Science, Technology, and Public Policy

Steven E. Miller writes that U.S. withdrawal from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty offers few benefits and solves no significant security problem, while raising some potential costs and obvious disadvantages.

The power of Pan-Africanism as a guiding vision for the continent’s development is widely studied, mostly as an aspirational phenomenon. At worst, Pan-Africanism has often been seen as a poor imitation of American federalism or European integration. Both of these perceptions do not reflect the profound nature of the role that the ideology of Pan-Africanism played in shaping the continent’s economic transformation. 

As assistant to the president for science and technology, director of the White House Office for Science and Technology Policy, and co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), Holdren has worked closely with Obama to reinvigorate America’s scientific capabilities on a range of policy fronts, from climate change and renewable energy to health care and nanotechnology.

By 2099 the nature of democratic politics could change in costly ways for politicians because of climate change, according to Nick Obradovich, research fellow with Harvard Kennedy School’s Science, Technology, and Public Policy program. Leveraging a century’s worth of political science research, he predicts in an article in Springer’s journal Climatic Change that voters’ disgruntlement about the societal effects of climatic extremes and weather-related disasters they experience will translate into more frequent turnover of political parties elected in and out of office, and will keep politicians of especially warmer, poorer countries more on their toes than is currently the case.

In this article — across two experimental studies — the authors find evidence that Sub-Saharan African politicians who commit to climate change policies may lose electoral support. Electorally important swing voters with weak party affiliations are least likely to support party statements about climate change. Interviews with standing elected officials from Malawi and South Africa corroborate the experimental findings. The combined results suggest voter preferences may hinder the successful implementation of climate change policy in Sub-Saharan African democracies.

A new manuscript from the STG Project chronicles the adoption of the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) Agreement on June 10, 2015. Prof. Calestous Juma and Dr. Francis Mangeni argue that Africa is pursuing regional trade as part of a broader strategy for long-term economic transformation.

Some 150–200 US tactical nuclear weapons are still scattered throughout the NATO countries of Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. Bringing together leading scholars and analysts of tactical nuclear weapons with country-specific expertise, MTA Associate Paolo Foradori's new book offers an in-depth analysis of the presence, role, perceived value, and destiny of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. The volume provides perspectives from all main actors directly or indirectly involved in the debate over the future of these weapons.

Despite substantial progress in improving nuclear security in recent years, there is more to be done.  The threats of nuclear theft and terrorism remain very real. This presentation recommends learning from the much stronger national and international efforts in nuclear safety, and in particular, taking steps to build international understanding of the threat; establish effective performance objectives; assure performance; train and certify needed personnel; build security culture and exchange best practices; reduce the number of sites that need to be protected; and strengthen the international framework and continue the dialogue once leaders are no longer meeting regularly at the summit level. Matthew Bunn presented this talk, based on a recent paper, on July 3rd, 2013 at the International Conference on Nuclear Security in Vienna.