a Goffmanian perspective called “dramaturgy” --- a theoretical variant within “cultural constructionism” (Jasper 1997) that is largely premised on the idea that humans are “symbolic making creatures, who spin webs of meaning around ourselves . . . that we humans together create everything that we know and experience, or at least the interpretive frameworks through which we filter all our experience.”

In this book, I argue that the three collective uprisings are “dramaturgical productions”, each one governed by an underlying “script”.

The first two uprisings embody the larger moral vision among protestors and participants to a distinct social project called modernity. While Marcos himself sought to modernize the Philippine nation under an authoritarian framework, the failure of this experiment provoked an alternative vision in which modernization would continue under a democratic political system, thus the theme of “re-democratization” shaped the character and flavor of the modernity script of the first uprising.

As a “sequel” to the first, the second uprising of January 2001 carried the same moral vision, but reworked to suit the requirements of the 21st century.

The third uprising witnessed the massive mobilization of the so-called lumpen poor and elaborates on James Scott’s notion of the “hidden transcript” formed in the subterreneal regions of discourse among the poor and the marginalized. It is inspired by the Biblical Pasyon, the movies, and the telenovela.

I argue that this discourse can be best understood by looking at internal cultural categories of meaning that reside in religious beliefs, symbols and practices and are carried over to the cinema, and more recently, to the telenovela, which are then recreated and acted out during uprisings. This evokes a “tele-cinematic” effect.

The three uprisings are competing social dramas and the Edsa shrine is the “center stage” of re-enactment. I elaborate on the notion of “spatial agency” to argue for the role of social spaces in collective action, and to provide an instance in which a physical site becomes a locus for creatively addressing the tension between structure and agency. Finally, I conclude this study with a meditation on the dangers of dramaturgy and the possibilities of utilizing it as constructive social critique to promote social justice and to deepen humanistic concerns. [Tess]

Unlikely contenders in championing transparency

Imagine the global contest for leadership as a battlefield. The front lines aren't just military and economic: Ideas are at least as crucial. And in this struggle, openness and transparency are growing ever more important. The United States, which once had an enormous advantage in terms of transparency, lost its position during the Bush-era rollback of civil liberties. Meanwhile, two surprising contenders have entered the lists.

The first is India. India's rambunctious, sprawling democracy has long been highly secretive, in keeping with colonial British traditions. But this started to change in the early 1990s, when grass-roots groups began demanding access to documents held by local governments. Day laborers, who are often left un- or undercompensated for government projects, demanded to know who else was getting paid, and how much. Villagers wanted to know why their schools remained unfinished. The movement spread rapidly, based on the notion that transparency was essential not just to liberty but to survival.

By 2005, this nationwide grass-roots campaign led to one of the world's most sweeping right-to-know laws. Indeed, the Indian Right to Information (RTI) Act is proving to be a muscular instrument for empowering citizens vis-à-vis India's notoriously ponderous bureaucracy. When police can't be bothered to accept a complaint about a theft, citizens can file RTI applications to find out why not, which often prompts the police to do what they should have done in the first place. Public works contractors must publish their contracts at their work sites, allowing local citizens to measure how work is going. The government and nongovernmental organizations have launched evaluations of the act's impacts, both still underway. But already campaigners are finding that some two thirds of focus group participants said that greater access to information would help solve many of their problems.

The far more surprising second contender is China. Conventional wisdom in the West portrays China as authoritarian, secretive, and rigid. Yet in 2008, China's State Council proactively established a set of nationwide open government information regulations. Now, via gazettes and Web sites, the government discloses an increasing array of statistics and details about health, education, budgets, economic programs, and urban planning. The same regulations allow citizens to request the release of information from the government.

This move, drawn from several years of experiments with transparency and accountability at local levels, represents a major political shift. China's system, traditionally dominated by secrecy and the rationing of information, is increasingly premised on openness and public scrutiny. One year in, the regulations are actively being used by citizens addressing grievances in land requisition, by environmental groups monitoring corporate standards, and by lawyers and public intellectuals scrutinizing everything from government toll collection to budget spending.

The sea change is likely due to strategic party calculations, rather than an embrace of democratic principles. Indeed, the Chinese Communist Party has found that secrecy can cripple its own efforts to foster growth and stability in a globalized world. For instance, China needed to improve its economic transparency to join the World Trade Organization. The global health and economic damage brought by the 2003 SARS outbreak and 2008 melamine poisoning scandal further spurred the government to become more open and stamp out malfeasance within its system.

The calculations are also domestic. China has to deal with official corruption that is not only endemic, but spreading. Its citizenry is increasingly informed, networked, and assertive. With pressures on these multiple fronts intensifying, the leadership has come to recognize that it must build in checks to its own administrative power if the country is to enjoy the economic growth and political stability upon which the party's continued dominance depends.

Thus, the contours of a new global contest are emerging. Western countries no longer have a monopoly over the definition and value of openness and disclosure. India's grass-roots approach champions transparency as a critical means of empowering the poor. China's state-driven approach wields transparency fundamentally as an alternative (rather than a prerequisite) to democratic reform. If the United States and other Western countries want to avoid losing the battle, they'll pay close attention to developments in these two countries. [AF & YT]

This article, titled "Transparent warriors" was first published in FOREIGN POLICY.

Health should be in all policies

Dr Tikki Pang, Co-Chair of the S.T. Lee Project's Global Health Governance (GHG hereafter) Study Group and Director of Research Policy & Cooperation at the World Health Organisation (WHO) summarises the discussions of the various global health issues that have taken place at the recently completed 62nd Session of the World Health Assembly.


1. Endorsement of WHO leadership in the context of influenza crisis:

Member States (as well as the external media) have been complimentary and largely supportive of the way WHO has handled the crisis so far. There have been a few critics, but by and large, the "erring on the side of caution" approach has been accepted by most.

In the context of the ST Lee Project's GHG, this crisis has served to reiterate the central role WHO must play in the context of global heatlh issues. The Organization's image is probably at the highest it has been for many years. Make no mistake-it could've so easily gone wrong-and kudos to the Director General Dr Margaret Chan for her decisiveness in the past month or two. The new US administration (new Health Secretary Sebelius came to Geneva) has been particularly supportive of WHO's efforts in coordinating the global response.

Another highlight was that UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon delivered the keynote address at the Assembly-his presence is yet another signal of the good coordination across the UN during this crisis.

Finally, WHO was also urged by its Member States not to move to phase 6 alert level although, based on current criteria, this should've happened-the countries urged the Organization to re-visit the criteria and take into account other factors such as disease severity, virus pathogenicity, clinical features, etc.

2. (However) tensions still running high on the virus sharing issue:

The IGM (Inter-governmental Meeting on Sharing of Influenza Viruses) met a few days before the assembly and, unfortunately, came to no agreement after 2 years of negotiations on trying to forge an equitable framework for sharing of viruses and benefits derived from any vaccines developed. Some developing countries mentioned, for example, that developed countries have signed agreements with vaccine manufacturers for 50% of the soon-to-be-developed vaccine against influenza A (H1N1) leaving the developing world highly exposed with the remaining 50%.

The agreement of the Assembly was to ask WHO/the Director-General to "support further negotiations", especially around a standard material transfer agreement for sharing of viruses. This topic was then linked to another one on the agenda in relation to "public health, innovation and intellectual property" which also has important implications for GHG as well as GHRG (R=research), i.e. how can GHG/GHRG tackle this issue of equitable access to health products and avoid the perception of "economics always trumps health" (expressed by a delegatiion at the Assembly).

3. Continued interest in primary health care and the social determinants of health:

In the context of the "dual burden" of the global financial crisis and potential influenza pandemic, the Member States were even more concerned about the state of their national health systems. In particular, it was felt that the basis for strengthening health systems should include considerations of equity, solidarity, social justice, universal access to services, multi-sectoral action, decentralization and community participation.

Financing was obviously a big issue and some countries highlighted the fact that low-income countries in particular rely a lot on overseas development aid for their health systems-which may be reduced due to the financial crisis. This underscores the view held by some that the ultimate objective of good GHG is the strengthening of health systems in low and middle income countries. This, in turn, has direct implications for global health security more generally.

4. Inter-sectorality important in future:

The message that "health should be in all policies" was repeatedly heard during the Assembly and the Norwegian delegation, for example, quotes their minister of health who had stated that "to close the health gap between rich and poor in a generation, every minister must be a health minister". I think this is part of a larger global trend- a meeting was held recently in Asia (the Prince Mahidol Award Conference) on "Mainstreaming Health into Public Policies". Although the idea and importance of an inter-sectoral approach is clearly relevant, whether it can be extended on a practical level, e.g. to inter-agency cooperation, is an open question. For example, there was debate at the Assembly on whose role is it to take on IPR (Intellectuual Property Rights) issues related to health products (WHO? WIPO? WTO?).

5. Tuberculosis (TB):

Amidst all the excitement about influenza, Member States also agreed that antibiotic resistance, as exemplified by the ongoing problem of multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB, deserves urgent attention and action. There are 500,000 cases of MDR TB and 50,000 cases of XDR TB annually (mostly in the developing world), and only 3% of patients are getting treatment according to standards recommended by WHO.

In terms of broader implications, it should be remembered that deaths during influenza pandemics in the past have been caused mainly by secondary bacterial infections (e.g. pneumonia)-so resistance to antibiotics may indeed be "the mother of all infectious disease challenges" (as expressed by one delegate).

6. Ongoing concern about support for WHO:

Dr Margaret Chan, Director General of WHO appealed to the Member States for enhanced financial support for WHO. Dr Chan reiterated that only 20% of WHO's budget comes from Member States contributions (this figure is around 80% for other UN organizations) and that the other 80% are from external donors, often highly specified for specific project areas. This, of course, compromises WHO's independence and credibility as it runs the risk of having its agenda defined by donors-in all reality, WHO is now a "soft money" organization just like academic institutions relying on external grants . This clearly has important implications in light of the expectation of WHO leadership in global health in the future. [Tikki]

Global health's quest for governance

The Lancet, a leading medical journal published out of New York and London, recently ran an editorial which highlights an ongoing concern with governance within The Gates Foundation – one of the most active and generous philanthropic foundations in the world (US$ 3 billion annually).

The editorial starts out by, deservedly praising the invaluable contributions made by the Gates Foundation, particularly for its deep commitment to global health. The Lancet credits the Foundation for adding “renewed dynamism, credibility and attractiveness to global health” as well as “inaugurating an important new era of scientific commitment to global health predicaments”.

Much of the criticisms on the Foundation consist on two areas: the Foundation’s choice of investments; and its alleged lack of transparency in governing process.

On the choice of investment, the article points out following issues:

• “The Foundation gave most of its grants to organizations in high-income countries”

• “The grants made by the Foundation do not reflect the burden of disease endured by those in deepest poverty”

• “Important health programmes are being distorted by large grants from the Gates Foundation. In some countries, the valuable resources of the Foundation are being wasted and diverted from more urgent needs”

On the lack of transparency, the article argues that for such an influential investor in global health like the Gates Foundation should not just be governed by the Foundation’s guiding principle #1 - “This is a family foundation driven by the interests and passions of the Gates family.”

The article then proposes five recommendations for the Gates Foundation: Improve governance, increase transparency and accountability, allocate grants to better reflect disease burdens, invest in health systems and research capacity in low income countries and listen and be prepared to engage with others.

The following is a statement released by the Gates Foundation in response:

“We welcome this article and its finding. We try to be very thoughtful about how to target our resources and we constantly seek out feedback from outside experts and stakeholders. In the end, we use our best judgment to determine where our finding can achieve the greatest reductions in health inequity around the world. We are committed to communicating information about our strategy, grants, and results, and are using our website to make it easier to find this information.”

Read The Gates Foundation's Guiding Principles
Read The Gates Foundation's Approach to Giving

What If Women Ran the Wall Street?

Would the world be a better place today if there were not less bankers but rather more bankers with heart; and even a better place with more women bankers with a heart and a soul?  

Indie is one of my good friends in Singapore with whom I can sit and have those wonderful "Bengali adda" moments. Every few months, over a cup of "deshi cha" we philosophise about life, the world, and -- in true Bengali fashion -- criticise almost everything under the sun.



It was on one of those evenings, after a lazy dinner, while having cha, of course, we were trying to "talk" our way into fixing most of the world problems.  All of a sudden, Indie blurted out that she had told her daughter that one profession never to even think about is investment banking -- "those evil bankers." 



Having spent a portion of my career as an investment banker, my defenses came into gear. Yes, some bankers are to be blamed for today's problems, but the world does still needs bankers, just as it needs doctors and lawyers. Maybe the world would be a better place today if there were not less bankers but rather more bankers with heart; and even a better place with more women bankers with a heart and a soul. Remember, I was one. I can attest to it.

It was exactly 20 years ago that I was woken up from a late morning sleep by a telephone call from Morgan Stanley. A senior banker called to congratulate me and to offer me a job as a financial analyst in their corporate finance department in New York. I was ecstatic. In those days, getting an offer from Morgan Stanley truly marked one as a "chosen one." Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were two of the most prestigious investment banks in the Street. They interviewed tens of thousands of students from around the globe and selected only 60 to join their Financial Analyst Program (a two year program to get into the management track of the company.) I was one of those 60. 



Thus, my career as an investment banker began. I was a 21-year old, armed with an undergraduate degree from a prestigious liberal arts college in New England and a passion to change the world. How would Morgan Stanley help me change the world? I did not know, but what I did know was that as a Bangladeshi woman (the first one in the bank's history I was told), I was getting an incredible opportunity to work with some of the smartest people in the world who were shaping the global financial markets (or making a mess out of them -- whichever you prefer.) 

Working in a prestigious white-shoe bank, I hoped I would learn the Midas touch of efficient financial markets that I could bring back to my country. Of course in the process, I could also save a little money to go to graduate school -- that was the added bonus.



That summer between graduation and the start of my new job, I was filled with anticipation. 

Liar's Poker (by a former bond salesman about his experience working on Wall Street) had just come out and was a bestseller. While driving around California with my dear friend Sunita, I read it and everything else I could get my hands on about the new world I would be entering. After all, I had to be prepared -- I would be working with the creme de la creme of the academic institutions. I knew a lot of them would be difficult (jerks, to put it bluntly), but I would survive and thrive. I would be representing my country, my race, and my gender. I had the weight of many people's expectations on my shoulders. Well, if nothing else, I was naïve. 



The first day of work was a day-long orientation session. I, of course, overslept. I got up in a panic, could not get a taxi, missed my turn getting in the crowded subways, and eventually walked into the big orientation hall half an hour late, while Dick Fisher, president of Morgan Stanley, was touting the virtues and discipline of banking. Thus, my fist day got started with some rude stares and shaking of heads. The only redeeming factor of the day was that, in the process of being late -- all sweaty and stressed out -- I met my future husband in the elevator, all calm and collected. It was not really love at first sight, but more shared misery at first glance. Anyway, given that this is supposed to be an article about my professional life, I will skip the romance for now. 



Looking back on that first day, I don't remember much else except the advice one of the directors gave in his speech. He told us that Morgan Stanley was an intense place, and that a lot will be demanded from us. Consequently, he continued, there will be many moments when we will want to burst into tears. And, when that happens, "go to the toilet, flush it and cry; because frankly nobody wants to deal with a crybaby." I thought the man was insane. Well, sadly, that turned out to be one of the sanest suggestions I took away from that day, as I put it to good use more times than I would like to remember over the course of the next two years.



Despite the tears, in general, my time at Morgan Stanley was intellectually stimulating, and it taught me what I had hoped to learn -- how to be a banker. I learned accounting, finance, and the intricacies of capital markets. I also learned what terrible management styles and awful personal lives most bankers had, and how I never wanted to be one of them when I grew up. It was a badge of honour within the Financial Analyst team to work 100-hour weeks and to count how many all-nighters one pulled. The small handful of women in the bank were told that we had to keep up with the "machismo" of the environment if we wanted to "make it." 



It was eye opening to see what the top bankers could get away with if they brought in lucrative deals. I recall one banker who had his phone replaced virtually every week because -- out of rage -- he would regularly throw them against the wall. I also remember brilliant minds like Vikram Pandit (yes, the same one now running Citibank) who could be rude and condescending but who could also solve any problem I might have regarding even the most complicated equity issuance. 



