Two weeks ago, dozens of cars were set alight in the French city of Clermont-Ferrand after a 30-year-old truck driver, Wissam El Yamni, was roughed up and then died while in police custody. The uproar underscored the hostility of young minority men towards authority across communities in Europe, an antipathy that has at times led to deadly violence.

The failure of Islamic integration in Europe is often attributed – especially by right-wing parties – to an excess of tolerance towards the large-scale Muslim immigration that began in the mid-1970s. By recognising Muslim religious requirements, the argument goes, countries like France, Britain and the Netherlands have unwittingly hindered assimilation and even, in some cases, fostered radicalism.

But the unrest in gritty European suburbs stems not from religious difference, but from anomie.

Europeans should not be afraid to allow Muslim students to take classes on Islam in state-financed schools and universities. The recognition and accommodation of Islamic religious practices, from clothing to language to education, does not mean capitulation to fundamentalism.

On the contrary, only by strengthening the democratic rights of Muslim citizens to form associations, join political parties and engage in other aspects of civic life can Europe integrate immigrants and give full meaning to the abstract promise of religious liberty.

FEELING DENIED

The rise of right-wing, anti-immigrant parties has led several European countries to impose restrictions on Islamic dress, mosque-building and reunification of families through immigration law. These policies are counterproductive.

Paradoxically, people for whom religion is otherwise not all that important become more attached to their faith’s clothing, symbols and traditions when they feel they are being singled out and denied basic rights. 

Take, for example, the French debate over whether to recognise the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, and the Muslim festival of Eid Al Adha as official holidays. Yes, the French state clings to the principle of “laicite”, or secularism – but the state’s recognition of Easter and Christmas as official holidays feels, to some Jews and Muslims, like hypocrisy.

It is Islam’s absence in the institutions young European Muslims encounter, starting with the school’s calendar, classroom and canteen, that contributes to anger and alienation.

In the last few months, there have been some signs that the right-wing momentum has slowed. A French Bill to ban headscarves from day care centres was killed in committee. The Dutch Parliament voted down a Bill to outlaw Islamic animal slaughter. And Germany’s most populous state helped offset a judicial ban on school prayer by announcing equal access to religion courses for Muslim students.

European countries could use a period of benign neglect of the Islam issue – but only after they finish incorporating religion into the national fabric.

UNDERGROUND ISLAM

For too long, they have instead masked an absence of coherent integration policy under the cloak of “multiculturalism”. The state outsourced the hard work of integration to foreign diplomats and Islamist institutions – for example, some students in Germany read Saudi-supplied textbooks in Saudi-run institutions.

This neglect of integration helped an unregulated “underground Islam” to take hold in storefronts, basements and courtyards. It reflected wishful thinking about how long guest workers would stay and perpetuated a myth of eventual departure and repatriation.

In Britain, for example, race-based equality laws protected Sikhs and Jews as minorities, but not Hindus and Muslims, since they were still considered “foreign”.

Institutional exclusion fuelled a demand for religious recognition, and did much to unite and segregate Muslims. Islamist organisations became the most visible defenders of the faith.

It is crucial now to provide the right mix of institutional incentives for religious and political moderation, and the most promising strategy for doing that is for governments to consult with the full range of law-abiding religious institutions that Muslims have themselves established. 

The French Council for the Muslim Faith, the German Islam Conference, the Committee for Italian Islam and the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board in Britain – all state-sanctioned Islamic organisations set up in the past decade – represent a broad cross-section of mosque administrators in every country.

They have quietly begun reconciling many practical issues, from issuing mosque permits to establishing Islamic theology departments at public universities to appointing chaplains in the military and in prisons.

CLEARING THE WAY

Ultimately, however, elected democratic institutions are the place where the desires of individual Muslims should be expressed. Ever since 1789, when a French legislator argued that “the Jews should be denied everything as a nation, but granted everything as individuals”, Europeans have struggled to resolve the tension between rights derived from universal citizenship versus group membership.

Over the next 20 years, Europe’s Muslim population is projected to grow to nearly 30 million – 7 to 8 per cent of all Europeans – from around 17 million. Granting Muslims full religious freedom would not remove obstacles to political participation or create jobs. But it would at least allow tensions over their religious practices to fade.

This would avoid needless sectarian strife and clear the way for politicians to address the more vexing and urgent challenges of socioeconomic integration.

Jonathan Laurence, The New York Times (Original link here)

No end to complications

IN DECEMBER boffins around the world were taken aback by an odd request. The American government called on the world’s two leading scientific publications to censor research. As we reported at the time, Nature (a British journal) and Science (an American one) were about to publish studies by two separate teams which had been tinkering with H5N1 influenza, better known as bird flu, to produce a strain that might be able to pass through the air between humans. The authorities fretted that were the precise methods and detailed genetic data to fall into the wrong hands, the consequences would be too awful to contemplate. They therefore suggested that only the broad conclusions be made public; the specifics could be sent to vetted scientists alone.

