In-Depth Archive

U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent trip through East Asia was only the latest reminder of the growing economic and geopolitical influence of the region’s rising powers. Now more firmly installed, the governments in China, Japan and South Korea have each begun to put their stamps on their countries’ strategies, as each country confronts the challenges posed by its neighbors and by relations with the United States. This special report examines the dynamic geopolitics of East Asia through articles published in the past 18 months. Regional Perspectives China’s Slowing Growth May Help Rebalance Regional RoleBy Iain MillsAug. 12, 2013 Beating Expectations, […]

Facing a level of criticism unprecedented since its restoration in 1975, the Spanish monarchy is in full damage control mode. “I am sorry, I made a mistake. It won’t happen again,” said King Juan Carlos in a seemingly improvised, but actually well-rehearsed, television address in April 2012. Prompting the extraordinary mea culpa by the 76-year-old Spanish monarch—a direct descendent of Europe’s most iconic rulers, including King Louis XIV of France, on both sides of his family, and Queen Victoria of England, on his mother’s side—was the controversy created by a photograph showing Juan Carlos holding a rifle next to a […]

On July 23, 1999, Morocco’s ruler, King Hassan II, died and was succeeded by his eldest son, Mohammed VI. Many Moroccans hoped that the succession would also entail a transition from a system of autocratic rule to a liberal democracy, and the new king’s early initiatives seemed likely to give substance to these hopes. Now, 15 years later, it is possible to see to what extent those hopes have been fulfilled and, if they have not, to determine why and to what degree they have been disappointed. The expectations for the new reign did not emerge, of course, in a […]

When King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand celebrated the 60th anniversary of his accession to the throne in June 2006, millions of Thais descended on Bangkok to join in the festivities. The king seemed to be at the height of his popularity. Beyond his considerable talents as a musician, painter and inventor, he had dedicated his reign to improving the welfare of the country’s most disadvantaged. Seeing the sight, foreign journalists had to concede the king was beloved by all Thais. In short, the legacy of Bhumibol’s reign seemed all but assured. Indeed, there was much to celebrate in mid-2006 not […]

Since the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women and the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995, many governments and international development institutions have expressed their commitment toward gender equality goals. Most development actors and policymakers, however, remain focused on a narrow interpretation of women’s empowerment and often argue for “investing in women and girls” as a means to achieve poverty reduction and GDP growth, rather than as an end in itself and as a matter of social justice. For example, the main argument behind the slogan “gender equality is smart economics” coined by the World Bank […]

The original and most immediate rationale for redistributive land reform is that, at low levels of capital intensity, large farms operated by wage labor will be less efficient than small owner-operated ones. This has given rise to an inverse relationship between farm size and productivity that continues to be widely observed in the literature. In fact, colonial powers had often tried to restrict access to land by the local population to ensure a continued supply of cheap and relatively uneducated labor, despite the associated economic cost. In a sense, land reform is an effort to rectify this historical injustice and […]

It is now very much old news that economic inequality has risen dramatically in the United States and many other developed democracies over the past 30 years. This dramatic increase has produced a flurry of discussion over how severe the increase has been, how much of a problem inequality really is and what can and should be done about it. While inequality is resurgent as an issue in U.S. politics, it has a much longer and more prominent history in middle- and low-income countries. This is likely due to the fact that inequality in developing countries has historically been much […]