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81. Perceptions of Public Safety and Trust in Security and Justice Institutions: Socio-Economic Influences in Serbia

Author:
Dušan Stanković
Publication Date:
07-2023
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP)
Abstract:
This analysis is based on the public opinion survey conducted in Serbia in 2022. The research objectives were to investigate citizens’ perceptions of public safety and trust in security and justice institutions in Serbia. Public safety perceptions were divided into questions on national safety and personal safety. The report is structured to present methodology and findings on the trust in security and justice institutions, and then perceptions of national and personal safety risks. The results are presented using graphic figures and text. The perceptions and demographical (socio-economic characteristics) differences are analyzed using a statistical test. Since the data of this study includes responses to the public opinion survey from October 2022, readers must consider the time gap between the public poll results and current public safety in Serbia.
Topic:
Security, Public Opinion, Institutions, Trust, and Public Safety
Political Geography:
Europe and Serbia

82. Instruments for Sustaining Peace: The Contribution of Strategic Foresight

Author:
Emily Munro
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The United Nations (UN) Secretary-General recently observed that “We have war reporters, but there are no peace reporters”.1 Building and sustaining peace is a long-term endeavour and does not create the headlines that war does. However, it is not only the attention of the media, but also that of governments, regional and international organisations, and others that have difficulty focusing on the long-term efforts required to build and sustain peace, and instead focus on short-term crises associated with conflict. This perpetuates a cycle whereby the issues that are growing in importance are not tackled early enough and become the crisis of the day. How can this cycle be broken? The concept of sustaining peace provides one answer.2 This concept, as the UN proposed in 2016, emphasises “a comprehensive approach to sustaining peace, particularly through the prevention of conflict and addressing its root causes”.3 It recognises that the stages or phases of any conflict are not clearly defined categories, and therefore attempts to break down barriers between artificially defined phases. It also includes explicit direction for approaches that are integrated across all sectors, and emphasises early action based firstly on the input of a wide group of stakeholders from across the society of a conflict-affected country and secondly on strong local, regional and international partnerships.4 The implementation of the sustaining peace concept is ongoing.5 Another component of the answer to the question of how to break the cycle referred to above comes from strategic foresight. Strategic foresight is the “structured and explicit exploration of multiple futures in order to inform decision-making”.6 It thus includes both a strategic thinking dimension, but also one of action and agency. Strategic foresight has a long history of increasing application in the public and private sectors across a variety of topics.7 While rapid technological change and the growing impact of climate change were increasing the prominence and value of strategic foresight approaches prior to 2020, more recent events like the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have led to an increasing interest in this approach, including in the peace and security domain. How strategic foresight can support efforts to build lasting peace received strong support from the UN Secretary-General in his report entitled Our Common Agenda, when he recommended that the New Agenda for Peace (which is due to be published in the form of a UN Secretary-General Policy Brief in June 2023) focuses in part on “Strengthening international foresight and capacities to identify and adapt to new peace and security risks”.8 Initiatives by Mexico in November 2021 and Japan in January 2023 in the UN Security Council (UNSC) under their respective presidencies of that body have provided opportunities for debate on themes related to sustaining peace.9 A further debate scheduled by Switzerland during its UNSC presidency in May 2023 will renew attention on the issue in the lead-up to the Summit of the Future in 2024 and at a strategic time before the New Agenda for Peace is due. At least one permanent member of the UNSC, the United Kingdom (UK), explicitly encouraged the UN to strengthen its “foresight capabilities to anticipate risks and inform our responses” in the context of the prevention of conflict and the implementation of nationally owned peacebuilding processes during the 26 January 2023 UNSC debate.10 An important backdrop to these recent efforts is the overarching commitment made in the preamble of the UN Charter “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”,11 and renewed emphasis on what today’s policymakers owe future generations.12 This is an issue that Switzerland reminded the UNSC of in the 26 January 2023 debate, stating “the New Agenda for Peace must serve as leverage for building sustainable peace. In these dark times, we owe it to all generations, everywhere in the world, to join our efforts and seize this opportunity”.13 This Policy Brief will address the gaps that exist in the steps we need to take today to build long-term sustainable peace. At its heart it will be a discussion of the instruments that link insights on how the future may evolve with decision-making around building peaceful societies. It will be argued that these foresight instruments need to be both routine and agile, and that they should be embedded in institutions involved in building sustainable peace.
Topic:
United Nations, Institutions, Sustainability, and Peacebuilding
Political Geography:
Global Focus

