This paper evaluates the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) of 2005. MGNREGA provides last-resort employment to rural Indians and guarantees beneficiaries one hundred workdays per year, which consist of building and maintaining local infrastructure. I find that that although the program has had strong short-term results, as it currently stands it will likely not generate lasting impacts. Due to a lack of skills development and durable infrastructure, workers remain dependent on the scheme for income, and the maintenance of infrastructure is dependent on continued program funding. In addition, poor oversight allows for corruption and decreases effectiveness. I describe MGNREGA’s weakest areas, as well as provide recommendations for how to refine them.

Foreign Policy blogger and CISAC Faculty Member Amy Zegart explains how major private companies are increasingly developing their own intelligence that conduct surveillance and analyze information that places the reputation, personnel or business interests of their company. These units look and act like government intelligence agencies, and are staffed with former CIA, FBI, and military professionals that maintain their government ties. Companies operating globally cannot afford to ignore political events, natural disasters, and other risks. 

Genetic improvements in heat tolerance of wheat provide a potential adaptation response to long-term warming trends, and may also boost yields in wheat-growing areas already subject to heat stress. Yet there have been few assessments of recent progress in breeding wheat for hot environments. Here, data from 25 years of wheat trials in 76 countries from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) are used to empirically model the response of wheat to environmental variation and assess the genetic gains over time in different environments and for different breeding strategies. Wheat yields exhibited the most sensitivity to warming during the grain-filling stage, typically the hottest part of the season. Sites with high vapour pressure deficit (VPD) exhibited a less negative response to temperatures during this period, probably associated with increased transpirational cooling. Genetic improvements were assessed by using the empirical model to correct observed yield growth for changes in environmental conditions and management over time. These ‘climate-corrected’ yield trends showed that most of the genetic gains in the high-yield-potential Elite Spring Wheat Yield Trial (ESWYT) were made at cooler temperatures, close to the physiological optimum, with no evidence for genetic gains at the hottest temperatures. In contrast, the Semi-Arid Wheat Yield Trial (SAWYT), a lower-yielding nursery targeted at maintaining yields under stressed conditions, showed the strongest genetic gains at the hottest temperatures. These results imply that targeted breeding efforts help us to ensure progress in building heat tolerance, and that intensified (and possibly new) approaches are needed to improve the yield potential of wheat in hot environments in order to maintain global food security in a warmer climate.

Judging from some of the titles of recent books on Russia—for example, Richard Sakwa's The Crisis of Russian Democracy, Gulnaz Sharafutdinova's Political Consequences of Crony Capitalism inside Russia, and Tom Remington's The Politics of Inequality in Russia—all is not well 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Corruption abounds, and state institutions are weak where they should be strong or strong where they should be weak. Under Vladimir Putin, democracy has deteriorated since the heady early days of the 1990s, and the negative externalities of Russia's rocky economic transition—especially privatization—have made it so that social inequality permeates postcommunist society.

In-conflict state building generates unbalanced civil-military relations in the host state due to an inevitable civil-military gap. Building civilian institutions cannot match the trajectory of progress in building military institutions. The civil-military imbalance creates structural risks to the democratization of the state. This article explains the civil-military gap and its risks, examines Iraq and in particular Afghanistan, and presents steps on how to make unbalanced civil-military relations conducive to democratization by shaping the political role of the military.

Focusing on Iran in 2009 and Egypt in 2011, this paper examines the role of the coercive apparatus in responding to crises triggered by mass anti-regime protest. We argue that the divergent outcomes of the two crises – authoritarian resilience in Iran and regime breakdown in Egypt – can be traced to the regimes’ distinct origins. On the one hand, the Iranian Islamic regime’s founding in sustained, violent, and ideologically driven struggle (1978-1983) created a regime elite and coercive apparatus with the stomach and capacity for high intensity coercion necessary to defend the regime against mass-based threats. Revolution, counter-insurgency, and war during the regime’s early years led to the growth of an ideologically motivated and highly partisan security services. In Egypt, by contrast, the absence of origins in violent, revolutionary struggle led to the creation of a coercive apparatus with weaker, more situational cohesion. The regime’s overall coercive capacity was high, but in the absence of a revolutionary heritage, the willingness of the repressive apparatus to suppress large-scale, mass protest was more open to question than in Iran.