In-Depth Archive

Over the past 30 years, the process of globalization has revolutionized international affairs. The amount of trade has tripled, and the ease with which goods, money, services and people now circulate globally has resulted in soaring economic growth and development that has benefitted almost all countries. Perhaps the most significant change has taken place in the Global South. Developing countries’ share of world trade has risen from around 10 percent in the mid-1990s to around 20 percent today. Even amid the recent global economic downturn, developing countries have still managed to significantly increase their share of global trade (.pdf). Partly […]

Discussions of sharing knowledge for global health initiatives typically conjure images of children afflicted with neglected tropical diseases. Knowledge sharing seems like an important but comfortably distant concern for those in industrialized countries. In fact, far from being localized to diseases endemic to developing countries, the concerns — and challenges — of sharing health knowledge are truly global. Take genomic science, a field with deep relevance to residents of industrialized countries, to whom it promises a future of increasingly personalized medicine. Yet that future of tailored therapy depends on the ability to access the collective building blocks of the human […]

Growing awareness of how development outcomes are dependent on our variable and changing climate is focusing increasing attention on the role of climate information in agricultural development. Much of this attention is driven by the growing acceptance that human activity is altering the Earth’s climate, and that the major greenhouse gas emitters have an obligation to help the most vulnerable to adapt. Independently of the climate change agenda, however, most of the international development banks have recognized that their investments are vulnerable to climate shifts and fluctuations, and now have strategies for screening projects for climate vulnerability and for making […]

Germany’s handling of the sovereign debt crisis gripping the eurozone has led some to wonder whether Germany has lost interest in Europe, or in the role it has historically played in the European Union. But does Germany really believe it has other, global options for a more unilateral foreign policy? Is Berlin falling prey to an Eastern temptation, whether from Moscow or Beijing? The answer is clearly “no,” but it is a no that has shades of gray. And those shades of gray are now combining to cast a shadow over the skies of Berlin; German foreign policy is no […]

The European Union’s stuttering economic recovery and ongoing debt crisis have called attention to the significant economic and commercial imbalances that exist within the union. In particular, Germany has been pointed to as a model of fiscal and economic governance, both for its strong GDP growth in 2010 and 2011 after the severe contraction of 2009, and for the surprisingly favorable conditions in its labor market. German employment has expanded over the past three years to well above precrisis levels, contrasting markedly with the experience of other European countries. Whereas in 2008 Germany’s rate of registered unemployment was roughly the […]

Both the Lisbon Treaty, which entered into force on Dec. 1, 2009, and the effects of the sovereign debt crisis that has ravaged the European Union for the past two years have considerably changed the union’s functioning. The Lisbon Treaty created the position of a permanent president of the European Council, tasked with preparing and chairing the council’s meetings and shepherding working committees between summits. As expected, this helped the summits of EU heads of state and government gain steering capacity and political importance in the decision-making system of the EU. But the sovereign debt crisis further established the European […]