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41. Promoting and Projecting Stability: Challenges and Perspectives

Author:
Amanda Lapo, Bastain Giegerich, and James Hackett
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
The ambition to promote stability and foster peace in an increasingly volatile security environment is an established element of EU and NATO policy. There is a risk that the coronavirus pandemic will increase the demand for stabilisation measures while at the same time complicating their supply. This paper focuses on the role that military and security actors can play in supporting stabilisation efforts. The ambition to promote stability and foster peace in an increasingly volatile security environment is an established element of European Union and NATO policy. This ambition is also reflected in many of their member states’ national-level policy and strategy documents. The direction and implementation of these policies are influenced by a range of motivations including security worries, humanitarian concerns and historical ties. Stability is a challenging endeavour at the best of times, and there is a risk that the coronavirus pandemic will increase the demand for it while at the same time complicating its supply.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, NATO, Regional Cooperation, Military Strategy, European Union, Political stability, Public Health, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Europe, North Atlantic, and North America

42. COVID-19: NATO in the Age of Pandemics

Author:
Thierry Tardy
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
Because of its magnitude, economic dimension, and lethality, the COVID-19 crisis has raised a wide range of questions that pertain to how seismic the crisis is, how much it will shape international politics and in what ways it is going to change the way we live. These are strategic-level questions (with very practical consequences) that only arose to the same degree in the context of the Second World War. The analysis of the impact of the current crisis on international security is not an easy exercise given that a) the crisis is not over and b) it will impact so many interconnected domains over such a long period that the number of unknowns is immense. The way and speed in which COVID-19 has already changed our lives – who would have thought in January 2020 that just three months later all of Europe’s economies would be totally paralyzed with most of their populations at home under lock-down? – are also an invitation to some prudence, or modesty, when it comes to predicting the fallout. On three occasions over the last 20 years, major events on the international scene – 9/11, the Arab Spring, and the current health crisis – have come as strategic surprises to our societies (if not to policy-makers and security experts). Not that global terrorism, political and social unrest in the MENA region or pandemics were absent from strategic foresight exercises, but the way they happened and, even more uncertainly, the type of cascading effects they provoked, were simply beyond any predictive capacity. The topic of the day, and of this Research Paper, is more the cascading effects of the current crisis than its non-prediction. Looking back at 9/11 and the Arab Spring, and at what those events meant for NATO, one can only acknowledge that such implications could hardly have been fully comprehended in the midst of the two events.
Topic:
NATO, Public Health, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Europe, North Atlantic, and North America

43. The Pandemic in Prison: Implications for California Politics and Policymaking

Author:
Amy E. Lerman and Jessie Harney
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
California Journal of Politics and Policy
Institution:
Institute of Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley
Abstract:
The effects of COVID-19 across California have been devastating, but the impact of the virus has been particularly acute in the state’s overcrowded prisons and jails. The epidemic has clear implications for incarcerated individuals and their families, but also for the tens of thousands of Californians employed in the state’s prison system. These workers represent a powerful force in state politics (Myers, 2018; Williams et al., 2020).
Topic:
Labor Issues, Prisons/Penal Systems, Public Health, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

44. Early in the Pandemic, There Was No Partisan Divide over Preferences for Voting by Mail in the 2020 Election

Author:
Thad Kousser, Mindy Romero, Mackenzie Lockhart, Seth Hill, and Jennifer Merolla
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
California Journal of Politics and Policy
Institution:
Institute of Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley
Abstract:
In April, 2020, was there a partisan divide between eligible voters from California’s major parties over whether they preferred to vote in person or through mail ballots in the November election, and what percentage of likely voters from each party said they would not vote if the election were held exclusively through the mail? Did partisans divide over policy proposals about how to conduct this election? We investigate these questions by analyzing a statewide survey of a diverse sample of 12,276 eligible voters conducted April 8-22, 2020. When we asked eligible voters how they wanted to cast their ballots this November, we found no significant divide between the Republican and Democratic eligible voters. More than half of eligible voters in both parties prefer to cast a ballot by mail, with nearly another two in ten voters preferring to drop off a ballot that has been sent to them in the mail. Gaps of eight to twelve percentage points emerge between partisans over support for policies that advance voting by mail, though there is still a strong consensus supporting these changes among all partisan affiliations.
Topic:
Elections, Voting, Public Health, Pandemic, Participation, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