A furore duly erupted, fanned by fears of a pandemic that would make the “Spanish flu” of 1918, which may have claimed up to 100m lives, look like a mild case of the sniffles. On January 20th the teams’ leaders, Ron Fouchier of Rotterdam’s Erasmus Medical Centre and Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, bowed to public pressure. In a joint statement published in Nature and Science and signed by 37 other leading flu experts, they announced a voluntary 60-day moratorium on all similar research. The aim of the self-imposed suspension, they explained, is to give organisations and governments time “to find the best solutions for opportunities and challenges that stem from the work”.

For a start, that means figuring out a way to disseminate the sensitive nitty-gritty to the right researchers, a condition that Nature and Science said must be met if they are to redact the controversial papers. It also involves deciding how, if at all, future research should be carried out. These and other topics will be discussed at a summit, hopefully to be held in February under the auspices of the World Health Organisation in Geneva. The signatories are betting that this way they will prevent heavy-handed regulation from stifling their field.

Even before interested parties convene in Switzerland, though, fierce debate has already got under way. In the January 19th issue of Nature, ten experts, including Dr Fouchier,weigh in on the matter. Science launched a similar policy forum. One immediate conclusion is that flu researchers are deeply split among themselves. Some are frustrated by what they see as overblown misgivings by the National Scientific Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), created in the wake of the Anthrax attacks of 2001 to advise America’s health department, which asked the two journals to withhold the latest research. Others praise the NSABB’s intervention as prescient.

One prominent critic, Peter Palese, of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, recalls his own work on the reconstruction of the Spanish-flu virus in 2005. At the time, the NSABB held its nerve, apparently concluding that the benefits of full disclosure outweigh the risks. Dr Palese points out in Nature that his success prompted many researchers to flood into the field. The resulting surge in papers revealed that the virus is vulnerable to existing seasonal flu vaccine and common flu drugs, allaying fears that mischief-makers would conjure it up and wreak havoc. Making it difficult to publish results would have discouraged new entrants and held back progress. Unhampered discussion of Dr Fouchier’s and Dr Kawaoka’s work would, he says, doubtless prove equally fruitful.

The two groups in Rotterdam and Madison have shown that viruses containing haemagglutinin, a protein which causes red blood cells to clump together, from H5N1 strains can be passed through the air between ferrets (as flu goes, ferrets and humans are very much alike). They also identified the genetic markers of the lethal strain. Such information is crucial if an effective vaccine and drugs are to be developed. And it enables health authorities to monitor outbreaks of bird flu for the dangerous mutations and so nip a potential pandemic in the bud. “The more danger a pathogen poses,” Dr Palese writes, “the more important it is to study it (under appropriate containment conditions), and to share the results with the scientific community.”

Others disagree. Michael Osterholm, of the University of Minnesota, and Donald Henderson, of the University of Pittsburgh, argue in Science that H5N1′s human fatality rate, a staggering 60% for the 570-odd recorded cases, means that any benefits flowing from the research are dwarfed by the risks. Although some research is warranted, they concede, there is no need to share the mutation data “outside of a small select group of established researchers already working within the WHO network”.

Such work, say many, should only be done in the most secure facilities: those rated “biosafety level 4″. Both Dr Fouchier’s and Dr Kawaoka’s labs are graded a notch lower, at “level 3, enhanced”, like the one where Dr Palese revived the 1918 virus. Others go further. In a spine-chilling editorial on January 7th, entitled “An Engineered Doomsday”, the New York Times implored scientists to destroy the deadly H5N1 strains in the name of safety.

The odds of that happening are long. In a statement sent to Science, the WHO says that research like Dr Fouchier’s and Dr Kawaoka’s is “an important tool for global surveillance efforts”. The organisation also reportedly worries that limiting access to relevant findings would be difficult to square with its recently updated pandemic influenza preparedness framework. That agreement, which stipulates that countries which provide virus samples should also receive the benefits of research, was preceded by four years of rancorous debate. If anything can be said for certain, then, it is that the gulf between those in favour of tighter controls and those against will be hard to bridge in two months.

The Economist (Original link here) 

Born in the USA, Made in France: How McDonald’s Succeeds in the Land of Michelin Stars

France — the land of haute cuisine, fine wine and cheese — would be the last place you would expect to find a thriving fast-food market. In a country known for its strong national identity and anti-globalization movement, it seems improbable that McDonald’s could have survived the onslaught of French social and political activism. In 1999, José Bové, an agricultural unionist, became a hero to anti-globalization supporters when he and his political group, Confédération Paysanne, bulldozed a McDonald’s in Milau, France, to protest against U.S. trade restrictions on French dairy products. With bullhorn in hand, he declared to the television news cameras: “We attacked this McDonald’s because it is a symbol of multinationals that want to stuff us with junk food and ruin our farmers.” In 2004, amid the nutritional controversy sparked by Morgan Spurlock’s documentarySupersize Me, McDonald’s was declared in French media to be the epitome of malbouffe, or “junk food” and deemed partly to blame for the nation’s rising obesity rate.

