Global Governance

The world is experiencing a grain rush. With increasing frequency, wealthy, food-importing, and water-scarce countries—particularly the Arab Gulf states and the rich countries of East Asia—are investing in farmland overseas to meet food security needs. Similarly, the private sector is pursuing farmland deals abroad, with many investors perceiving land as a safe investment in an otherwise shaky financial climate.

A lone ranger mindset inflicting both developed and developing countries stands in the way of a significant reduction of carbons emissions, but the world will eventually have to put differences aside in order to reach an agreement on climate change, according to a panel with experts on Brazil, China, and India who convened in anticipation of the upcoming UN Convention in Copenhagen.

Over the past year, the Chinese government has been aggressively promoting low carbon policies to help ensure China's energy security and lower the country's greenhouse gas emissions. At the Copenhagen climate meeting in December 2009, the Chinese leadership committed the country to ambitious CO2 emissions targets.

The Cold War International History Project and the Latin American Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars presents U.S. Intelligence Estimates on Latin American Revolutionary Movements, 1947-1987.

The discovery of A.Q. Khan's extensive nuclear proliferation network based upon gas centrifuge technology used to enrich uranium to weapons-grade has created a crisis of confidence in the non-proliferation regime. While the beginnings of gas-centrifuge experimentation date back to the 1930s, it was only in the 1970s that the technology advanced enough to become commercially viable. Widely considered an unlikely path to nuclear weapons proliferation until the 1990s, gas-centrifuge technology is now seen by some as a central threat to the non-proliferation regime.

The Lisbon Treaty introduced significant changes in the institutional order and external representation of the European Union. This workshop will revisit the founding compromise of European integration between sovereignty and supranationality and assess the effects of these transformations on the legitimization of the EU. Focusing on the European Council as the prominent governing body of the European polity and the most dramatic arena of European politics, European and American academics and officials will offer their views.

Over the last decade, international organizations have brought the fight against corruption in local governments to the global stage. The prominence of corruption as a global problem stems from the fact that it is associated with poor economic performance, low foreign investment, increased inequality and poverty, environmental degradation. Grigorescu asserted that it also threatens the survival of young democracies.

The European Union and other International Organizations have played an important role in reforming the institutions of post communist societies. Through its accession process, the EU in particular has generated a great deal of activity in institutional reform in central and Eastern Europe. But there is evidence to suggest that these changes are not as authentic and deep as they should be. By tracing East European countries' progress in adopting the EU's acquis communautaire, Wade Jacoby offered five paradoxes the should be considered when designing a democracy promotion strategy.