I could write volumes about my time at Morgan Stanley, and maybe one day I should. For now, I have to borrow Dickens' words and sum it up as: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity."



Investment banking truly brings out the best and worst in people. One is pushed to the limit of intelligence, creativity, endurance, and at the same time raw competitiveness. Sports metaphors were a part of nearly every conversation. It was basically a testosterone-driven environment where "sink or swim" was practiced and honoured as a law of the jungle. All this was exacerbated because there were so few women around to bring a different sensibility in the picture. 



A recent survey found that nearly two-thirds of women employed in London's financial markets believe their gender makes it harder for them to succeed. The machismo of the environment makes it difficult for women to climb the banking ladder, and even if they do, there is definitely a glass ceiling that they cannot go beyond. 



Perhaps if more women would stay in this industry, change the macho politics and bring a different sensibility to it, we would not be in the financial mess we are in today. In recent World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, there was a pretty broad consensus among the participants that if Wall Street had been run by women they would have saved the world from the corrosive gambling culture that dominated many a trading room. 



While I did not stay on in Wall Street and fulfill my duty of making the Street a kinder and gentler place (I will leave that to the next generation of women bankers), I did use my banking skills to the fullest in my subsequent careers. I used my financial modeling skills to create growth models at Grameen Bank, my business forecasting acumen at the publishing companies I ran, and my deep financial know-how in starting my own company.



Now my career is coming full circle as I am putting in place the first Social Stock Exchange of Asia. I am making use of what I have learned in the last 20 years of a career that has spanned the social sector, media, academia, and most importantly, banking to create perhaps one of the most important financial platforms for Asia (or the world, for that matter.)



I could not have done this if I had not started my career on Wall Street. Those tears shed in the toilet stall will now help raise money to build toilets for hundreds and thousands of people without proper sanitation in Asia. As a woman, it feels especially good because I not only survived the Street but I am using it to help me change the world. Hats off to all the women bankers -- the world needs us. [Durreen]



This article was first published in The Daily Star. Durreen Shahnaz is the Founder and Chairman of Social Stock Exchange Asia and Head, Program on Social Innovation and Change at the Centre on Asia and Globalisation, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS.

Centralised vs. Decentralised

Tikki Pang, a member of the S.T. Lee Project's Global Health Governance study group and Director, Research Policy & Cooperation at the World Health Organisation (WHO), emailed in few days ago a thought-provoking piece written by David Brooks of The New York Times. The Brooks' article addresses global health governance in the current context of the potential swine flue epidemic and the relative merits of a "top-down" centralised response versus a much more "bottom-up", decentralised approach in the context of responding to transnational threats like pandemic.


Swine flu isn’t only a health emergency. It’s a test for how we’re going to organize the 21st century.

In these post-cold war days, we don’t face a single concentrated threat. We face a series of decentralized, transnational threats: jihadi terrorism, a global financial crisis, global warming, energy scarcity, nuclear proliferation and, as we’re reminded today, possible health pandemics like swine flu.

These decentralized threats grow out of the widening spread and quickening pace of globalization and are magnified by it. Instant global communication and rapid international travel can sometimes lead to universal, systemic shocks. A bank meltdown or a virus will not stay isolated. They have the potential to hit nearly everywhere at once. They can wreck the key nodes of complex international systems.

So how do we deal with these situations? Do we build centralized global institutions that are strong enough to respond to transnational threats? Or do we rely on diverse and decentralized communities and nation-states?

A couple of years ago, G. John Ikenberry of Princeton wrote a superb paper making the case for the centralized response. He argued that America should help build a series of multinational institutions to address global problems. The great powers should construct an “infrastructure of international cooperation ... creating shared capacities to respond to a wide variety of contingencies.”

If you apply that logic to the swine flu, you could say that the world should beef up the World Health Organization to give it the power to analyze the spread of the disease, decide when and where quarantines are necessary and organize a single global response.

If we had a body like that, we wouldn’t be seeing the sort of frictions that are emerging from today’s decentralized approach. Europe has offended the U.S. by warning its citizens not to travel across the Atlantic. Ukraine is restricting pork imports. Europe could hoard flu vaccines, leaving the U.S., which has only one manufacturing plant, high and dry. Fear of a pandemic could lead to a restrictionist race, as nations compete to curtail movement and build walls.

Those dangers are all real. Yet, so far, that’s not the lesson of this crisis. The response to swine flu suggests that a decentralized approach is best. This crisis is only days old, yet we’ve already seen a bottom-up, highly aggressive response.

In the first place, the decentralized approach is much faster. Mexico responded unilaterally and aggressively to close schools and cancel events. The U.S. has responded with astonishing speed, considering there are still few illnesses and just one hospitalization.

The Times published a photo on Monday of the New York City health commissioner, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, leading a crisis response meeting. The photo is the very image of a focused, local response. People are wearing polo shirts and casual wear — intensely concentrating on the concrete incidents in their own backyard.

If the response were coordinated by a global agency, those local officials would not be so empowered. Power would be wielded by officials from nations that are far away and emotionally aloof from ground zero. The institution would have to poll its members, negotiate internal differences and proceed, as all multinationals do, at the pace of the most recalcitrant stragglers.

Second, the decentralized approach is more credible. It is a fact of human nature that in times of crisis, people like to feel protected by one of their own. They will only trust people who share their historical experience, who understand their cultural assumptions about disease and the threat of outsiders and who have the legitimacy to make brutal choices. If some authority is going to restrict freedom, it should be somebody elected by the people, not a stranger.

Finally, the decentralized approach has coped reasonably well with uncertainty. It is clear from the response, so far, that there is an informal network of scientists who have met over the years and come to certain shared understandings about things like quarantining and rates of infection. It is also clear that there is a ton they don’t understand.

A single global response would produce a uniform approach. A decentralized response fosters experimentation.

The bottom line is that the swine flu crisis is two emergent problems piled on top of one another. At bottom, there is the dynamic network of the outbreak. It is fueled by complex feedback loops consisting of the virus itself, human mobility to spread it and environmental factors to make it potent. On top, there is the psychology of fear caused by the disease. It emerges from rumors, news reports, Tweets and expert warnings.

The correct response to these dynamic, decentralized, emergent problems is to create dynamic, decentralized, emergent authorities: chains of local officials, state agencies, national governments and international bodies that are as flexible as the problem itself.

Swine flu isn’t only a health emergency. It’s a test for how we’re going to organize the 21st century. Subsidiarity works best.


This article "Globalism Goes Viral" by David Brooks was published in The New York Times on 28 April 2009.

Best foreign affairs / politics movies

Stephen Walt of Harvard University has listed his favourite top ten movies on "foreign affairs / politics" in the latest issue of FOREIGN POLICY.

Here is my list of top five:

5. The Last Emperor
4. The Motorcycle Diaries
3. East / West
2. The Lives of Others
1. The Great Escape

And the honorable mention goes to: Team America (The Dear Leader carried this movie! Watch him singing "I am so ronry" and Hans Blix's "very very brief" meeting with the Dear Leader.

What's on your list? [Sung]

Difference between global governance and global government

CAG Director Ann Florini explains the difference between "global government" and "global governance," intergovernmental organizations such as the UN, and the role and achievements of civil society and transnational networks, particularly on environmental issues.

















[RELEVANT READING]

Ann's 15 April 2009 interview with The Straits Times "Asia is opening up, slowly".

"The seemingly opaque world of Asian governments is anything but that these days as several are trying to open up to scrutiny. Asia is a hotbed of experiments in this area."

Building knowledge on transparency innovations

Significant global trends are combining to make transparency and disclosure regulation one of the most important and exciting areas in which government and civil society can be working to transform and strengthen local governance structures.

Not only are advances in electronic and digital communications enabling people to access information that governments may not want publicized; ideas and norms have fundamentally shifted. It is increasingly expected across societies that “good” governments are transparent and open, and practitioners are also actively recognising that transparency can be a useful regulatory tool to improve performance across a range of governance sectors, from economic issues to environmental, health, and corruption concerns.

From March 4-6, 2009, The Asia Foundation and the Centre on Asia and Globalisation (CAG) of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore jointly hosted an International Workshop on Transparency and Access to Information. The event brought together academics, civil society members, and government officials from China, Vietnam, India, Korea, Mexico, Singapore, and the United States, to discuss ongoing innovations and challenges in the use of transparency regulation in strengthening local governance.

The workshop afforded opportunity for remarkably open discussion on the approaches and obstacles for transparency regulations that spanned the whole policy-making process. For example, at the policy drafting stage, the Vietnam National Assembly has agreed to include an Access to Information law into the 2009 legislative agenda and assigned the Ministry of Justice to head the drafting committee, with the expectation for the law to be promulgated in 2010. At the implementation stage, China’s Open Government Information (OGI) regulation came into force on May 1, 2008, and efforts are ongoing to implement the regulation at the local level. And on the enforcement and sustainability question, countries such as Korea and Mexico have had access to information laws in place for over a decade, placing them in a position of being able to share plentiful lessons in implementation and efforts at improvement over time.

The diversity of country experiences gathered in Singapore made for some intense discussion on the wide-ranging approaches to enacting transparency regulations. For example, India’s remarkable transparency law was the result of a sustained and extremely widespread campaign carried out by a vast network of civil society groups across the country. China’s OGI regulation, in contrast, evolved from a combination of sustained experiments by local governments, on the one hand, and central level legislative commitment on the other.

The workshop saw participants engaging in lively discussion on the various roles of government, civil society, and academia in advancing the use and understanding of transparency as a governance tool. Some emphasized that civil society demand for information is crucial to the successful practice and implementation of access to information laws and regulations, and underscored the need for civil society to be constantly vigilant and to act as a check against the government. Others placed greater store on the need to have stronger government leadership and political will to drive reform and overcome the myriad of vested interests within the system, to create an effective system of disclosure, and transform the mindsets of public officials. Still other participants commented that it would be important to debunk some of the common myths and misconceptions leading to fears about the potentially destabilizing effects of government openness. Academia plays an important role in this process, in building up research projects that rigorously investigate the relationship between transparency regulations, and governing performance.

Participants also tackled the relationship between transparency regulations and democracy. It was pointed out that in Mexico, a gradual and steady process of democratization led to transparency being viewed as an important component of the democratic system. Some argued that transparency can only flourish in a culture where the principle of transparency is tightly coupled with the democratic notion of access to information as an individual right.

On the other hand, it was also argued that transparency regulations can work across a wide range of political environments. For example, in Vietnam a surprisingly vibrant media and the growing importance of public opinion in the country’s political, economic, and social life are energizing the call for greater transparency and access to information. One presenter suggested a few broad guiding principles for the enactment of successful transparency laws: First, the laws should be compatible with the existing political environment; second, the law has to benefit public officials as well as the people, so that there are proper incentives for successful implementation; and third, implementation efforts should involve participation from civil society and the media.

The workshop saw substantive discussion on the challenges of implementation. It was noted that there are several challenges lying ahead for the implementation of the OGI regulation in China. Particular attention was given to the initial efforts being done by the Legislative Affairs Office of Hunan Province, with technical support from The Asia Foundation.

In general, participants noted a wide range of challenges on the implementation front. First, challenges can arise from a culture of secrecy within the government and bureaucracy, and a lack of political will and commitment. Second is the challenge of having adequate resources, building the proper systems and procedures for archiving, record-keeping and disclosure, and training for public servants. Third is to establish consistency between new disclosure regulations and existing laws, particularly secrecy laws. Fourth, it is critical to generate sufficient awareness within the government bureaucracy and publicly across business and society. Without outside pressure and demand for information, the government faces little incentive to implement disclosure systems properly.

Moving forward, workshop participants raised a wide-ranging set of research and programmatic agendas for potential future collaboration. There was an enthusiastic reception to the idea of forming global networks between academic institutions, civil society organizations, and governments to promote long-term sharing of knowledge and learning in transparency that can help create awareness and build norms across sectors.

Participants were also keenly interested in the development of indicators for assessing the performance of transparency initiatives. It is clear that the issue of transparency and governance is a topic of great relevance to Asia’s development. As countries from India to Vietnam to China continue to experiment with different approaches to transparency, it is likely that we will be witnessing significant innovations coming from the region. [Yeling]

Yeling Tan is The Asia Foundation’s Consultant in Singapore. She can be reached at ytan@asiafound.org.

Inadequacies of the status quo

Professor Tommy Koh is Ambassador-At-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore, Chairman of the Institute of Policy Studies at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and the National Heritage Board. Professor Koh shares his views on key trends in global governance, how should Asia and Southeast Asia be more engaged in global governance, what to expect from Obama Administration and finally the EU’s role in global governance.


Q. What are your assessments of the key trends shaping global governance?

The first key trend is the speed, breadth and depth of globalization. We have become inter-connected and, to varying degrees, inter dependent. What happens in one part of the world will have an impact on other parts of the world. The current global financial and economic crisis started in Wall Street and in the US, but, it spread very quickly, across the Atlantic, to Europe, and then to the rest of the world. So, because of globalization, an American crisis has become a global crisis.

The second key trend is that many of our global challenges cannot be solved by any single country, no matter how powerful, or by a group of like-minded countries. They can only be solved by all the countries of the world, working together. Take global warming and climate change as an example. It is a problem which cannot be solved by the US alone or by a group of like-minded States comprising the US, Europe and Japan. It can only be solved by a new international consensus, supported by all the countries of the world, including China and India.

The third key trend is the growing deficit between the world’s need for global governance and the inadequacies of the status quo. I am glad that the LKY School has launched the ST Lee Project to address this problem.


Q. How is global governance conceived in Southeast Asia and what role can this region play in global governance?

Southeast Asia is one of the most globalized regions of the world. It is a region which does not reject globalization but welcomes it. It seeks to harness the opportunities presented by the bright side of globalization and to cope with the challenges released by the dark side.

The region plays a positive and pro-active role in global governance through its regional organization, ASEAN, and through other regional organizations, such as, ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN+3, the East Asia Summit and through such inter-regional forums as APEC, the Asia-Europe Meeting, Forum of East Asia and Latin-America and the Asia-Middle East Dialogue.

ASEAN also plays an active role at the global level, at the UN, WTO, WHO, IMO, ICAO, UNEP, etc. ASEAN is aware of the deficit in global governance. It will work cooperatively with other regions of the world to reduce and, if possible, erase that deficit.


Q. What contributions can Asia make to global governance?

Asia is a major beneficiary of globalization. Asia is also a region of growing prosperity. Asia must, therefore, behave as a responsible stakeholder and not as a free rider. What does “responsibility” mean?

First, it means that Asia should be generous in sharing its wealth, knowledge, expertise and experience with other less developed regions of the world. Japan’s generous ODA is a laudable example. The current efforts by China and India to help Africa develop its infrastructure is another example.

Second, Asia should shoulder a larger burden in helping the world to maintain international peace and security, such as, in peace-keeping missions.

Third, Asia should contribute leadership and intellectual capital to global governance. It is not enough for Asia to contribute money, eg “cheque book diplomacy” or provide “arms and legs”, eg sending troops to UN peace-keeping missions. We must also provide the world with Asian leadership and Asian ideas.


Q. What role would you like the US to play in global governance in our multi-polar world?

I think the Obama Administration would probably agree that we no longer live in a unipolar world. The world has become increasingly multi-polar. It is, however, also true that not all the poles are equally powerful. The US is, in every respect, the most powerful country in the world. Whether you love or hate the US, you will probably agree that the US is the indispensable leader of the world. Few enterprises will succeed without the participation and support of the US.

My vision is for the US to return to its historic role of world leader. My hope is that the US will seek to translate its overwhelming power into moral leadership; that the US will lead but not dictate; that it will respect international law and international institutions; and that it will resort to the use of force only as the last resort. The US leads best when it leads by example.


Q. What is your view on Europe’s role in global governance?

Europe suffers from a bad press in Asia. There is inadequate appreciation in Asia of the miracle which the EU represents. One only has to compare Europe in the two halves of the 20th Century to understand my point.

