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111. Regional Organizations and the UN Programme of Action on Small Arms

Author:
Eric G. Berman and Kerry Maze
Publication Date:
06-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Small Arms Survey
Abstract:
The UN Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects (PoA) provides an increasingly critical framework for governments and civil society. Armed groups continue to illegally access and use illegal weapons to mount mass attacks on civilians and terrorize cities and communities, commit human rights violations and banditry, and incite and prolong armed conflicts. Some 60 million people are displaced due to war and insecurity (UNHCR, 2016). Armed attacks and kidnappings directed at humanitarian workers are at record highs. Armed groups are increasingly disregarding international humanitarian law and, as a result, are blocking much needed assistance to populations at risk.1 The vast majority of deaths from armed violence do not occur in conflict settings, however. Of the more than 500,000 lives that are lost annually to armed violence, in some countries small arms––many of them illicit––are used in more than three out of four homicides (Geneva Declaration Secretariat, 2015).
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, International Security, Governance, Weapons, and UNDP
Political Geography:
Global Focus

112. The Pillars of Governance. A Macro-Quantitative Analysis of Governance Performance

Author:
Gregor Walter-Drop, John Wiesel, and Melissa Lee
Publication Date:
05-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 700
Abstract:
State building is seen as the central tenet of many present-day development efforts. This rests on a global normative script that emphasizes the modern state’s role in providing governance services from security to education to health. However, the relationship between statehood and governance outcomes is not well understood. We use a macro-quantitative approach to analyze state performance in various governance dimensions including security, health, education, economic subsistence, infrastructure, and the environment. We test for the power of statehood in explaining the variation in governance outcomes while controlling for various other factors prominent in the respective debates in political science, economics, and development studies. The analysis yields three interesting results. First, statehood does not have a consistent significant relationship with governance outcomes. It matters more for some outcomes than for others. Second, we find that statehood sometimes performs better at predicting subjective (survey-based) evaluations than at predicting objective measures of governance outcomes (which confirms the ubiquity of the normative script). Finally, we find that the degree of domestic female empowerment performs consistently strong at explaining the variation in governance outcomes. This result is consistent with the policy community’s emphasis on women’s roles in development.
Topic:
Security, Education, Health, Infrastructure, Governance, and State Building
Political Geography:
Global Focus

113. Engaged societies, responsive states: The Social Contract in situations of conflict and fragility

Author:
Marco Mezzera
Publication Date:
04-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Centre for Conflict Resolution
Abstract:
This concept note presents an analysis of the use of a “social contract” as a way of framing UNDP’s governance and peacebuilding practices in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. It forms part of the follow-up to the UNDP report “Governance for Peace: Securing the Social Contract” (UNDP, 2012) both to contribute further to UN policy discussions and to help chart ways forward. The social contract is the process by which everyone in a political community, either explicitly or tacitly, consents to state authority, thereby limiting some of her or his freedoms, in exchange for the state’s protection of their universal human rights and security and for the adequate provision of public goods and services. Divided into five sections, this note provides both a conceptual understanding of the social contract, as well as policy implications for UNDP projects moving forward. The note also examines case studies of post-conflict regions where the social contract has been rebuilt and proposes areas for further study in order to help fully capitalize on the potential that the social contract offers. Finally, the two annexes provide a framework for a tool to help practitioners analyze the structure and dynamics of the social contract in a fragile setting.
Topic:
Governance, Peacekeeping, Conflict, and Social Contract
Political Geography:
Global Focus

114. The G20 and Global Governance

Author:
Stephen Kirchner
Publication Date:
10-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The Group of 20 sees itself as “the premier forum for international economic cooperation” (G20 2009b). This article examines its evolution and performance, and member countries’ compliance with G20 summit commitments. The G20 evolved as a response to the shortcomings of its predecessor, the G7/8. Yet its creation allowed member countries to avoid confronting many of the problems that arose out of the earlier forum. The best defense of the G20 is that it is the only institution of its type, but it still consumes scarce political and diplomatic capital, sometimes to the detriment of the policy objectives to which it is notionally committed. In this article, I compare data on members’ compliance with G20 summit commitments to proxy measures of the quality of domestic policies and institutions. While the proxies predict G20 compliance, it turns out that G20 compliance has no power to predict subsequent changes in domestic policies and institutions. The main implication of this data is that international economic and political cooperation is a symptom, not a cause, of domestic policies and institutions. Improvement in domestic policies makes the best contribution to advancing the G20 agenda, but such improvements do not appear to depend on the G20 process.
Topic:
Economics, International Cooperation, Governance, and G20
Political Geography:
Global Focus

115. Triggering Increased City-Level Public Finance for Pro-Poor Sanitation Improvements

Author:
Jameson Boex and Benjamin Edwards
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
This paper provides a general framework for understanding the political economy and fiscal determinants of sanitation service provision by urban local governments. The paper will address several questions: what do we expect to influence spending on local sanitation? Do different fiscal instruments have an impact on expenditure levels? Do increased local revenues lead to increased expenditures over the long term? What role do different stakeholders play in determining expenditure levels? The paper first looks at the role of political factors in constraining local expenditure decisions, then turns to a review of the fiscal determinants of service delivery expenditures.
Topic:
Political Economy, Governance, Urban, Sanitation, Services, and Cities
Political Geography:
Global Focus

