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11. Rethinking the Concept of a “Durable Solution”: Sahrawi Refugee Camps Four Decades On

Author:
Carmen Gomez Martin
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
The Sahrawi people, who have long lived in the western part of the Sahara, have been housed in refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria, since 1975—the year that Morocco took de facto control of Western Sahara. Their situation poses many questions, including those regarding the status of their state-in-exile, the role of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, and the length of their displacement. The conditions in the Tindouf camps present a paradigmatic case study of the liminal space inhabited by long-term refugees. Over the decades, residents have transformed these camps into a state-like structure with their own political and administrative institutions, which has enabled the international community to gain time to search for an acceptable political solution to the long-term conflict between the Polisario Front (the Sahrawi rebel national liberation movement) and the Moroccan government. The existence of a state-like structure, however, should not itself be understood as the ultimate solution for the thousands of people in these camps, who are currently living in extreme poverty, surviving on increasingly meager international aid, and enduring an exceptionally long wait for the favorable conditions whereby they may return to their place of origin. This essay is divided into three sections. First, it addresses the question of the Western Sahara from a historical point of view. The three major phases of the Sahrawi-Moroccan conflict provide the context for the formation and the current situation of the Sahrawi refugee camps. Second, it touches on the implementation of durable solutions for refugees living in camps and the supposedly transitional role of these spaces in such solutions. Finally, the essay applies an analytical framework to the paradigmatic case of the Sahrawi, demonstrating the contradictions between the theoretical model used to understand protracted refugee situations and the permanent problem regarding the rights of refugees.
Topic:
Poverty, Refugees, Displacement, Conflict, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
Africa, Algeria, Morocco, and Western Sahara

12. A Better Process, a Stronger UN Secretary-General: How Historic Change Was Forged and What Comes Next

Author:
Yvonne Terlingen
Publication Date:
06-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
When on October 13, 2016, the General Assembly appointed by acclamation António Guterres of Portugal as the United Nations’ ninth secretary-general, there was a sense of excitement among the organization’s 193 members. For once, so it seemed, they felt they had played an important role not only in choosing the secretary-general but also in appointing a man generally considered to be an outstanding candidate for a position memorably described as “the most impossible job on this earth.”1 The five permanent, veto-wielding members of the Security Council (Perm Five) still exercised the greatest power in the selection process, as they always had in the past. Yet the candidate chosen appears, surprisingly, not to have been the first choice of either the United States or Russia, two of the Perm Five that until then had effectively chosen the secretary-general between them in an opaque and outdated process. It is doubtful that António Guterres would have been appointed if the General Assembly had not embarked on a novel process to select him. All previous secretaries-general were chosen on the basis of a haphazard and secretive process that occurred behind closed doors and was not merit based. The method to select the UN secretary-general is laid down in a few words in the UN Charter. Article 97 allocates responsibility for appointing the secretary-general to all members of the General Assembly acting on the recommendation of the Security Council. However, for the last seventy years—with one circumstance-specific exception2—the General Assembly has had no say in the selection: its member states merely rubber-stamped the decision of the Perm Five, which recommended just one candidate each time for the General Assembly to appoint. All previous secretaries-general were chosen on the basis of a haphazard and secretive process that occurred behind closed doors and was not merit based. The process was geared toward appointing the lowest common denominator candidate,3 but nevertheless produced a few outstanding secretaries-general. There has never been a female secretary-general, and until 2016 only three women had ever made it on a Security Council shortlist.4 The entire process lacked transparency and accountability and fell far short of the UN’s own standards and ideals, let alone the current recruitment practices for top international positions. Selections of all previous secretaries-general were made without appointment criteria, without a call for nominations or for CVs, without a timeline for nominations, and without public hearings or other effective methods of public scrutiny. In recent selections, candidates were often pushed into horse trading with the Security Council’s permanent members to gain their support in exchange for making promises of senior UN posts for their nationals. This has led to some countries holding monopolies over key posts.5 Moreover, the tradition of appointment for a five-year, once-renewable term, with reappointment controlled by the Perm Five, has effectively secured a secretary-general beholden to the Council’s most powerful members. The whole process “would be rejected as a bad joke by any serious institution in the private sector,” noted one senior UN authority who worked under multiple secretaries-general.
Topic:
United Nations, Leadership, Diversity, and Transparency
Political Geography:
Global Focus