And yet McDonald’s, the world’s largest fast-food corporation, with a global presence in 123 countries across all six inhabited continents, has turned the home of Le Cordon Bleu cooking academies and the Michelin Guide of world-renowned restaurants into its second-most profitable market in the world. The chain has more than 1,200 restaurants in France — all locally owned franchises — and a growth rate of 30 restaurants per year in the past five years alone. What is at the heart of this impressive growth that has stunned French observers and surprised business analysts? The three main reasons for McDonald’s success are local responsiveness, rebranding and a robust corporate ecosystem.

Local Responsiveness

Burger King — arguably McDonald’s largest competitor in the world — entered the French market in 1981 but closed its 39 stores in 1997. Its strategy of directly transplanting the American restaurants,, with no local adaptation, resulted in weak sales. A French hotel and restaurant journal remarked at the time of the brand’s closing that “Burger King faced no significant handicap against its rivals McDonald’s and Quick. Despite the three companies entering the French market around the same time, McDonald’s has grown to 542 restaurants and Quick [to] 258.” To put Burger King’s failure into context, from 1983 to 1996, the French fast-food market grew by nearly 1,450 restaurants, and total market value increased fivefold. The different growth trajectory of McDonald’s France is largely attributed to the age-old American adage, slightly refined: The customer — the French customer, to be exact — is king. At every turn, the management of McDonald’s France has been sensitive to the preferences of French consumers, both inside the restaurants and in their daily lives.

Since opening its first French restaurant in Strasbourg in 1979, McDonald’s has sought to leverage the strength of the global conglomerate while tailoring its menu to the French palate. Although some elements of an international strategy were apparent in McDonald’s French entry, overall the chain was not responding to local market needs and opportunities. Strasbourg was chosen as the initial location in order to leverage the brand recognition that already existed in Germany, while keeping the same restaurant décor and recipes for France. According to Nawfal Trabelsi, senior VP for McDonald’s France and Southern Europe, “For the first 15 years, from 1980, what we did above all was offer people a slice of America.” However, in 1995, McDonald’s started using French cheeses such as chevre, cantal and blue, as well as whole-grain French mustard sauce. By changing the recipes in France, McDonald’s started executing a multidomestic strategy and winning the hearts of French consumers.

McDonald’s also demonstrated the power of understanding the cultural particularities of consumers across national boundaries. In France, barely 10% of meals are eaten outside the home, compared to nearly 40% in the U.S. and the U.K. Unlike their Anglo-Saxon counterparts, French consumers rarely snack between breakfast, lunch and dinner. As a result, French meal times also last longer, and more food is consumed through multiple courses, creating unique opportunities and challenges for fast-food dining. McDonald’s decided to capitalize on the opportunity. Rather than run promotions that encourage snacking, the company freed up valuable labor by installing electronic ordering kiosks, which are used by one out of every three customers in more than 800 of its restaurants. McDonald’s has capitalized on the French cultural preference for longer meals by using surplus labor to provide table-side service, particularly in taking orders from lingering diners inclined to order an additional coffee or dessert item. Thanks to such initiatives,  the average French consumer spends about US$15 per visit to McDonald’s — four times what their American counterparts spend.

Moreover, to solve the issue of empty tables during non-meal times, McDonald’s introduced McCafé in France — a range of high-end coffees and pastries available from a separate counter. McCafé pastries come from the Holder Group, a baking conglomerate that operates the popular Paul and luxury Ladurée brand stores in France. According to McDonald’s France chief of staff Alexis Lemoine, “I set up taste tests for my friends between McDonald’s macaroons and those of Ladurée, and almost no one can tell the difference.” This unorthodox move from the most traditional purveyor of burgers and fries not only increased revenues by 5% — by adding products with over 80% profit margins — but also contributed to theembourgeoisement (gentrification) of the chain’s image.

In August 2011, McDonald’s announced that the McCafé would be taking on another ubiquitous French food icon: the baguette bread roll (which will also be supplied by the Holder group). By baking the baguettes in-house and offering them both as a breakfast item and in the form of baguette sandwiches, McDonald’s is clearly making a play for the non-franchised “fast-food” segment currently occupied by the tens of thousands of bakeries across France. According to a 2009 study by French restaurant industry consulting firm Gira Conseil, the French consume nine times more traditional sandwiches than hamburgers, and more than 70% of all sandwiches consumed in France are made on baguettes. As McDonald’s Trabelsi notes, “Today, we are part of French daily life. Our priority is to integrate locally while offering our traditional products…. The French are passionate about bread and crazy about baguettes. We’re gradually responding to a natural demand.”

As a response to the growing trend for healthy eating in France, McDonald’s introduced the McSalad. The new concept store, designed and implemented by McDonald’s France as an all-salad restaurant, is the first of the company’s 32,000+ global restaurants where customers will not find any of the traditional burgers, fries or shakes. Situated in the heart of La Défense, Paris’s massive corporate office park, the McSalad is targeted at the upscale clientele of the area’s 200,000 daily business workers who can place their orders online from their desks to maximize their short lunch breaks. According to Elizabeth Rosenthal, a New York Timescontributor and researcher on food trends, the French spent an average of 38 minutes per meal in 2005, down from an average of 82 minutes in 1978.