The EU is an expanding oasis of peace and prosperity in Europe. Europe is not a fortress but is open to the world. When drafting the ASEAN Charter in 2007, my colleagues and I often looked to the EU for inspiration. Europe has an important leadership role in all aspects of global governance and not just in setting new norms. Let me give some examples of the kind of leadership which we would like to see more of. The former President of Finland, Maarti Ahtisaari, brought peace to Aceh. The EU and ASEAN provided observers to oversee the process of disarmament and reconciliation. Another European, Pascal Lamy, is head of the WTO and is driving the desperate quest for a successful conclusion to the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations. The EU took the initiative to propose the convening of the G20 Summit, in Washington, in September 2008, to address the global financial and economic crisis.

The EU also took the initiative to convince the UN Security Council to authorize the use of naval power to combat the Somali pirates preying on ships off the Gulf of Aden. I therefore believe that Europe has played and will continue to play a constructive leadership role in global governance.


This interview was first published in the February 2009 edition of Rapporteur - CAG Newsletter.

Creating Social Stock Exchange Asia

My phone beeps. I forgot to put my mobile phone on silent mode. I am thoroughly embarrassed because I am sitting in the first of hopefully many important meetings with the officials of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. We are discussing the merits of situating a Social Stock Exchange in Singapore. I cannot resist -- I glace down at my phone under the table and see that the text message is from the company registration board telling me that the registration of Social Stock Exchange Asia (SSXA) has been approved.

I am ecstatic. I have been on pins and needles because the registration took several weeks to process (as opposed to the 24 hours it usually takes to register a company in Singapore.) I had worried that this was because the only other exchange in the country is the Singapore Stock Exchange, partly owned by the government. Needless to say, even the mere registration of SSXA had the potential to raise a few eyebrows.

Raised eyebrows aside, the fact remains that on March 20, 2009, SSXA was created to provide a capital market for social good. This indeed is the start of a new era and an apt response to the financial greed that gripped most of the developed world for the past several decades. The best part is that SSXA has the potential to be the sensible Asian response to the Western mayhem and bring social consciousness to the forefront of global financial markets.

Creating a Social Stock Exchange is indeed a lofty goal; but I cannot aim at anything less lofty. Exactly ten years ago, I created my first social purpose company, oneNest. It was an idea that germinated from my time at Grameen Bank when I saw many micro-entrepreneurs struggling due to lack of market access for their products. These entrepreneurs needed more than access to credit, they needed help managing the supply chain. Grameen Bank ultimately recognized this and eventually responded by creating Grameen Check and Grameen Shamogri.

A few years later when the twists and turns of life gave me the opportunity to start a company, I reached back to my Grameen days and created a market place where I brought together, on the one hand, thousands of microcredit borrowers and cooperatives creating beautiful handmade personal and household products with, on the other hand, luxury catalog companies, boutiques and department stores in the Western market. I ran and grew oneNest and eventually sold it (granted I had very little control of the company by the end -- but that is another story). However, the thought always nagged me that I could not do enough for the disadvantaged millions of the world. I had to do more. Now is my second chance.

What will SSXA do? Simply put, it will increase access to capital for enterprises with a social mission. On a bigger scale, it will help social enterprises further develop the professionalism of their operations and create a whole ecosystem around it to support social enterprises – some of which is already in the works. SSXA will be Asia’s first social stock exchange, providing a trading platform and an efficient capital raising mechanism for Asian Social Enterprises (SEs), including both for-profit and not-for-profit entities with a social mission. SSXA will connect these SEs with impact investors seeking to achieve both a social return and an economic return on their investment while providing capital to fund innovative social businesses. This platform will also enable philanthropic donations.

Such an exchange will bring all the relevant players in the ecosystem together, speaking the same language and assisting one another in creating greater social good. It will encourage the governments, civil societies, academics, investment banks, research companies, auditing bodies and social enterprises to agree on a framework to measure social value, common terminology, transparency, and social and financial goals.

Social enterprises seeking to list shares or bonds on the exchange will go through proper social and financial auditing (third party validation) and report regularly to investors on both their social and financial results. Investors purchasing shares and bonds on the exchange will be attracted by the transparent disclosure of social returns and will evaluate companies based on both their social and financial returns. They will understand that a social enterprise may not maximize its earnings due to the cost associated with fulfilling its social mission. And they will be willing to accept a limited financial return in order to support this mission. Of course, given the current dismal state of the market for profit-maximizing businesses, any economic return topped with a social return may feel like a windfall to an investor.

Social investors are an emerging group of investors in the financial market. In Europe, and especially in the UK, they are a rapidly growing group which initially focused on Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) but now includes many investors focused on investing in social enterprises and social purpose businesses. These investors comprise of private investors, high net worth individuals, family offices, investment funds and charitable foundations with the common thread being that they seek double bottom line returns (ie, social and financial returns) from their investments. Given the current financial climate, more and more charities are also leaning towards ‘mission-related investment’ as well. In the UK alone, there are now over 25 billion pounds dedicated to socially responsible investment.

In Asia, the social investor pool is smaller, but growing. Bodies such as UNPRI (United Nations Principles for Responsible Investing) and ASRIA (Association for Socially Responsible Investing in Asia) are actively promoting the notion of socially responsible investing. A number of family offices and wealthy individuals in Asia are also focused on social investment. Much of the interest so far has been focused on microfinance institutions. In addition, Islamic banking has been very active in South East Asia in promoting their unique brand of responsible investing. SSXA will push the envelope on the existing socially responsible investing, bring forward social enterprises and social purposes companies (in addition to microfinance) in energy, water/sanitation, media, fair-trade, health, education, and cottage industry and bring to the attention of these investors a whole new set of enterprises which would not have been noticed otherwise.

Such a platform/exchange cannot be created overnight. It will take years before SSXA is a robust trading platform. However, with the proper assistance and support from other members of the social investing ecosystem, it can become the cornerstone of a potentially very large social enterprise economy. Given the current economic climate, I have to say, organizations and government bodies are ready to pause and listen. I thank them for that. As more players embrace the idea of SSXA, each will become a crucial part of a peaceful revolution in the making. [Dureen]


Dureen Shahnaz is Founder of Social Stock Exchange Asia and Head of Programme on Social Innovation and Change at the Lee Kuan Yew Schoool of Public Policy, National University of Singapore

Two Old Presidents and Barrack Obama

Deep into January 2001, two children of former presidents took their oath. George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States, and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the 14th President of the Philippines.

Both assumed their office in a cloud of legitimacy. He lost the popular vote to Al Gore, but after a protracted legal struggle in those unceasing Florida recounts, was awarded the presidency by five Supreme Court judges. She assumed hers through a second round of people power uprising, after which the unanimous pronouncement of twelve Philippine Supreme Court judges granted the Constitutional certainty of her ascension.

An egg pelted George W. Bush limousine on the way to the inaugural site. He raised his hand on the Capitol steps in Washington with thousands of protestors carrying placards that read, “Hail to the Thief!”

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo raised hers at the Edsa shrine amidst a jubilant middle-class citizenry who congratulated themselves yet again for another presidential ouster. Meanwhile the poorer classes who awarded Joseph Estrada a landslide victory in the 1998 elections stayed away, sneering and hissing at the spectacle of a stolen presidency.

He had eight inaugural balls the night before his inaugural, all of them black-tie events. Hers was a four-day street party of savvy texters. Drunk with triumph, the urbanite protestors gyrated along the ten- kilometer stretch of Edsa to the music of the Ouster Band.

He is known to falter in the English language. The Brits call him “The English Patient” for the way he so badly needs remedial lessons. He massacres the words “nuclear” and “trepidation,” and could barely remember the names of heads of state during televised debates with his opponent. While Americans were nervous about having a “mentally-challenged” President, Filipinos were secure in the competence, at least linguistically, of theirs. After all, she has a PhD in Economics.

On the day America celebrated its new President, the weather sucked. It was bitterly cold in Washington on inaugural night of January 20th 2001. Rain had become snow. The next morning the new President woke up to a nasty winter storm.

At the other wide of the world on Saturday noon of January 20th 2001, the sun was brilliant and warm when Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo became the 14th president of the Philippines. The middle class of Metro Manila celebrated the triumph of another Edsa, their bodies standing tall, their hearts feeling stout again.

Fast forward to January 20, 2009, eight years to the exact same day. It’s bitingly cold in Washington DC, but the day is bright with the sun out. Somewhat like people power in Manila, an estimated two million people came to view the inaugural of the first African-American president, Barack Obama, except that this one stands solidly and firmly on Constitutional foundations. No pelting eggs, no booing, no hissing but a whole lot of cheering and clapping.

At a little past noon, the country definitively closed the page on the Bush presidency and opened a new one. The world watched the fifth youngest US president step into the most powerful office with an aura of near-invincibility, while Aretha Franklin sang as though her voice had been honed through many years of song for this one musical moment.

What makes presidential winners finally deserving of their office is not what they bring to the campaign but what they deliver to the electorate at the moment of their victory. Candidate Obama has won, and President Obama he has become. With his victory is the transformation of the nation itself, with aspirations bigger and better than all the different sentiments of the citizens combined.

Colin Powell aptly described Barack Obama as a “transformational figure.” Beyond this outstanding description lies a sense of deep faith shared by all, Americans and non-Americans alike, that the world can be re-made and that people can make better choices. Two million people stood outside to testify to this faith. Several millions more watched on television, as if the world was experiencing a Durkheimian “collective efflorescence”

Barack Obama embodies this faith. This was the source of his easy victory. To move us all along forward, resolutely. To forge ahead despite the burdens of an economic recession and a dangerous world with two raging wars. To wear power and strength, but graciously, much like the African adage that was Theodore Roosevelt’s favorite: “carry a big stick, but speak softly.”
The true task of the presidency, I submit, is a firm and resolute commitment to it, to ensure that the sacredness and sanctity that citizens have imbued the office with are preserved, if not expanded. Presidents become enlarged persons when wearing presidential shoes, because they are expected to assume bigger-than-life proportions. They must be transcendent of narrow desires and ambitions, free of the pettiness and vulgarity that grips ordinary people. President Obama is America’s redemption and America’s pride.

Meanwhile, two other presidents on opposite sides of the world --- one ex, the other an incumbent --- are competing for the title of the Most Unpopular President.

He’s back in Texas and hasn’t been heard from. No one from the global media seems to think it worthwhile to do a post-mortem.

She’ll still be around for another sixteen months. Filipinos have suffered her this long; perhaps it’s worth the wait, just to avoid another constitutional row. That’s assuming she doesn’t concoct some legal maneuver to prolong her stay. Which might mean another people power uprising, and thus elevate the practice as the country’s national pastime.

Like America, I prefer to keep my faith. [Tess]


This article was first published in Globalnation.inquier.com

Witnessing a movement

Like many Bangladeshis living overseas, I was energised by the US election, which produced a remarkable president and, as importantly, mobilised the young and old like no other political event in recent history.

Was it possible for such an election to occur in Bangladesh? I was sceptical. But, I flew to Bangladesh with hopes of being a part of history in the making. Thankfully, my scepticism was proven wrong. What I experienced was far beyond my fondest imagination.

On returning home and embarking on election work, I not only witnessed a remarkably orderly election process, but also had the feeling that it was just the most recent manifestation of a movement that is gripping the nation. I witnessed that the citizens cared about the election and wanted to make a difference through their votes.

Like my fellow citizens, I got swept into the wave of optimism and felt that anything was possible. Only when I stepped out of this wave did I realise that what I had experienced was a movement, a powerful movement that none of our political parties could have imagined gripping the nation after years of political, social and economic abuse of the people.

While I was basking in the warm glow from the excitement of the election process, I had another reason to feel good as I saw that the new cabinet would contain four women ministers. For the first time, our politicians realised that we needed women more than just as figureheads of the political parties.

Dr. Dipu Moni, whom I had the chance to meet a few weeks ago on the campaign trail, is the new foreign minister. My “chance meeting” with Dr. Moni took place in Chandpur at a Mukho Mukhi program organised by Shujon (Shushashoner Jonnyo Nagorik). This and many other Shujon programs gave me opportunities to meet the candidates.

As a proud participant in Shujon's democratic process, I sent Dr. Moni a congratulatory text message. Just think about thisI, an ordinary citizen, had the chance to actually speak with a potentially powerful candidate and then text her. If this is not a sign of a powerful new movement, I don't know what is.

There were a number of organisations that can take credit for bringing this new voice to the people. The social enterprises and not-for-profit organisations played their role in uplifting and empowering Bangladeshis over the past several decades. In this election, however, this empowerment was put to practice by entities like Shujon. Shujon collected information on all 1500+ candidates and organised over 80 Mukho Mukhi programs.

As a witness to the process, I can definitely say that Shujon's process of disseminating information and publicising its message of electing the “clean and right candidates” influenced many thousands of voters. My congratulations and gratitude to the more than a hundred thousand volunteers who worked tirelessly to make this process possible.

While the Americans celebrate the beginning of a successful grassroots movement initiated by a charismatic leader, we need to celebrate Bangladesh's successful grassroots movement initiated by its citizens. There was no one leader or party that mobilised the citizens. It was the people themselves.

Platforms like Mukho Mukhi allowed the people to speak up. In gatherings of several thousand people, women got up and asked the candidates what they would do for women, young people asked about job opportunities, and young/old all asked how clean the candidates would be. They were making clear to the candidates that they must serve the people.

This fire of citizen movement that has been ignited needs to be nurtured and developed. If not dealt with carefully, such a fire can become uncontrollable or die. The winning party not only has to live up to its election mandates but also has to listen to the millions of voices across the nation. In the US, President Obama's team is keeping the fire of his movement burning by creating “Organizing America.” We need to do the same.

Shujon, along with similar organisations, will continue to push along the democratic system by promoting: accountalibility of the elected officials; decentralised governance; grassroot participation in democracy; women's, children's and minority rights; youth involvement; and self reliance. However, all political parties need to become a part of this process.

The new government needs to work with community leaders to empower the citizens and mobilise them for good governance, social justice, clean politics and correct policies. It should with start communicating with the people.

Perhaps our leaders can take a page from the Obama book and keep the line of communication open with the people. Dr. Moni, I am looking forward to your response to my text to you! [Durreen]


This article was first published in The Daily Star.

Building global governance around the human being

This is a transcrip of speech by Minister for Foreign Affairs of Singapore, George Yeo at the 2008 S.T. Lee Project on Global Governance Conference, 4-6 December in Singapore.

First let me thank Kishore for inviting me here this evening to join you for a discussion on global governance. I feel very honoured to be paired with Strobe Talbott, whose speech I enjoyed very much. A few weeks ago, Ann Florini sent me his book – The Great Experiment - which I dipped into with pleasure. He had a section on gypsies which I really enjoyed reading. It reminded me of a conversation I had with a Roman Cardinal some years ago when I was in Rome attending the canonisation of the Opus Dei founder Josemaría Escrivá. The cardinal said that John Paul II had not too long before, canonised a gypsy saint; and St Peters square was flooded with gypsies. But this time in a role which most Italians were not used to seeing. The Roman Cardinal said to the gypsy leader: “Now that you have your own saint you have got to behave better.” The manner in which he narrated this story to me showed first, recognition of the problem, then a challenge to better behaviour but, most importantly, love, profound love. Reading Strobe Talbott’s account of the gypsies in his book, how he sought them out in order to understand better, I thought that this is a man with a heart. I had not met Strobe before and am very proud to be joining him this evening for this discussion on global governance, which must always put human beings at the heart of what we are trying to do.

There are almost infinite ways in which human beings can be organised. That is the study of history, and gypsies who are unrooted in geography are an example. For the first time, more than any other time in history on this planet, we are all bound together. Yet at the same time, each community, it could be a nation or tribe, has centuries if not thousands of years of legacy transmitted through its cultural DNA, which is very difficult to change. There was a time in Australia when they thought that they could pole-vault the aborigines into the 20th Century by taking the young away from their parents and then educating them in a modern environment. The result was an absolute tragedy. We do not quite know how the cultural DNA is transmitted from mother to child. We know it takes a village to raise a human being. In ways, we do not fully understand, the cultural transmission is tenacious. When we talk about globalisation, we are talking about the way in which we bring different complex operating systems together. It is like the internet. The internet was an ARPA discovery. That by each operating system accepting a certain protocol, TCP/IP, different systems could interconnect even though they have different legacies and different deep programmes. Built upon this, through hyperlinks, we could communicate as if we belonged to a common system. In some ways, this is what globalisation is. Through common rules, such as those of the UN, rules of warfare, rules of human conduct, rules of trade in WTO, rules of financial management in BIS, and so on, different countries and different systems are able to come together resulting in a greater division of labour and greater productivity for humanity as a whole.

