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2020-01-30
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace;
In the past two years, the Russian public's appetite for change has increased considerably. A small but growing group of Russians blame President Vladimir Putin for the country's problems, and his capacity to deliver change is now being questioned. Yet the demands for change are taking very different forms, not only in open protests but also through latent discontent, and the public has not identified a specific alternative leader as a potential agent of change.In July 2019, the Carnegie Moscow Center and the Levada Center, Russia's main independent polling agency, conducted a third poll in two years asking 1,600 Russians about their readiness for change. The results show some striking new trends. A total of 59 percent of respondents—17 percent more than two years before—said that the country needed "decisive comprehensive change" (see Figure 1). The Russian publication of this research in November 2019 attracted a lot of attention from the media and political class. An answer came in January 2020 in a form of constitutional changes and the resignation of the government. In his annual address on January 15, Vladimir Putin said: "Our society is clearly calling for change. People want development. . . . The pace of change must be expedited every year and produce tangible results in attaining worthy living standards that would be clearly perceived by the people. And, I repeat, they must be actively involved in this process."
2020-03-04
Open Society Foundations;
Tajikistan's current laws regarding drug users and drug policy are a cumbersome mix of recently adopted international obligations and regressive provisions dating back to the Soviet period. With support from the Open Society Global Drug Policy Program and the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation-Tajikistan, representatives from the country's Ministry of Health, Drug Control Agency, and civil society organizations analyzed existing drug legislation and bylaws with the aim of identifying areas for improvement.
2020-03-10
Center for Economic and Policy Research;
This study focuses primarily on the 'Final Report' of the OAS audit of the election results and shows how the authors of that report misrepresent the data and evidence found in the audit in an attempt to further bolster their claims of intentional manipulation on the part of Bolivia's former electoral authorities. The OAS Final Report identifies many real problems with the management of the elections that should be addressed. However, despite claims to the contrary, it does not provide any evidence that those irregularities altered the outcome of the election, or were part of an actual attempt to do so.
2020-06-29
Heartland Alliance;
This first-of-its-kind study confirms that more than 3.3 million people in Illinois could be impacted by permanent punishments as a result of prior "criminal justice system" involvement, which is more accurately referred to as the "criminal legal system" given the well-documented inequities that bring into question whether the system actually brings justice to people who come into contact with it."Never Fully Free: The Scale and Impact of Permanent Punishments on People with Criminal Records in Illinois," lifts up that permanent punishments are the numerous laws and barriers aimed at people with records that limit their human rights and restrict access to the crucial resources needed to re-build their lives, such as employment, housing, and education. The report recommends a broad dismantling of permanent punishments, so that those who have been involved with the criminal legal system have the opportunity to fully participate in society.The data illustrates the dramatic number of people who may be living with the stigma and limitations of a criminal record in Illinois. Since the advent of mass incarceration in 1979, there are an estimated 3.3 million adults who have been arrested or convicted of a crime in Illinois. Under current laws, these individuals have limited rights even after their criminal legal system involvement has ended. In fact, the report uncovered a vast web of 1,189 laws in Illinois that punish people with criminal records, often indefinitely.
2020-06-01
West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI);
The world is today confronted to a new threat; the novel Coronavirus infection (Covid-19). The virus first broke in China in November 2019, and has since swept across countries, overwhelmed health facilities and brought economies to their knees. As of 2nd June, 2020, the coronavirus is known to have infected more than 6 million people across the globe, claimed over 350 000 lives, and poses an existential threat to humanity.
2020-07-09
Bipartisan Policy Center;
This report documents the results of a nationwide study that the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology conducted in 3,119 individual polling places across the country to measure wait times at the polls during the 2018 midterms. It provides the type of fine-grained analysis of voters' reality as they waited to cast ballots that survey data cannot replicate.
2020-02-18
Ble Solutions;
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation's Madison Initiative (MI) seeks to strengthen U.S. democracy and its institutions in a time of political polarization. The goal is to help create the conditions in Congress in which its Members can deliberate, negotiate, and compromise in ways that work for most Americans. Launched in 2014, this nonpartisan initiative supports nonprofit organizations across the ideological spectrum—academic researchers, advocacy groups, think tanks, and civic leadership organizations—that seek to understand and improve the political system so that elected representatives are better equipped to solve society's greatest problems and in turn, earn public trust and support. The Hewlett Foundation's board authorized MI to make $15-20 million in grants per year from 2014 to 2021, for a total commitment of $150 million.
2020-07-23
Heartland Alliance;
Health Neighborhood, a pilot project within Heartland Alliance Health (HAH), intended to create a population-based approach of improving integrated care among people with experiences of homelessness, who were housed in permanent supportive housing (PSH). The program was built on through intensive partnerships between HAH and five Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) providers: Chicago House, North Side Housing and Supportive Services, Deborah's Place, Housing Opportunities for Women, and Heartland Human Care Services (HHCS). The program was implemented from 2016 – 2019, and served 46 participants.
