Reference Update
June 2009
1. The Green Economy
Matthew E. Kahn. Foreign Policy, May/June 2009, 5 pages
Will going green end the recession? Should governments promote alternative energy? Will stopping climate change boost economic growth? The author discusses the economic impact of sustainable development and the promotion of environmentally friendly industries. Also examined are questions of sustainable practices and job creation, and the relation between ending climate change and economic growth.
2. Last Man Standing
Tyler Cowen. The Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2009, 4 pages
The author argues that although America's relative decline in global affairs has been foretold many times, it never quite seems to happen. The author discusses why the United States has such a robust economy and how the global financial crisis has demonstrated that the United States remains an indispensable nation.
3. Burgeoning Bourgeoisie
John Parker. The Economist, February 14, 2009, 4 pages
More than half of the world population is said to belong to the middle class, a result of significant economic advances achieved in the developing world. In this article, the author discusses the global growth of the middle class, examining a number of issues that have led to economic increases in the developing world.
4. Vietnam: Country Outlook
Economist Intelligence Unit - ViewsWire, 4 June 2009, 1523 words
The political landscape is unlikely to change dramatically in 2009-10, with the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam almost guaranteed to maintain its firm grip on power. The government's fiscal stimulus, estimated to be worth under US$4bn by the IMF, will be directed at a raft of infrastructure projects as well as other measures that will help to boost growth. In addition to fiscal loosening, the State Bank of Vietnam will maintain an accommodative monetary policy stance in order to support the economy.
5. The Erosion of U.S. Power in Asia
Dan Blumenthal. Far Eastern Economic Review, May 2009, 4 pages
The author discusses the detrimental nature of the Obama administration’s defense cuts on American strategy in Asia and looks at why Asia remains a dangerous place where good, old-fashioned hard power still matters. How planned defense cutbacks could erode the ability of the United States to keep the peace in Asia is also examined.
6. Popular Perceptions of Political Regimes in East and Southeast Asia
Matthew Carlson and Mark Turner. Democratization, April 2009, 22 pages
How do people in East and Southeast Asian countries perceive their own institutions and governance? Which regimes are perceived as operating in the best interest of society? Which provide citizens with the most adequate political and civic freedoms? The authors examine what citizens in the region actually think about the structure, process, and outcomes of governance in their countries and compare these with the regime classifications put forth by political scientists.
7. Rebalancing American Foreign Policy
Paul K. MacDonald. Daedalus, Spring 2009, 11 pages
Examining the foreign policy and extensive national security challenges the presently face the United States, the author explains why the Obama administration should reorient American foreign policy and lay out a new national security strategy that more effectively strikes a balance between the ends and the means.
8. Diplomacy, Inc.
John Newhouse. Foreign Affairs, May/June 2009, 20 pages
Lobbyists representing foreign interests have an increasingly powerful impact on how the United States formulates its foreign policy. The author examines how money and influence can trump disinterested policy calculations, hurting the country in the end.
9. What Happened to the Idea of World Government
Thomas G. Weiss. International Studies Quarterly, June 2009, 19 pages
What happened to the idea of world government that was so central in the United States to public debate of the 1930s and 1940s and why has it been replaced by global governance? The author examines the reasons behind this evolution—the need to incorporate interdependence and non-state actors into analytical frameworks along with a lack of imagination from analysts—as well as the pluses and minuses of both concepts.
10. A Third Year of Decline
Arch Puddington. Journal of Democracy, April 2009, 15 pages
Global freedom is reported to be in decline, having suffered continued reversals from 2006 through 2008. The conditions are said to coincide with the violent opposition of democratic ideals in several authoritarian regimes. In this piece, the author assesses the agents of democratic reform.
11. Preparing for Pandemics
David L. Heymann. The World Today, June 2009, 4 pages
The foresight of a group of virologists and epidemiologists over fifty years ago has helped us to understand and manage the risk of the new H1N1 influenza emerging from a series of events that happened over the past months. These events occurred before most people were even aware that influenza A/H1N1 had breached the species barrier between animals and humans. The author profiles the Global Influenza Surveillance Network that links laboratories around the world that keep an eye on respiratory infections and help people understand and manage the risks of pandemic infections.
12. Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?
Lester R. Brown. Scientific American, May 2009, 8 pages
There is a possibility that water shortages, soil erosion, and rising temperatures from global warming will disrupt agricultural production in the developing world, leading to political instability. The author argues that without massive and rapid intervention to address these three environmental factors, a series of government collapses could threaten the world order.
13. Hungry Oceans: What Happens When the Prey is Gone?
Margot L. Stiles, et al. Oceana, March 2009, 40 pages
The global depletion of small fish is causing widespread malnutrition in fish, marine mammals, and seabirds. These prey fish, which underpin marine food webs, are being steadily exhausted by heavy fishing, increasing demand for aquaculture feed, and climate change. The authors discuss problems of food shortages in the ocean and offer solutions to protect prey species that are fundamental to ocean ecosystems and fisheries.
14. Texting toward Utopia
Evgeny Morozov. Boston Review, March/April 2009, 6 pages
Could it be that changes in the web over the past six years -- especially the rise of social networking, blogging, and video and photo sharing -- represent the flowering of the Internet's democratizing potential? Does the Internet spread freedom? The author discusses the relationship between the Internet and democracy, focusing on the potential effect of the Internet and mobile technology on the development of democracy.
15. The New Digital Press: How to Create a Brighter Future for the News Industry
Darrell M. West. Issues in Governance Studies No. 25, May 2009, 11 pages
The author examines a fundamental economic and technological transformation of journalism, focusing on how to support changes that protect basic democratic principles in the new digital era and steps to make sure that the new digital press can achieve its full potential. The need for an information strategy for the news industry that expands upon the strengths of digital media such as diversity, immediacy and interactivity, while encouraging in-depth coverage is also discussed.
16. Inside, Outside, and Online
Chrystie Hill. American Libraries, March 2009, 4 pages
The Internet is quickly becoming embedded into the daily lives of people with more and more individuals accustomed to the use of search engines. One thing being neglected by these people is recognition of the library as an information resource online. The author reflects on the roles that libraries and librarians play in society, discussing how the emergence of computing has heavily impacted library service as supported by research from the Information Institute on public libraries and the Internet.
17. Without a Trace
Yudhijit Bhattacharjee. The Atlantic, May 2009, 1 page
The author discusses the use of software that obscures internet search history and generates a stream of fake queries to mask a user's true search behavior. The discussion focuses on concerns over search privacy and the question of whether the ability to track search histories has positive applications, such as tracking searches on "influenza" during an epidemic.
18. What Does It Mean to Be an American?
Sarah Song. Daedalus, Spring 2009, 10 pages
Tracing the history of U.S. citizenship requirements to its modern version, the author argues that it is important to maintain a set of shared political and cultural values, while at the same time allowing for and valuing distinct ethnic identities within the larger context. The piece takes a look a different ideals of civic solidarity with an eye toward what they imply for newcomers who wish to become American citizens, focusing on the role of U.S. citizenship in maintaining a cohesive democracy and the relationship of ethnicity and American identity.
19. How Countries Democratize
Samuel P. Huntington. Political Science Quarterly, Spring 2009, 39 pages
The author examines a trend toward democracy in the countries of southern and eastern Europe, Latin America, and East Asia, during the last quarter of the 20th century that has been characterized as the third in a series of modern waves of democratization. An outline of the previous two waves is examined and an explanation of how the third wave democratization occurred is presented. The various possible structures of democratic and authoritarian governments are discussed, and the reactions of democratizing forces to particular types of authoritarian government are analyzed.
20. The Case for a Concert of Democracies
James M. Lindsay. Ethics and International Affairs, Spring 2009, 7 pages
The author discusses why the world needs a "league" or "concert" of democracies -- a single institution that brings together the world's established democracies into a single organization dedicated to joint action. He discusses the primary tasks of a Concert of Democracies and explains how the institution would achieve these goals.
