Research Library

With opposition to large-scale energy infrastructure on the rise, transmission service providers find it problematic to build the new power lines essential to a greener grid. This paper highlights the Texas Competitive Renewable Energy Zone initiative (CREZ) — a case study of the difficulties that new power lines face and the policy choices that can facilitate development of this necessary infrastructure. The CREZ experience can inform development of new large-scale transmission infrastructure in other regions.

Through an examination of crime patterns in a major urban center in Latin America — Mexico City— this study contributes to the development of a theoretical and empirical understanding of criminal activity and its correlation with space and time.

David R. Brockman, nonresident scholar in religion and public policy, identifies the major religious and political proponents of Christian Americanism in Texas since 2008 and explores how they promote the ideology.

Author Julie Cohn traces historical trends and experiences with the U.S. electrical grid to help frame choices as more renewables are brought into the system.

Religion nonresident scholar David R. Brockman examines an attempt to force the removal of Tarrant County GOP vice chair Dr. Shahid Shafi because he is Muslim. The paper places the controversy within the context of Islamophobia in politics and outlines the challenges the case presents for the Republican Party both nationally and statewide.

The authors examine a unique and anonymized dataset of complaints about government corruption in an urban Mexico district. The trends they found are transferable to other urban districts across the country and Latin America, they write, and may help anticorruption agencies in Mexico and beyond direct their efforts. https://doi.org/10.25613/cqgc-xv79.

NAFTA has neither been the enormous success that its supporters believe, nor the disaster that its detractors claim. Renegotiating NAFTA — or even threatening to repeal it — is not a high-stakes proposition. The treaty simply does not possess the leverage to deliver a major boost or setback to the U.S. manufacturing sector. 

This study analyzes the new legal framework and definitions governing Mexico's energy sector as a result of the constitutional reform, and the implications for the hydrocarbons and electrical sectors.

As China continues to open up to the transnational circulation of labor, ideas, technology and capital under globalization, one must wonder: will Chinese society’s more cosmopolitan and transnational groups continue to be guided by guanxi, the system of social networks and influential relationships that facilitate business and other dealings?

Authors Tony Payan and Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera lay out how Mexico must anticipate and resolve potential problems in organized crime, corruption and natural resource allocation priorities in order to successfully implement its energy reforms.