The Atlantic Initiative, the publisher of atlantic-community.org, will be hosting a policy exchange in Berlin on May 25, 2011 from 2:45-4:30 PM, where the winners of atlantic-community.org’s policy workshop competition "Ideas with Impact" will present their team’s policy recommendations to the US Ambassador Philip D. Murphy and CDU/CSU Foreign Policy Spokesperson Philipp Mißfelder. Please download an invitation and register via email, if you would like to attend this event at Wilhelmstr. 67, 10117 Berlin.
This exchange between atlantic-community.org members and transatlantic decision makers is the culmination of a Web 2.0 policy formulation process that represents a blueprint for our think tank’s approach to generating new ideas. Our editorial team developed questions on Iran’s nuclear program, Russia and the West, and climate change, which were put to our community in the form of an op-ed competition. The astonishing response from our members was nearly 50 submissions from students at Germany’s leading universities. In each category, six articles were shortlisted and put up for discussion for one week in our Open Think Tank. During this week, the five shortlisted authors were tasked with making constructive comments on each other's articles and defending their arguments. Our editorial team then created interactive wikis from these debates and hosted Skype conference calls through which the participants reached a consensus and refined their arguments. This online policy workshop resulted in four Atlantic Memos:
1. Engaging Tehran with Concrete Reciprocity
2. Consistent Regime-Change Policy in Iran
3. The Reset: How Germany Can Set a New Tone for Western-Russian Engagement
4. Transatlantic Leadership by Example: Toward Inclusive Climate Change Policy
All four Atlantic Memos have been widely distributed and published online at the Roosevelt Institute, Young Professionals in Foreign Policy, Europe's World and will soon be published by the International Relations and Security Network. The forthcoming dialogue in Berlin is an opportunity for our member's ideas on how to solve some of the toughest issues facing the transatlantic partners to have an impact on American and German decision makers.
The goal of the competition was to encourage the next generation of decision-makers and opinion leaders to consider the future of transatlantic relations and develop new solution-oriented approaches to European-American cooperation. Atlantic-community.org was launched in April, 2007, as the first online foreign policy think tank, and focuses specifically on issues affecting transatlantic relations. The aim of the website is to promote open and constructive debate, encouraging people of diverse backgrounds – not only from Europe and North America – to participate in developing solutions online. We especially want to make a new generation of thinkers and young leaders heard by giving them the opportunity to publish and debate side by side with established experts. We encourage you to join atlantic-community.org and contribute to the Open Think Tank.
The winners in each of the three categories will receive a cash award of EUR 750, while the three runners up and third places will each receive EUR 400 and EUR 300 respectively:
Iran's Nuclear Program:
1. Sascha Lohmann: Mutual Trust Building is Required between the West and Iran
2. Felix Haas: Iran: Practical Incentives Instead of Punitive Measures
3. Niklas Anzinger: Isolate the Regime in Tehran
Russia and the West:
1. Philipp Große: Western Values Key to Progress with Russia
2. Marcel Lewicki: Change Through Rapprochement: Russia in a Greater Europe
3. Guli Babadjanova: Acknowledge the Past and Invest in the Future
Climate Change:
1. Jan Schierkolk: Sustainable Development Through Climate Change Tech Pool
2. Julia Grauvogel: The EU Needs to Take the Initiative
3. Edson Ziso: Clean Technology Transfers are Needed
Dr. Jackson Janes, the Executive Director of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, and Dr. Johannes Bohnen, Chairman of the Atlantische Initiative formed the jury.
This competition was organized under the sponsorship of the United States Embassy in Berlin.
Photo by Angus Kirk used under a Creative Commons license.
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