Analyses
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Jesse Jenkins and Harry Saunders explain why energy demand will not decrease even if we find ways to use it more efficiently. In energy planning circles, efficiency is often viewed as an inexpensive way to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gases. Governments and NGOs prominently adopt efficiency policies, while the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) estimate that efficiency measures can greatly reduce emissions, therefore helping to stabilize our global climate. This focus on efficiency is particularly prominent in the world’s emerging economies, where getting more out of less energy is seen as a key path to both...
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Tulin Daloglu analyses the results of the Turkish election and the strategies that Prime Minister Erdogan might use in order to keep his position intact. It came as no surprise: On June 12th, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan won a third consecutive term in the election. While Erdogan has argued in the past that secularists in the military, judiciary and other state bureaucracies denied him full power to govern the country, he can no longer make that claim. After AKP’s two term in office – today - there is no military that would attempt a coup, or a judiciary that would challenge him. Erdogan’s victory is the most decisive in his nine years in power. With Erdogan...
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By S.AgarwalSachin Agarwal provides context for the reasons NGOs are necessary. They fill in the gap by providing services that neither the government nor the private sector undertake. In a utopian world, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) would not exist. NGOs provide services that fill gaps left by the private and public sectors. To better understand why this gap exists we have to understand the incentives of the different stakeholders of society. Elected politicians are driven by short-term interests that do not always align with long-term social goals. With policymakers thinking about the next election, democracies produce public policies that are often shortsighted at the national level and...
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Siddharth Ramalingam states that increasing liquidity remains the key concern of the Fed as it tries to bring the US economy to a recovery. QE 2 is under way, but the economy’s unresponsive nature may make QE 2.5 and a possible QE 3 a necessity. Minding the gap between QE2 and QE3 Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve (Fed) recently announced that the Fed has no intentions of putting in place another round of quantitative easing (QE) once Quantitative Easing 2 (QE2) ends. However, a closer reading of the chairman’s statement makes it all too clear that the Fed isn’t, and cannot afford to be, unequivocal about the possibility of there not being another round of...
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On Thursday, the UN's Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), a Security Council backed investigation of the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, delivered its first round of indictments against four suspects. Some had predicted that after six years of anticipation, followed by a year of leaked disclosures on suspects, followed by months of awaiting "imminent" indictments, the actual moment of truth may be - well - anti-climatic. Nobody could have predicted quite how non-momentous an event this would be. Four Hezbollah Members Charged As expected, the accused four are allegedly affiliated with Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah,...
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In retrospect, India's foreign policy trajectory since the 1980s has been a series of leaps and bounds towards reconciliation with the United States. The two democracies were separated by the Cold War, near-adversaries in the 1970s after India broke off Bangladesh from Pakistan, and wrenched farther apart by the US sanctions and condemnation that followed India's nuclear tests in 1998. A seminal visit from President Clinton in 2000 did much to repair ties, but it wasn't until the Bush administration, focused on the China threat and the possibility of India as a rising Asian counterweight, that relations really flourished. In 2005, India and the US signed a far-reaching...
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By d.morganThe informal system of clientelism that characterizes Pakistan’s internal politics is also instructive for understanding the way the country conducts itself on the international stage. It is no secret that Pakistan depends heavily on international aid. The current administration knows that without the huge sums currently poured into its coffers from the US ($1.5 billion in the past eighteen months), it would struggle to pay its civil servants, armed forces or maintain a semblance of civil society. However, the ongoing threat of militancy and the spectre of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons means that the US cannot allow Pakistan to collapse. But American money in return for ...
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By AnonymousOzsel Beleli looks at recent elections in Turkey and reviews the degree to which Turkey is really a democracy. On June 12th, 87% of registered voters in Turkey placed their votes in ballot boxes across the country. If elections or impressive turnout rates were the primary indicators of a flourishing democracy, Turkey would clearly deserve high marks. However, much more is necessary to create and sustain a political system where democracy can flourish. Does Turkey have a democratic government? Recent events indicate that Turkey’s democracy is at best flawed, and possibly under significant threat. If democracy was indeed flourishing, the ruling AKP would not publicly seek a super-...
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Silicon Valley: the fabled “Shangri-La” for budding entrepreneurs. In the 1990s the name brought to mind high-spirited 20 and 30- somethings working day and night on exciting new ideas. The world of Silicon Valley was seemingly open to all those with an idea and the cajones to “go for it.” Flash forward a decade, and California and Silicon Valley seem slightly different. Silicon Valley is still very much a haven for startups and new tech related firms to call home, however the shape, form, and size has seemingly shifted. Many companies in the initial incubators of the 90s were wiped out at the burst of the bubble, while others have risen and grown into the dominant...