The recent financial crisis is a crisis of that hyperlink, or an aspect of that hyperlink. The global imbalance - so much has been written about it, this is not the subject which I am going to talk about tonight. Except that the financial crisis is a problem of the higher system which links us all together. Strobe talked about President Bush convening the G-20 meeting to address the problem, of this hyperlink or the hyper net. But if you look deeper into it, stripped of all the extraneous aspects, the core relationship in the 21st Century is the relationship between the US as the world’s sole superpower today and China as an emergent superpower. I am not discounting the importance of Europe, Russia, Japan, Brazil or India – after all we are talking about the multi-polar reality this century - but the core is the Sino-US relationship. If we get that right, I believe the other poles can be fitted in and the global system can run reasonably effectively. But if that nexus between the US and China is broken, there is no way we can put the global system together. Whether it is a problem of proliferation or climate change or financial stability, without the US-China nexus, it cannot work.

This evening, I would like to talk about this critical relationship in global governance - the Sino-US relationship. These two countries, China and US constitute very different operating systems. Singapore is a point, a city state and we take the world as it is. We do not try to change the world because we cannot change the world. But, we got to adapt to it and live by arbitraging differences in systems, cultures and so on. We are three-quarters Chinese, so we have a certain familiarity with the Chinese system but we were established by the British East India Company. We use English as our common language for communication. Our legal system, our administrative systems, are all Anglo-Saxon in origin. There is a lot of the Anglo-Saxon world in us. When we deal with the Chinese, we switch to our Chinese channel, when we deal with the Americans; we switch to our American channel. We do this almost instinctively because we are taught at a young age to adjust to different groups and different combinations of groups. This is really what defines Singapore - our multi-channel characteristic.

But going back to China, to what it is, and why it is so different from the US. China is China. China is a highly evolved civilisation which is almost impossible for any individual or group of individuals to change rapidly. Mao Zedong in his final days said he achieved very little. This was by his own admission. China has a tradition, what Fairbanks called the Great Tradition, which is persistent and enduring. Some years ago, when I was Minister for Heritage and Information on a visit to China, I asked to see Mao Zedong's hometown Shaoshan in Hunan. I visited the museum which had the usual political presentation. But next to the museum was the Mao ancestral temple which to me was far more interesting. In front of me, on the high altar, tablets of the most important forebears, an urn with incense burning, and Mao was on that altar.

Recently when I had dinner with a cousin from my ancestral village in southern China, we were talking about the Hakkas, you know Lee Kuan Yew is a Hakka, and an important town in Guangdong is Meixian where Ye Jianying, came from. Ye Jianying was the man who protected Deng Xiaoping from the Gang of Four so that after Mao died, he could be resurrected, and his leadership changed China. He told me that if you visit Ye’s ancestral temple, you would find many great men in that family tree. It is a glorious ancestral temple.

A few years ago I went back to my ancestral temple. They were re-opening one branch and I had to do the ceremonies. I could not say no because it would look very bad if I were to deny them that honour, if I were to decline their invitation. After the ceremony I asked to record the names of my children in the ancestral book. When I said “My daughter's name is . . . “, they said "Oh, girls do not have to be recorded, only your sons". My sister who was with me grumbled "You see, when they want money, they contact you, when it comes to recording who you are, they ignore the girls". But the daughters-in-law are a separate matter. I have a nephew whose daughter-in-law is British, and they wanted her name. They said "What's her name?" “Jane Goodall.” “How do you write it?” "J,a, ". They wrote it down letter by letter. Sons and the wombs bearing sons are recorded. Throughout Southern China, despite all the official talk about Communism and so on, an ancient tradition is coming back with amazing force. Every Chinese Minister, every State Councillor, every Vice-Premier, every member of the Standing Committee is being claimed by his ancestral temple because it brings honour to the ancestors, it brings honour to the progeny. Listening to Hu Jintao in recent years, he talks about a harmonious society and you notice they downplay the dictatorship of the proletariat and the class struggle. They have gone back to Confucius now. This Confucian aspect of Chinese society is deep in the cultural DNA and not something which can be willed away. Yes, when you're trying to overthrow the emperor or government, you debunk Confucius but when they re-establish power, they bring it back.

China is a country, indeed it is a civilisation, with a deep sense of itself. Every dynasty considers it a duty to record the history of the previous dynasty, and over the centuries, 24 official histories had been written, astonishing in its accuracy with respect to names, events and geography but always exaggerating triumphs and failures. Today, the history of Southeast Asia, the history of many parts of the world including India and Central Asia, would not be a fraction of what it is without reference to the Chinese records. The last Chinese dynasty was the Qing dynasty which ended in 1911. It is only a few years ago that the PRC decided to write the official history of the Qing dynasty. After close to a hundred years! Li Lanqing, the Vice-Premier, spoke to the scholars and the historians before they embarked on this exercise: “Collect the material - local sources, provincial sources, foreign sources - but do not be too quick to draw conclusions”. This is an instinct or a worldview which no other civilisation has. The Chinese have no desire to convert a non-Chinese into Chinese. They are like the Jews, if you not born one, that is okay, there is no requirement for you to become one. But for precisely this reason the Chinese have a view of the world which sees globalisation in terms of China at the centre, and China's relationships with other countries individually. The idea of a melange, a complex network with multiple nodes, is something not comfortable to the Chinese. This is in stark contrast to the American view of the world.

The first time I was in China to visit my grandparents, I went with my parents. My experience was a deeply emotional one. It was the only time in my life when I kept a daily diary. When last year I read Obama's book Dreams from my Father, going through his last chapter on his visit to Kenya, I felt a strong resonance. Obama felt he had to go back to find out where he came from, the way I felt I had to go back to find out where I came from. It is emotionally entangling because you have all these relatives and obligations, elders who make claims on you which you resented but which you felt you have to oblige to a degree because it is expected of you. Then when you left, you felt a certain relief but also feeling a compulsion to come back from time to time. And a few years later, I brought my wife, after I got married, to see my grandparents.

Obama brought his wife back to see his roots in Kenya. For that reason, he is a very unusual person because of his background. He said when he went back to the US, he felt a certain liberation. And indeed Asians visiting the US breathe fresh air because it is a country which downplays tradition. You can be who you are, you can express your views freely, and you are under not too many obligations. Every time I visit the US, I try to visit heritage sites in New England, Monticello, Mount Vernon and Philadelphia, reading the speeches of the founding fathers, the deliberations that led to the founding of the republic and the writing of the Constitution. They are deeply inspiring, because here were a group of men, people who left Europe, who were persecuted in Europe, arriving on a new continent determined to create human society afresh. In Obama's speeches, you hear echoes of the founding fathers. Because the US was conceived in that manner, it has a different culture; it has a missionary spirit, wanting others to be like them. So unlike the Chinese who do not seek to convert you and make you Chinese, Americans want you to become American because it is such a good thing.

If we look at globalisation today, it is really an American construct, the hyperlink - the HTML language, the XML language - is basically an American language. It is expressed in accounting rules, financial rules, the way armies are organised, industrial standards, financial standards and so on. The problem is when the US becomes excessive in this missionary zeal. Political scientists like Kissinger talk about the dual strain in American foreign policy. There is the national interest which defines the foreign policy of all countries, but there is in American foreign policy always an additional strain, a call to an American ideal, a desire to spread the word, to democratise the world. To a point, that is very attractive and to an extent it enables the world to be globalised. But beyond a point, when you start intruding into the deep operating system of particular countries or tribes, it creates problems.

When America goes into Iraq and tries to democratise Iraqi society as if it has no legacy, you have a problem. When it goes into Afghanistan, and tries to overwrite deep tribal instincts, it runs into problems. I was in Iran a few years ago, in 2004 the year after the US moved into Iraq. It was a very interesting visit; I went to Persepolis and had a sense of how the Iranian saw themselves as being an ancient people with a long history. Someone in my delegation on the last day decided to ask the protocol officer who accompanied me a provocative question. He asked him. “If the Americans were to invade Iran, would you fight the Americans?” His reply shocked me. In a loud voice he said, “Fight them? I would lead them in and show them the way.” I was worried for him. He spoke at such a high volume I thought that they would immediately arrest him and throw him into some dark dungeon. In fact if you meet ordinary Iranians, there is a great affection for American culture. Of course, in the establishment, among the elite, there is a strong nationalism that would not buckle to American pressure. American culture can be very attractive, propagated through Hollywood, through its products and services, its brands or the ideas of its founding fathers. But when the US seeks to go beyond that, it finds resistance and limits.

When we talk about global governance and America leading the way, there is no substitute for American leadership because the software linking the world is fundamentally American. The Chinese cannot do that. The Indians cannot do that. The Europeans cannot do that. The Japanese cannot do that. Look at it another way, if one day planet earth were in danger and the only way to preserve the species was to colonise another planet and we draw people from all over the world for that journey. How will human society be organised in that new world? I believe that society is more likely to be like America rather than China, India or Japan. Recently the Chinese had a man walk in space, and being ethnic Chinese, many of us in Singapore felt proud of the achievement. When you watched the people in the Chinese control room cheering, they were all Chinese faces. But when you watch a space launch in the US and observe the people in the control room, they are individuals drawn from all of humanity. If one day there is a Spaceship Enterprise, the Captain can be white, brown, yellow or black and we would not be surprised.

Coming back to the issue of global governance - America has to lead, but America has to lead in a way which acknowledges the diversity of the human family. Whether you are a gypsy or an Australian aborigine or a Chinese or Indian – in fact there are many kinds of Indians - or Arab or Jew, each is profoundly different. Yes, there are similarities which enable us to intercourse like we do this evening. But when it is time to marry off our young, when it is time to conduct funeral rituals, we are different and we have no wish to be the same. Please do not get me wrong when I talk mostly about Sino-US relations. It is not because I am downplaying the importance of Russia, Europe, Japan, India or Brazil or other countries but because I believe in this century that is the single most important relationship to be concerned with.

I would also like to make a brief comment about Islam because I believe Islam is a big challenge to all of us in this century for a variety of reasons. We need more than a seminar or a speech to talk about why Islam is a challenge in this century. Just yesterday, I had a very interesting discussion with the Aga Khan. I was charmed by him. I was so impressed by his sense of humanity and he is the Imam of the Ismaili Shia community! There are 15 million of them in the world. I thought, this is a very different perspective of Islam which we are not used to seeing. For many of us, in many parts of the world, Islam is associated with terrorism, blood and violence, with men wearing turbans and beards. Yes, there is an aspect of Islam which is Salafi, which enabled Muhammed in the 7th Century to unite the tribes of the deserts and steppelands, which many centuries later, also enabled Abdul Aziz Saud to reunite the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula. But that is only one aspect of Islam. There is also the Islam of Samarkand, Bokhara, Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo and Cordoba which represented a great civilization. We are in the middle of a financial crisis. There is so much written about it. I was reflecting on the Muslim proscription against insurance and interest payment. We used to laugh at these strange proscriptions but there is wisdom in them. The underlying concern is about moral hazards when the interests of claimants diverge. When we look at the problem of the financial world today and what led to the crisis, it is because the interests of claimants are opposed. So there is something in Islamic finance which makes a lot of sense. It is important, even as we fight terrorism, to see the achievements of Islam - to celebrate a civilisation which is so well presented in the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, which you can see today in Doha in the new Islamic Centre designed by I M Pei, in the Aga Khan. They enable us to view Islam in perspective and sow greater respect between Muslims and non Muslims. This is very important because, without respect, we cannot deal and, if we do not deal, we suboptimise on the solutions we find.

An Indonesian Minister told me this a few months ago. It was a story that I could not recount earlier because it would be interfering in American domestic politics. He said that at a reception in Washington, he saw Obama whom he knew from before across the room. Obama shouted at him “Assalamu Alaikum” and he replied “Alaikum As-Salam.” I was afraid that if I were to repeat the story during the campaign, it would give credence to internet reports that Obama was a closet Muslim. He is not a Muslim. He expressed that greeting not because he is a Muslim but because he understood the words, may the peace of God be with you. There cannot be a better greeting than that.

When we talk about global governance, when all is said and done, it has to be built around the human being – respect for human beings, respect for the diversity of human beings. I can never forget what the Roman Cardinal told me. He served the Pope as the secretary of the Synod of Bishops. He has passed away now. He told me how he drafted a speech for Pope John Paul II to bishops from around the world, saying the “even though we are different we are one”. The pope said no, it is because we are different that we are one. In other words, before we can love, before we can respect, we must respect the uniqueness of every individual. If we are all the same, something is very wrong. Countries are different, tribes are different, cultures are different, and in global governance, the basic building block must acknowledge that diversity and that difference. But that which binds us all together, that hyperlink, that for a long time will be American in its essence.

Minister George Yeo's speech on Global Governance, Part I, 4 Dec 08 @ Yahoo! Video

Minister George Yeo's speech on Global Governance, Part II, 4 Dec 08 @ Yahoo! Video

A bless in disguise?

Johannes Linn and Colin Bradford of the Brookings Insitution point out in their latest paper titled "Could the Financial Crisis Push Global Governance Reform?" that the Nov 15 economic summit in Washington DC of the heads of state from the G20 industrailised and developing economies could represent a major step toward a new architecture in global financial and economic relations as a first step in global governance reform more broadly.

The Nov 15 summit will be the first ever meeting of G20 countries at head of state level and gives the next president of the United States an opportunity to demonstrate a commitment to the G20 as a better global steering committee than the G7/8. Read full article.


Colin Bradford will take part in the inaugural launch of the S.T. Lee Project on Global Governance conference - a multidisplinary reseach project of the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

Why Asia stays calm in the storm

What does the Asian silence on the financial crisis really mean? Does it mean silent gloating, with a heavy dose of schadenfreude? Does it signify terror that Asian economies will also be blown away? Or does it reflect a sober calculation that calm and steady heads are required in such a storm? Amazingly, in the thousands of words spun in the incestuous western discourse on this crisis, little attention has been paid to Asian views, even though the calm and steady responses of China, India and Japan, the three anchor Asian economies, provide hope that there may be some pillars of stability in the swirling storm.

There is little gloating in Asia, even though some would be justified. In many ways, US and European policymakers are doing the opposite of what they advised Asian policymakers to do in 1997-98: do not rescue failing banks, raise interest rates, balance your budget. Millions of Indonesians and Thais would have been better off if their governments had been permitted to do what western governments are doing now. An apology from the west to Asia would not be inappropriate.

Nor are the Asians terrified. They learnt many valuable lessons from their financial crisis in 1998: do not liberalise the financial sector too quickly, borrow in moderation, save in earnest, take care of the real economy, invest in productivity, focus on education. Hence, while America was busy creating a financial house of cards, Asians focused on their real economies. This explains why the latest International Monetary Fund growth rate estimates for 2008 and 2009 for China are 9.7 and 9.3 per cent; and for India, 7.9 and 6.9 per cent respectively.

Equally importantly, Asian minds have never been captured by the strange ideological belief that markets know best and government should step aside. Most Asian policymakers are puzzled by former US president Ronald Reagan’s statement: “Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Alan Greenspan, former US Federal Reserve chairman, only recently admitted the folly of his ways when he acknowledged that lending institutions could not regulate themselves. By contrast, virtually all Asian governments believe that the virtues of the “invisible hand” in the market have to be balanced by the “visible hand” of good governance. This Asian emphasis on good governance may serve as a real asset in the storm.

In the past, Asian governments expected western counterparts to be role models of good governance. One story illustrates how times have changed. This year, a European banker consulted the Reserve Bank of India to learn how to get a banking licence in India. He was briefed on the conditions and told that the Indian authorities would also assess his regulator. The European banker smiled and said: “No problem. We have excellent regulation.” The Indian officer replied: “After subprime, we are not sure of US regulation; after Northern Rock, British regulation; after Société Générale, French regulation and after UBS, Swiss regulation.” In short, the gold standard that the west assumed it had in the field of regulation has vanished. Asians realise that they must forge their own standard. Fortunately, there will be no rush to overregulate. Tony Tan from the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation said: “We should guard against overregulation and protectionism and a retreat from globalisation.”  His comments reflect an Asian concern: that the Americans and Europeans, hitherto the custodians of the liberal international economic order, will retreat into protectionism. Asian societies also know they are becoming the biggest beneficiaries of globalisation and must assume greater responsibility in stabilising the economic system.

