The first sentence uttered to describe the U.S.-Chinese relationship in the third and final presidential debate was President Obama’s, and it contained both the words “adversary” and “partner.” Messaging doesn’t get much more mixed than that, and the President’s opponent, Mitt Romney, was not much clearer. In such a hotly contested election, we might be […]

Why Nations Fail, by Professors Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson has deservedly gained right of entry to the pantheon of Big Books on economic development.Like the pantheon’s other occupants, most recently—Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, and Ian Morris’s Why the West Rules for Now, Acemoglu and Robinson’s work tackles one of the biggest questions […]

It was the summer of 2000, and the situation for Egypt’s fledgling civil society community was looking dire. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a prominent sociologist, had just been dragged from his home and jailed by longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak. The 61-year-old academic was held without formal charges for weeks and then prosecuted for a nebulous array […]

One of the biggest advantages of America’s energy revolution also seems the most counterintuitive: It’s good for the environment. But fracking and other drilling techniques put cheap, clean natural gas on the market, allowing America to transition away from dirtier fuels like coal. As a result, American carbon dioxide production hit a 20-year low earlier […]

Many Republicans sincerely believe that if Barack Obama wins a second term as President, America as we know it may cease to exist. Some Democrats are equally passionate in their belief that a Romney election would fundamentally alter the social contract, return us to disastrous Bush policies, and maybe get us into a war with […]

by John EllisMitt Romney should enjoy his seven-point lead in the Gallup tracking poll. It isn’t likely to last. The next debate focuses on foreign policy and national security issues. Regardless of what you think of the president’s policies in this arena, he is fluent in the subject matter. Mr. Romney, demonstrably, is not. So […]

This is the time in the American election cycle when much ink is spilled on that peculiar American institution known as the Electoral College. The debate has become quite stale and predictable: Reformers (mostly on the left) argue that the college is an antiquated relic of the horse-and-buggy era that offends a basic principle of […]

For a small country located in a very tough neighborhood, Georgia has not received lots of attention since 2008, when Russia invaded the country and declared South Ossetia and Abkhazia independent. And with the world’s attention focused elsewhere (elections in the U.S., the humanitarian disaster in Syria, the challenge of Iran), many might have missed […]

The U.S. is preparing for a role it hasn’t held in quite some time: exporter of crude oil. Although America has long been among the world’s largest producers of crude oil, the high level of domestic consumption has meant that most of this crude remained within the country for processing and use. But now the […]

Michael Young's coinage of the term "meritocracy" is turning fifty years old. Young's satirical warnings of its downside remain as fresh as ever.