83. Can cities cope?

Author:
Francis Kibirige, John Martin Kewaza, Ronald Makanga Kakumba, Stevenson Ssevume Male, Muhammad Ssenkumba, George William Kayanja, Fred Male, and Pius Tibaingana
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Afrobarometer
Abstract:
On 1 July 2020, less than a year before January 2021 presidential and parliamentary elections, Uganda’s minister of local government, acting under the Local Governments Act and with the approval of Parliament, elevated 10 of the 15 earmarked municipal councils across the country to city status (Parliament of the Republic of Uganda, 1997, 2020). City status, equal in stature to district local government status, is the highest level that local government units can attain under the current law and is synonymous with near-autonomy, including significant political influence and more control over resource mobilisation and use. Residents in the newly elevated city environs celebrated this administrative milestone amid surging expectations of immediate upgrades of public-services infrastructure and jobs. But the respective administrations awoke to the realities of over-stretched, outdated services infrastructure, and inadequate funding incapable of meeting the heightened level of demand. Can these new cities fulfil their mandate – even in the face of COVID-19-related impacts on the economy and personal living conditions – and cope with soaring public expectations? Evidence from the 2022 Afrobarometer survey suggests that it will not be easy, as the public mood, engagement with elected local leaders, and public service-delivery ratings are on the decline while mistrust, perceptions of official corruption, and resentment toward paying taxes are on the rise.
Topic:
Education, Health, Governance, Leadership, Institutions, Social Services, and Public Service
Political Geography:
Uganda and Africa

84. Taxation for development: The impact of the Ebola epidemic on citizen support across West Africa

Author:
Juan Antonio Martínez-Sánchez and Shaun Da Costa
Publication Date:
07-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Afrobarometer
Abstract:
We explore the impact of the Ebola epidemic on attitudes toward taxation for development in West Africa. Utilising representative surveys from before and after the peak of the crisis, we estimate the impact of Ebola using both objective (recorded case rates) and self-reported measures of exposure (knowing a friend/relative who was infected with/died from Ebola). In addition, we consider the indirect impact of Ebola on redistributive preferences through disruption to different domains of life, including school, work, social gatherings, and medical care. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that higher levels of Ebola exposure and disruption are associated with greater levels of support for taxation for development.
Topic:
Development, Governance, Ebola, Tax Systems, and Institutions
Political Geography:
Africa, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea

85. Does local infrastructure determine trust in local government councils?

Author:
Thomas Isbell, Wilfried Youmbi, and Daniel Kofi Banini
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Afrobarometer
Abstract:
The relationship between infrastructure and trust in local government is under-researched yet relevant for many countries. This paper examines how proximity to local infrastructure relates to public trust in local governments. Using data from the sixth round of the Afrobarometer survey in Cameroon, we construct an infrastructure indicator index to measure respondents’ proximity to local infrastructure. The index considers whether the respondent lives in a primary sampling unit (PSU) with access to electricity, water, cell phone service, and a sewerage system. It also takes into account whether the respondent lives in a PSU with paved roads where a school, police station, and health centre are within walking distance. We examine causality by using the presence or absence of a bank in the respondent’s PSU as an instrumental variable for local infrastructure. The study shows a robust positive and statistically significant relationship between proximity to infrastructure and public trust in local government. The results suggest that Cameroonians’ willingness to reward infrastructure in their neighbourhoods by trusting their government officials who might provide these facilities is indicative of a desire for bottom-up political accountability in the absence of citizens’ ability to hold top government officials accountable due to limited levels of democracy. Infrastructure provision and its variations have become an important measure of government performance, with communities that have better access to infrastructure conditions expressing greater trust in local government officials.
Topic:
Infrastructure, Institutions, Trust, Energy, and Local Government
Political Geography:
Africa and Cameroon