As the world’s greatest emerging economic power, China has acted remarkably responsibly in this crisis. It has received with polite dignity the western bankers coming cap in hand to seek money. It did not remind them that barely a year ago many of the same bankers had castigated it for its conservatism in opening its financial sector. That caution has been vindicated. More importantly, China has continued to buy US Treasury bills at a steady pace to reassure the market it has not lost faith in them.

The Asian governments demonstrated their calm at the Asia-Europe meeting in Beijing last weekend. The premiers of China and India, Wen Jiabao and Manmohan Singh, gave thoughtful speeches. Sadly, the western media barely reported them. Mr Wen emphasised the development of the real economy; Mr Singh said: “In this age of globalisation we have a global economy but it is not supported by a global polity to provide effective governance.” Asian leaders have good ad­vice to offer. The west should pay heed.

While the US and European publics are losing faith in free trade, Asian economies continue to work on free trade agreements. Few westerners are aware China and the Association of South East Asian Nations have concluded an agreement that will create the world’s largest FTA, with 1.7bn people. Japan and India have similar FTAs with Asean. This growing interdependence will act as a pillar of stability and growth for the global economy.

The really good news is that few Asians have lost their optimism about the future. They have no illusions about the crisis but are confident that they remain on the right trajectory to deliver the Asian century. This is why the key Asian economies will react calmly in this storm. Confidence in the future is a great asset in such times.

This article was first published in FINANCIAL TIMES.

Kishore Mahbubani is dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. His new book is titled: The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.

Do Chinese lie?

Charles W. Hayford of AsiaMedia surveys three books: Chinese Characteristics; Americans and Chinese: Passages to Difference, and Lies that Bind: Chinese Truth, Other Truths to illustrate how the discussion of Chinese and Western perceptions of honesty has progressed over time. Read full article in AsiaMedia.

Time for an Asian Social Stock Exchange

As I write this article, the storm in the financial markets continues -- stock markets in Asia, Europe and the US all are going through roller coaster rides, people fear bank runs and governments are pulling together trillion dollars worth of rescue packages. In this sadly crazy historic moment, when every current option is looking bleak and governments are busy cleaning up the private sector mess, perhaps it is a good time to look some distance into the future toward a gleam of hope for a kinder and gentler form of capitalism. My suggestion for that is to put together effective regional 'social stock exchanges' in each continent that can spearhead social good through capital markets. I believe Asia is ripe to take the lead in meeting this challenge.

What is a social stock exchange? It is a stock market where investors who care about social and economic returns buy stocks and bonds of companies that have strong economic and social returns. Interestingly, in a social stock exchange both not-for-profit and for-profit companies can participate. For-profit entities can either issue shares representing ownership in their companies or issue bonds. Meanwhile not-for-profit companies can utilise the stock exchange to issue bonds an action in itself that can bring operational accountability to the not-for-profit sector (as opposed to carte blanch donations from foundations).

Although Professor Muhammad Yunus discusses the idea of a social stock exchange in his latest book, Creating a World Without Poverty, and has been promoting it in lecture circles, the concept is not a new one. There are already several Social Stock Exchanges in operation or in the works, albeit each uniquely different from one another.

BOVESPA in Brazil was the first social stock exchange in the world. It was launched in 2003 with the objective of bringing together non-profit organisations and the social investors who are willing to support their programmes and projects. For BOVESPA investors, the return is solely in 'social profit,' where the investment brings about a more just society with opportunities for the poor and neglected. By providing capital for the non-profit organisations that list on this exchange and the providing social value for the investors who participate in this exchange, BOVESPA aims to change the labeling of non-profit organisations to 'Social Profit Organisations'. So far about 43 Social Profit Organisations have raised capital through this exchange. However, trading of stock in this exchange is still a distant goal.

Europe's answer to social investing is the FTSE4Good. Set up by FT Stock Exchange in London, FTSE4Good is an index for socially responsible investment. The definition of 'socially responsible' for this index is very broad and covers topics such as: working towards environmental sustainability, developing positive relationships with stakeholders, and upholding and supporting universal human rights. There are about 25 companies in this index. Given FTSE financial requirements, these companies are large for-profit entities which in many cases have very tangential effects on positive social change. Their 'social mission' often springs from the defensive posture of CSR rather than from a genuine effort to make positive social impact.

In North America, Green Stock Exchange (GREENSX) is attempting to become the Social Stock Exchange for that continent (and Europe). This Canada-based social stock exchange is aiming to launch by end of the year to trade shares in social businesses. GREENSX's definition of social business is a business that makes a profit but benefits society as well delivering a triple bottom line return (economic, social and environmental return). GREENSX's goal is to provide small green issuers access to public equity capital efficiently while ensuring liquidity for the investors. The success of GREENSX remains to be seen.

There is obviously a budding global interest in the notion of social stock exchange. Recently, Rockefeller Foundation donated $500,000 to the UK government to pay for a feasibility study for a social stock exchange. The Foundation picked UK as the site for the feasibility study because of the UK government's support for social enterprises. Existing UK government initiatives include legal reforms for separate incorporation for social businesses and plans for a social investment bank funded with unclaimed assets held by financial institutions.

All this is encouraging in a global perspective; now, how about Asia and, in particular, Bangladesh? Bangladesh is a country that continues to produce remarkable social enterprises, and given the state of the country and the world, it can be expected to keep the pipeline of social innovation flowing. The limiting factor is, of course, capital. Let us move a few degrees east in longitude, and there is a country, which -- though a small dot on the map -- is wealthy, is a player in the financial markets and is itching to make a mark in social business. This country is, of course, Singapore. Singapore is ready, able and perfectly positioned to be the home of Asia's first Social Stock Exchange. Bangladesh is ready, able and perfectly positioned to pepper that exchange with very effective social businesses. This is a match made in financial heaven.

Now, what's the next step? It is very simply for the Bangladesh government to have the vision and desire to initiate a ground-breaking discussion with the Singapore government. Bangladesh is well positioned to make its mark in the next economic revolution of conscious capitalism. It can take its rock star social entrepreneurs Yunus and Abed -- and get them to perform the ground-breaking concert for the social stock exchange for its potential partner Singapore.

Thus, my request to the Bangladesh finance ministry use this opportune moment -- initiate the courtship and get Bangladesh on the global financial map. We are all waiting.


Durreen Shahnaz is the regional managing director of Asia City Publishing Group and adjunct associate professor at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at National University of Singapore.

Worse than financial crunch

The world is heading for an "ecological credit crunch" far worse than the current financial crisis because humans are over-using the natural resources of the planet, an international study warns today.

The Living Planet report calculates that humans are using 30% more resources than the Earth can replenish each year, which is leading to deforestation, degraded soils, polluted air and water, and dramatic declines in numbers of fish and other species. As a result, we are running up an ecological debt of $4tr (£2.5tr) to $4.5tr every year - double the estimated losses made by the world's financial institutions as a result of the credit crisis - say the report's authors, led by the conservation group WWF, formerly the World Wildlife Fund. The figure is based on a UN report which calculated the economic value of services provided by ecosystems destroyed annually, such as diminished rainfall for crops or reduced flood protection. Read full article in THE GUARDIAN

Find out how you can reduce ecological footprint

Nobel Injustice

Martti Ahtisaari is a great man. He deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for his life work. But it was a mistake for the Norwegian Nobel Committee to cite his work in Aceh as a reason for giving him the prize.

As a recent story by Agence France Presse put it, Ahtisaari’s “most notable achievement was overseeing the 2005 reconciliation of the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement rebels, bringing an end to a three-decade-old conflict that killed some 15,000 people.” But it was Indonesia’s people and leaders who should have received the Nobel Peace Prize for the Aceh political miracle.

More fundamentally, the mentioning of Aceh in this Nobel citation raises serious questions about the mental maps used by the Nobel Prize Committee in making these awards. The committee members increasingly seem to be prisoners of the past. They continue to assume that we live in an era of Western domination of world history.

But that era is over. Increasingly, the rest of the world has gone from being objects of world history to becoming its subjects. By giving the Nobel Peace Prize to the Indonesians instead of a European mediator for Aceh, the Nobel Prize Committee would have recognized that the world has changed.

Three other big benefits would also have resulted from giving the award to an Indonesian. First, the West associates the Islamic world with violence and instability. Few believe that Muslims are capable of solving their political problems by themselves.

But this is precisely what the Aceh story was all about. Two key Indonesian leaders, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Vice President Jusuf Kalla, showed remarkable political skill and courage in working out the peace deal for Aceh. A Nobel Peace Prize for them would have shown the West that Muslims can be good peacemakers and, equally important, it would have sent a message of hope to the Islamic populations of the world that have seen their self-esteem eroded by stories of failure.

Aceh was essentially a spectacular Muslim success story. Hence, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has squandered a valuable opportunity to send out a message of hope to the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims, one that would have rid the world of the grand global illusion that peacemaking is a “white man’s burden.”


Kishore Mahbubani is Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. His most recent book is The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.

This article was first published in PROJECT SYNDICATE.

Financial Crisis 101

The Eternity of Geo-Politics

By Kishore Mahbubani

When I was a diplomat I used to say that diplomacy was the world’s second oldest profession but I always hastened to add that it bore no relationship to the oldest profession. The reason why it is old is because since human beings began organizing themselves into tribes and societies, there were rivalries, struggles for power which often led to conflict, frequently over territory. Diplomacy was therefore invented to handle the eternal challenge of geopolitics.

In the modern and more civilized world order we live in, where the prospect of any direct war between any two major powers is a remote possibility (partly because of the advent of nuclear weapons), many of us would like to believe that geopolitics has taken a back seat in the face of growing global interdependence. One stark reality about the 21st Century that we should hoist in is that geopolitics will return with a vengeance, even though many of the rivalries and contests will be played out beneath the surface. The naked eye will not catch these new geopolitical contests. We will need a sophisticated vision to understand the new geopolitical terrain that is rapidly emerging. And the terrain could become treacherous.

History teaches us that whenever a dominant power begins to lose power relatively, new opportunities are created for rising powers. We are living in such an era. The United States is slowly beginning to lose the unquestioned dominance it had over the global order. Fortunately, for the world, the United States has been on balance a benevolent power. The 1945 rules-based order it created (with multilateral institutions like the UN, IMF, WB and GATT) were a great gift to the world. This multilateral fabric explains the remarkable explosion we have seen in both global economic growth and global trade. Without the United States acting as the ultimate guarantor of this global system, we would not have had the global stability we have seen.

The American people were happy to see United States act as a custodian of this benign multilateral order because they believed that with global stability and trade liberalization, they would naturally emerge as the biggest winners of the system. Now, in a remarkable reversal, fewer and fewer Americans believe that they will benefit from global openness. Instead, more and more of them believe that they will lose their jobs and prosperity to China and India.

In the next ten years, there will be an intense debate in United States on how much global responsibility it should take on. We cannot tell the outcome. Short term populist pressures could lead to greater protectionism (and we have seen many warning signals from the US Congress). If the United States walks in that direction and stirs all kinds of national retaliations, we should be prepared to see the gradual unraveling of our benign global order.

The big problem that the world faces is that there is no other natural global leader to take on the benign role that the United States has played. The other natural candidate is the European Union (EU). Indeed, it has hitherto played a helpful and constructive role in supporting the benign role of the United States. However, it has no capacity to step into the shoes of the United States as the global leader. The reasons are complex but they have to do with highly divisive decision-making process of the EU. The result of having to reconcile the interests of 27 member-states is that the EU is driven down to the lowest common denominator. The Irish veto of the Lisbon Treaty process destroyed the chance of having a single Foreign Minister to represent the EU’s global voice. To paraphrase Henry Kissinger, we also lost the prospect of having a single telephone number to call in Europe.

To make matters worse, the EU has become geopolitically incompetent. Much to the chagrin of my European friends, I have pointed out the EU’s greatest civilizational achievement of creating zero prospect of war inside the EU has to be balanced against the failure of the EU to create zones of security and prosperity outside their immediate borders. Hence all the long-term threats to the EU are going to come from their immediate neighboring environments: North Africa, Middle East, the Balkans and the Caucasus. The recent unfortunate Georgian episode provides a vivid and powerful case study of the EU’s geopolitical incompetence. However, it must also be emphasized that the new models of rules-based global cooperation will in one way or another be inspired by the EU models of cooperation. Hence we must give the EU the credit it deserves.

By contrast to the EU, the most geopolitically competent great power in the world today is China, which has the prospect of emerging as the world’s greatest power with its economy surpassing that of the United States. History teaches us that relations between the world’s greatest power and the world’s greatest emerging power have always been tense. Hence, if history is a guide, we should be seeing rising geopolitical tensions between United States and China. Instead we are seeing the exact opposite phenomenon. Why?

The reason is simple. China is emerging as the most geopolitically competent rising power. Luck has helped. Both 9/11 and the recent Georgian fiasco, which created new tensions between the West and Russia, were geopolitical gifts to China. But the Chinese also know how to capitalize on their luck. They have been shrewdly helpful to the United States on some of its crucial geopolitical challenges, including Iraq, Iran and North Korea. The United States reciprocated by squeezing President Chen Shui-bian when he was in power. Hence, the Taiwan issue which could have been the flashpoint for the US – Chinese rivalry (as it did when President Bill Clinton almost sent aircraft carriers through the Taiwan Straits in 1996) has become a vivid example of a new US-China cooperation. This is a geopolitical miracle which should go into the Guinness Book of World Records.

China has carefully adopted a low profile, wisely adhering to Deng Xiaoping’s advice not to aspire for global leadership. But this low profile has now become a double-edged sword. It has defused American worries about China. But it also prevents China from aspiring to become the custodian of the global system. India, the other possible candidate, is also not ready to do so. Hence, at a time when rapid globalization is creating a small global village where village leadership is critical, we have a situation where all the major powers – US, EU, China and India – are shunning global leadership. This is a prescription for trouble. If the benign global order deteriorates and we move away from a rules-based regime, we will inevitably see new geopolitical rivalries and contests emerge. When that happens, the need for the world’s second oldest profession to perform well will never be greater.

The only consolation for Singapore is that it does well in geopolitical competence. Now that I am no longer a diplomat, I can create my own index of geopolitical competence. In this index, I give the former Soviet Union a 2 (for losing a great empire without a shot), the EU a 4 (for reasons given above), the USA a 7 (for remaining as the world’s greatest power) and China a 9 (for emerging as a great power with so much skill and deftness. And I would give Singapore a 10 out of 10. This is a result of extraordinary leadership we have enjoyed. Hence, at a time when we may be moving into treacherous geopolitical terrain, the real challenge for Singapore is to maintain this extraordinary leadership.


Kishore Mahbubani is the Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.

Stinking Rich & We Need You!

Image source: The Economist
On Sept 29, US$1.2 trillion was wiped off the value of the New York Stock Exchange as members of the House of Representatives in the US, under pressure from constituents, voted against the US$700 billon bailout package designed to resuscitate the financial system. The knockback sent reverberations around the world, with markets falling sharply from Europe to East Asia.

What this knockback demonstrates, despite the "we are all capitalists now" proclamations of recent years, is that many Americans feel little affinity with the Wall Street set who had been "managing" their investments and who had extended their mortgages (without worrying about who would extend the cash needed to service them).

Many argue that this is a crisis of regulation, or a crisis of responsibility and ethics, as if these were technical problems to be tweaked. However, the roots of the political (as opposed to the strictly financial) crisis we are currently witnessing run much deeper. A quarter of a century of globalisation has fundamentally transformed not only our economies, but also our states and societies, leaving politicians few options.