2020-11-04
Palgrave Macmillan;
The birth year of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), 1963, is often considered Africa's year of independence. But political freedom did not mean freedom from the repression and violence which had characterized the colonial period. Wars and conflicts have scarred the continent since independence. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, they became more complex and widespread. And so, too, did the international efforts to restore and (re) build peace in Africa. Countries worst affected by violence and conflict included Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan/South Sudan, Central African Republic, Mali, and Libya. In recent years, the quest for sustainable peace in Africa has taken on a new urgency, as instability and insecurity continue to negatively impact the lives of millions of Africans and hinder the continent's economic growth and development. This book joins the quest for peace by examining 30 years of peacebuilding in Africa, highlighting key lessons learned and offering some recommendations for making peace stick.
2020-08-26
Partnership for Public Service;
As the United States works to stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus and blunt the pandemic's economic fallout, the need for an effective and efficient federal government has never been clearer. Indeed, there may be no institution more important to the health, safety and financial wellbeing of the nation than the federal government. To deliver for the American people now and in the future, and competently respond to inevitable crises, the government must be able to recruit and hire a world-class workforce. Yet the federal recruiting and hiring process is in drastic need of repair.The federal government has long struggled to attract the talent it needs, handicapped in part by a General Schedule pay system that makes it difficult to compete with the private sector. Too often, the applicant experience is miserable, plagued by confusing job announcements, a USAJobs platform that is difficult to use, and a cumbersome hiring process that can take months to complete. Even after collecting resumes, agencies rely too frequently on outdated methods to evaluate candidates, causing them to overlook the most qualified.While there are a number of well-documented steps that Congress and the Office of Personnel Management could take to reform the recruiting and hiring process, agencies can do a great deal on their own.1 Made possible by generous support from the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation and informed by interviews with human resources leaders in government and the private sector, this report describes approaches that agency leaders and human resources specialists can take right now to strengthen the federal workforce.Particularly as new staff are added to deal with a range of issues stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, agencies should:- Strategically identify their talent needs for both today and tomorrow.- Recruit more effectively and efficiently by being proactive, promoting their brand, keeping in touch with former employees and targeting young people.- Ensure that they hire the best applicants by creating a better candidate experience and using innovative techniques to identify who is most qualified.- Look inward for the next generation of talent. This report describes what these strategies look like in practice, sharing replicable examples from across the federal government.
2020-04-27
Partnership for Public Service;
In 2019, the Partnership for Public Service launched a project with X Sector Labs, a management consulting firm that advises executives on cross-sector leadership, and the San Francisco Federal Executive Board, which helps build cooperative relationships among federal, postal and military employees across northern California. The aim was to understand better how organizations in California's public, private, nonprofit and other sectors work together toward shared goals and to explore how to further enhance collaboration, especially with the federal government. Between October 2019 and January 2020, we jointly hosted a series of roundtable discussions in northern California to identify best practices for, and barriers to, collaboration among governments, businesses, nonproft organizations, academia and philanthropy.More than 70 leaders from across sectors - the majority of whom have worked in both government and private or nonprofit roles during their careers - convened for conversations about how organizations can take collective action to address today's pressing challenges. Participants described why organizations partner, shared examples of collaborative efforts that worked well, and assessed potential difficulties around collaboration.During these discussions, participants strongly agreed that when multiple organizations work together, they enhance their ability to address issues and achieve results. Too often, however, individuals and organizations are deterred by obstacles that can hamper collaboration.This paper summarizes key themes from the roundtable discussions, including benefits and potential challenges of partnering across organizations, and outlines actions that could increase the number of effective partnerships in California, especially those involving the federal government. We hope these findings will help boost the ability of all sectors to collaborate with one another more often and more effectively.
2020-02-28
EnCompass LLC;
Since 2015, the MacArthur Foundation's On Nigeria strategy has sought to reduce corruption by supporting Nigerian-led efforts that strengthen accountability, transparency, and participation. Its theory of change builds on Jonathan Fox's "sandwich theory," which leverages the interplay between a push from below, by which citizens demand change ("voice"), and a squeeze from above to encourage public and private institutions to develop and enforce laws and regulations ("teeth").As of January 2020, the On Nigeria strategy has made 138 grants (totaling $66.8 million) that are a proving ground to develop and test a range of tactics and entry points for addressing corruption. Corruption is complex and ever-evolving, and progress toward the goal of reducing it will most certainly not be linear nor simple. Thus, On Nigeria reflects a multilayered strategy, comprising five areas of targeted programming, or modules—the Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) Program, the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) Intervention Fund, Electricity Distribution, Criminal Justice, and Media and Journalism; and three cross-cutting areas—behavior and social norm change, civil society pressure for government accountability, and election-related efforts.The goal of this paper is to provide the latest information from the ongoing evaluation of On Nigeria, facilitate learning, and serve as one input to determine the next stage of programming. The evidence presented explores the strategy's progress to date, the validity of its theory of change, and status of windows of opportunity in the strategy's landscape.