13. After Liberal Hegemony: The Advent of a Multiplex World Order

Author:
Amitav Acharya
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
“The dominance of a single great power,” wrote American scholar Robert Keohane in his widely acclaimed book After Hegemony, “may contribute to order in world politics, in particular circumstances, but it is not a sufficient condition and there is little reason to believe that it is necessary.”1 This proposition has never been put to a greater test as it is now. Since the election of Donald J. Trump as U.S. president in November 2016 there has been a vast outpouring of anxiety over the future of the liberal world order.2 But the myths, limitations, and decline of this order have been anticipated and forewarned for some time, even though its proponents have not acknowledged it. The “first myth” about the U.S.-led liberal hegemonic order, as I have written elsewhere, is “how far it extended for much of its history, especially during the Cold War period.” I pointed out that “the Soviet bloc, China, India, Indonesia, and a good part of the ‘third world’ were outside of it . . . . Despite the exalted claims about its power, legitimacy, and public goods functions, that order was little more than the US-UK-West Europe-Australasian configuration.”3 Noting that the liberal order was hardly benign for many countries in the developing world, I argued that it should be seen as a limited international order, rather than an inclusive global order. Joseph S. Nye, one of the staunchest champions of the liberal order, made a similar point when he wrote in the January/February 2017 issue of Foreign Affairs that the liberal order “was largely limited to a group of like-minded states centered on the Atlantic littoral” and “did not include many large countries such as China, India, and the Soviet bloc states, and . . . did not always have benign effects on nonmembers.”4 The liberal order did expand and strengthen with the economic reforms in China and India, and with the end of the cold war. And while the champions of that order celebrated its expansion, they still generally assumed that the main challenge to it would come from the rising powers, led by China. Their assumptions notwithstanding, precisely at a time when many of these powers today are not doing all that well, the liberal order appears to be imploding. Trump’s victory and Brexit suggest that the current challenge to the liberal order is as much, if not more, from within as from without. Precisely at a time when many of the rising powers are not doing all that well, the liberal order appears to be imploding. The domestic challenges to the liberal order led by Trump and his supporters could be overstated, however. After all, Hillary Clinton won a majority of the popular vote, and the Brexit referendum only passed by a slim margin. More importantly, however, the crisis of the liberal order has deeper roots, owing to long-term and structural changes in the global economy and politics. As such, Trump’s ascent to power is a consequence—not a cause—of the decline of the liberal order, especially of its failure to address the concerns of domestic constituents left behind by the global power shift. Given these factors, Trump is unlikely to reverse the decline of the liberal order even if he wanted to. Instead, he may well push it over the precipice. In what follows, I first describe the foundations of the liberal order, and show that the ground on which it was built has been eroding for some time, though Trump’s rhetoric and policies are also damaging. Next, I argue that for now the rising powers are not in a position to overturn the current order completely, and in fact they may wish to preserve some elements of it in the near and medium term. I describe a “multiplex world” in which elements of the liberal order survive, but are subsumed in a complex of multiple, crosscutting international orders. Finally, I offer some suggestions on how scholars and policymakers can manage the transition to such a multiplex world.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Hegemony, Reform, and Liberal Order
Political Geography:
Global Focus

14. The Need for Governance of Climate Geoengineering

Author:
Janos Pasztor
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Sooner rather than later, policymakers around the world will need to confront an uncomfortable reality: that despite the best efforts of national governments and thousands of mayors and other civic leaders, we can no longer contain global average temperatures to below 1.5–2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels through mitigation of carbon emissions alone. It is widely acknowledged that even if the world stopped all emissions today, there would still be a rise in global temperatures to a level that would stay for hundreds of years (the lifetime of the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere) before temperatures began to drop, thus constituting a temperature “overshoot.” For many experts the question is no longer whether the world can keep the temperature rise below the goals stipulated in the Paris Agreement, but by how much will the world miss that target and how long will the overshoot last. For many experts the question is no longer whether the world can keep the temperature rise below the goals stipulated in the Paris Agreement, but by how much will the world miss that target and how long will the overshoot last. The acknowledgement of this temperature overshoot—alongside a growing appreciation of its devastating impact on people’s lives, the global economy, and the environment—may mark a new inflection point in our efforts to manage the risks of climate change.1 When you add to this the U.S. president’s announcement in June 2017 that the nation would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, it comes as no surprise that a growing number of scientists are thinking about additional approaches to managing the risks of an overshoot. Perhaps most dramatically, we have seen a resurgent interest in a field that once resided at the fringes of science or on the pages of sci-fi novels, but which is now being taken quite seriously in academic circles: geoengineering. As this interest develops, it is becoming more likely that a group of countries or cities or even one or more wealthy individuals might decide to deploy geoengineering technologies during the coming decades. We need to be ready for any such eventuality; and being ready means considering a host of pressing questions. How would we govern such actors? Who assesses the balance of risks and rewards when deploying geoengineering technologies? What safeguards and what compensation mechanisms need to be built in? If we start deliberately altering global temperatures, who controls the global thermostat? It was to address these questions that the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative was born: to bring the profoundly complex issues of geoengineering governance and ethics to a much wider audience.2 We are potentially at the dawn of an age of geoengineering. It is time for policymakers to start discussing whether geoengineering is to go forward and, if so, how.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, Governance, and Geoengineering
Political Geography:
Global Focus

15. Ebola, Liberia, and the “Cult of Bankable Projects”

Author:
Shefa Siegel
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Fragile states are unable to cope with additional shocks like Ebola; without passable roads, electricity, and social solidarity there is no viable way to administer basic medical care or prevent minerals from illegally crossing porous borders, much less suddenly contain a runaway virus. Yet instead of addressing core issues of state failure, development aid continues pushing narrowly focused agendas that have little meaning in places where institutions and infrastructure are broken. Why, in response to the disastrous events we saw unfolding in Liberia, were we not calling for public and private investment in the region to be shifted from one bureaucratic budget line to another?
Topic:
Development, Humanitarian Aid, Infectious Diseases, Health Care Policy, and Ebola