Fireplaces and Flatscreen TVs

The second major success factor could be headlined “progressive marketing.” Perhaps the most striking aspect about McDonald’s restaurants in France is not found on the menu — it is the restaurants themselves. McDonald’s franchisees have invested heavily in their ambiance and spent approximately US$5 billion in renovations in less than a decade. The most noticeable innovation has been the refinement of the restaurant interiors to create a welcoming environment where customers linger — a stark departure from the American restaurants’ strategy to minimize customer visiting time and maximize purchasing turnover. Sleek, modern tables with plush, comfortable chairs and high-impact wall graphics are more reminiscent of Starbucks than a traditional fast-food chain. Outside, the store’s visual profile and signage are so subdued as to be practically invisible to passers-by until customers are directly in front of the restaurant itself. This contrasts strongly with the chain’s style of buildings in the U.S., where the lighted golden arches logo is hoisted high in the air in order to be seen from a distance.

Far from the homogenous design layouts throughout the U.S., French franchise owners have opted for tasteful, diverse and regionally appropriate restaurants. McDonald’s Alexis Lemoine notes that, even within Paris, restaurants varied tremendously according to target demographics. In 2005, free wifi was implemented in all McDonald’s restaurants in France — a move not followed by their U.S. compatriots until 2010.

This strategic shift in the fast-food business model has not gone unnoticed by other global subsidiaries. In September 2011, McDonald’s Canada appeared to follow the French lead and announced its own $1 billion, 1,400-store overhaul. In explaining the decision to transform the traditional restaurant layout into sleek stone-and-wood interiors — complete with free wifi, fireplaces and flatscreen TVs — McDonald’s Canada CEO John Betts notes, “People tend to linger a little bit more in restaurants today. They want to enjoy their meals and take a break from the busy lifestyle that they lead. We think our restaurants today are certainly doing that a lot better than in the past.”

In trying to appeal to the modern French restaurant goer, McDonald’s has also pushed to publicize the “greening” of its image. In France, the golden arches are not surrounded by the familiar red background, but by a forest green color. Although initially controversial with the head U.S. office, this branding has already been followed by several of its European subsidiaries. Furthermore, McDonald’s advertises that it aims to reduce gas emissions by more than 50% over the next 10 years and already recycles 7,000 tons of frying oil to be used as bio-diesel fuel. Steps have yet to be taken to recycle the many tons of paper and plastic produced in-store. Lemoine claims it has proven “too difficult,” but it clearly seems a logical next step for the “green” company to take.

In line with the strategy of redefining its image, McDonald’s reviewed its reputation for unhealthy food. Jean-Pierre Petit, the CEO of McDonald’s France, put his decades of marketing skills to good use. Although not required, nutritional and caloric information were added to all food packaging. Other health-friendly features of McDonald’s France include reducing salt on french fries, fresh fruit packets (introduced in 2007), and “le Big Mac” with a whole-wheat-bun option. Although the lion’s share of McDonald’s revenue will continue to be burgers and fries, the company has taken steps to show that it is committed to healthy eating and using French fare.

Suppliers as Partners

Perhaps the greatest strength of McDonald’s France, in addition to its uncanny ability to predict French consumer preferences, is its ability to redefine the American model that has worked so well in the U.S. McDonald’s France has created an entire ecosystem that has been critical to its current success. After the José Bové bulldozer incident, McDonald’s France introduced ad campaigns to tell customers more about itself, where it came from, what ingredients it used, and who it employed — just how French it had actually become. It then strengthened ties to French agribusiness, advertising widely that 95% of the company’s ingredients come from France, with the rest coming from the European Union.

McDonald’s is today the number-one purchaser of beef in France. “We know where every hamburger and chicken nugget came from,” notes Lemoine. “We can trace them to the farm within one day.” This also allowed for some advantages during the mid-1990s’ “mad cow disease” panic (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy). “Our competitors had to cut out all beef production. We were so confident we knew our farms that we continued producing and gained market share.”

Moreover, although McDonald’s sources 95% of its produce in France, very few of its suppliers have formal contracts with the chain. Instead, they are seen as partners whose success is symbiotic to McDonald’s. “McDonald’s cannot afford to have supply issues preventing it from selling Big Macs,” Lemoine says, “but the large capital investment that suppliers make to provide products makes them equally dependent on Big Mac sales — creating a sort of interdependence between supplier and the restaurant.”

Employees are supported through programs to give them particular qualifications, such as nationally recognized diplomas and certifications, and in turn, employees regularly have been found supporting McDonald’s and protecting its brand on Internet forums and blogs. McDonald’s leverages its franchises and their proximity to customers by ensuring that 20 elected franchisee representatives vote on every marketing campaign and product launch before they are implemented. French doctors were consulted when discussing how to improve McDonald’s nutritional content, and Greenpeace was engaged to discuss its environmental strategy.

In their book, The Soul of the Corporation, Hamid Bouchikhi, a professor at ESSEC business school in France, and John Kimberly, a professor at Wharton, examine the challenge of both corporate and national identity in multinational corporations. Ask any French person the “nationality” of McDonald’s, and he or she will most certainly say it is an American brand. However, 95% of all McDonald’s France products are sourced from French farms. The company’s management, employees and franchisees are 100% French and operate nearly autonomously from the U.S. parent organization. Its menu items, designed by French chefs and featuring regional specialties, such as Roquefort cheese sandwiches and Parisian macaroons, are found nowhere else in its global network of restaurants.

