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81. Policing and Violence: The Less Visible Harms of Policing Practices

Author:
Cecilia Menjívar
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Institution:
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Abstract:
In recent years, pervasive physical violence perpetrated by police forces across the world has come to light. From São Paulo to Cape Town, from Hong Kong to every major U.S. city, the public has witnessed—mostly through media images—policing through the use of excessive force, such as beatings, assaults, false arrests, verbal abuse, and terrorization. These acts shock us and may even make us feel unsafe. However, they are not directed toward all groups equally. The experiences of Black people fighting for justice in the United States; poor residents protesting extreme social inequality in Ecuador and Chile; Muslims in India facing violence for their religious beliefs; women in Mexico City and Santiago protesting gender-based violence; and anti-government protesters in Hong Kong demonstrate a clear pattern: vulnerable groups who oppose the state or its policies, or who seek to redress past state violence, are the primary targets of police violence.
Topic:
Human Rights, Inequality, Violence, Police, and Police Brutality
Political Geography:
Global Focus

82. The Applicability of Transitional Justice in Pre-Conflict Contexts

Author:
Pablo de Greiff
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Center on International Cooperation (CIC)
Abstract:
The current moment can be characterized, politically, in terms of two macro-level phenomena, a lurch towards populism (of the left and the right) on the part of many leaders (and eventually, their followers), and simultaneously, unusually large popular mobilizations in favor of progressive causes. These seemingly dilemmatic factors arguably share a common underlying cause, namely, great lack of trust in the familiar mechanisms of political representation—a lack of trust which itself has deeper roots in increasing inequality and dysfunctional forms of the politics of recognition.
Topic:
Inequality, Populism, Transitional Justice, and Pre-Conflict Contexts
Political Geography:
Global Focus

83. Advancing Gender Integration into Global Fragility Act Country Strategies

Author:
Liz Hume, Megan Schleicher, Sahana Dharmapuri, and Erin Cooper
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Our Secure Future
Abstract:
This brief provides a summary of key recommendations from civil society on how to integrate gender into the GFS. It is critical that the GFA country and regional plans go beyond the individual empowerment of women in a society and aim to transform the societal power structures that fuel instability and inequality.
Topic:
Security, Civil Society, Gender Issues, Women, Inequality, Peace, and WPS
Political Geography:
United States and Global Focus

84. Horrible Trade-offs in a Pandemic: Lockdowns, Transfers, Fiscal Space, and Compliance

Author:
Ricardo Hausmann and Ulrich Schetter
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
In this paper, we develop a heterogeneous agent general equilibrium framework to analyze optimal joint policies of a lockdown and transfer payments in times of a pandemic. In our model, the effectiveness of a lockdown in mitigating the pandemic depends on endogenous compliance. A more stringent lockdown deepens the recession which implies that poorer parts of society find it harder to subsist. This reduces their compliance with the lockdown, and may cause deprivation of the very poor, giving rise to an excruciating trade-off between saving lives from the pandemic and from deprivation. Lump-sum transfers help mitigate this trade-off. We identify and discuss key trade-offs involved and provide comparative statics for optimal policy. We show that, ceteris paribus, the optimal lockdown is stricter for more severe pandemics and in richer countries. We then consider a government borrowing constraint and show that limited fiscal space lowers the optimal lockdown and welfare, and increases the aggregate death burden during the pandemic. We finally discuss distributional consequences and the political economy of fighting a pandemic.
Topic:
Development, Government, Political Economy, Inequality, Economic Growth, Fiscal Policy, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Global Focus

85. Gender Differences in Professional Career Dynamics: New Evidence from a Global Law Firm

Author:
Ina Ganguli, Ricardo Hausmann, and Martina Viarengo
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
We examine gender gaps in career dynamics in the legal sector using rich panel data from one of the largest global law firms in the world. The law firm studied is representative of multinational law firms and operates in 23 countries. The sample includes countries at different stages of development. We document the cross-country variation in gender gaps and how these gaps have changed over time. We show that while there is gender parity at the entry level in most countries by the end of the period examined, there are persistent raw gender gaps at the top of the organization across all countries. We observe significant heterogeneity among countries in terms of gender gaps in promotions and wages, but the gaps that exist appear to be declining over the period studied. We also observe that women are more likely to report exiting the firm for family and work-life balance reasons, while men report leaving for career advancement. Finally, we show that various measures of national institutions and culture appear to play a role in the differential labor-market outcomes of men and women.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Women, Employment, Inequality, Human Capital, and Legal Sector
Political Geography:
Global Focus

