Böcker utgivna av Brookings Institution Press

What challenges and risks do Chinese and Russian bases pose to the United States' military strategy? How do the military postures of great powers interact and with what consequences for regional and global security? This book examines the emerging dynamics of geostrategic competition for overseas military bases and base access. The comparative framework adopted in this volume examines how the geopolitical interests of the United States, China, and Russia and their respective underlying force posture interact in different regions including the Indo-Pacific, Europe, sub-Sahara Africa, the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and the Arctic Circle. By exploring the security, political economic, and domestic political dynamics of specific regions, the contributors to this volume reveal varied motivations for overseas military bases and base access among great powers. With analysis on the particular dynamics of overseas bases in major regional theaters, the book offers a valuable window into the nature and scope of the broader "great power competition" underway in the twenty-first century.

This policy-oriented book of essays by noted scholars and experts considers the key trends shaping Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic, to climate change, economic disruptions, demographics and other domestic concerns, and shifts in the global order.

This collection of six papers on the role of quantitative risk assessment in the promulgation of recent regulatory standards represents the latest contribution to a series of volumes published by Lester Lave and the Brookings Institution on regulatory decisionmaking.

"Americans spend more than $100 billion a year to buy weapons, but no one likes the process that brings these weapons into existence. The problem, McNaugher shows, is that the technical needs of engineers and military planners clash sharply with the political demands of Congress. McNaugher examines weapons procurement since World War II and shows how repeated efforts to improve weapons acquisition have instead increased the harmful intrusion of political pressures into that technical development and procurement process.Today's weapons are more complicated than their predecessors. So are the nation's military forces. The design of new systems and their integration into the force structure demand more care, time, and flexibility. Yet time and flexibility are precisely what political pressures remove from the acquisitions process.In a series of case studies and conceptual discussions, McNaugher tackles concerns at the heart of the debate about acquisition-the slow and heavily bureaucratic approach to development, the preference for ultimate weapons over well-organized and trained forces, and the counterproductive incentives facing the nation's defense firms. He calls for changes that run against the current fashion-less centralization or procurement, less haste in developing new weapons, and greater use of competition as a means of removing the development process from political oversight.Above all, McNaugher shows how the United States tries to buy research and development on the cheap, and how costly this has been. The nation can improve its acquisition process, he concludes, only when it recognizes the need to pay for the full exploration of new technology."

Egypt has long been valued for its strategic importance in the Middle East and North Africa, but its relationship with the United States continues to evolve. Egypt is the second largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid and has been a key player in the Middle East peace process. This volume by William B. Quandt first provides an authoritative analysis of the successful U.S.-Egyptian relationship-both past and present-and then examines policy options for the future. Quandt explains that it is important for American policymakers to honestly assess the strengths and weaknesses of the ties that link the United States and Egypt, to think of how best the relationship might evolve, and to try to establish a stronger basis for cooperation, especially in the area of economic assistance and debt repayment. For the sake of its broad interests in the region, the United States must also remain involved in promoting a broadening of the Arab-Israeli peace process.

"State and local governments are at a financial crossroads. As the federal government attempts to reduce its deficits, state governments will have to provide a greater share of support for mandatory social programs. Local governments face demands for new initiatives in education and for civic improvements. Both have obligations to employee pension plans that are large and still relatively untested. Running counter to these claims on state and local budgets is a voter effort to limit the amounts that governments may tax or spend.This fourth edition of James A. Maxwell's classic and widely acclaimed book will help both layman and lawmaker understand the choices open to their governments. It provides a lucid, nontechnical analysis of state and local finance. It gives concise descriptions of the taxes, grants, debt issues, and user charges that finance state and local government and discusses their relative virtues and drawbacks. It traces the history of state and local finance and presents statistical data on expenditures, federal aid, revenue from taxes and user charges, debt, and pension funds. The new edition, in recognition of changes since the mid-1970s, also includes a separate chapter on financing education and broadened analyses of federal grant programs, employee retirement systems, and nonguaranteed municipal debt."

Bookshelves abound with theoretical analyses, how-to guides, and personal success stories by famous corporate leaders, public officials, even athletic coaches, expounding on how to lead from the top. But what about those in the middle who are increasingly tasked with trying to reshape, reorient, or recreate the capabilities of an organization?Leading Change from the Middle takes you on the journeys traveled by Kurt Mayer, an information technology executive in the Department of Defense trying to build a new IT system in record time with limited resources, and Stephen Wang, a mid-level leader in city government trying to build a capability for supporting commercial agriculture. Kurt and Stephen have to navigate complex organizational and stakeholder landscapes in which they often have few decision rights and few resources¿a common scenario for mid-level leaders. One succeeds; one does not.While following Kurt and Stephen, the book introduces a new approach for increasing the likelihood of successfully leading change. This new approach breaks down into three core strategies: First, identify all relevant stakeholders and partition them into four categories: superordinates, subordinates, customers, and complementors/blockers (those who control needed resources but over whom the leaders have no authority).Second, for each stakeholder category, identify Communications, Strategies, and Tactics (referred to as CoSTS).Third, don't stimulate negative emotions that make people DEAF¿Disrespect, Envy, Anger, and Fear¿to efforts to produce change. As the book follows the journeys of Kurt and Stephen, it walks through the details of each strategy.In presenting this material in a concise, accessible, and applicable format that translates theory to practice, Nickerson provides an important service for leaders trying to build extraordinary capabilities for their organizations¿from the middle.

