Research Library

Energy experts from government, industry and academia investigate influences on oil and gas investments, as well as future directions for global commodity pricing.

Women have been central to the events that have shaken Tunisian politics since the Arab Spring. This article addresses how Tunisia came to occupy a premier position in regard to women's rights and discusses some of the current debates on women's rights in Tunisia following the Arab Spring.

Under this study, the Baker Institute will embark on a comprehensive study on the interaction of the oil investment cycle and the general business cycle, including consideration of how the global economy and patterns of industry capital investment are influenced by oil price shocks.

In a recent commentary, Baker Institute science and technology policy experts described two international court cases that aimed to define “research” — and that ultimately arrived at two different answers. “What makes this interesting is that the courts’ definition of ‘research’ was based on politics — what the court wanted the end result to be,” said Kirstin Matthews, the institute’s fellow in science and technology policy. To reach a decision prohibiting human embryonic stem cell (hESC) patents, the EU court ruled that “research” occurs in a continuum. To reach a decision supporting federal funding of stem cell research, the U.S. court ruled that “research” involves a specific project.

The emphasis is on the deterioration of the participation of the political institutions and politicians before the citizenry in Costa Rica, which shows a process of exhaustion, loss of legitimacy of institutions and actors. This process goes back a few decades and shows no sign, in the short term, of the emergence of new structures in the political system. This paper systematizes the morphology of exhaustion and identifies the trends in which the reform can be based. Such reform should be based on constitutional engineering and should support the political reform process from the tendencies of change that are expressed in the political system. Published in Revista Derecho Electoral, December 2013. In Spanish only.

A speaker series addressing a variety of important topics related to Latin America.

With Comptroller Susan Combs’ announcement that she will not run for re-election in 2014, the Texas Republican Party faces the undesirable prospect of an all male slate candidates for statewide executive offices. Political science fellow Mark P. Jones discusses prospective female candidates and what an all male slate could mean for the Texas GOP.

A collaboration uniting the resources and expertise of Rice University's Baker Institute and the Organization of American States.

Countries around the Persian Gulf are falling behind with regard to renewables, both for technical and for political reasons. And they need to diversify — just like the rest of us — if they are going to keep local consumption from using up too much of the oil they would rather sell.