With the next round of presidential primary elections coming up Tuesday, billboards are popping up across South Carolina with a political message that might resonate with any Democratic contender: "Lost your job to free trade and offshoring yet?"

The issue of employment is high on the agenda in this political season. President Bush can take credit for an economic recovery, but he is vulnerable when it comes to jobs. The stock market is up, but job growth is dismal -- only 1,000 jobs were created in December, a fraction of the 300,000 new jobs the Bush administration projected.

As the temperature rises over disappointing job growth, the practice of "offshoring" -- sending jobs overseas to cheap labor markets -- has worked its way into the rhetoric of the presidential campaign trail.

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic front-runner after victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, has been denouncing the Bush administration for rewarding "Benedict Arnold CEOs" who move "profits and jobs overseas." Howard Dean, the populist former governor of Vermont, has told his audiences that America needs a president "who doesn't think that big corporations who get tax cuts ought to be able to move their headquarters to Bermuda and their jobs offshore."

Significance unknown

There's no consensus among economists and experts over the long-term significance of the trend toward offshoring, jargon that combines the words "offshore" and "outsourcing." It generally refers to the export of white-collar jobs in information technology and other professional fields such as accounting and banking services.

But blue-collar workers have borne the brunt of the pain. South Carolina, a key battleground state for the Democrats, has been hit hard by overseas outsourcing in the textile industry, and has lost about 64,000 manufacturing jobs over the past three years, according to the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, the Washington-based lobbying group that paid for the billboard ads.

Offshoring statistics are fuzzy at best. One report estimates that 300,000 of the 2.4 million jobs lost since the beginning of the recession in 2001 can be attributed to offshoring. Future projections are all over the map: One predicts 3.3 million service-sector jobs will go overseas in the next 15 years, while a University of California-Berkeley report estimated 14 million U.S. service jobs are at risk.

"I think the issue is going to be exaggerated and manipulated by both sides in the political debate," said Dean Davison, an analyst at the Meta Group, a technology research and advisory firm in Stamford, Conn. "There are distinct differences of opinion in what corporations should do to take responsibility, and what kind of public policy should be implemented."

Legislation has been introduced in Congress to address the issue, some of it intended to stir up debate rather than win passage. Kerry introduced a bill in November that would require call-center operators to disclose their physical location to consumers who phone in for customer service or technical help, ostensibly to discourage U.S. companies from moving such jobs overseas.

On the other end of the ideological spectrum, Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., won passage for his amendment to the Senate's omnibus appropriations bill last week that bans some federal contracts to vendors using offshore labor. News of this caused a furor over the weekend in the New Delhi press, on the assumption the lucrative Indian industry in back-office contracting operations was threatened by congressional sanctions. But that was a false alarm.

Few firms affected

The ban applies only to a relatively small number of U.S. companies bidding for contracts under a Bush administration program to privatize certain federal government services, such as architectural design work, explained John Palatiello, a Washington-based lobbyist representing domestic companies bidding for privatization contracts. The strategy, he said, was to prevent federal unions from claiming their jobs were being sent overseas.

"The motivation wasn't to stop offshoring per se," Palatiello said, "but rather to get it out of the debate on privatizing federal services."

Antipathy to offshoring has deep political roots. Manufacturers in the toy and apparel industries have gone overseas for decades to produce their goods from contractors using cheap labor. Gradually, electronics makers and Silicon Valley's computer brands all followed -- and more recently software and professional services.

Presidential wannabe Ross Perot immortalized this inexorable force of globalization as the "giant sucking sound" from Mexico when he campaigned against the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1992 election. Twelve years later, many of those Mexican manufacturing jobs have moved to China.

The fuss over job loss in this presidential election year is of particular concern in India, the nation that is benefiting most from the offshoring boom. A Jan. 19 article in the Times of India, headlined "Why is the U.S. running scared?" captured the dismay: "The issue has become a political hot potato. It has even entered the presidential debate, with Democrat Howard Dean attacking his rival contender Wesley Clark for being soft on it. Why the big hoopla over outsourcing?"

Rafiq Dossani, a consulting professor at Stanford University's Asia-Pacific Research Center, published a study of companies moving operations to India last year. He is a proponent of the business efficiencies of offshore labor markets. But even he is concerned about the long-term political consequences.

"This may be a problem in the minds of some politicians now, even before there's been sufficient analysis of what is going on," said Dossani, a New Delhi native. "But I think over the next five years this is going to have a huge impact. The range of jobs that can be offshored is mind-boggling."