"From a modest beginning in 1935 to an income replacement scheme for workers in commerce and industry, the social security system has grown to cover 90 percent of working Americans. It now pays $78 billion a year in benefits and is obligated to pay $4 trillion in future retirement benefits to workers now covered. With a projected tax rate of 30 percent of gross wages by the year 2050 to meet its obligations under current law, the system, in the author's words, is at ""the most crucial juncture of its forty-year life.""This comprehensive review and analysis, the thirteenth in the Brookings series of Studies in Social Economics, discusses social security in relation to other sources of retirement income and clarifies its financing problem, benefit structure, and ambivalent goals. It deals with two main financing questions. First, will the payroll tax yield the revenue needed to pay benefits as the retired population rises as a fraction of the working population? Second, is the regressive social security tax really the best source of revenue for a system with welfare components such as the minimum benefit and dependents' benefits? Though such benefits are viewed as progressive, they are not paid according to need. They meet neither the income redistribution requirements nor the individual equity goals of the social security program. The author provides a comprehensive account of the benefit structure and clarifies its relation not only to the basic goals of social security but also to the country's three-tiered system of income security. She offers recommendations for eliminating ""an irrational and correctable feature of the benefit formula,"" for lowering the dependency ratio, and, most important, for a definition of goals."

In 1938 the U.S. Government took under its wing an infant airline industry. Government agencies assumed responsibility not only for airline safety but for setting fares and determining how individual markets would be served. Forty years later, the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 set in motion the economic deregulation of the industry and opened it to market competition. This study by Steven Morrison and Clifford Winston analyzes the effects of deregulation on both travelers and the airline industry. The authors find that lower fares and better service have netted travelers some $6 billion in annual benefits, while airline earnings have increased by $2.5 billion a year. Morrison and Winston expect still greater benefits once the industry has had time to adjust its capital structure to the unregulated marketplace, and they recommend specific public polices to ensure healthy competition.

Essays discuss the presidential nominating process, media campaign coverage, voter participation, campaign financing, election fraud, and the role of political parties.

In recent years, federal courts have become increasingly aggressive in shaping regulatory policy, abandoning their traditional deference to bureaucratic expertise. This new judicial activism has been particular evident in the regulation of air pollution. R. Shep Melnick analyzes the effects a variety of court decisions have had on federal air pollution control policy and assesses the courts' institutional capacity for policymaking in such a complex arena. In six cases studies of environmental programs or issues he examines the interplay among the courts, the Environmental Protection Agency, Congress, and the White House. The conventional wisdom is that the courts have improved environmental policymaking, but Melnick concludes that as a whole "the consequences of court action under the Clean Air Act are neither random nor beneficial." He finds that "court action has encouraged legislators and administrators to establish goals without considering how they can be achieved,? widening the gap between promise and performance. The results, he charges, have been increased cynicism, serious inefficiencies and inequities, and a lack of rational debate. An analysis of the institutional characteristics of the judicial branch reveals how these problems have come about and why they are likely to afflict other programs as well as environmental regulation. The author proposes several reforms to improve the courts' ability to handle regulatory cases.

"Japan is the great economic success story of the postwar period, growing at unprecedented rates to become one of the world's most advanced industrial nations. But since the early 1970s, Asia's economic giant has had to contend with many of the problems encountered by Western economies--slower growth, increased unemployment, rapid changes in the financial and industrial sectors--problems that have permanently transformed its economy and pose crucial challenges for its leaders.In this book, Edward J. Lincoln discusses Japan's burst of growth and the complex interplay of demographic, cultural, economic, and political forces that shaped the subsequent emergence of large domestic imbalances. The motivation and impact of Tokyo's successive attempts to deal with slower growth receive special attention: ballooning government deficits that supported domestic growth in the late 1970s, a determined switch to austerity measures in the 1980s as a surging current-account surplus conveniently buoyed the economy, and as yet uncertain responses to the recent appreciation of the yen that has capped the external surpluses.Lincoln focuses on the changes experienced by Japan's financial institutions and their implications for international economic transactions. Slower growth and altered monetary flows have brought increasing domestic and international pressures for deregulating financial institutions, and the government has responded cautiously. The study analyzes the resulting tensions and crosscurrents within Japan and the strains that have developed in relations with the United States. It concludes with a lucid presentation of Japan's options for stimulating domestic demand through reducing private-sector savings, increasing investment, and raising government spending, as well as appropriate U.S. policies to promote these outcomes. Whatever policy decisions Japan makes in the next few years will be shaped by the economic forces and institutional framework Linco"

"A Brookings Institution Press and National Academy for Social Insurance publicationThis book presents a cross-cutting assessment of disability income policy in public and private programs in the United States and in European countries. It evaluates whether there is a crisis in disability benefit policy, drawing on an in-depth review of Social Security disability programs by a panel of national experts. In addition to highlighting the panel's findings and recommendations for reform, the authors debate issues in financing and delivering quality health care through Medicare and Medicaid for working-age persons with disabilities, and they examine new developments in how Workers' Compensation organizes and finances cash benefits and health care for workers injured on the job. These developments in benefits and health policy for disabled workers are examined in light of budget constraints and challenges posed by today's rapidly changing labor market. The book concludes with a provocative discussion of ""where are the jobs?""--an assessment of growing wage inequality between less skilled and highly skilled workers and the implication of labor market trends for goals of promoting employment among persons with chronic health conditions or disabilities.The contributors include Monroe Berkowitz, Rutgers University; Richard V. Burkhauser, Syracuse University; John Burton, Rutgers University; Philip de Jong, Institute for Law and Public Policy, Leiden University, the Netherlands; Alan Krueger, Princeton University; Katherine Newman, Harvard University; Van Ooms, Committee on Economic Development; Dallas Salisbury, Employee Benefit Research Institute; Leslie Scallet, Mental Health Policy Resource Center; and the Honorable Bruce C. Vladek, Health Care Financing Administration."