In The News

Illusions of Empire: Defining the New American Order

G. John Ikenberry March 2, 2004
From an unprecedented era of global power to a soon-to-be realized decline, five new books on American empire run the gamut of explaining and forecasting the long-term possibilities of American power. In this review for Foreign Affairs, G. John Ikenberry notes where each author gets his analysis correct, but he also suggests what they fail to see. All describe America as an empire, but that...

Chinatown Is a Hard Sell in Italy

Daniel Williams March 2, 2004
Rome recently laid down the law on would-be founders of a Chinatown in the city's downtown area. The city wants to avoid the creation of an ethnic ghetto “in the historic center of Rome.” The Italians’ strongest complaint is the isolationist nature of the Chinese neighborhood, which operates almost entirely apart from the rest of the city. Many of the Chinese immigrants do not speak...

Balancing Reactions

Gihan Shahine March 1, 2004
Across the Mediterranean from France, Muslims and Christians alike are showing their distaste for the new French ban on "conspicuous" religious symbols in the schools. French politicians have decided that Muslim headscarves, Jewish yarmulkes, and "large" Christian crosses have no place within its secular schools. Muslim and other religious activists disagree. To truly live...

Outsourcing Debate - Part III

David Dapice March 1, 2004
Despite the political debates over outsourcing that are emerging in this US presidential election year, the economic story is quite simple. In the final installment of a three-part series on outsourcing, economist David Dapice says that outsourcing allows hundreds of thousands of people in developing countries like Vietnam the chance to earn wages, pull themselves out of poverty, and - in turn...

A New Consensus on Free Trade

Gene Sperling March 1, 2004
During the Clinton presidency, “globalization with a human face” was the motto that underlined US trade policy. Today, under pressure from the outsourcing debate, both the Bush administration and the Democratic candidates are pushing to close the doors on open markets. Gene Sperling, director of economic programs at the Center for American Progress and national economic adviser during the Clinton...

Aussies Too Fire Broadside at Outsourcing

Kalinga Seneviratne March 1, 2004
For the last several weeks, US politics have been dominated by discussions about the shift of information-technology (IT) jobs to lower-wage nations. Now, Australians are joining in to register their protest. A new deal between American company IBM and Australian telecom giant Telstra threatens to move 450 Australian jobs to India, where IBM has said it will base the conglomerate's IT...

Use Outsourcing to Spur Change in India

Bruce Stokes February 28, 2004
A provision in the new US Omnibus Appropriations bill prohibits the offshore outsourcing of some federal government contract work. And now Democratic Presidential hopeful Senator John Kerry has suggested requiring all call centers, in the US and abroad, to inform consumers where the operators are located when providing customer service. Calling these actions and policies "largely the product...