Carlos Bellini, Daniel Lledo, Thiago de Aragao

Download 2009 Elections in Latin America (140 kilobyte PDF)

This report presents an evaluation of the legislative elections in Argentina and their impact on the Presidential succession of 2011, as well as an evaluation of the Presidential candidates in Uruguay, chosen through their parties' primaries. The Presidential election is scheduled for October 2009.

Joshua Cooper Ramo

Supported by Hill & Knowlton

February 2007

Download Brand China (260 kilobyte PDF)

In this new report, from the author of the widely discussed paper 'The Beijing Consensus', Ramo argues that China's national image, and the misalignment between China's image of itself and how it is viewed by the rest of the world, may be its greatest strategic threat. It argues that alongside its other reforms, China needs a 'fifth transition' if the trust and understanding necessary for the next stage of its development are to be achieved.

This paper has been kindly supported by Hill & Knowlton.

Christopher J Forster

April 2006

Download China's Secret Weapon (320 kilobyte PDF)

Preface by Lord Charles Powell of Bayswater

The Wall Street Journal reported recently how foreign-invested R&D centres in China have almost quadrupled to 750 over the last four years. The Foreign Policy Centre report bears this out with statistics showing that China is now ranked third in the world for total R&D spending. It estimates that by 2010 China will have the same number of science and engineering graduates as the United States. The idea that China is a sweat-shop economy is very dated. Instead it is a growing challenge to the previously comfortable technological lead of the Western countries.

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Thiago de Aragao

March 2006

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Latin America is a region characterised by a consistently high potential for economic and social development, but faces serious difficulties in accomplishing this task. Throughout the last few decades Latin America has experienced periods of economic growth generally followed by moments of stark recession. Such economic growth cycles have always been tremendously difficult to maintain and, most of all, use in creating positive results for social development. In some ways, the economic history of South America has been a permanent alternation of these cycles - a typical stop and go – or, 'like a chicken flying', always short and low.

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Seema Desai

January 2006

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As the centre of gravity in the world's economy continues to move east, it appears increasingly anachronistic that the only Asian country represented at the G8 table is Japan, by all accounts a stagnating economic and political power in the world. The time is approaching for China to be invited to be a full member of the G8, and for the new G9 or G10 (if India is included) to focus on its central objective: to preside over and guide the world's economy.

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Andrei Piontkovsky

January 2006

Download East or West? (190 kilobyte PDF)

The break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a geopolitical earthquake that redrew the map of Europe and Central Asia. In his state-of-the-nation address, in April 2005, Russia's President Vladimir Putin went so far as to describe it as the 'biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century'. His declaration caused a stir among the world's political scientists, sociologists, economists and even philosophers. Yet the full import of his words was lost on much of his foreign audience. 'For the Russian people', Putin continued, the collapse of the Soviet Union 'became a real drama'.

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Andrew Small

November 2005

Download Preventing the Next Cold War (360 kilobyte PDF)

2005 has seen the emergence of political dynamics and shifts in thinking in both Washington and Beijing that risk tipping US-China relations over into a state of open geopolitical rivalry unless there are concerted attempts at conflict prevention.

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Shairi Mathur

September 2005

Download Voting for the Veto (170 kilobyte PDF)

The case for India's permanent seat in the Security Council is as compelling as it is simple. India is the world's largest democracy, soon to be the world's most populous country, and home to over 15 per cent of the world's population; it possesses nuclear weapons and strategic missiles; it has at various times taken a global leadership role, not least in its co-founding of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1955; and as an early champion of the concept of 'peaceful co-existence' between the communist bloc and the free world, India has been a leading advocate of 'peaceful' foreign policies and non-aggression. In 2005, the World Bank ranked India as having the fourth biggest GDP in the world (in terms of purchasing power parity), and tenth biggest (in terms of the conventional GDP measure). India has taken part in more than 30 UN peacekeeping operations. By any sensible measure of 'equity', the reform of the Security Council in 2005 should result in India's elevation to the Security Council with the same powers as China and the USA.