Elections year is arriving in a few weeks, greeted with anxiety by some and as a part of a necessary transition by others. A long-time scholar on Indonesia, Donald K. Emmerson of the Asia/Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, shared his views recently on the country's struggle towards reform. The following is excerpts of the interview with the professor, who is writing What is Indonesia?: Question: Politicians, experts and the public differ on how they view Indonesia's achievements in the reform process. Your comment? Answer: Most prominent have been the political reforms: Four constitutional amendments, decentralization, laws on elections, and so on. But how will these work out in practice? That is still unclear. Economic reforms, by comparison, have lagged. And what about corruption? Perhaps the least progress has been made on that front. What are key areas that governments after Soeharto have yet to deal with in the transition process? One could make a list. But another response would be to note the gap between the laws already on the books and their implementation. It will not be easy. But doing so will be crucial for success in the transition process. How would the results of next year's elections affect the process of reform? Optimistically, one can picture a healthy concentration of legitimacy at the top of the system, enabling decisive remedial policies. Pessimistically, one can picture a struggle between a popularly mandated presidency and a popularly mandated legislature to the detriment of effective policies. I slant toward optimism. I doubt that the next president and the next DPR (legislature) will be eager to repeat the circumstances in which president Abdurrahman Wahid was removed from office. Whatever happens, 2004 will be a "Year of Voting Frequently" -- at least two elections (April, July) and possibly three (if a second-round presidential vote in September becomes necessary). Let's hope for the best. What are the basic conditions for Indonesia to succeed with reform and to bring the country of 220 million people out of the current crises? When I was in Jakarta in August, the answer I heard most often from Indonesians was: Leadership. Could there be a whiff of nostalgia for Soeharto's leadership in that response? Among the multiple conditions for success in overcoming the current difficulties, one of the most important will be the actual performance of democratically chosen governments, including the one scheduled to emerge from next year's elections. It is, unfortunately, possible that democracy as a method can succeed but wind up discredited by the failure of resulting governments to provide security, ensure justice, reduce poverty, and so on. And there is a sense in which the competitive electoral process itself tends to raise public expectations as to what can and should be done by government. But I am hopeful. Experience of governmental transition often suggests two options, either success and an emergence of democracy, or failure and a return to a militaristic regime. How do you see this? There are not "always two options" in such transitions. Within the category "democracy" alone there are many types and gradations. As for militarism, it is striking how much the image and therefore potential leverage of the military has changed from the immediate post-Soeharto period. Could it be that by not intervening blatantly, army leaders have built up enough credit to allow for subtler forms of influence? Not to mention the more security-conscious atmosphere since Sept. 11, 2001 and Oct. 12, 2002 (terrorist attacks in the U.S. and in Bali respectively). Interesting, too, is the increasing mention of men with army backgrounds as possible presidential candidates next year. But just as democracy is internally diverse, so should we avoid putting everyone who has had an army career in a single box labeled "militarist." I live in California. The voters of my state just fired one governor and hired another. I may be naive, but I hope that as governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger will not treat complex and intractable socioeconomic problems in the same way that the Terminator treated enemy robots! In any case, it is far too early to predict the outcome of any of next year's national elections in either Indonesia or the U.S. Whatever the result, let's hope it's for the better in both countries.

Question: Politicians, experts and the public differ on how they view Indonesia's achievements in the reform process. Your comment? Answer: Most prominent have been the political reforms: Four constitutional amendments, decentralization, laws on elections, and so on. But how will these work out in practice? That is still unclear. Economic reforms, by comparison, have lagged. And what about corruption? Perhaps the least progress has been made on that front. What are key areas that governments after Soeharto have yet to deal with in the transition process? One could make a list. But another response would be to note the gap between the laws already on the books and their implementation. It will not be easy. But doing so will be crucial for success in the transition process. How would the results of next year's elections affect the process of reform? Optimistically, one can picture a healthy concentration of legitimacy at the top of the system, enabling decisive remedial policies. Pessimistically, one can picture a struggle between a popularly mandated presidency and a popularly mandated legislature to the detriment of effective policies. I slant toward optimism. I doubt that the next president and the next DPR (legislature) will be eager to repeat the circumstances in which president Abdurrahman Wahid was removed from office. Whatever happens, 2004 will be a "Year of Voting Frequently" -- at least two elections (April, July) and possibly three (if a second-round presidential vote in September becomes necessary). Let's hope for the best. What are the basic conditions for Indonesia to succeed with reform and to bring the country of 220 million people out of the current crises? When I was in Jakarta in August, the answer I heard most often from Indonesians was: Leadership. Could there be a whiff of nostalgia for Soeharto's leadership in that response? Among the multiple conditions for success in overcoming the current difficulties, one of the most important will be the actual performance of democratically chosen governments, including the one scheduled to emerge from next year's elections. It is, unfortunately, possible that democracy as a method can succeed but wind up discredited by the failure of resulting governments to provide security, ensure justice, reduce poverty, and so on. And there is a sense in which the competitive electoral process itself tends to raise public expectations as to what can and should be done by government. But I am hopeful. Experience of governmental transition often suggests two options, either success and an emergence of democracy, or failure and a return to a militaristic regime. How do you see this? There are not "always two options" in such transitions. Within the category "democracy" alone there are many types and gradations. As for militarism, it is striking how much the image and therefore potential leverage of the military has changed from the immediate post-Soeharto period. Could it be that by not intervening blatantly, army leaders have built up enough credit to allow for subtler forms of influence? Not to mention the more security-conscious atmosphere since Sept. 11, 2001 and Oct. 12, 2002 (terrorist attacks in the U.S. and in Bali respectively). Interesting, too, is the increasing mention of men with army backgrounds as possible presidential candidates next year. But just as democracy is internally diverse, so should we avoid putting everyone who has had an army career in a single box labeled "militarist." I live in California. The voters of my state just fired one governor and hired another. I may be naive, but I hope that as governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger will not treat complex and intractable socioeconomic problems in the same way that the Terminator treated enemy robots! In any case, it is far too early to predict the outcome of any of next year's national elections in either Indonesia or the U.S. Whatever the result, let's hope it's for the better in both countries.

APARC Professor Donald K. Emmerson, together with IIS Director Coit D. Blacker and Hoover Institution Fellow Larry Diamond (both of CDDRL), discussed "Democracy vs. Liberty" on the television program "Uncommon Knowledge."

Is democracy - that is, free elections - to be desired at all times for all nations? Or are nations more successful when they establish the rule of law, property rights, and other constitutional liberties first? For the United States, this is no longer an academic question. America is deeply involved in nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq. Should the establishment of democracy in these countries be the first priority for the United States, or is securing public order and the rule of law more important?