Can McDonald’s France still be considered an “‘American’” company? Can its unique French characteristics explain its success there? Although McDonald’s France leverages the power of the global network — contributing to, and benefiting from, the brand and innovation — it has redefined itself as a French company that is constantly looking to adapt to the needs and preferences of the French culture.

Lucy Fancourt, Bredesen Lewis and Nicholas Majka, Knowledge@Wharton (original link here)

SMALL government, the opposite of big government, is aimed at reducing the role of the state in the economy. In taking a laissez-faire approach towards regulating the private sector, it is argued that small government lowers costs and promotes efficiency by allowing the market to determine prices and economic outcomes. Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher was a champion of small government.

But small government has not been seen as an unqualified success. Critics have cited increased costs of public services, unemployment and a widening wealth gap as some of the unintended consequences of small government.

After the 2008 global financial crisis that many blamed on unfettered greed and dysfunction in the private sector, we see evidence that the tide of public opinion is turning against small government. So the jury is out and the debate will continue.

Government in Singapore

WHAT sort of government do we have in Singapore? Is it small government – or is it big government?

Depending on who one asks, different commentators will offer different views on the ‘size’ and influence of Singapore’s Government.

Some analysts see our Government as exercising ‘big’ or substantial influence across a broad spectrum of areas. But on other measures, Singapore’s Government is not particularly big.

One of these dimensions is the size of government spending, which at 17 per cent of gross domestic product is one of the lowest in the world. In the United States, such expenditure totalled 38.9 per cent of GDP. In Australia, it was 34.3 per cent, and in New Zealand, 41.1 per cent.

The paradox of government

THERE is a paradox of government that I discovered after many years in the public service. The law of diminishing returns applies to government as much as it does to economics. The marginal return on government policies diminishes over time, even as the effort to implement policy stays constant or even increases.

I surmise that there are a couple of reasons for this. The first reason is that as government policies lead to improvements, the needs of the people change. This is explained by Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – a theory in psychology advanced more than half a century ago. Maslow’s proposition was that after the basic physiological needs of a person are met, more complex psychological needs will have to be fulfilled. At the top of this hierarchy of needs is the need for self-actualisation, which is to realise the individual’s potential.

So if you accept this proposition, then after the government has delivered on the basic needs of food, security, shelter, transport and health, expectations of the people are going to change, not in demanding more of the basic needs, but in fulfilling their more psychic needs in the upper reaches of Maslow’s hierarchy, including social, emotional and self-actualisation needs.

The second reason is what I would term the ‘third generation effect’. Singapore is now 46 years old, and into the third generation of Singaporeans. The first generation of Singaporeans lived through the turbulence and uncertainties of Merger and Separation. The next generation started life on a firmer footing, but at the same time imbibed from their parents a sense of the vulnerabilities. But the third generation of Singaporeans have known only the affluence and success of Singapore. For them, the uncertainties of the 60s and 70s are abstractions from their school history books. When their grandparents speak of the turmoil and danger that they experienced, they shrug their shoulders because it is an experience outside theirs.

The changing role of government

THESE and other reasons will change and transform the role of government.

In the beginning, the Government was characterised by strong regulation – big government if you will – seeking compliance with policy rules, and maintaining as efficient a system as possible.

But today, citizens and businesses alike have far higher expectations of the Government than before. Access to information has increased dramatically in scope and speed as a result of the Internet revolution. Social networking platforms like blogs, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have empowered citizens to express their views. Virtual communities are beginning to shape the debate and context of public policy issues.

What is the appropriate model of governance for Singapore going forward? The question is not simply whether the people have a sufficient input in government policy. It is also how much we should rely on the market to decide on policy outcomes and public deliverables.

Big markets

ONE limit on the size of our Government has been our belief that free market forces should determine prices and economic outcomes. This is the approach advocated for small government.

But our faith in the market has not been uncritical or absolute. We have not been ideological about small government.

Economist Dani Rodrik outlined a framework that can usefully be applied to how Singapore has chosen to blend the work of markets and the Government:

First, the Government has sought to enable markets. This includes ensuring rule of law, property rights, and public infrastructure – functions that most governments perform. In Singapore, enabling markets has also included industrial policy and capability development, subjects of some controversy in policy circles around the world, especially among proponents of small government that believe in the laissez-faire approach.

Second, the Government has sought to regulate markets. This includes supervision of the financial sector, competition regulation, and taxation of negative externalities. But a key feature of Singapore’s approach has been the shift towards lighter regulation accompanied by risk-based supervision.

Third, the Government has sought to stabilise markets. This is the bread- and-butter of macroeconomic management. Singapore’s basic approach in monetary and fiscal policy is not far different from global practices. But its efforts to address asset price inflation and credit crises are interesting examples of targeted interventions that harness market forces.

