International trade policies and new technologies facilitate the flow of people, information, and products across national borders, in turn encouraging the integration of regional economies, societies, and cultures. RAND research has investigated how globalization affects and has been affected by policymaking throughout the world.
Today's global challenges demand RAND's innovative analysis. Old patterns of state-to-state and bloc-to-bloc relations are now eclipsed by global concerns that cut across functional disciplines and regional boundaries. Complex issues such as international security, transnational trade and investment, education, health care, information technology, and energy and environment are all topics that benefit from the multidisciplinary, uncompromising analytic approach of researchers in International Programs at RAND.
Commentary
Charles Wolf Jr. reviews How China Became Capitalist by Ronald Coase and Ning Wang: The authors interpret China's rise in terms that are distinctly different from what has been accepted as conventional wisdom, which holds that China's dramatic rise has resulted from astute guidance by its Communist Party leadership.
Journal Article
Declines in self-reported sleep quotas with globalizing lifestyle changes have focused attention on their possible role in rising global health problems such as obesity or depression.
Research Brief
Describes a methodology for analyzing public opinion and mood in closed societies, focusing on a case study that analyzed Iranian public opinion and mood as expressed over Twitter in the nine months following Iran's 2009 presidential election.
Journal Article
National and transnational health care systems are rapidly evolving with current processes of globalisation.
Journal Article
The complex relationship between globalization and health calls for research from many disciplinary and methodological perspectives.
Report
Assesses the factors contributing to the decisions by the United States and Japan to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the meaning of those decisions for bilateral cooperation on trade expansion.
Report
Analyzes Iranian public opinion and mood as expressed over Twitter in the nine months following the 2009 election.
Journal Article
The development of standards is normally justified with functional and economic rationales.
Report
Discusses innovation's role in the legal services industry, factors affecting innovation's production, and the research and data infrastructure needed by policymakers to understand whether restrictions on the practice of the law should be altered.
Report
This paper presents a theory of natural alliances in which commonalities in political culture are a strategic asset for better coordination and greater predictability among partners. It applies this theory to the case of the US-European alliance.
Commentary
It's fashionable among academics and pundits to proclaim that the U.S. is in decline and no longer No. 1 in the world. The declinists say they are realists. In fact, their alarm is unrealistic, writes Charles Wolf, Jr.
Journal Article
The authors consider an evidence-based approach to science and innovation policy analysis.
Commentary
What is significant about China's acquisitions over the past few years is the change they represent from the negligible amounts in the past, writes Charles Wolf, Jr.
Journal Article
The authors address globalization and political control of education, with a focus on understanding the larger contextual conditions associated with globalization and regulation.
Commentary
When the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago, those raised in the shadow of possible nuclear holocaust felt disbelief, followed by relief and hope that the end of the Cold War would bring lasting peace, and the end of conflict. And in Europe, at least, it mostly did – but not everywhere, writes Christopher S. Chivvis.
Commentary
The increasing importance of the G-20 summits is testimony to the growing role emerging states now play in managing the international economy. But integrating these newcomers into the global community is unlikely to be straightforward or simple, writes Lowell H. Schwartz.
Report
The United States can become more energy efficient and create more "green" jobs by adopting some of the strategies used by the European Union and Australia to rate and disclose the performance of commercial and government-owned buildings.
Commentary
The damage done by the financial crisis now seems to require not a refurbishing job but an extreme makeover. While soul-searching and even self-loathing are inevitable during a crisis, this is no time for America to shy away from a capitalist system that has produced decades of economic growth, writes Krishna Kumar.
Report
China is a global actor of significant and growing importance, now integrated into the international system and altering that system's dynamics. The complexity of China's ever-changing global activism raises questions about its intentions and the implications for global stability and prosperity.
Report
Will the current global economic recession have long-term geopolitical implications? Assuming that economic recovery begins in the first half of 2010, lasting structural alterations in the international system — a substantial change in U.S.-China relations, for example — are unlikely. This is because economic performance is only one of many geopolitical elements that shape countries' strategic intent and core external policies.
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