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Newly inaugurated Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto promised during his campaign to triple Mexico’s GDP growth rate to 5-6 percent annually. In order to even approach that lofty goal, Peña Nieto must confront the country’s bloated monopolies that discourage competition and raise the cost of goods and services for Mexicans. Complicating this already monumental task is Mexico’s entrenched culture of monopolies, which will be harder to defeat than the actual monopolies themselves. When it comes to Mexican monopolies, the big offenders are well-known: Telmex, the telecommunications conglomerate owned by the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim; Televisa, the largest multimedia company […]

Editor’s note: Richard Gowan will be writing the Continentalist column for the month of December. Is France the most influential nation at the United Nations today? To anybody who doesn’t follow events at the U.N. closely, this may sound silly. The United States still has more political and financial clout than any other member of the organization, even if it has to endure frequent criticism from poorer countries. Russia has used its status as a permanent member of the Security Council as a blunt instrument to protect Syria from U.N. sanctions for more than a year. China has become an […]

The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit concluded in Cambodia two weeks ago with tensions among members over maritime disputes with China in the East and South China Seas taking center stage. ASEAN is entering a critical stage in its development as an influential player in charting the future geopolitical trajectory of Asia. In 2015, the bloc aspires to establish the ASEAN Economic Community, which would integrate all member economies into a single market. Despite this, ASEAN continues to struggle when it comes to matching its potential with concrete achievements, as demonstrated by the Cambodia summit. A large […]

Editor’s note: Catherine Cheney reported on German policymaking as part of the German-American Fulbright Commission’s Berlin Capital Program, which is funded by the German Foreign Office. BERLIN — The Betreuungsgeld, a policy that will provide a monthly allowance to parents who keep their toddlers out of public daycare programs, is at the center of an emotional debate on family politics in Germany. Approved last month and scheduled to go into effect next year, the subsidy is an attempt to make it easier for parents, in most cases women, to care for children ages one to three on their own. Critics […]