CSMD Spring Break Reading List

As Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy (CSMD) heads into spring break, here is what we will be reading.

“This Week in Markets and Democracy” will return, relaxed and refreshed, on Friday, April 8.

• A new RAND study says corruption costs the European Union over a trillion U.S. dollars (€990 billion) every year—eight times higher than previously thought. The study’s authors, Marco Hafner and Jirka Taylor, recommend ways to stave off some of these losses, including better member-state monitoring, a new investigatory office, and an EU-wide procurement system.

• U.S. elections in 2012 and 2014 ranked the worst out of any long-established democracy, according to a new report from the Electoral Integrity Project. The United States scored particularly poorly on electoral registration and campaign finance.

• 90 percent of African trade is by sea, more than any other region in the world. The Economist argues its inefficient and poorly-managed ports fuel corruption.

• Anne-Marie Slaughter and Elmira Bayrasli write for Project Syndicate on how entrepreneurship is a powerful, but underused, diplomacy tool. They say policymakers should look to entrepreneurs to power development and to help find new solutions to big problems, such as climate change and migration.

• Writing for Just Security, Human Rights Watch’s Eileen Donahoe argues that by focusing on states, existing human rights institutions are ignoring how other actors defend or violate those rights. Technology accentuates this shift.