Booklist | What to Read on Global Policy Analysis” in IR via Stephen M. Walt

Walt’s crowdsourcing a reading list–but also identifying the gap in goodreads for global policy analysis.  He also explains why process matters so much for international policymaking, and the importance of implementation via diplomacy and military power:

In global affairs, by contrast, the rule of law is far weaker and there are often competing power centers with very different interests. Strategic interactions loom much larger, and the success of a given policy choice often depends not just on the intrinsic merits of the specific initiative but on how other key actors will respond to it. (Among other things, this is why simple game theoretic models are often useful for analyzing certain international policy problems). To the extent that the issues are truly global, the correct policy choice depends far more on bargaining, persuasion, in some cases coercion, and on developing solutions that either elicit others’ voluntary compliance or achieve the objective in the face of opposition. Such features are not entirely absent in domestic policy discussions, but they play a larger role in interactions between states, corporations, and non-state actors operating in the anarchic world of international politics.

via Is There a Good Book or Article on “Policy Analysis” in IR? | Stephen M. Walt.

Some of the commenter suggestions are worth considering:

• Maarten Hajer’s article, “Policy without Polity: policy analysis and the institutional void”
• John Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie
• Dan Drezner, All Politics is Global; Avoiding Trivia
• Being useful: policy relevance and international relations
• Managing Strategic Surprise, Ian Bremmer and Paul Bracken, eds.
• Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, The Practioneer’s Game
• Bob Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails
• Policy analysis papers from Bernard Brodie, Tom Schelling and Raymond Garthoff
• Graham Allison and Zelikow, Essence of Decision
• Jeffrey Pfeffer, Managing with Power: Politics and Influence in Organizations

Guidance on Non-Binding Documents

Words mater.   For example, avoid the terms “shall,” “agree” or “undertake” in lieu of “should,” “intend to” and “expect to” when writing a non-binding document, according the the US Department of State guidance.  Why?

Governments frequently wish to record in writing the terms of an understanding or arrangement between them without, by so doing, creating obligations that would be binding under international law. The language, titles, and techniques used for this purpose vary considerably. While not binding under international law, a non-binding instrument may carry significant moral or political weight. Such instruments are often used in our international relations to establish political commitments. Ambiguity as to whether or not a document is legally binding should be avoided. When negotiating a nonbinding instrument, both/all sides should confirm their understanding that the instrument does not give rise to binding obligations under international law.

via Guidance on Non-Binding Documents.

Remembering Ambassador Richard Holbrooke

Larger than life?  A peacemaker with an abrasive personality?  A man of letters?  A wise man?  How should we remember Richard Holbrooke, who passed away on Sunday, 13 December 2010?  Even the Taliban issued a statement which Alissa J. Rubin notes, borders on true regard.

I had initially planned a briefing with him when he served as the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. with my students at the urging of my wife–and having been wishing I pushed harder to make it happen in the style of this already legendary U.S. diplomat.  Since his passing I have been thinking about what made him so substantial, interesting, and important.  I like the emphasis Eliza Griswold in Slate puts on him:  someone who knew that ‘relationships are the building block of diplomacy”–and wish I could have known him, too.

A lot of different pieces of the mosaic are readily available.  The book blog Paper Cuts hones in on Holbrook as author and intellectual:

Richard Holbrooke was, like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of those rare public intellectuals who managed to combine a life in world affairs with the life of the mind. In his role as a diplomat, he seemed to maintain ironic distance on himself, watching as he conducted negotiations at the highest level and reflecting on his own activities and decisions.

via Barry Gewen, Paper Cuts, NYT.com

At FP.com, David Rothkopf seconds this motion, calling him a “wise man,” not only for his briliant organiational strategy in creating a team that worked across and largely through bureaucratic silos, but also for his thoughtful engagement:

In fact, perhaps that term “wise man” is one that we should not pass over too quickly. Holbrooke was a direct descendent of that line of U.S. foreign policy thinkers who earned that title, one made famous by Walter Issacson and Evan Thomas in their great book on the seminal foreign policy thinkers of the post World War II era.

via On the death of a wise man – the passing of Richard Holbrooke | David Rothkopf.