Fourth, the Government has sought to legitimise markets. Globalisation, free trade and open markets lead to significant dislocations. Some of the sharpest debates over the role of governments centre on this: To what extent should governments facilitate adjustments, redistribute incomes or provide social safety nets, so as to maintain public support for market-oriented policies?

Engaging big society

COMPLEMENTING government and markets, we will also need a strong society – one that is robust and resilient – to tackle the great challenges of the 21st century.

These challenges will increasingly be ‘wicked problems’ – characterised by multi-dimensionality and growing complexity. Their causes and contributing factors will not be easily identified ex ante. Today, the Government faces an increasing number of complex public policy issues in which the trade-offs are much more difficult to make, because each could lead to unintended consequences and risks. Many of these public policy issues exceed the capacity of the Government working alone. Instead, they require the active contribution of the private and people sectors.

This approach has been most evident in the economic arena. A succession of four economic reviews – in 1986, 1998, 2003 and 2008 – saw the public and private sectors coming together to produce far-reaching policy recommendations for Singapore’s long-term economic competitiveness.

The coming years will see a growing need for governance – which requires collaboration across the public, private and people sectors – rather than the Government acting as the sole, or even dominant, player.

A key part of this governance process will be growing mutual engagement between the public and people sectors. In his 2011 National Day Rally speech, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong underscored the importance of such engagement, pointing out that the nation needs to ‘harness diverse views and ideas, put aside personal interest and forge common goals’.

There are four broad areas where engagement will be important:

Public information

IN SOME cases, engagement will involve the Government informing the public: Providing objective information clearly and succinctly, that helps the public understand the context, alternatives and choices involved in an issue. Traditional channels for this include fact sheets, websites, open houses and press releases. It calls for good communication skills, such as sharing concise, specific and relevant information in a timely manner.

Public consultation

A SECOND form of engagement is public consultation, which involves gathering ideas and feedback from the public on analyses or proposals by the Government, so that the public’s perspectives, concerns and aspirations can be taken into consideration.

An example of this was the Ministry of Health’s (MOH’s) work on means testing in health care. In a series of dialogues, MOH officers distilled and used the learning from each session to refine the policy, then tested the new ideas out at the next meeting. Dialogues to seek citizens’ views on the pegging of subsidy rates were reported in the media. As more people understood the rationale for change, support for it grew.

Consensus-building

A THIRD form of engagement is to partner the public in framing issues, developing alternatives and building consensus on preferred solutions.

An example of such consensus-building is the Land Transport Authority’s (LTA’s) efforts to work with communities. In some private estates, for instance, the LTA worked with grassroots leaders to facilitate a dialogue so residents could voice their concerns. Together, they agreed on a traffic scheme to optimise roadside parking spaces in the estate. Residents then helped to enforce the scheme by reporting infringements.

More of such conversations will need to be extended into the public space to deepen collective understanding, and build society’s capacity to deliberate issues rationally in a safe environment.

Co-creation

IN SOME instances, a fourth form of engagement can involve community co-creation of policies. This can engender greater ownership of outcomes and increase overall public value beyond what any single sector can achieve on its own.

The ‘Community in Bloom’ programme, initiated by the National Parks Board and People’s Association to foster a love for gardening and promote community bonding, is an example of such collaboration between the Government and people.

The future of big society

I HAVE deliberately spent some time on how society can evolve, and how government can play a part in that. This has not been an area where Singapore has had extensive experience. It will be a shift from ‘Government to you’ and ‘Government for you’, to ‘Government with you’. The imperative is for the Government to move towards a collaborative approach to policymaking, and be prepared to co-create and connect with the people.

Peter Ho 

The writer is senior adviser to the Centre for Strategic Futures, Prime Minister’s Office.

I’m sure you’ve heard about major sites purporting to go dark for a day in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Perhaps the most high profile site among them to is knowledge-sharing giant Wikipedia whose site solemnly proclaims:

“Imagine a world without free knowledge… The US Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia.”

A broad overview of the bill is provided by The Wall Street Journal. You can get a detailed look into why this bill is supposedly dangerous in Mashable. The article carefully analyzes key sections and comments on the potentially incredulous and harmful consequences that might arise and inevitably threaten and subvert a free and open internet. On the other hand, Andrew Orlowski of the The Telegraph argues that the reason why SOPA exists because “no voluntary agreement is in place” among the large tech firms to more actively thwart piracy and protect copyrighted content.

What is your opinion on the protests? Are bills like PIPA and SOPA a necessary legislation to let governments reign in the pirated activities on the internet and protect the interests of content creators? Or is the bill overly broad in its execution, threatening the fundamentally open nature of the internet? 

As gleaned from ‘Occupy’ movements, it’s evident that inequality is a key gripe among many. Paul Krugman writes that if Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he would be utterly disappointed by how inequality between class continues persist although racial differences have been somewhat muted. Even the recent scrutiny on local ministerial salaries seems to suggest a growing desire to see the public office as something separate from the private sector’s high-income winners of the system. This list of the biggest disadvantages of capitalism also provides some insight into the flaws of the system that the may have received little media or government attention.

Is there a viable alternative then? Can you really imagine the world making a concerted effort in moving beyond this current system, or would minor tweaks suffice to keep everyone happy and progressing together? 

