Research Library

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is starting her second term in office facing economic and political problems that feed into each other. These problems can be attributed to a large extent to mistakes her administration made during her first term. Rousseff’s macroeconomic policy proved to be inconsistent, and the choices she made in some key economic sectors, especially energy, were demonstrably disastrous. Rousseff now faces the enormous challenge of reconciling the leftwing populism that led her to victory with the inescapable need to regain the trust of the most dynamic sectors of Brazilian society, including the private sector.

In 1972, a National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, comprising establishment figures chosen mostly by President Richard Nixon himself, issued a report that declared that “neither the marihuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety” and recommended that Congress and state legislatures decriminalize the use and casual distribution of marijuana and seek means other than prohibition to discourage use. President Nixon ignored the report and Congress declined to consider its recommendations, but during the 40-plus years since its publication, at least 37 states have acted to refashion a crazy-quilt collection of prohibitions, nearly always in the direction favored by the commission. The specifics vary by state, but most reform legislation has followed one of three formulas: decriminalization of marijuana possession, legalization of marijuana for medical use, or legalization of marijuana for adult recreational use. In this issue brief, authors Katharine Neill and William Martin examine the facts and fears surrounding each of these options.

A growing number of Brazilian companies are expanding internationally. These companies are part of the transformation reshaping the global investment environment. They have shifted their international strategy from being based exclusively on exports to becoming foreign investors in countries such as Peru, Chile, Colombia and Mexico.

Although there are enormous potential benefits for Mexico's energy sector in the future, there are also important challenges the country must overcome to fully realize its energy potential. One of them has to do with the land ownership and land use regime in Mexico. As the legislative debate on the new Ley de Petróleos and the Ley de la Comisión Federal de Electricidad (Petroleum Act and Federal Electric Utility Act) proceeded in the summer of 2014, the Mexican Congress anticipated potential land-related conflicts associated with exploration and production activities related to hydrocarbons and new energy-related infrastructure projects. These potential conflicts stem from the fact that all of these projects will necessarily require the right of way to access and work on the resources in the subsoil of privately owned as well as on so-called “socially owned” lands in regions targeted for energy development. Thus, the Mexican Congress sought to avoid land-related conflicts by including language related to land ownership and use in the new energy legislation. The legislation, however, may not be able to prevent such conflicts.

With the recent approval of Mexico's energy reform and the current enthusiasm of South American governments to attract foreign investment in oil, one might be tempted to conclude that the tide of resource nationalism is receding in the region. Nevertheless, the cycles of investment and expropriation that have characterized the oil sector in Latin America are unlikely to go away.

Mexico must address two key questions in order to realize the promise of greater employment opportunities: Does the country’s current workforce have the needed skills to adequately respond to increases in production, and is the country allocating the necessary resources to respond to the demand for future skills? This issue brief focuses on education's role in reducing the workforce skills gap that Mexico will face as the energy sector expands.

A deadly virus named MERS has spread from Saudi Arabia to over a dozen countries since 2012. While the chances for widespread infection are remote due to the virus's low human-to-human transmission rate, all governments should nevertheless support academic freedom and scientific collaboration to keep local outbreaks of viruses like MERS from becoming serious pandemics.

On May 23, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto signed a series of bills to implement constitutional changes to the country’s political and electoral processes. The reforms bring some of the most dynamic shifts to Mexican politics since the 1990s, including replacing the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) with the National Electoral Institute (INE). The new INE and the measures behind it now strive to replicate the IFE’s success in the country's states and municipalities.

This issue brief proposes a framework for awarding bids in a public tender for exploration blocks. The context for the proposal is Mexico’s energy reform of 2013-2014.

This issue brief examines the signals conveyed by Mexico's 2014 energy reforms, and analyzes the limitations in law, institutional design and policy that may delay, if not derail, the reforms' success.