Reports & Papers

168 Items

Image of Vladimir Putin standing in front of a podium

AP Photo

Strike for justice protesters are seen Monday, July 20, 2020, in Milwaukee.

AP Photo/Morry Gash

Paper - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Racial Justice is a National Security Priority: Perspectives from the Next Generation

| July 17, 2023

In the words of Walter White, Executive Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1929–1955, “Race discrimination threatens our national security. We can no longer afford to let the most backward sections of our population endanger our country by persisting in discriminating practices. We must meet the challenge of our neighbors, not only because discrimination is immoral, but also because it is dangerous.” What was true more than half a century ago continues today.

People protest following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in Washington

AP/Jacquelyn Martin, File

Paper - Harvard Kennedy School

Pro-democracy Organizing against Autocracy in the United States: A Strategic Assessment & Recommendations

| October 2022

This working paper offers strategies to protect subjugated groups and inform a broad  pro-democracy struggle should an authoritarian administration gain power in 2024.

A member of the Afghan security forces walks in the sprawling Bagram air base after the American military departed, in Parwan province north of Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, July 5, 2021.

AP Photo/Rahmat Gul

Paper

Easier to Get into War Than to Get Out: The Case of Afghanistan

| August 2021

The U.S. should accept with humility its inability to fully eliminate terrorism. Specifically, U.S. policy must balance “ends, ways, and means;” establish clear and achievable objectives; adopt efficient, effective, and resource-sustainable strategies; ensure synchronization of diplomatic and military efforts; build alliances to share the burden of countering terrorism; and leverage cooperative mechanisms and regional partnerships to increase the capacity and willingness of regional states to defend their sovereignty and contribute to multinational coalitions against terrorism.  A balanced, integrated, and synchronized strategy encompassing defense, diplomacy, economic, and humanitarian assistance lines of effort should be cornerstone of a revamped foreign policy in the coming decades.

Report - Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University

Rechanneling Beliefs: How Information Flows Hinder or Help Democracy

| May 24, 2021

Despite a technically successful election with a record-breaking voter turnout,  U.S. institutions and procedures have not created the kinds of shared public consensus over the results of the 2020 election that they were supposed to. The authors write that the United States needs a dynamic stability, one that incorporates new forces into American democracy rather than trying to deny or quash them. This report is their attempt to explain what this might mean in practice

Discussion Paper - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

Investor Rewards to Climate Responsibility: Stock-Price Responses to the Opposite Shocks of the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Elections

    Authors:
  • Stefano Ramelli
  • Alexandre Ziegler
  • Richard Zeckhauser
| May 2021

Donald Trump’s 2016 election and his nomination of climate skeptic Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency drastically downshifted expectations on U.S. policy toward climate change. Joseph Biden’s 2020 election shifted them dramatically upward. The authors study firms’ stock-price movements in reaction. As expected, the 2016 election boosted carbon-intensive firms. Surprisingly, firms with climate-responsible strategies also gained, especially those firms held by long-run investors. Such investors appear to have bet on a ‘‘boomerang’’ in climate policy. Harbingers of a boomerang already appeared during Trump’s term. The 2020 election marked its arrival.

Tractors on Westminster bridge

AP/Matt Dunham

Paper - Institut für Sicherheitspolitik

The Global Order After COVID-19

| 2020

Despite the far-reaching effects of the current pandemic,  the essential nature of world politics will not be transformed. The territorial state will remain the basic building-block of international affairs, nationalism will remain a powerful political force, and the major powers will continue to compete for influence in myriad ways. Global institutions, transnational networks, and assorted non-state actors will still play important roles, of course, but the present crisis will not produce a dramatic and enduring increase in global governance or significantly higher levels of international cooperation. In short, the post-COVID-19 world will be less open, less free, less prosperous, and more competitive than the world many people expected to emerge only a few years ago.

Paper

The Congressional Futures Office

    Authors:
  • Justin Warner
  • Grant Tudor
| May 2019

This report interrogates the widening gap between responsive lawmaking in Congress and the deepening complexity of advancements in science and technology. It finds that certain weakened capabilities have atrophied the organization’s absorptive capacity, or the ways by which it recognizes the value of, assimilates, and makes use of knowledge outside of itself. We propose the design of a new internal body—the Congressional Futures Office—as an optimal response among a set of considered options. 

Discussion Paper - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

Policy Evolution Under the Clean Air Act

| November 2018

The U.S. Clean Air Act, passed in 1970 with strong bipartisan support, was the first environmental law to give the Federal government a serious regulatory role, established the architecture of the U.S. air pollution control system, and became a model for subsequent environmental laws in the United States and globally. We outline the Act’s key provisions, as well as the main changes Congress has made to it over time. We assess the evolution of air pollution control policy under the Clean Air Act, with particular attention to the types of policy instruments used. We provide a generic assessment of the major types of policy instruments, and we trace and assess the historical evolution of EPA’s policy instrument use, with particular focus on the increased use of market-based policy instruments, beginning in the 1970s and culminating in the 1990s.