Research Library

Despite the many potential challenges — including difficulties conserving water, using clean energy and dealing with the López Obrador administration — Tesla will most likely move forward with the construction of a “gigafactory" in Mexico. In this issue brief, fellow David Gantz explains why the benefits outweigh the risks.

This paper tracks a change in the direction of Mexico’s energy policy under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — a change that inhibits private investment while attempting to restore Pemex’s oil monopoly.

The author explores consociational democracy as it has played out in Lebanon, and its possible use as a heuristic tool to rethink the relationship between communal groups, political organizations, and the state in the contemporary Middle East.

This brief quantifies the potential exposure of key European countries to Russian gas price and supply manipulation, shows how Moscow has used energy as an instrument of coercive diplomacy since the early 1990s, and briefly assesses the impacts and future policy implications of Russian entities’ past use of the “energy weapon” in and near Europe. Although it has not been widely successful to date in the former Soviet zone, Russia's use of the energy weapon against Western European countries in various forms still constitutes a strategic threat that warrants close attention from policymakers in Washington and throughout Europe, writes fellow Gabriel Collins.

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.