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Jennifer Moll (ed.)

August 2005

Download Blueprint for Russia (250 kilobyte PDF)

This FPC publication explores political change in Russia. It is now available for purchase and will be launched at the FPC's Fringe Event at the Labour Party Conference.

Utilising each author's expertise, this pamphlet compiles a broad range of opinions to outline a Blueprint for Russia. The contributions focus on political change in Russia as it relates to the three key policy areas of law, the economy and political pluralism.

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Yongjin Zhang

April 2005

Download China Goes Global (310 kilobyte PDF)

In China Goes Global, Yongjin Zhang looks at how engagement with globalisation is changing the Chinese state – and how China in turn is affecting the global economy. He argues that China's astronomical growth figures have obscured its transformative effects.

Accession to the WTO has led to a massive increase in trade – but also to a growing commitment to free trade and the global economic system

Chinese companies are 'going global', acquiring energy assets, listing in international stock markets and becoming serious global investors

As 'the world's factory', China is now shaping the changing dynamics of global supply and demand; and leading the wider shift towards a truly globalised economy.

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Angie Austin

April 2005

Download Energy and Power in China (310 kilobyte PDF)

The USA, EU and Britain have all recognised that domestic regulation of China's growing energy use and power industries constitute a 'global good', but the EU and Britain only recently instituted bilateral programs for promoting more efficient energy use by China through support of better domestic regularoty regimes.

This pamphlet urges the EU and Britain to urgently adjust their priorities for development cooperation with China in order to devote significantly more resources to the promotion of more effective regulation in China's energy sector.

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Dr Greg Austin

April 2005 Hard copy: £2.95, plus £1 p+p. Buy it on CentralBooks.co.uk

Download China Arms Ban (260 kilobyte PDF)

The European decision to lift the 1989 arms embargo targeted exclusively against China has encountered strong resistance from the US, particularly the Congress, and other allies including Japan. This new report from the Foreign Policy Centre argues that the dispute is damaging and unnecessary, and the result of a failure in European public diplomacy rather than a serious transatlantic policy disagreement. The lifting of the embargo will not change the military balance in East Asia nor affect the Chinese calculus of risk over the use of force against Taiwan; it is also ineffective as a mechanism to compel China's leadership to improve its domestic human rights policies.

As a result, the move has emerged as a test of Europe's new security policy, and of its ability to communicate decisions to key allies and stakeholders. European leaders must take their case to US Congress leaders through a vigorous public diplomacy campaign, to convince them that the EU will continue to restrict arms to China effectively even after the 1989 ban is lifted.

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Andrei Kunov, Mikhail Myagkov, Alexei Sitnikov, Dmitry Shakin

April 2005

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The 2003 Duma elections saw an overwhelming victory for President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party and drastic defeat for other political parties. Opposition calls for a recount went nowhere and many puzzles about voting trends in Russia went unanswered. This pamphlet presents the results of ground-breaking research from the Open Economy Institute in Moscow, using a new statistial method for understanding the flow of votes and electorate support between political parties. The authors find that the Russian electorate was far less predictable in the last cycle than in the first decade of modern Russian democracy; and argue that the prospects for an effective multi-party system are now bleak.

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Greg Austin, Ken Berry

February 2005 Hard copy: £2.95, plus £1 p+p. Buy it on CentralBooks.co.uk

Download the report (280 kilobyte PDF)

The United Nations does not just need reform, it is in need of a 'Reformation'. The composition of the Security Council is just one structural question among many other deeper issues. The scope of change needed can only be understood with reference to the massive changes in international power relationships of the past sixty years.

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Prasenjit K. Basu, Brahma Chellaney, Parag Khanna, Sunil Khilani

2005

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In 30 years India's economy could be larger than all but those of the US and China. In this collection of essays, with a preface by the Indian High Commissioner to the UK, Kamalesh Sharma, four leading thinkers on India explore how it can carve out a world role that best serves its goals and interests.

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