He was never sentimental about U.S. foreign policy, a ‘machine that doesn’t work’–and even had strong words for how the State Department must needs be reorganized to be the essential player that he believe it should be.

From a personal standpoint, Nick Kristof hits on Holbrooke’s abrasiveness, a force that was useful for good ends:

It’s well-known that he could be abrasive, and he rubbed some people the wrong way. But what’s sometimes missed is that abrasiveness was usually serving some cause; it wasn’t just him trying to get his way. Quite regularly when I would write about AIDS, I would get a reproachful call from Richard. “So, why didn’t you mention testing?” he would ask. As chairman of the Global Business Coalition against AIDS, he was among the first to appreciate the importance of widespread testing for HIV, on the theory that you couldn’t constrain the epidemic until you knew who had it. And so once he understood that, he pushed and persuaded and bullied to get more testing. For my part, persuaded and bullied by Richard, I began to mention testing more often – and my readers and the public were better off for it.

via Richard Holbrooke, RIP – NYTimes.com.

These skills were useful in his diplomatic profession:

A brilliant, sometimes abrasive infighter, he used a formidable arsenal of facts, bluffs, whispers, implied threats and, when necessary, pyrotechnic fits of anger to press his positions. Mr. Obama, who praised Mr. Holbrooke on Monday afternoon at the State Department as “simply one of the giants of American foreign policy,” was sometimes driven to distraction by his lectures.

But Mr. Holbrooke dazzled and often intimidated opponents and colleagues around a negotiating table. Some called him a bully, and he looked the part: the big chin thrust out, the broad shoulders, the tight smile that might mean anything. To admirers, however, including generations of State Department protégés and the presidents he served, his peacemaking efforts were extraordinary.

via Strong American Voice in Diplomacy and Crisis, NYT.com

There’s more, and you should spend the time–the Packer New Yorker piece, a list of Holbrooke’s Foreign Policy articles–at the Atlantic Wire--as well as the WaPo update on his final words to “end the war” which appear to be more of humorous banter than famous last words.  But even so, if the U.S. was to have found a diplomatic way out of Afghanistan, it was well served having this diplomat extraordinaire on its side.

The Joy of Stats with Hans Rosling

Research can be fun, especially when you visualize it.  This four minute short covers 200 Countries in 200 Years.

Organizing Issues at the World Economic Forum Dubai

At the 2010 The World Economic Forum the world was organized by drivers & trends, risks & opportunities, regional agenda, industry agendas, and policy & institutional responses.  The challenge then is to organize these categories in a way that fosters connections in a meaningful way.

Nathan Yau of flowingdata.com developed an insightful interactive chart that shows what happens visually when one council decides its top five with whom they would most benefit from interaction.

via Working Together (click to try it out).

On Innovation, Groupthink and Problem-solving

The study of “fourth quadrant” innovation helps negotiators learn about how good policy ideas are created and might also be tapped to explore solutions for the world’s most intractable “wicked” problems involving collective action (environment, economy) or selective alliances (terrorism).  The insight here is that more innovations come from open collaboration settings rather than the competetive setting of the market, solo entrepreneurs or amateurs:

Consider a recent start-up called Kickstarter, which embodies many of these complex values. Kickstarter is a site that allows individuals to fund creative projects, like movies, art installations, albums and so on. Donors may get special gifts in return for their contributions — signed copies of the final CD or an invitation to the opening — but they don’t own the creations they help support. In just two years of existence, Kickstarter has raised more than $20 million for thousands of projects, taking a small cut of each transaction.

The economic exchange that Kickstarter enables between donors and creators works outside the traditional logic of markets. People are “investing” in others not for the promise of financial reward, but for the social rewards of supporting important work. The artists, on the other hand, are relying on a decentralized network of support, not government grants. And somehow, in the middle of these new models of collaboration, lies Kickstarter itself, a for-profit company that may well make a nice return for its own investors and founders.

via Innovation Isn’t a Matter of Left or Right – NYTimes.com.