Well firstly, children are brutally honest people I believe, so what you glean from the responses will most certainly be fairly authentic, rather than adult responses that often tend to second-guess survey intentions or are more conscious about the politically correct answer or image their answers may portray.

Secondly, the responses give us a sense of what kind of society we are, or at least what kind of society we try to make ourselves to be, and the values we seem to uphold. We may write off their responses are immature or childish, but truth be told – this is the world they perceive, or rather the world that is being projected to them. Even suggestions that the Presidency is the ‘coolest job’ is highly telling of how we – or the media – may have been over highlighting the ceremonial easy-life-good-pay role of the Presidential office. Mentions of dreams to be a tai-tai or billionaire seem cute, but what might such early thoughts breed in future?

Thirdly, the emphasis on ‘thinking about others’ – as inferred from the top career ambitions – is actually notable. I believe that kids do honestly and sincerely think about others a lot more in their younger formative years. Yes, such sentiments may fly in the face of developmental literature that charts stages of maturity according to age but such survey results perhaps offer a different view: the human being possibly being more naturally other-centered and actually becomes more selfish as he/she continues to interact more with the adult capitalist milieu.

What are your own thoughts on the survey findings? 

WASHINGTON, DC, January 10, 2012 (ENS) – “Inadequate progress on nuclear weapons reduction and proliferation, and continuing inaction on climate change,” prompted the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists today to push the hands of the Doomsday Clock one minute closer to midnight.

“It is five minutes to midnight,” said the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists group, announcing their decision at a news conference in Washington. “Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed. For that reason, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is moving the clock hand one minute closer to midnight, back to its time in 2007.”

The Doomsday Clock now stands at five minutes to midnight. (Image courtesy Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)

The last time the Doomsday Clock minute hand moved was in January 2010, when it was pushed back one minute from five to six minutes before midnight. The clock’s hands have been adjusted 20 times since its inception in 1947, when the clock was initially set to seven minutes to midnight.

The Doomsday Clock expresses how close this group of scientists belives humanity is to catastrophic destruction, symbolized by midnight on the clock. The group monitors the means humankind could use to obliterate itself. First and foremost, these include nuclear weapons, but they also encompass climate-changing technologies and new developments in the life sciences that could inflict irrevocable harm.

“Inaction on key issues including climate change, and rising international tensions motivate the movement of the clock,” said Lawrence Krauss, co-chair, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Board of Sponsors and a professor with the School of Earth and Space Exploration and Physics departments at Arizona State University.

“As we see it,” he told reporters, “the major challenge at the heart of humanity’s survival in the 21st century is how to meet energy needs for economic growth in developing and industrial countries without further damaging the climate, exposing people to loss of health and community, and without risking further spread of nuclear weapons, and in fact setting the stage for global reductions.”

“Even though climate change is happening and is getting more urgent as we speak,” warned Krauss, “no comprehensive global action is happening.”

Jiaxing coal-fired power plant in Zhejiang Province on China’s east coast (Photo by zpsohu (Panoramio)

“The global community may be near a point of no return in efforts to prevent catastrophe from changes in Earth’s atmosphere,” warned Allison Macfarlane, who chairs the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board and is a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission on American’s Nuclear Future, and an associate professor with George Mason University.

“The International Energy Agency projects that, unless societies begin building alternatives to carbon-emitting energy technologies over the next five years, the world is doomed to a warmer climate, harsher weather, droughts, famine, water scarcity, rising sea levels, loss of island nations, and increasing ocean acidification,” said Macfarlane.

“Since fossil-fuel burning power plants and infrastructure built in 2012-2020 will produce energy and emissions for 40 to 50 years, the actions taken in the next few years will set us on a path that will be impossible to redirect,” she said. “Even if policy leaders decide in the future to reduce reliance on carbon-emitting technologies, it will be too late.”

Science skeptics who diminish and discount scientific findings are a “worrisome trend,” said Robert Socolow, a member of the BAS Science and Security Board.

“The world needs the political leadership to affirm the primacy of science or problems will be far worse than they are today, said Socolow, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and co-principal investigator with the Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton University.

He and the other BAS representatives at the news conference expressed concern that, in Krauss’ words, “politics trumps science” at a time when elections are coming up in the United States, Russia and France and new leadership is soon to take over in China.

Doomsday Clock graph. The lower the graph, the higher the probability of catastrophe is considered to be.(Graph by Fastfission)

Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first U.S. atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock in 1947 using the imagery of apocalypse – midnight – and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion – countdown to zero – to convey threats to humanity and the planet.

While the group is opposed to nuclear weapons, it neither endorses or does not endorse nuclear power. It maintains that nuclear power must be safe and if done well could help with climate change.

The decision to move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is made by the Bulletin’s Board of Directors in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 18 Nobel Laureates.

Jayantha Dhanapala is a member of the BAS Board of Sponsors, a former United Nations under-secretary-general for Disarmament Affairs (1998-2003), and ambassador of Sri Lanka to the United States (1995-1997).

“The world still has over 19,000 nuclear weapons, enough power to destroy the world’s inhabitants several times over,” he warned today.