16. Voter Characteristics and Leader Effects in a Post-Communist Context: The Case of the 2012 Legislative Elections in Romania

Author:
Andrei Gheorghiță
Publication Date:
06-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
In the contemporary political environment, the added value brought by leaders to the electoral performance of the parties appears to be significant and growing. However, the impact of leader evaluations on the vote choice is likely to vary from one voter to another. This article explores the influence of voter characteristics on the magnitude of leader effects in the context of the 2012 legislative elections in Romania. Five such characteristics are considered: objective political knowledge, subjective political information, party identification, political engagement, and time of voting decision. For this purpose, the paper employs data from the 2012 Romanian Election Studies (RES) three-wave panel survey. The analyses prove a significant influence of political knowledge and party identification and negligible effects of the other three voter characteristics considered. Thus, political knowledge appears to stimulate the manifestation of leader effects. Similarly, voters holding partisan ties appear to experience higher levels of personalization. The implications of these findings are discussed extensively.
Topic:
Security, Human Welfare, Politics, Governance, and Elections
Political Geography:
Romania

17. Defining Down Sovereignty: The Rights and Responsibilities of Nations

Author:
Amitai Etzioni
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Defining down sovereignty" refers to the normative thesis that sovereignty should not grant a state absolute protection against armed intervention in its internal affairs by other states, and that instead the international community should condition such immunity on states living up to particular standards. This essay suggests two modifications to this thesis. First, the international community should spell out the kinds of failures to protect civilians that can justify armed interventions by other states, as well as which agency has the authority to determine when such failures have occurred. In other words, the international community should determine how low to set the bar for intervention, and who makes the rules. Second, the international community needs to establish an additional international responsibility, namely, a responsibility to prevent international terrorism. The essay treats both of these modifications as shared international normative understandings; it does not attempt to translate these changes into international law.
Topic:
Sovereignty, Terrorism, Leadership, State Building, and Armed Conflict
Political Geography:
Global Focus

18. Equality as a Global Goal

Author:
Edward Anderson
Publication Date:
06-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were established following the UN Millennium Declaration, which was approved by the UN General Assembly in September 2000. Described by some as the “world's biggest promise," they set out a series of time-bound targets to be achieved by the international community by 2015, including a halving of extreme poverty, a two-third reduction in child mortality, a three-quarter reduction in maternal mortality, and universal primary education. The MDGs were, however, often criticized for having a "blind spot" with regard to inequality and social injustice. Worse, they may even have contributed to entrenched inequalities through perverse incentives. As some have argued, in order to achieve progress toward the MDG targets at the national level, governments focused their attention on the "easy to reach" populations and ignored more marginalized, vulnerable groups. The aim of this essay is to examine the extent to which this widespread criticism has been successfully addressed in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), approved by the UN General Assembly in September 2015.
Topic:
United Nations, Millennium Development Goals, Sustainable Development Goals, and Equality
Political Geography:
Global Focus

19. Swedish Feminist Foreign Policy in the Making: Ethics, Politics, and Gender

Author:
Karin Aggestram and Annika Bergman-Rosamond
Publication Date:
09-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
In 2015 the world’s first self-defined feminist government was formed in Sweden. As part of that ambitious declaration, Sweden also became the first state ever to publicly adopt a feminist foreign policy, with a stated ambition to become the "strongest voice for gender equality and full employment of human rights for all women and girls." To be sure, launching a feminist foreign policy is a radical policy change. At the same time, this policy is embedded in the broader global efforts to promote gender equality in the international arena, which we have seen evolving over the past few decades in the aftermath of the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. The resolution "reaffirms the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response, and in post-conflict reconstruction and stresses the importance of their equal participation and full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security."
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Gender Issues, United Nations, Peacekeeping, Humanitarian Intervention, and Feminism
Political Geography:
Europe and Sweden

20. Ending Statelessness Through Belonging: A Transformative Agenda?

Author:
Kristy A. Belton
Publication Date:
12-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Belonging. The subject conjures up a realm of emotions. In today's world, where increasing numbers of people are on the move, whether voluntarily or forced, it captures the nostalgia one feels for a home left behind or the yearning one has for acceptance in a new community. It can produce feelings of joy or loss even from a distance, as when one follows political, sporting, or family events from afar. It encompasses sentiments of anguish, fear, and resentment when those who wish to belong are rejected or when those within a group feel threatened by those from without. For all the talk today of an interconnected, globalizing world where borders are “not just permeable, but . . . shot through with large holes,” most of us still expect our national borders—the borders of the state where we belong—to be impenetrable, except through the preapproved legal channels.
Topic:
Globalization, Displacement, Borders, and Belonging
Political Geography:
Global Focus