86. Distrust in the heartland: explaining the Eurasian “Organization Gap” through the Russo-Chinese relations

Author:
Valdir da Silva Bezerra and Henoch Gabriel Mandelbaum
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Conjuntura Austral: Journal of the Global South
Institution:
Conjuntura Austral: Journal of the Global South
Abstract:
The concept of Eurasia is one of the most important elements of geopolitics, dating back to the beginning of the last century, and whose development owes much to the works of geographers and political thinkers alike. Nevertheless, although comprising a big portion of the planet’s political space, this region suffers from a relative ‘organizational gap’, especially if compared with neighboring regions such as Western Europe and Southeast Asia for instance. This paper contends that the lack of an overarching political arrangement in Eurasia owes much to particular aspects of the Russia-China relationship, which encompasses Great Power aspirations and competing organizational schemesin the region. Different views about Eurasia itself, associated with a quest for leadership in regional institution-building, put both Russia and China on competitive tracks, essentially obstructing the formation of a broad political design in the broader continent. To substantiate our point, the present work applies certain concepts from historical institutionalism, whose mechanisms enabled a thorough evaluation of patterns of inception, continuation, and change of political institutions, alliances and principles affecting the Sino-Russian relationship over time, as well as its effects on Eurasia’s ‘organizational gap’ per se.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, History, Geopolitics, Institutions, and International Institutions
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Eurasia, and Asia

87. 'Win Without Fighting': The Chinese Communist Party's Political and Institutional Warfare Against the West

Author:
John Lee and Lavina Lee
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
When compared to Western forms of diplomatic conversation and strategic discussion, phrases emanating from Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can appear peculiar, platitudinous, and so ambiguous as to be devoid of practical content. China’s paramount leader Xi Jinping speaks frequently about a ‘community of shared future,’ a ‘common destiny for mankind’ as part of his ‘China dream,’ or of his country’s ‘rejuvenation.’ He promises to pursue and achieve a ‘new type of great-power relations’ with the United States that will ‘expand the converging interests of all and build a big global family of harmony and cooperation.’ Yielding to the temptation to dismiss these phrases as glib and meaningless or as empty promises to the world would be a serious mistake. Emerging as the victorious side after the world was reshaped in the aftermath of the Second World War, and, more recently, the formal end of the Cold War, the United States and its allies have generally enjoyed dominance in all forms of power. The challenge and threat of China is largely understood in the context of its increase in material power, which is relatively easy to understand and quantify. In contrast, far less attention is being paid to non-material power, which is, admittedly, more nebulous and difficult to assess. However, China’s focus has been on relentlessly building its ‘comprehensive national power’ (CNP), that is, the sum-total of its powers and strengths—economic, military affair, science and technology, education, and resource—and influence. Thus, CNP encompasses both material and non-material power, and China’s buildup of both of these forms of power best explains its strategic and diplomatic successes. Chinese ‘rejuvenation’ is also not just about building GDP or having the world’s largest naval fleet. Rather, the CCP’s vision of a ‘community of shared future for mankind’ is very much about displacing the dominance enjoyed by the US and other advanced democracies in shaping global discourse and conversations, norms and standards, and influence within and through institutions. The advanced democracies have taken these less obvious forms of power for granted, a complacency that Beijing has exploited. As the CCP recognizes, “In the final analysis, the rise of a great power is a cultural phenomenon. It (that power) must be accepted by the international community. Be accommodated by the international system, rely on the international system, and be recognised by international norms.” To be sure, there is a rich and growing literature on the CCP’s various information, influence, and institutional resources and activities, and this report does not seek to reproduce the excellent work already in the public domain. Rather, it begins from the uncomfortable but growing realization that the CCP believes it has long been at war with the US and its allies, even though kinetic force has been used in only a few instances. It looks at why this war is being waged, what the hallmarks of success for Beijing look like, and how the use of non-material strategies in the form of political and institutional warfare complements and augments China’s better known material approaches in the CCP’s determined attempts to win this ongoing war or struggle. The report seeks to emphasize that, in understanding the challenge and threat of China, political and institutional warfare should not be treated as optional or interesting adjuncts to traditional notions of warfare or that their effects are peripheral to core strategic and even military objectives. On the contrary, non-material approaches are essential to the Chinese strategy and have real-world outcomes that are often the same ones that the use of force or economic coercion is intended to achieve. Just as the CCP views comprehensive power as encompassing material and non-material elements, its notion of waging and winning a war may or may not include a military element. We need to do the same when countering, deterring, and, if necessary, defeating Chinese strategies and actions. Moreover, the CCP’s approach is not just about putting its views forward in overt or veiled ways in the hope that it will change our minds about various issues. Instead, Beijing’s strategy is much more proactive and profound than that. The CCP’s political and institutional approaches are about fundamentally changing and shaping even the way we begin to think about or analyze an issue or what we perceive to be its ‘first principles.’ It is designed to shape the way we talk (or do not talk) about an issue, the presumptive and analytical frameworks we employ to do so, and the discourse regarding it that is accepted and deemed acceptable. At first glance, such a deeply cognitive approach might seem fanciful and impossible to implement. However, this report offers two recent case studies of instances where the CCP enjoyed considerable success in melding the material and the cognitive—with tangible and real-world results. This report then offers a summary of the real-world strategic effects and their impacts on the tactical decision-making of countries and their elites that should concern those in charge of our political, economic, military, and diplomatic policies and activities. In conclusion, it suggests some general responses to the CCP’s strategy, approach, and actions in these contexts.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Politics, Economy, Institutions, Strategic Competition, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