While the current crisis has often been compared to the Great Depression of the 1930s, the two periods are distinctly different. The way out of the Great Depression essentially involved the establishing of a political compact between industrial capitalists and organised labour, with the state acting to stimulate demand and mitigate the risk to workers through a variety of compensatory mechanisms. What followed was a period of relatively equitable economic growth in the developed world that, among other things, gave birth to the mass consumer society of our time.

In contrast, the era of globalisation, which was ushered in by declining rates of profit and other crises in the 1970s and '80s, has involved a process of "financialisation", where the relationship between industrial and financial capital, which concerned political economists from Marx to Keynes, has apparently become largely redundant. Financial deregulation has permitted the enormous growth of global markets for a variety of financial products, which act somewhat autonomously from and greatly eclipse the "real" economy of trade in goods and services.

Financialisation has been part of a broader process that has placed the market at the centre of social relations, redistributing wealth and power. This has involved assaults against worker rights in many industrialised countries at a time where capital has been liberated to relocate to sources of cheaper labour.

Furthermore, at the same time many workers in the West have been both voluntarily and forcibly drawn into becoming investors - substituting the socialisation of risk that was embodied in the welfare state with tying pension plans to the market like never before.

And while the massive extension of credit, both in the form of mortgages and credit cards (which are now often tied together), provided palliative care to many, with some workers experiencing declining real wages, it also served to further lock them to a highly volatile system in which they had very little power to advance their interests vis-a-vis highly powerful and well-connected market players.

Meanwhile, the risk to capital has been socialised, with public bailouts a common feature of the past 25 years, regardless of the recent failure of the US government's rescue package. Yet, despite such bailouts, under globalisation arguments have been continuously advanced for less regulation and for the importance of paying CEOs "well".

In this hyper-capitalist environment inequality has been soaring, with the average pay packet of a high-end American CEO being 250 times that of an average wage earner. In short, there has been concentration of capital that still retains an insatiable appetite for profit.

In trying to satisfy this appetite capital has gone in search of returns in dangerous waters (such as that section of the population that aspires to owning homes yet has been so marginalised that it does not have the means to service its borrowings). In the short term, you can disguise this concentration by creating complex financial instruments to on-sell. In the medium-to-longer term, reality hits home when people begin to default.

So the big question seems to be not how to reregulate financial markets, but whether everyday citizens can be convinced that their interests are advanced by a different set of interests to theirs and an ideology that has spent the past quarter of a century eroding the "over-regulation" of the Western welfare state and dispensing with its social safeguards.

While US taxpayers were told by people like US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that bailing out capital was necessary to support the system for everyone and that caution had to be exercised in reregulating the financial sector, middle America doesn't appear to have much sympathy for him or the obscenely remunerated "Just Do It" set at the centre of this debacle.

The US government will still be able to put together another bailout package; however, the crisis seems far from over for the very reason that it is hard to see where new sources of real productive output will emerge, especially in an economy such as the United States.
The game of smoke and mirrors no longer holds any attraction for those left with cash to allocate.

Where the fix to the Great Depression came in the form of redistributive measures to workers within the domestic economy - a globalised world makes this process next to impossible for the very reason that capital can so easily relocate to cheaper sources of labour outside of America.

Even if capital can get back on its feet with a public bailout, finding profitable undertakings inside US borders that benefit the broad population seems highly unlikely.


Shahar Hameiri is a doctoral candidate at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University. Toby Carroll is a research fellow at the Centre on Asia and Globalisation, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. This article "The Politics of the Financial Crisis" was published in Bangkok Post.


RECOMMENDED READING: Emerging Lessons From The Crisis by Eswar Prasad *

"Whatever the final outcome, one thing is certain– the rest of the world will no longer be enthusiastic about adopting the free-market principles that guided US financial development. While desperate times may call for desperate measures, massive US government intervention will also make it difficult in the future to make the case that the state should stay out of the workings of the financial system."

* Eswar Prasad is professor of economics at Cornell University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is the former head of the IMF’s Financial Studies Division.

Contesting Indonesia

Indonesia heads back to the polls in 2009 – a process that some hope will provide solutions to many of the problems that the country faces. Poverty persists, corruption remains endemic, infrastructure is failing and fuel costs have risen.

At the same time, democratisation and decentralisation have fundamentally altered Indonesia’s political process. A great diversity of groups – state and non-state, nationalist, religious, paramilitary and otherwise – are actively jostling for influence and power in determining the future trajectory of the nation. Many are forging new mechanisms and partnerships to further their respective agendas.

CAG’s Indonesia series casts the spotlight on this deeply contested process and examines the implications for state-society relations, accountability and democracy.

(The Series schedule)

In Memory of Gordon Gekko

Just wondering how many Wall Streeters are youtubing Gordon Gekko's "Greed is Good" speech video and reminiscing about the good old days.... (click image to view video)

Here are some of memorable Gordon Gekko quotes from the movie "Wall Street":

● "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA."

● " We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you're not naive enough to think we're living in a democracy, are you buddy? It's the free market. And you're a part of it. You've got that killer instinct. Stick around pal, I've still got a lot to teach you."

● "It's not a question of enough, pal. It's a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn't lost or made, it's simply transferred from one perception to another."

● "Lunch is for wimps."

Perspectives on the US Financial Crisis

LKYSPP Professor Charles Adams spoke on the current financial turmoil at a panel dicussion held at the Asian Development Bank on 19 September. Here are his views on the crisis:

The dynamics of the current financial crisis are broadly similar to many other crises. First, there is a period during which too much credit is extended, leverage rises to very high levels (in large measure through derivatives and low margins), and people start to believe that things will be different, based on a “story” of a new era (the Greed period).

This is the boom or bubble period that precedes the eventual collapse, as vividly documented by Kindleberger in his study of financial crises.

Second, there is some event (the “Canary in the coalmine” moment) that triggers a reappraisal of the story and, ultimately, a reversal of the excesses during the boom. The problems in the sub-prime segment of the US real estate market likely served as the wake up call during the current crisis.

In this second phase, positions are unwound, leverage is reduced, and financial firms begin to scramble for capital and liquidity in response to losses and writedowns (the Fear period).

Finally, following a series of ad hoc interventions involving lender of last resort and life-boat rescues, the official sector steps in with bold measure such as guarantees and the purchase of substantial chunks of the financial system and/or distressed assets.

For those with at least some familiarity with financial crises, the time signature of every crisis is uncannily similar. In the unhappy ending to many financial crises, the economy enters a deep and protracted downturn and public debt levels soar to high levels as the official sector bails out the private sector. The current crisis fits this mould. As the crisis is far from over, however, one should be careful in speculating about the end point.

The current crisis is only one of a large number of financial—and, particularly banking-- crises that have occurred in recent decades. The key wrinkles this time around are that the crisis blew up in the core rather than the periphery of the system (recall the large number of recent crises that occurred in emerging markets at the periphery of the system); has been affecting multiple markets, instruments, and institutions (commercial banks, investment banks, Insurance companies); and has spilled over across countries as financial risks were unbundled and sold around the world. Intriguingly, new financial players such as Sovereign Wealth Funds are starting to play a role as sources of new capital while hedge funds, at least thus far, have been in the back seat.

As in other crises, the current episode has involved a breakdown of the multiple lines of defence set up to deal with periods of excessive exuberance.

The first line of defence is the risk management of financial firms. Arguably, risk management across a range of firms has again been subject to massive failures, and their oversight oards have not performed as intended.

The second line of defence includes all the various market and official analysts-- as well as credit rating agencies--that monitored the US financial sector and failed to spot impending problems until too late. A conflict of interest on the part of rating agencies that advised on, and then rated, complex financial products likely played a role here, and will need (somehow) to be addressed. But it is also staggering how many other private and official observers did not predict problems, and did not call for action that could have avoided the excesses.

Finally, in the third line of defence, the very fragmented US regulatory bodies did not play their proper role and were arguably “asleep at the wheel” as the shadow banking system bloomed. Clearly, any one of these lines of defence could have prevented the crisis but each broke down, with serious consequences.

US-led Capitalism: R.I.P?

(Cartoon source: The Economist)

New Century Financial. Sachsen Landesbank. Bear Stearns. IndyMac. Fannie Mae. Freddie Mac. Lehman Brothers. Merrill Lynch. AIG. They were all US companies that went belly up in the last few months.

British bank Barclays bought Lehman Brother's North American business. Japanese firm Normura Holdings has just bought Lehman Brother's Asia-Pacific unit. Morgan Stanley is said to be fighting for survival and China’s Bank Citic is being discussed as a possible rescuer and Singapore's own GIC is eyeing distressed US financial assets. Does this signal the irresistible shift of global power to Asia?

As the US government unveiled what is the largest overhaul of government-led financial regulation since the Great Depression, some opinion makers and stakeholders around the world now argue that the recent events signal the end of US-led capitalism. [Sung]

● “The End Of American Capitalism As We Knew It”
Financial Times

● “The World As We Know It Is Going Down”
Spiegel Online

● “Crisis Exposes Flaws in U.S. Economy, Tarnishes Image”
Bloomberg

● “Is this the end of US Capitalism”
Al Jazeera asks five prominent economists - Does the crisis signal the end of US-style capitalism? And if so, what are the lessons learned?

● “We Are All Capitalist Now? Not Any Longer”
The Times

New CAG Working Papers on Energy, Governance and Regionalism

The CAG Working Paper Series disseminates works-in-progress that reflect the broad range of research activities of the CAG researchers and faculty associates (click title to download) :

Global Governance and Energy
Ann Florini

"Energy has risen to the top of policy agendas around the world. There is now widespread recognition that energy policy has become key to international security,economic development, and the environmental sustainability of modern civilization. Yet this importance is not reflected in the world’s institutional infrastructure for managing global problems. A handful of international organizations work in uncoordinated fashion on various pieces of the energy puzzle. No organizational infrastructure exists to support the global conversation that is now badly needed about how to move the world onto a sustainable path that provides appropriate, reliable, and affordable energy services."


Contested regionalism in Southeast Asia: The politics of the trans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline Project
Toby Carroll & Benjamin Sovacoo

This article analyses the trans-ASEAN gas pipeline project (TAGP) as a wayto reconceptualise regional dynamics in Southeast Asia and the forces shaping them – what we call ‘contested regionalism’. For this task, we propose an analytical framework that delves within and beyond the state, and which places emphasis upon the role of material and ideological factors operating at particular moments in time. The framework reveals that the tensions acting within and upon ASEAN and the TAGP shape the regional approach to energy governance in such a way that the gas pipeline project – much like other ‘regional’ projects – is unlikely to ever come close to fulfilling its brief or that of its masters. What is more probable is that the project’s form will continue to be conditioned by entrenched politico-economic realities and the influence of dominant ideologies – especially during times of crisis – that have the capacity to exacerbate existing regional animosities and disparities.


Regionalism, Governance and the ADB: A Foucauldian Perspective
Teresita Cruz-del Rosario

Discourse analysis is a theoretical perspective primarily concerned with the ideas, beliefs, symbols, images, and categorizations that give meaning to social life. It is likewise concerned with how these meaning systems are produced and reproduced, how they guide action and behaviour, and who are the credible agents of knowledge. Power relations produce a hierarchy of discourses, some more dominant than others. In the field of development policy, multilateral institutions like the Asian Development Bank are purveyors of a dominant discourse on governance which has been conceptualized as economicmanagerialism. This sets the tone for governance practices among its “client” governments. Despite this, there remains the possibility within ADB itself to reinterpret ideas and provide alternative meanings. Two subregional programs, the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) and the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) are illustrative examples of a patently economic managerialist approach to regional governance with possibilities for discursive shifts.

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what it does to climate change

A Cantonese old saying goes “anything that walks, swims, crawls or flies with its back to heaven is edible”. I agree, mostly. I love eating meat. Korean galbi, wagyu beef from Kobe, spicy Portuguese chorizo, roasted lamb shoulder…

I also know that climate change is a real threat that affects all of us and that we can only overcome this challenge by doing something together, shoulder to shoulder. I am prepared to do my part. I just didn’t know that eating less meat is one step humanity can take in order to assist in tackling climate change challenges and threats.

Last week, UN climate change expert, Chairman of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and India’s seventh Nobel laureate Dr Rajendra Pachauri encouraged people to eat meat less and become vegetarians at least once a good to assist in solving global warming. Dr Pachauri argued that diet change was important because of the huge greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental problems - including habitat destruction - associated with rearing cattle and other animals. It was relatively easy to change eating habits compared to changing means of transport.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the meat production accounts for nearly a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. These are generated during the production of animal feeds, for example, while ruminants, particularly cows, emit methane, which is 23 times more effective as a global warming agent than carbon dioxide. The agency has also warned that meat consumption is set to double by the middle of the century. Read the full article in The Guardian. [Sung]

Setting up of an Asian Observatory on Health Systems

Professor Phua Kai Hong, Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy recently attended a workshop organised by WHO Regional Office in Manila to discuss the setting up of an Asian Observatory on Health Systems. According to Dr Phua, the WHO Regional Director, Dr Shigeru Omi who visited the School a few months ago is keen to involve LKYSPP to be part of a regional consortium for comparative health systems studies. Here is the background of the meeting:

Progress in improving health outcomes, achieving the health related Millennium Development Goals, and reaching universal access to health services as expressed by the slogan 'Health for All' from the Declaration of Alma-Ata on Primary Health Care is unacceptably slow in many countries.

Weak health systems have been identified as one of the main obstacles to improving health and scaling up effective health interventions This is so even when the funding situation for health has improved. Although reasons for weak health systems vary from country to country, the common ones include inadequate human and financial resources and their inefficient use; lack of coordination and inefficient management; financial, social and geographical barriers limiting access to essential health care; and inadequate information and evidence for policy- and decision-making.

Health systems are part of the fabric of societal and civic life. The core values and principles of the Declaration of Alma-Ata on Primary Health Care promulgated in 1978 are still relevant, even in today's globalized world. There is increased awareness of health inequities and the damaging effects they have on individuals and society. Evidence suggests that health systems oriented towards primary health care (PHC) are more likely to deliver better health outcomes, more equitable health outcomes, and greater public satisfaction at lower costs.

To guide its work in responding to these global challenges, the WHO Secretariat has produced the document Everybody's Business: Strengthening Health Systems to Improve Health Outcomes-WHO's Framework for Action. Building on Everybody's Business, which was developed in Geneva, the WHO Regional Office in the Western Pacific has developed a Strategic Plan for Strengthening Health Systems in the WHO Western Pacific Region.

The regional strategic plan is aimed at improving the WHO response to the health systems challenges and needs of its Member States. A meeting of experts to obtain perspectives and inputs on how to strengthen health systems in the context of the core values and principles in PHC was convened in Manila from 5 to 6 August 2008.

In addition to dealing with the core issues and activities in the regional Strategic Plan, the meeting also further elaborated the concept of a health systems observatory for the region. The need for better collection, analysis, and use of information on health systems is a recurring theme within the region that the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific feels the need to address. [Sung]

It’s Still Obama’s Election

Despite all the buzz over Sarah Palin and the polls showing a dead heat or even a slight McCain advantage, Obama is still well ahead in the only polls that actually matter – so much ahead that it’s hard to see how McCain can pull out a victory.

In the US system, voters don’t directly elect Presidents. Although voters cast their ballots marked for a candidate, in fact they’re voting for a slate of delegates to the Electoral College. (The American system, after all, was set up by men who didn’t trust ordinary voters to know what was good for them, so Presidential and originally Senate elections were designed to be indirect.) These days, those delegates are pledged to a specific candidate.

It’s those Electoral College delegates who actually choose the President, several weeks after the early November national election. The magic number is 270 – if you get the votes of 270 electoral college delegates (a bare majority of the total), you become President.

And Obama still has a big advantage in likely numbers of electoral college delegates, even using the same polls that show him lagging in the popular vote.

How is this possible? Because each of the fifty US states gets to decide how to allocate its electoral college delegation. Each state gets the same number of delegates as it has members of Congress – two Senators plus however many Representatives the state has, which is based on population. (The smallest number of delegates a state can have is thus three, for its two senators and at least one representative. Alaska, Palin’s home state, has three.) 48 of the states have a winner-take-all system, so a candidate who (barely) wins enough states can triumph over one who wins in several states by huge margins but doesn’t carry enough of the states. That’s what happened to Al Gore in 2000, who won the popular vote by a margin of several hundred thousand – and lost the Presidency.