86. AI in the Age of Cyber-Disorder

Author:
Fabio Rugge, John R Allen, Giampiero Massolo, Thomas A. Campbell, Samuele Dominioni, Caitlin Chin, Mishaela Robison, John Villasenor, Darrell M. West, and Paola Benanti
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI)
Abstract:
The rise of Artificial Intelligence applications is accelerating the pace and magnitude of the political, securitarian, and ethical challenges we are now struggling to manage in cyberspace and beyond. So far, the relationship between Artificial Intelligence and cyberspace has been investigated mostly in terms of the effects that AI could have on the digital domain, and thus on our societies. What has been explored less is the opposite relationship, namely, how the cyberspace geopolitics can affect AI. Yet, AI applications have so far suffered from growing unrest, disorder, and lack of normative solutions in cyberspace. As such, from algorithm biases, to surveillance and offensive applications, AI could accelerate multiple growing threats and challenges in and through cyberspace. This report by ISPI and The Brookings Institution is an effort to shed light on this less studied, but extremely relevant, relationship.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Authoritarianism, Cybersecurity, Inequality, Surveillance, Artificial Intelligence, Disinformation, and Cyberspace
Political Geography:
Global Focus

87. From Industrial Citizenship to Private Ordering? Contract, Status, and the Question of Consent.

Author:
Ruth Dukes and Wolfgang Streeck
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
This paper revisits the notions of contract and status found in classical sociology, legal theory, and labour law. Adopting an historical perspective, it explores the fragmentation of the status of industrial citizenship during the neoliberal period and discusses the enduring usefulness of the status/contract distinction in analyzing current trends in the regulation of working relations, including the spread of “gig” or platform-mediated work. Elements of status, it is argued, must always be present if work is to be performed and paid for as the parties require it. Claims to the contrary – for example, that the gig economy creates a labour market without search frictions and only minimal transaction costs: contracts without status – assume an undersocialized model of (monadic) social action that has no basis in the reality of social life (Durkheim, Weber). Still, status may come in a variety of forms that are more or less desirable from the perspective of workers, businesses, and society at large. The paper traces what it conceives as the privatization of status via contracts between employers and workers under the pressure of marketization and dominated by corporate hierarchies. Towards the end of the twentieth century, sociologists observed the division of workers into two groups or classes – core (with relatively well-paid and secure employment) and peripheral (low-paid and insecure). Thirty years later, gross inequalities of wealth and conceptions of the neoliberal self as ever-improving, ever-perfectible, are combining to create novel forms of status not fully anticipated by the literature.
Topic:
Democracy, Inequality, Citizenship, Private Sector, and Industry
Political Geography:
Global Focus

88. Adopting a Sustaining Peace Lens to the COVID-19 Response

Author:
Céline Monnier
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center on International Cooperation (CIC)
Abstract:
COVID-19 is creating a series of crises that increase the risk of conflict worldwide. Beyond the health impact, issues like worsening inequality, food insecurity, human rights abuses, and political tensions can deepen pre-existing social fractures in any country, creating additional layers of grievance. Addressing these risks early on and building resilience to them is key to preventing the potential for violence. But the pandemic also brings new opportunities for peacebuilding. A system-wide implementation of the sustaining peace approach is critical to ensure that United Nations response contributes to decreasing risks for violent conflict in the longer term—including efforts to “build back better.” This report draws on interviews with 25+ individuals across the UN system and member states to highlight some of the key challenges for peacebuilding in the immediate COVID-19 period as well as in the longer term. The report documents how entities across the UN have made positive steps toward implementing a sustaining peace approach, and provides recommendations for deepening these gains across the system.
Topic:
Human Rights, Inequality, Peace, Humanitarian Crisis, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Global Focus

89. What a Pandemic Reveals: Health Inequalities and Their Reflection on Policies

Author:
Özge Karadağ Çaman and Selma Karabey
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV)
Abstract:
The relationship of human health with social and the environmental factors has long been among the issues that have been dwelled on especially since the beginning of the 19th century. The field of medicine springing from these studies is known as “Social Medicine”. Although developments in pathology and microbiology caused the importance of social factors in the etiology of diseases to be set aside at the end of the 19th century, social medicine has acquired its currency again in later years. Indeed today, we need to read and understand the principles of social medicine more than ever.
Topic:
Health, Inequality, Pandemic, COVID-19, and Health Crisis
Political Geography:
Global Focus

90. Gendered laws and women in the workforce

Author:
Marie Hyland, Simeon Djankov, and Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
Abstract:
This paper provides the first global look at how gender discrimination by the law affects women’s economic opportunity and charts the evolution of legal inequalities over five decades. Using the World Bank’s newly constructed Women, Business and the Law database, it documents large and persistent gender inequalities, especially with regard to pay and treatment of parenthood. The paper finds positive correlations between more equal laws pertaining to women in the workforce and more equal labor market outcomes, such as higher female labor force participation and a smaller wage gap between men and women.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Women, Inequality, and Economic Inequality
Political Geography:
Global Focus