45. Virus-proof Violence: Crime and COVID-19 in Mexico and the Northern Triangle

Author:
International Crisis Group
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
As the coronavirus rages in Mexico and the northerly Central American countries, criminal outfits have adapted, often enlarging their turf. To fight organised crime more effectively, governments should combine policing with programs to aid the vulnerable and create attractive alternatives to illegal economic activity.
Topic:
Crime, Violence, Public Health, Pandemic, COVID-19, and Organized Crime
Political Geography:
Central America, North America, and Mexico

46. Sustainable Humanism Needed

Author:
Peter J. Jacques
Publication Date:
09-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Cairo Review of Global Affairs
Institution:
School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, American University in Cairo
Abstract:
COVID-19 has become a central election issue, but to overcome this urgent health crisis America needs to tune out the echo chambers that repeat medical misinformation and conspiracies.
Topic:
Elections, Public Health, Sustainability, Pandemic, COVID-19, Misinformation, and Health Crisis
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

47. The World Is Watching the United States

Author:
Diana Bartelli Carlin
Publication Date:
09-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Cairo Review of Global Affairs
Institution:
School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, American University in Cairo
Abstract:
The United States is facing a perfect storm that puts it in the headlights of its counterparts’ world views.
Topic:
Governance, Radicalization, Leadership, Discrimination, Violence, Public Health, Pandemic, COVID-19, and Racism
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

48. COVID-19: The Pandemic and its Impact on Security Policy

Author:
Matthias Rogg
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
The world is caught up in an existential struggle. The opponent is intangible; it spares neither state nor social group and does not stop at any border. For many of us, this struggle feels like war. Indeed, with the growing use of war-like language in the fight against COVID-19, also called coronavirus, a rapidly rising number of victims, and last but not least the economic consequences which are becoming increasingly clear, we seem to be experiencing a war-like situation.
Topic:
Security, Public Health, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

49. US Health Care in the Pandemic

Author:
Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Conference Board
Abstract:
Within a few short weeks in early spring, the COVID-19 pandemic began to unleash its devastation on the health and economic well-being of the American public. With this attack, it challenged the structure and basic foundations of the US health care system. In response to the growing deluge, US health care workers, public health officials, and health care industry leaders were the front line of defense against the virus. The whole country witnessed their extraordinary courage, fortitude, and rapid and unyielding response. A government stagnated by partisan politics joined to swiftly pass unprecedented relief and support legislation, waive regulation, and launch a historic, large-scale vaccine and treatment development effort in collaboration with the private sector. The US health care system has not collapsed. But as the US emerged from the initial weeks of the swift, unprecedented, and devastating destruction of the COVID-19 global pandemic, several significant shortfalls in the health care system became clear: the ability of the structure of the system to handle the challenge; the nation’s preparedness when the pandemic began; and finally, how the system has performed given the resources we have on hand. These three problems could be restated as: How should the nation change the fundamental structure of the health care system? What should we do now to respond to the current pandemic? And what should we do, once the smoke clears, to prepare for future pandemics?
Topic:
Health, Public Health, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

50. Coronavirus Policy Under a Biden Administration

Author:
Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Conference Board
Abstract:
now appears almost certain that former Vice President Joe Biden will assume the office of President on January 20 of next year. The President-elect today announced the membership of a new thirteenmember advisory board of non-governmental experts to develop recommendations so that they can be implemented by his new Administration, further emphasizing that this is the priority focus of his transition. This memo, covering the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, is the first in a series of short pieces to explain what you can expect from the new Administration. Candidate Biden’s campaign laid out in considerable detail a five-point program (counting the number of major headings in the document; some news outlets specified six) for how he would attack the pandemic, which was claimed to be sharply different from the practices under the Trump Administration. President-elect Biden yesterday stood up his new transition website, with what is now characterized as a seven-point plan, which is shorter (a little more than one-seventh the word count) and less-detailed than the campaign document. And the President-elect today announced the membership of a new thirteen-member advisory board of non-governmental experts to develop these recommendations so that they can be implemented by his new Administration.
Topic:
Health Care Policy, Elections, Public Health, COVID-19, and Joe Biden
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America