So national polls aren’t very useful. Instead, it’s the state-by-state polls that matter. And adding up the numbers of Electoral College votes in states that are currently tilting noticeably to one candidate or the other shows a strong Obama advantage of about 225 Electoral College votes for Obama, versus 175 for McCain. The rest are in states currently too close to call.

Can McCain still win? Yes, but to do so, he has to carry many more of the currently undecided states than Obama does. Anything is possible in American elections – but the safe money now is on Obama. [Ann]

● Not all the policies proposed by Obama and McCain are sound. Foreign Policy lists 20 terrible policy proposals suggested by McCain and Obama:

Obama's Top 10 worst ideas

McCain's Top 10 worst ideas

● Reminder: Catch Ann tomorrow night (11th September) at 10.30 pm on Channel 8 FOCUS program. Ann will give her take on the upcominig US Presidential Election.

The Goonj Approach...A Voice...An Effort

It is human nature to judge people by their appearances. The clothes we wear convey signals about personality, background, taste, and social status. For some, the situation is a little different. This is what the people working at Goonj, an Indian social enterprise, saw in the village of Gidhdha:

“In the peak of winter days, the children did not have a single piece of cloth covering their bodies - warm clothing was a distant dream. This is a 35-lakh strong community spread across Bihar, where people are forced to eat rats in dire circumstances of poverty & survival. Clothing is the last priority in their lives. Parents often make their naked children sleep in a small hole dug in the ground and cover them with grass (pual), to survive the chilly nights. Women don’t take a bath for many days as they have nothing to change into & often people take loans on heavy interest to buy a single piece of clothing - which lasts them for as long as it does not disintegrate into nothing.”

A typical knee-jerk response to such a situation would be to round up some donations of clothing to give to the villagers in Gidhdha. Clothing donations are not new - and in fact are often abused: spring cleaning of one's closet while easing your conscience - why not? But goods that are passed to those in need in a pitying manner, as hand-outs, or as unwanted trash, end up stripping the recipients of their self esteem and self reliance, ending up as a particularly destructive form of goodwill.

Ashoka Fellow Anshu Gupta (pictured) approaches the poverty challenge with a very different mindset. His organization Goonj is grounded a few simple yet crucial principles: Self help as the starting point. Always uphold and protect a person’s dignity. Seek to empower rather than breed dependency. Goonj takes leftover clothing and turns it into a resource for mobilizing rural communities. The clothes come at the end of a Goonj project, not at the beginning. Goonj organizes village meetings where it asks participants to identify projects that their community would benefit from. Village members are then expected to implement these projects themselves in order to earn the clothing. Clothes (pre-sorted and screened for quality) are given to each villager at the completion of the project - with respect and without making the recipient feel like a charity case. In some cases, the mobilization and impact arising from these projects have created so much positive change that community members have forgotten about the clothing they earned in the process.

There are many different ways to think about social enterprises – e.g. business models for the production of social and environmental goods, or businesses with a triple bottom line - and debates surround the measurements of the output, impact and sustainability of social enterprises. In the case of Goonj, its financial viability has yet to be proven. Since the clothes are donated, the bulk of Goonj's operating costs are in logistics and transportation. Goonj has started some income generation streams through its production of accessories made with recycled material, but revenue from these sales will cover only a fraction of the costs.

However, the social innovation that Goonj has created is so simple and basic, it's lamentable that we even call it an innovation. It is fundamentally about dignity and respect, and 'pricing' the upholding of these principles above other indicators such as numbers of clothing delivered and numbers of households reached. If we were to use the latter numeric measurements, then it would be easy to come up with a more efficient business model. But how does one measure things like empowerment, self-help and dignity, in a social innovation model where the manner in which a piece of clothing is handed over is more important than the speed with which it reaches those in need? How does one grapple with the tradeoffs between empowerment and efficiency in service delivery?

Read more about Goonj’s approach and projects at Goonj homepage. [Yeling]

Florni's Take On Obama vs McCain

Catch CAG Director Ann Florini tomorrow night (11th September) at 10.30 pm on Channel 8 FOCUS program. Ann will give her take on the upcominig US Presidential Election.

Renewable Energy in the Mekong Delta

CAG Research Fellow Benjamin Sovacool has just returned from Laos and Cambodia, where he met with local officials, businesspersons, and activists to discuss electrification and energy development in the Mekong Delta.

Here are a few insights from his trip:

● The people of Laos and Cambodia, while culturally rich, are economically poor. More than half of the population of both countries lives on less than one U.S. dollar per day, and a majority of people in both countries lack any sort of regular access to electricity. Indeed, while Benjamin was in Phnom Penh he experienced two power outages in less than twenty-four hours. (see first photo of rural villagers fishing in the Mekong)

● Because of this striking poverty, Laos and Cambodia have both embarked upon ambitious plans to develop massive hydroelectric projects on the rivers flowing throughout the two countries. The Laos Department of Energy Promotion and Development Ministry of Energy and Mines, for example, reports that Thai, Cambodian, and Laotian developers intend to construct no less than twenty differently sized hydro projects in the region. (See second image of Laotian map of dams)

● Unfortunately, their plans for electrification and development, while they could definitely help local villagers and farmers, could also induce grave consequences on the natural environment. Large-scale dams, such as those that have been proposed in the Mekong Delta, consistently fragment riparian ecosystems, destroy habitats, shift sedimentation flows, and degrade local fisheries. The environmental consequences of continuing to build large dams along the Mekong remind us about the tenuous balance policymakers and regulators must face with pursuing economic growth on the one hand, and preserving the environment on the other. [Ben]

The answer, my friend, is blowing the wind

This ad by Epuron- a German based renewable energy company - won the top honor for best film advertising spot at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes. Titled “Power of Wind”, it shows the benefits of the wind when used intelligently. This is a funny and intelligent take on the wind as an energy source, an excellent promotion for the future of renewable energies. Click image to view. [Sung]

Consensus-Building Asian-Style

A recent conference in Tokyo entitled "Consensus-Building in Asia: Building a Sustainable Society" yielded some surprising insights. For one, culture was a predominant discussion item on the table - a refreshing break from most discussions that often neglect or bypass cultural aspects in tools and technologies that are deemed as “universal” and therefore “context-free.”

Not so during the Tokyo conference. Amidst a variety of scholars and practitioners who grappled with the problem of understanding conflict and building consensus around environmental issues, culture was more than sufficiently mentioned, not as a footnote, but rigorously “unpacked” to award it enough scholarly merit.

Here are a few insights:

● Informal networks are usually operating in parallel with formally-designated consensus-building processes, mostly through intermediaries (go-betweens), an invisible “council of elders” to confer its blessing/benediction, a ritual network of buddies, classmates, soulmates, friends, peers, etc. --- all of whom drive the process in ways that are not so apparent during the formal process;

● Symbolic outcomes as important as the material results of consensus-building, perhaps even more so. Respect and recognition, for example, is a significant currency with which to measure success, and not just the formal, written agreement that may come out of the lengthy consensus-building exercises;

● Technical choices are most often choices that are deeply laden with values, and are also most often unstated. While the language which protagonists use are couched in technical terms, an underlying layer of value(s) oftentimes foregrounds the process which, if left unrecognized, leads to a hardening of positions among all sides, and thus makes consensus building problematic;

● Consensus is most difficult to obtain in cases that involve value conflicts, mostly around identity issues. A good example in environmental cases is the antagonism between traditional uses of a physical space (e.g., a mountain regarded by the locals as “sacred) versus modern uses of the same space (e.g., astronomers who want to use the mountain to build a telescope that will give the best view for gazing into the universe). The identity of belonging/community on one side is pitted against professional/scientific identities on the other, and both are oftentimes locked into positions that cannot be resolved by technical approaches. The “arrogance on both sides” threatens to convert these differences into a long-standing intractable conflict;

● Conflicts that are surrounded by historical baggage need to be seen through the prism of value conflicts. These are built up over time and obtain the status of immutability, especially when historical conflicts have become entrenched in memory that is carried over through generations.

The conference did raise very valuable points for both scholars and practitioners who look at Asia as a site for redefining and refining theory and practice around consensus-building. [Tess]

Shape of things to come

Some have argued that Katrina was not the only category 5 hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast and that the Gulf Coast has always been vulnerable to hurricanes, with or without global warming. What we do know is the physics of tropical hurricane and that it forms over warm ocean water. We also know that since the early 1950s, the average intensity of tropical storms has increased globally and that this trend correlates with the increase in average sea surface temperatures in the tropics.

Carlos Pascual and Strobe Talbott from the Brookings Institution also point out in their recent article titled “7 Years to Climate Midnight” that greenhouse gas emissions are raising the Earth's temperature and the Earth is on a trajectory to warm more than 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit by around mid-century and that exceeding that threshold could trigger a series of phenomena: Arable land will turn into desert, higher sea levels will flood coastal areas, and changes in the convection of the oceans will alter currents, such as the Gulf Stream, that determine regional weather patterns, Manhattan and Florida would be under water, while Nevada would have no water at all. Read "7 Years to Climate Midnight". [Sung]

China and India, living in perfect harmony

A week ago today I attended the Mahatma Gandhi-Daisaku Ikeda Peace Research Conference on “The Rise of China and India: Towards a Harmonious Region?” It was organized by NUS's East Asian Institute and held at the Hotel Parkroyal.

Why do we attend conferences and workshops? Is it to learn something new? Is it to showcase our own work? Is it to network and make connections that may lead to future collaborations? In many cases it would be all of the above. But I am especially keen to learn something new and not just new facts and figures but new ideas and new ways of thinking.

Professor Shih Choon Fong, the President of NUS, wrote in the forward message of the conference programme; “How will these two Asian giants tackle the issues of good governance, development, eradication of poverty, education, scientific and technological innovation? Are they able to act as two powerful engines of growth and serve as anchors for the peace and prosperity of the East Asian community?

The objective of the conference was to explore opportunities and obstacles to a harmonious region underpinned by the rise of China and India. The conference provided a platform for scholars from China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand to present their perspectives.

The presentations ranged from the theoretical to a widely improbable scenario. One speaker outlined how Western international relations theory can help in understand the rise of China. He looked at the effectiveness of the realist, institutionalist and constructivism approach to explaining the rise of China and argues that there is a deep gap between economics study and international relations study yet provides no alternative.

Then there is the professor who is pessimistic about harmony in the region, believing that China’s rise in economic, military and cultural power will create conflict – perhaps to the extent of a major conflict between the USA and China.

Another professor noted that Japan is concerned about the possibility that the rise of China and India may result in the relatively less important role of Japan in the world political and economic order. And Japan is worried about the USA changing its attitude towards the country.

As a participant with limited knowledge of China and India, I felt each perspective and presentation give me a better understanding of the past and present of these two countries. Indeed I learned new facts and figures. Yet I was looking for more. I imagined the conference would shed some light on what the institutional arrangements of a harmonious region would look like. I thought it could provide more insight to the questions posed by Professor Shih Choon Fong. [Sandra]

Tomato spread to defuse Arab - Israeli tensions

CAG Research Fellow Tan Yeling is big on social entrepreneurship and is doing her "walk-the-talk" by co-teaching a leadership course to a group of students at Raffles Institution and Raffles Junior College in Singapore.

Yeling recently came across an inspiring article on Social Enpreneurship which profiles a "not-only-for-profit" business that has createed profitable joint ventures by putting together Palestinian and Israeli businesses. The man behind this is Daniel Lubetzky - the Mexican born son of a Holocaust survivor who founded PeaceWorks, a successful global business that promotes peace through commerical ventures among Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians, Tukrs, Indonesians and Sri Lankans.

While in Israel, Lubezky came across a struggling local business that produces delicious sundried tomato spread. Lubetzsky later founded out that the company was importing expensive glass jars from Portugal and tomatoes from Italy. So he suggested the company owner to source the jars from Egypt and tomatoes from Turkey and Palestine. This led to a establishment of joint ventures between Israelis and Palestinians, set up by Lubetzsky's PeaceWorks. Today, tapenades and spreads under the labels Moshe & Ali's and Meditalia are sold in stores across the US. Read "Making Social Entrepreneurship Matter", published in BusinessWeek, 6 August 2008. [Sung]

Beyond the buzz of CSR

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is currently the 'buzz' of Dhaka's business sector. Thus, it was no surprise during my recent trip to Dhaka to hear various interesting uses (and abuses) of the term. It was also interesting to hear that the government is taking an active interest in CSR, embracing the concept by considering a tax exemption for corporate spending on CSR. The fact that Bangladeshi business and government are even talking about doing things to assist the society is a good thing. However, the question I found myself asking each time CSR was mentioned, is whether the initiatives being discussed can really be considered CSR, or if what is passing as CSR is just a public relations gimmick that will ultimately tarnish the whole concept of CSR in Bangladesh.

The subject of CSR is still a nascent one. As a concept, CSR is being defined and debated in business and academic circles around the globe. One definition that seems to be gaining credence is that CSR is the practice of a corporation internalising the externalities it creates through its business practices. In layman terms, CSR means corporations taking responsibilities for their actions and doing something about improving them.

With that in mind, it is important to differentiate CSR from corporate philanthropy or charitable work that is unrelated to the corporation's business. CSR is not the same as the work done by a corporation's foundation arm. CSR involves a conscious effort by the corporation to essentially operate differently to change its practices to improve their impact on society, or to actively seek to ameliorate any negative impacts they may have.

In Bangladesh I noticed that the philanthropic work of corporations was being labeled as CSR. Mislabeling philanthropic work as CSR does little to improve unsavoury business practices of a corporation. As a matter of fact, such mislabeling may give corporations a green light to behave as they wish without regard to their impact on society and then try to whitewash their bad behaviour by merely making a donation to an unrelated cause.

Don't get me wrong, I am not against corporate philanthropy; the more the better! What I am asking for is clear labeling; which leads to clear thinking. While corporate philanthropy is not CSR, it is still a good thing. Philanthropy can be (and is) used as a form of public relations or advertising. As Michael Porter and Mark Kramer argue in their Harvard Business Review article, a company can and should think of philanthropic acts in a strategic way. Such acts can improve the corporation's image and thus their standing in the competitive landscape. The key here is transparency.

Companies can make best use of their philanthropic contributions if they come out clear about what they are doing and how they are doing it and make clear that these contributions have nothing to do with their business practices.

Two examples from Bangladesh may help to illustrate the difference between corporate philanthropy and true CSR. British American Tobacco Bangladesh (BATB) has an extensive “CSR” programme; however, its CSR efforts seem to be out of sync with its business practices. British American Tobacco Bangladesh's website highlights its responsible business practices, which include supporting IT education and afforestation programs. While these may be laudable charitable programs, they have little to do with BATB's business. Sadly, nowhere on its website does BATB mention the ill effects (social, economic and health-related) of smoking or what BATB is doing about them.

By contrast, recently a Danish TV documentary showed that child workers were employed by a subcontractor for Grameenphone (another company touting its CSR programs in Bangladesh) and were handling dangerous heavy metals and chemicals with practically no protection. Following this disclosure, Grameenphone took steps to rectify the problems (related to this case). This is an example of modifying the corporation's business practices to improve its impact on society (albeit in a reactive manner).

It is a shame that Grameenphone took action to change its business practice only in response to pressure from the foreign media. How much better it would have been if Grameenphone had taken the initiative based on its own ethical principals; or even if the pressure had come from within Bangladesh. In the west, CSR is being driven by demands from consumers, employees, shareholders and other stakeholders for better business practices. Why shouldn't Bangladeshi consumers and citizens stand up and press our corporations to live up to standards that we dictate?

Rather than giving tax breaks to corporations for practicing CSR in Bangladesh, the government should set policies in place or empower entities to monitor and publish CSR practices of corporations. If a corporation embraces true CSR practices, if there is true transparency in the system, and if consumers have a say in the matter, then the corporation will be rewarded by the market system. These corporations then should have no qualms about publicising their good deeds and reaping the rewards of greater market share.

We as consumers in Bangladesh need to exercise more of a voice and we need to take responsibility in encouraging companies to embrace CSR and ethical practices. We have to demand that businesses 'embed' CSR in the core of their operations, making it part of their corporate DNA so that it influences decisions across the corporation.

