News & Announcements

Sandri Gozi, Italian Undersecretary of State for European Affairs, joined the Future of Diplomacy Project on November 1 for a discussion titled “Italy, the EU and the US: A Conversation on Transatlantic Challenges.”

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.

The Right Honourable Douglas Alexander offered his views on European security in a discussion moderated by FDP Executive Director Cathryn Cluver.

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.

The Project on Managing the Atom offers fellowships for pre-doctoral, post-doctoral, and mid-career researchers for one year, with a possibility for renewal, in the stimulating environment of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. The online application for 2016-2017 fellowships opened December 15, 2015, and the application deadline is January 15, 2016. Recommendation letters are due by February 1, 2016.

CAMBRIDGE, MA. - Eric Rosenbach, a veteran Army intelligence officer who served as executive director for research in the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs from 2007 to 2010, has been appointed deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced the appointment on Tuesday, Oct. 4, in Washington. Rosenbach left the Kennedy School in 2010 to become managing director of the Markle Foundation, handling national security issues, and moved earlier this year to a senior role at Good Harbor Consulting, a leading consulting firm on cyber-security and related issues. He remained a faculty affiliate at the Belfer Center and an adjunct lecturer at the school, teaching a course on counterterrorism policy and national security law.

The Index of African Governance, produced at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, ranks all 53 African countries according to their ability to provide good governance for their inhabitants. The full Index report illustrates the enormous variety of governance performance on the continent. Mauritius, the Seychelles, Cape Verde, and Botswana are the four best governed countries this year, as they were in last year's annually produced Index, then called the Ibrahim Index of African Governance. Tunisia, Ghana, Algeria, Namibia, South Africa, and São Tomé and Príncipe round out the top ten best overall performers.

All citizens of all countries desire to be governed well. That is what citizens want from the nation-states in which they live. Thus, nation-states in the modern world are responsible for the delivery of essential political goods to their inhabitants.

Small states, island states, and Botswana and South Africa are the best governed countries in sub-Saharan Africa according to this year's Index of African Governance, released today by researchers at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island-state, tops the list of well-governed territories for the second year, the Seychelles is second, Cape Verde third, Botswana fourth, and South Africa fifth.