88. The state of the European Union

Author:
Anand Menon and Simon Usherwood
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
UK in a Changing Europe, King's College London
Abstract:
In ‘The State of the European Union’, some of the most respected scholars working on the EU provide their analysis of its current state, looking, in turn, at member states, at the EU institutions, at a number of policy areas and cross-cutting political themes and at EU relations with key external partners. This is a crucial moment in the history of the European Union. It has taken on new responsibilities in the face of new challenges and now must deliver, whilst simultaneously managing deep and potentially debilitating divisions between member states. There is all to play for.
Topic:
International Relations, European Union, Regional Integration, and Institutions
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and Europe

89. A beginner’s guide to the European Union

Author:
UK in a Changing Europe
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
UK in a Changing Europe, King's College London
Abstract:
UK in a Changing Europe is launching a new series of ‘beginner’s guides’ – quick, easy guides to the most pressing issues, important institutions and divisive debates in politics and society today. We’re kicking off our series with a guide to the European Union, an institution encompassing around 47,000 staff, seven institutions, over thirty agencies, and a population of almost 450 million. It’s pretty complicated, to say the least. But here we have tried to set out ​in an accessible and straightforward way what the EU is and how it came to be, what its institutions are and what they do, the EU budget, and how the EU makes and enforces laws and regulations. This guide is perfect for those who are learning about European institutions and multilevel governance for the first time during their politics A-level. ​It will also be useful for undergraduate students beginning their studies in law, politics and economics who want to know more about how the EU interacts with their chosen subject area, or seasoned professionals who just want a quick reminder on how member states and European bodies cooperate on key policy areas.
Topic:
Governance, European Union, and Institutions
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and Europe

90. Guardrails for Democracy

Author:
Erica Shein and Katherine Ellena
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES)
Abstract:
Democracy thrives on the vibrant exchange of ideas, transparency, and confidence in government institutions. Corruption can have disastrous effects on democracy, from derailing a government’s response to a public emergency to driving distrust in democratic institutions and damaging the credibility of governments, both at home and abroad. Holding governments accountable and limiting opportunities for abuse is instrumental to maintaining public trust and to helping countries weather shocks to democracy. Independent governmental institutions – including Supreme Audit Institutions, National Human Rights Institutions, Anti-Corruption Authorities, Ombuds Institutions, and Election Management Bodies — are an essential part of the democratic fabric. These institutions should serve as guardrails to keep democracy on track, but, absent safeguards, can become ineffective, irrelevant, or even tools for state capture. This Guide draws on IFES’ evidence-based Autonomy and Accountability Framework (AAF) to support an assessment of threats, risks, and weaknesses in the autonomy and accountability of independent institutions at any stage of establishment or development. An institution can use the assessment to help insulate itself from political interference and conflicts of interest, shore up its ability to execute its mandate effectively and efficiently, and build or preserve public trust. The AAF also provides a blueprint for legislatures seeking to enshrine effective protections for new institutions in the law. This Guide can be used by an institution on its own or in collaboration with partners to conduct a thorough, introspective review of its own autonomy and accountability mechanisms, or by a civil society organization seeking to advance the work of a specific institution or inform the design of advocacy campaigns. Constitutional or legal drafting committees might also find this resource useful to identify key elements for reform. The Guide includes a series of question sets to identify and understand strengths and threats to autonomy and accountability, and to assist in identifying the specific considerations that may apply given the institution’s unique mandate, structure, or legal context. The Guide also includes sample strategies to fill the gaps identified in the assessment and build institutional resilience.
Topic:
Civil Society, Democracy, Institutions, and Legal Sector
Political Geography:
Global Focus