We want our companies to succeed and do good deeds at the same time, and why shouldn't we? After all, we possess the ultimate purchasing power to make the company a success. It is about time we Bangladeshi consumers exercised our rights. [Durreen]

Durreen Shahnaz is the Regional MD of Asia City Publishing Group. This article was first published in The Daily Star - #1 ranked English daily of Bangladesh.

Transnationalims Reconsidered

Studies on transnational activities are often underlined by the binary framework of state and society, local/national and global, old actors (such as state agencies) and new ones (such as domestic activist groups, international organizations and transnational NGOs). Such approaches tend to obscure the fluid, open-ended and unpredictable character of the negotiating process in governance.

Yet the case of AIDS prevention in China paints a much more complex and diverse picture. Dr Wu Fengshi, Assistant Professor, Department of Government and Public Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong rightly points out in her case study that transnational relations are often in flux and existing categories cannot fully capture the myriad of players and stakeholders involved.

Take transnational NGOs, a core player (or groups of players) for instance. These are no longer mere pressure groups imposing their demands on the state. According to Dr Wu, “NGOs are very active in building diverse strategic relationship with domestic players. They are not simply allies of local social groups, nor are they purely governmental followers. They create new micro-mechanisms for state-society interaction, and help to facilitate and lead state and societal actors to practice such mechanisms”.

Fresh insights like these would do well to challenge conventional understandings of global public health governance, an issue which has risen rapidly on the international agenda over the recent years. [Yanchun]

G8: Between Aspiration and Reality

The best way to start is at the end.

“Is it perhaps a question of legitimacy and by what criteria are countries judged as eligible to become members of the G8, including those other countries aspiring to be included in this exclusive body?” This was the last question from audience to Masahiro Kuhno, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister of Japan and “Sherpa” to the G8 summit during a lunchtime seminar series entitled "G8 – All Talk, No Action?"

At the heart of this question is a much-vaunted discomfort over G8’s continued existence amidst a world already besieged by numerous global institutions involved in the precarious responsibility of overseeing the global economy. And whether this task rightfully belongs to a coterie of countries who have no other common denominator except that they are the world biggest economies, and coincidentally, Mr. Kuhno himself charmingly admits, the world’s biggest emitters.

Robert Cox refers to the G8 as a “nebuleuse”, “a process of governance without government, involving a transnational process of consensus formation among the official caretakers of the global economy.” Unlike other global institutions, the G8 has no physical headquarters, no governing charter, no overseeing board. The only concrete manifestation that they exist at all is a collective photograph of all G8 heads of state who converge on the country hosting the annual meeting. And, quite disconcertingly, a digital posting of the elaborate G8 menu sneaked in by some enterprising blogger.

This year’s meeting held in Hokkaido, Japan, seems preoccupied with the issue of expansion and enlargement of membership. Should it include the G-5 (another loose coterie of countries on the rise --- China, India, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia)? Who and how is that decision going to be made? Should the G-5 be treated as “outreach” activities or should the G-8 seriously deliberate the question of becoming G-13?

Are these are the critical questions that should preoccupy these global leaders? More pointedly, shouldn’t the issue of expansion and enlargement be re-framed in terms of including a wider representation of constituencies beyond those represented by the state? Shouldn’t the substantive issue of declining contributions to ODA raise red flags on these leaders’ commitment to reduce global poverty? [Tess]

SWFs: Known Unknown or Unknown Unknown

Donald Rumsfeld once said, “there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Rumsfeld certainly wasn’t referring to Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs; see SWFs ranking) but these have certainly become one of the unknowns to many. The world saw a number of countries setting up their own SWFs to manage their accumulated wealth. The IMF estimated last year that SWFs now control nearly USD 3 trillion and that by 2012, the figure could reach USD 12 trillion. USD 3 trillion is significant when you consider that the total current value of traded securities in Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe combined is about USD 4 trillion.

Some argue that SWFs are useful tools to diversify and strengthen their economies while others have pointed out the lack of transparency (very few disclose information about their assets, liabilities, investment strategies, etc) and potential abuse of power.

SWFs certainly challenge the traditional notions of governance within existing international financial institutions and this will be one of key issues that CAG’s Global Finance Governance study group will examine when it convenes in Singapore in December.

Edwin Truman, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics explodes myths surrounding SWFs in his latest article titled “Sovereign Wealth Funds: Debunking Four Popular Myths” in which he outlines four popular myths: (1) about "them" not "us" (2) all the same in their opacity (3) a net benefit to the international financial system, and (4) not like hedge funds. Read Truman's article. [Sung]

More checks and balances

Today’s major financial issues have far-reaching implications traversing well beyond any national boundary. These issues are global in scope and thus require global solutions. As the global financial market faces unprecedented challenges on the one hand and rapidly decreasing resources on the other, greater cooperation is needed among states, private sectors and civil society groups around the world in order to work together through various institutional arrangements. These efforts must also be supported by the adoption and enforcement of binding rules at all levels of financial activities.

The concept of global governance – systems with global effect created and regulated by multilevel private and public actors in variegated institutional arrangements – thus becomes increasingly relevant as the globalisation of the financial market takes place. And CAG’s Global Governance project is looking into this very issue.

Many have argued in the recent years that the entire system for global financial regulation is in serious need of a major update. The question is, how. Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Harvard and formerly chief economist at the IMF ponders whether more regulated financial markets with stricter rules and enforcements to curb what he calls “financial triumphalism”, would do the trick. He points out that historically the eras of heavy financial regulation tend to have significantly fewer financial crises than lightly regulated free-wheeling eras. He writes: “No one is suggesting that we go back to the ‘financial repression’ of the 1950’s…financial innovation ought to be allowed to flourish but not without better checks and balances. Otherwise, we will be forever trapped in a framework where taxpayers are forced to bailout banks in bad times, while wealthy shareholders reap huge profits in good times.” Read Kenneth Rogoff's article titled "The End of Financial Triumphalism" in PROJECT SYNDICATE. [Sung]

Professor Rogoff will deliever a talk titled "What do we know about exchange rates" at the LKYSPP on 18 August 2008. See details.

Death to feudalism, unleash the brain power

Kishore Mahbubani, the dean of LKYSPP, writes in “The New Asian Hemisphere” about the reluctance and difficulties on the part of the West to accept the rise of Asia today. With China about to host Asia’s third Olympiad, the entire world’s attention is once again on this part of the world - the home of more than 60% of world population and where the economic growth rates have consistently outstripped those of major Western countries for decades.

As the countries of Asia gain ever greater political, economic and social clout, international relations scholars and policy makers around the world have been trying to find out how the newly empowered Asian nations can take advantage of such opportunity and how can they claim a stronger position in defining and managing global affairs (Read "Is Asia ready for a bigger role" by Ann Florini, CAG Director).

In his latest lecture delivered at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta last week, Kishore Mahbubani shares his blue print on how an emerging, resource-rich country like Indonesia can take part in the great transformation China and India are going through now, and Korea decades before. "Asia always had the world's largest pool of brainpower. But it also had the world's largest pool of unused power. The simple reason why Asia is taking off now is that the unused brainpower is finally being used, " Kishore said. Expanding on this, he added, "China and India are succeeding and taking off because they are finally finding the right means of igniting the hundreds of millions of brains that they always had. After China and India, the third largest pool of brainpower is in the ASEAN region. The success of ASEAN will be determined by whether we follow China and India's pattern and unleash the brainpower of the masses or whether we follow the Latin Amercican path of nurturing the interests of the elite classes." Read Kishore Mahbubani's lecture. [Sung]

Beer, schnitzel and renewable energy

CAG’s Energy Governance Programme examines what policies and institutions are needed to bring about a shift to a more effective, efficient, and sustainable global energy system, with a focus on the role of Asia. It is mapping the existing institutions and comparing them to what is needed for global energy governance. The research includes investigation of regulatory barriers to the widespread adoption of renewable and distributed-generation systems in Asia, examination of the prospects for nuclear energy in the region and evaluation of energy options for India and China in a global context.

Research Fellow Benjamin Sovacool has just returned from the land of sunshine, solar energy, and schnitzel. After presenting research at the Tenth Annual World Renewable Energy Congress in Glasgow, Scotland, Benjamin headed over to Germany to learn more about renewable energy and tour some solar panel manufacturing facilities.

Meetings with Enercon, the largest German manufacturer of wind turbines, the German Ministry of Environment (or Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit if you’re German), and the German Solar Industry Association confirmed that using feed-in tariffs—schemes that give renewable power providers guaranteed access to the electricity grid and then pay them a premium for their electricity—is the best way to accelerate the growth of renewable energy technologies.

Researchers at the Zentrum fur Sonnenenergie-und Wasserstoff-Forschung Baden-Wurrtemberg in Stuttgart, Germany, also noted that Singapore could itself rapidly become a world leader in solar panel manufacturing if they decided to take the lead in promoting renewables.

In Frieburg, Germany, a small town that has more installed solar power than the entire United Kingdom, researchers at the Fraunhofer-Institut für Solare Energiesysteme, a research laboratory, and Solar Fabrik-AG, a solar panel manufacturer, explained that cutting edge R&D continues to reduce the cost of solar energy and improve efficiency.

Finally, in Hamburg, Stefan Schurig and Bianca Barth from the World Future Council talked about what Singapore could do if it wanted to model the success Germany, Spain, and Denmark have had in developing renewables: craft a stable, strong, and consistent regulatory policy. [Ben]

Related article: "Renewable energy technologies: Just as reliable as fossil fuel plants", Ben Sovacool

Picture: Solar paneled building in Frieburg, Germany

Can we proclaim Doha dead yet?

This week’s collapse of the trade negotiations in the so-called Doha round (which has been running for over seven years) signalled the most recent instalment in a story that has not had anywhere near as many ups as it has downs. If the Doha round was animal, it would have surely been euthanized years ago.

The failure of the negotiations is to be expected. The problem is that liberalising reform creates winners and losers – something that even the best spin doctors cannot conceal. Subsequently, pressures to liberalise create their very own constituencies of resistance – one of the great contradictions of liberal economic reform.

In 2003, Doha round talks collapsed in Mexico over farming subsidies and issues pertaining to market access. In 2006, negotiations took a dive, once again, over issues of market access. In 2007, the talks fell in a heap over the very same issues, with the EU, the US, India and Brazil unable to reconcile their differences. And this year, the divergence between the US, India and China over agriculture could not be bridged.

Trade liberalisation measures in an increasingly unequal and politically fractured world were always going to be a very difficult undertaking. This is because the costs and benefits attendant to trade liberalisation measures are asymmetrically dispersed; the benefits of comparative advantage are far from appreciated by the worker who used to make a protected product but is now unemployed because their job has moved from one country to another. Nor are they appreciated by the protected farming conglomerate who receives hearty subsidies.

Likewise, in the underdeveloped world the savvy use and abuse of particular trading arrangements by the developed world has made many cynical about the potential for trade opening measures to improve their lot. In the end divergent interests often shape policy outcomes.

So, the question is should the defibrillator be charged and applied to the depressed chest of Doha? While ‘true-believer’ liberal reformers will undoubtedly say ‘yes’ (Pascal Lamy has already stated that the round is still alive), the reality is that the trajectory of the global political economy is largely beyond responding to the desperate, yet technocratic pronouncements of global bureaucrats.

The most likely outcome in the current global environment is the continuation of two processes that liberalisation measures have actually assisted in facilitating: the continued strengthening of protectionist and nationalist responses to the contradictions of globalisation and the further negotiation of select bilateral and other trade deals, where mutual interest is more readily accommodated.

To be sure, both processes have been in motion for some time. While you would think by now that the politics of economics would be more than apparent to neo-liberals, ideology is a powerful thing – so powerful that it even leads some to believe that they can revive the dead.

Let’s accept that the dead can’t be revived. What next? Perhaps out of Doha’s death can come new life for an entirely different beast, an entity underpinned by popular support across national boundaries that seeks to place issues of social justice – that is, socially sustainable development – before those of profit?

Given the assault that individualism has waged on the collective imagination in the last couple of decades this is sure to be a real challenge. However, such challenges are best tackled when the dominant paradigm is under siege, its legitimacy in tatters.

In this regard, nascent potential resides in social forces such as the Fair Trade movement, which has only fairly recently begun to make waves, albeit modest ones. Certainly, there are critics to this movement: the right see it as a subsidy, the left as a sell-out to capitalism. But its success in providing an alternative approach to commerce is surely not to be dismissed. Against the seemingly impenetrable forces of government and big business is an array of small producers who have been enrolled in the market in a way that can better reward the efforts of the marginalized by shortening trade chains and guaranteeing better prices.

Alternatively, solutions stemming from marginalised actors themselves could also generate positive social change. The point is that under globalisation technocratic liberal policy, such as that of the WTO, has benefitted the few at the expense of the many. Indeed, in part as a result of this, such approaches have now reached a political impasse, where they have no broad-based legitimacy in either the developed or the developing world. As such, its potential to be further implemented is virtually non-existent, without the use of brute force.

Subsequently, it’s time for more popularly-supported, trans-national approaches to development to take to the global stage. Doha’s terminal condition is not necessarily a mournful thing but the vacuum that it leaves must be filled by something of substance or else we will descend into the nationalism and protectionism that has plagued the world at previous points in history.

It’s time to put equity into development. [Tess & Toby]

The wrong way to fight AIDS

CAG has recently launched a multidisciplinary global governance project which will look at how state, the private sector and civil society can better organize strategies to address the deficiencies in global governance. One focus is on global health governance which over the past several years has risen rapidly on the global agenda. Thanks to the Gates Foundation and new resources from various donors, substantial funds have become available, particularly for HIV/ AIDS. However, have the funds been used effectively?

Laurie Garrett, a Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations and one of the most respected intellects on global health, points out in an article published in the International Herald Tribune that the fight against AIDS today has been all about “treatment”, rather than finding a long-term cure. She laments: “the slogan of the first 15 years of the pandemic was 'until there is a cure!'. Today it seems the global health leadership of the world is satisfied with, ‘until there is lifelong drug therapy for everybody, and no prevention strategy!'." Laurie warns that “a dangerous sentiment is sweeping over the AIDS establishment, calling for elimination of all funding for HIV vaccine research and prevention programs, shifting those dollars. euros and yen to expanding HIV treatment”. Read Laurie Garrett's article "The wrong way to fight AIDS"

To make things worse, the standard HIV drug treatment given to new patients in poorer countries in Africa is developing alarming levels of resistance ("When the drugs don't work", FT, 1 August, 2008). This warrants a serious concern given the escalating economic burden of HIV treatments and the lack of options in using alternatives. Compounding this problem is that there is only little data available on resistance. The article points out that many donors and HIV drug treatment companies have spent a lot of efforts and funds in accelerating drug-based treatment but not much in monitoring the resistance. Most of them lack the capacity to carry out appropriate resistance studies, the article finds. Clearly, there is an urgent need to build in appropriate governance mechanisms for long-term capacity building in monitoring resistance. Read "When the drugs don't work". [Sung]

An Age of Globalised Crisis

In the light of fruitless conclusion of G-8 meeting in Japan early last month and this week's collapse of Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations, a number of leading opinion makers are wailing the lack of political will by the world’s stakeholders to tackle difficult choices that must be made.

Jeffrey Sach has written a timely piece titled "Where are the global leaders?" for PROJECT SYNDICATE in which he urges so called “global leaders” of G-8 nations to “get your act together or don’t bother to meet next year”. He adds, "it’s too embarrassing to watch grown men and women gather for empty photo opportunities”. Sach stresses that the world needs global solutions for global problems but the G-8 “global leaders” simply aren’t up to the task. He identifies four underlying problems: the incoherence of American leadership; the lack of global financing; the disconnection between global scientific expertise and politicians; and finally, the lost relevance of key international institutions – notable the UN and the World Bank. Read "Where are the global leaders".

On a similar take, CAG Research Fellow Toby Carroll suggested in The Nation recently that in an age of globalised world, humanity as a whole has indeed a lot of thinking and organising to do if it is to survive well. Tobby calls for reinvigoration of debates and coordinated action to challenge the dominant ways of looking at globalisation and its challenges. Read Toby's "An Age of Globalised Crisis". [Sung]