21. Civil Society
Howard J. Wiarda. American Foreign Policy Interests, May 2009, 4 pages
The author discusses the American panacea known as civil society and the efforts by the U.S. to export it to other states. The efficacy of transporting and implementing an American approach in developing countries is also examined with discussion on how such actions may be problematic and may or may not threaten the stability of the states that U.S. policymakers are trying to strengthen.
22. Basic Skills Education
Kay Mills. The Education Digest, April 2009, 6 pages
The author explores developmental education programs for underprepared students by profiling Pasadena City College's Teaching and Learning Center, which offers its students basic skills education through an eight-year holistic approach to guiding underprepared students through math, English, and other subjects. The success of learning communities that allow students to take a series of courses linked to one another is discussed.
23. Universities for Cities and Regions: Lessons from the OECD Reviews
Barbara Ischinger and Jaana Puukka. Change, May/June 2009, 6 pages
Reviewing the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) study of higher education's role in local and regional economies, the authors discuss how regions can play a key role in the development of national, local, and regional innovation systems. Why universities, local and regional stakeholders, and governments at different levels should consider mobiliting the full potential of higher education for economic development is also examined.
24. Moving the Classroom into the Newsroom
Chris Roush. American Journalism Review, February/March 2009, 6 pages
The author explores the partnership between the Anniston Star, an Alabama newspaper, and the graduate journalism program at the University of Alabama. Each year, selected master’s students from the university contribute to the paper as Knight Community Journalism Fellows, thus getting on-the-job training in community coverage, as well as practice in using the latest multimedia methods for newsgathering and delivery. Though there are dozens of similar school-newspaper collaborations across the United States, none has so far taken its educational initiatives to the Anniston Star’s level of involvement, in which the degree-granting program is housed right in the newsroom.
25. The Teachers' Lounge
Dudley Barlow. The Education Digest, April 2009, 4 pages
The author discusses the use of high technology in education, focusing on using computers in the teaching of writing and composition classes. He details his personal experiences learning how to use computers in his lesson planning, including the ease of use in using word processing software. The ability of computers and the Internet to improve students writing is analyzed, along with efforts by politicians to increase educational accountability.
26. Cheating Goes Global as Essay Mills Multiply
Thomas Bartlett. The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 20, 2009, 5 pages
Essay mills allow students to cheat on their college assignments by paying other people to write their papers. Here the author asserts that today’s essay mills have become more sophisticated and international. A company called Essay Writers, for example, sells custom essays that are undetectable by plagiarism detection software. The author offers some recommendations for professors on how to better structure their assignments to deter plagiarism and provides suggestions on how to discourage the act by talking to students about ethics and the purpose of college.
27. Community Colleges: A Route of Upward Economic Mobility
Natalia Kolesnikova. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, March 2009, 29 pages
The author compares community colleges to traditional, four-year colleges, noting the types of students, the economic returns, and the educational objectives of the students who attend these two types of educational institutions. She also discusses whether a community college education affects an individual’s chances of obtaining a more advanced degree and whether students who receive an associate degree prior to obtaining a bachelor’s degree have different educational and labor market outcomes than their counterparts who do not pursue associate degrees.
28. Foreign Students Pour Back into the U.S.
Beth McMurtrie. The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 21, 2008, 5 pages
The author discusses the influx of foreign students who enrolled in U.S. universities in 2007, looking at factors such as the growth of middle classes, insufficiency of higher education resources in foreign countries, and increased recruiting efforts by U.S. colleges as contributors to the increase number of foreign students going abroad to study.
The following articles are from “The Global Financial System”, an electronic journal of U.S. State Department, May 2009:
29. The End of American Capitalism? Mark Twain, Lake Wobegon, and the Current Crisis
Mark Blyth, Professor of International Political Economy, Brown University, 4 pages
While the type of financial crisis we face today is unprecedented, crises of capitalism are not. They are commonplace.
30. Debt Man Walking
John B. Judis, Senior Editor, The New Republic, 3 pages
Economists know the fatal flaw in our international monetary system — but they can’t agree on how to fix it.
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