U.S. Continues Aid to Nations That Used Child Soldiers – NYTimes.com

Idealism, meet policy realities via a fun little game we call negotiation:

Despite those findings, in an annual State Department report on human trafficking, the Obama administration is allowing American military aid to continue to the four countries, issuing a waiver this week of a 2008 law, the Child Soldiers Prevention Act..In a memorandum to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday, President Obama said he had determined that the waiver was in “the national interest.”

via U.S. Continues Aid to Nations That Used Child Soldiers – NYTimes.com.

The four kinds of political debates this campaign season. – By Christopher Beam – Slate Magazine

The skills of debate are useful to diplomats, as much of the argumentation–although structured in different forms–employs the use of persuasive skills and the ancient art of rhetoric.

Political campaign season is a rich time to evaluate the current status of this oratorial art form.  Debates have also been used as oppositional truth-seeking vehicles for interested citizens.  Are they working in 2010?

No one wins in political debates—least of all the audience. We know it’s a bad idea to watch them. But we watch anyway, thinking: This could be it. This debate, unlike the others, could begin with an exchange of bon mots, transition to witty jousting, probe deeply into most pressing issues of our time, build with a set of passionate but non-clichéd paeans to the American idea, and climax with a final parry-thrust that leaves a verbal dagger lodged in the lesser candidate’s larynx.

That never happens. Viewers are instead subjected to a fire hose of context-free assertions and vague cant. Arguments are oversimplified. Rhetorical pivots are uncreative. Personal attacks are never as vicious as you hope. Even a great train wreck is too much to ask.

via The four kinds of political debates this campaign season. – By Christopher Beam – Slate Magazine.

 

Negotiating Domestic Policy: Federal Deficit

Sure the U.S. deficit is a domestic issue, but in a global economy the implications can be far-reaching.  And the game of politics can sometimes be a helpful parallel to the dance of diplomacy as there are issues, agendas, trade-offs, and interests involved in brokering any solution.

How could the deficit be solved?  Thomas Friedman notes that leadership (be it Tea Party, not “Kettle” or otherwise) is a prerequisite.  But ultimately, we must arrive at the issues of what to cut, what to save, and overall–what should government do?

… a truly conservative approach to the deficit does exist. You can find strands of it among Republican governors, some of the party’s current Congressional candidates and the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, Paul Ryan. …

“We as Republicans need to realize that you can’t just cut off the welfare queen and balance the budget,” says Rand Paul, a Senate candidate in Kentucky, who has some extreme views on other issues but is evidently pro-arithmetic. “The only way you’ll ever get close to balancing the budget is if you look at the entire budget.”

via Economic Scene – Republicans’ Deficit-Cut Pledge Lacks Specifics – NYTimes.com.

What’s Happened to Cultural Discourse? – Opinionator Blog – NYTimes.com

This discussion raises an important aspect missing from our p0litics–and a component that under-girds real understanding of issues, policy, and ideas:

One of the things that has always bewildered me is that we have a surplus of television shows that feature political chat and almost no TV shows that feature cultural or sociological chat — despite the fact that the latter topics are of more interest to people. You can turn on the TV at any moment and find 5 shows debating the Tea Party movement, but almost none debating changing parental norms, changing definitions of masculinity, etc. It’s hard to recall the last time a novel generated a national discussion, or even a history book.

This imbalance also holds outside of TV — on blogs, op-ed pages and so on.

You have always been involved in cultural discussion. Charlie Rose and a few others do it today. Why isn’t there a greater supply? Is there something intrinsically hard about the medium? Is there no space between academic highbrow stuff and TMZ? Is the problem that novelists no longer write to generate big public controversies?

via What’s Happened to Cultural Discourse? – Opinionator Blog – NYTimes.com.