116. A Post-2015 Local Governance Agenda

Author:
Jameson Boex
Publication Date:
06-2015
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
The role of local governance within global development is approaching an important inflection point. To the extent that local governments function as effective platforms for collective local decision-making and as effective mechanisms for promoting the collective interests of their constituents, local governments are ideal partners for achieving development success. Moreover, regardless of the mechanism or type of decentralization or “localization” that is ultimately chosen, in the end, we cannot ignore the vertical governance mechanisms and multilevel service delivery mechanisms that are needed to ensure the effective delivery of public services at the local level.
Topic:
Governance, International Development, Services, and Decentralization
Political Geography:
Global Focus

117. Losing Control? Sovereignty in the Age of Globalization

Author:
Saskia Sassen
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Course Pack
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
What determines the flow of labor and capital in this new global information economy? Who has the capacity to coordinate this new system, to create some measure of order? What happens to territoriality and sovereignty, two fundamental principles of the modern state? And who gains rights and who loses rights? Losing Control? examines the rise of private transnational legal codes and supranational institutions, such as the World Trade Organization and universal human rights covenants, and shows that though sovereignty remains an important feature of the international system, it is no longer confined to the nation-state. Other actors gain rights and a kind of sovereignty by setting some of the rules that used to be within the exclusive domain of states. Saskia Sassen tracks the emergence and the making of the transformations that mark our world today, among which is the partial denationalizing of national territory. Two arenas in particular stand out in the new spatial and economic order by their capacity to set their own rules: the global capital market and the series of codes and institutions that have mushroomed into an international human rights regime. As Sassen shows, these two quasi-legal realms now have the power and legitimacy to demand action and accountability from national governments, with the ironic twist that both depend upon the state to enforce their goals. From the economic policy shifts forced by the Mexico debt crisis to the recurring battles over immigration and refugees around the world, Losing Control? incisively analyzes the events that have radically altered the landscape of governance in an era of increasing globalization.
Topic:
Debt, Globalization, International Political Economy, Sovereignty, World Trade Organization, Labor Issues, and Governance
Political Geography:
Global Focus
Publication Identifier:
9780231106092
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

118. In Pursuit of Transparent Trading

Publication Date:
10-2015
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Natural Resource Governance Institute
Abstract:
Commodity trading and the activities of trading companies influence economic and governance outcomes in developing countries. Typically privately owned with flexible business models, many trading companies work extensively in “high-risk” environments – including countries with weak institutions, conflicts or other challenges that scare away more risk-averse companies. Given the size of this footprint, and its prevalence in countries with high levels of corruption or poverty (or both), the quality of trading companies’ business practices is of serious concern. Trading companies play several roles through which they influence public institutions and public revenues, and they frequently build close relationships with top officials and political elites. They are major buyers of raw materials sold by governments and state-owned companies worldwide, and these transactions generate significant public revenues. Traders also provide large loans to governments, sell refined products, and enter into joint ventures with state-owned entities. They are expanding their upstream and downstream operations in developing countries as well.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Natural Resources, and Governance
Political Geography:
Global Focus

119. From Reporting to Reform: Eleven Opportunities for Increasing EITI Impacts

Author:
Max George-Wagner and Erica Westenberg
Publication Date:
06-2015
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Natural Resource Governance Institute
Abstract:
Under the EITI Standard, implementing countries are required to produce far more comprehensive reports than before; these go beyond revenue payments to include disclosures across the entire extractive industries decision chain. However, the objective of the Standard is not merely to generate more data, but rather that stakeholders will use the information to impact the governance of the sector. This EITI briefing note explores how countries are faring at meeting the EITI’s more ambitious requirements and what implementing countries can do to begin moving “from reporting to reform.” This briefing note is based on a review of the first 22 reports produced under the Standard; the review assesses both the quality of reporting, as well as the content. We found that in many respects countries have risen to the challenge and become more ambitious and comprehensive in their reporting. This has included highlighting critical deficiencies in license allocation processes, revealing politically affiliated owners of companies, and identifying significant local revenues that were never disbursed. However, a number of significant gaps remain and these are holding countries back from seeing meaningful impacts from their EITI processes. For instance, these reports have missed opportunities to inform major tax code revisions, ignored hotly debated issues of sector employment, and left stakeholders in the dark about individual extractive projects.
Topic:
Economics, Industrial Policy, Intelligence, Natural Resources, and Governance
Political Geography:
Global Focus

120. NRGI Readers: A Primer Series About Resource Governance

Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Natural Resource Governance Institute
Abstract:
NRGI has created a series of short, illustrated overviews of key topics in NRGI's portfolio of work. Together they serve as a robust introduction for the lay reader to fundamental issues and concepts in resource governance. Most contain helpful figures and infographics, and each reader has a standard format: key messages, key concepts and case examples, and a final set of practitioner-orientated questions to ask. Each topic is explicitly linked to the relevant precepts of the Natural Resource Charter.
Topic:
Economics, Industrial Policy, Oil, Natural Resources, and Governance
Political Geography:
Global Focus