United States Trident II (D-5) missile underwater launch (Photo courtesy U.S. Defense Dept.)

“Despite the promise of a new spirit of international cooperation, and reductions in tensions between the United States and Russia, the Science and Security Board believes that the path toward a world free of nuclear weapons is not at all clear, and leadership is failing,” he said.

As a positive signal, Dhanapala pointed to the ratification in December 2010 of the New START treaty between Russia and the United States which reversed the previous drift in US-Russia nuclear relations.

“However,” warned Dhanapala, “failure to act” on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty by leaders in the United States, China, Iran, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel, and North Korea “continues to leave the world at risk from continued development of nuclear weapons.”

“Obstacles to a world free of nuclear weapons remain,” agreed Socolow. “Among these are disagreements between the United States and Russia about the utility and purposes of missile defense, as well as insufficient transparency, planning, and cooperation among the nine nuclear weapons states to support a continuing drawdown.”

“The resulting distrust leads nearly all nuclear weapons states to hedge their bets by modernizing their nuclear arsenals,” Socolow warned. “Such developments appear to other states to be signs of substantial military build-ups.”

There are positive signs amidst the challenges, particularly the engagement of people in determining their own future, the group emphasized.

“The Science and Security Board is heartened by the Arab Spring, the Occupy movements, political protests in Russia, and by the actions of ordinary citizens in Japan as they call for fair treatment and attention to their needs,” said Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Executive Director Kennette Benedict.

“Whether meeting the challenges of nuclear power, or mitigating the suffering from human-caused global warming, or preventing catastrophic nuclear conflict in a volatile world, the power of people is essential,” Benedict said. “For this reason, we ask other scientists and experts to join us in engaging ordinary citizens. Together, we can present the most significant questions to policymakers and industry leaders. Most importantly, we can demand answers and action.”

Environment News Service (Original link here) 

Is the conception of a Doomsday Clock helpful for cautioning humankind? Or is it simply making us more paranoid or pessimistic about humanity’s future? 

FROM the streets of Tunis to Tahrir Square and beyond, protests around the world last year were built on the Internet and the many devices that interact with it. Though the demonstrations thrived because thousands of people turned out to participate, they could never have happened as they did without the ability that the Internet offers to communicate, organize and publicize everywhere, instantaneously.

It is no surprise, then, that the protests have raised questions about whether Internet access is or should be a civil or human right. The issue is particularly acute in countries whose governments clamped down on Internet access in an attempt to quell the protesters. In June, citing the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, a report by the United Nations’ special rapporteur went so far as to declare that the Internet had “become an indispensable tool for realizing a range of human rights.” Over the past few years, courts and parliaments in countries like France and Estonia have pronounced Internet access a human right.

But that argument, however well meaning, misses a larger point: technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience. It is a mistake to place any particular technology in this exalted category, since over time we will end up valuing the wrong things. For example, at one time if you didn’t have a horse it was hard to make a living. But the important right in that case was the right to make a living, not the right to a horse. Today, if I were granted a right to have a horse, I’m not sure where I would put it.

The best way to characterize human rights is to identify the outcomes that we are trying to ensure. These include critical freedoms like freedom of speech and freedom of access to information — and those are not necessarily bound to any particular technology at any particular time. Indeed, even the United Nations report, which was widely hailed as declaring Internet access a human right, acknowledged that the Internet was valuable as a means to an end, not as an end in itself.

What about the claim that Internet access is or should be a civil right? The same reasoning above can be applied here — Internet access is always just a tool for obtaining something else more important — though the argument that it is a civil right is, I concede, a stronger one than that it is a human right. Civil rights, after all, are different from human rights because they are conferred upon us by law, not intrinsic to us as human beings.

While the United States has never decreed that everyone has a “right” to a telephone, we have come close to this with the notion of “universal service” — the idea that telephone service (and electricity, and now broadband Internet) must be available even in the most remote regions of the country. When we accept this idea, we are edging into the idea of Internet access as a civil right, because ensuring access is a policy made by the government.

Yet all these philosophical arguments overlook a more fundamental issue: the responsibility of technology creators themselves to support human and civil rights. The Internet has introduced an enormously accessible and egalitarian platform for creating, sharing and obtaining information on a global scale. As a result, we have new ways to allow people to exercise their human and civil rights.

In this context, engineers have not only a tremendous obligation to empower users, but also an obligation to ensure the safety of users online. That means, for example, protecting users from specific harms like viruses and worms that silently invade their computers. Technologists should work toward this end.

It is engineers — and our professional associations and standards-setting bodies like the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers — that create and maintain these new capabilities. As we seek to advance the state of the art in technology and its use in society, we must be conscious of our civil responsibilities in addition to our engineering expertise.

Improving the Internet is just one means, albeit an important one, by which to improve the human condition. It must be done with an appreciation for the civil and human rights that deserve protection — without pretending that access itself is such a right.

Vinton G. Cerf of The New York Times (link here)

What analogy did the author employ to illustrate his argument? Do you agree with the author’s views that the Internet should not be considered a Human Right? 

Why do you think people are thinking about the Internet in this manner?