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81. The Undemocratic Dilemma

Author:
Yascha Mounk
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
Over the past decades, the ability of liberal democracies around the world to translate popular views into public policy has declined. This is a result of two major developments: Legislatures have become less reflective of popular opinion because of the growing role of money in politics. At the same time, they have also become less powerful because of the growing importance of bureaucratic agencies, central banks, judicial review, free trade, and international institutions. But there are no easy solutions, since some of these institutions are needed to meet high expectations on government performance. The “technocratic dilemma” thus poses a real threat to liberal democracy’s ability to meet the public’s twin demands of responsiveness and performance.
Topic:
Economics, Governance, Democracy, and Liberal Order
Political Geography:
Global Focus

82. Examining the Urban Dimension of the Security Sector

Author:
Andrea Florence de Mello Aguiar, Lea Ellmanns, Ulrike Franke, Praveen Gunaseelan, Gustav Meibauer, Carmen Müller, Albrecht Schnabel, Usha Trepp, Raphaël Zaffran, and Raphael Zumsteg
Publication Date:
02-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
This report argues that the urban context presents a microcosm wherein one might observe debates and developments on security sector governance (SSG) and security sector reform (SSR) that also take place at the national level – with relevant challenges and opportunities, applied practices and lessons learned from past or ongoing attempts to provide security for both people and the state. Moreover, the report aims to show that urban security sector dynamics differ depending on whether the city is situated in a developed, developing, fragile and conflict-affected, or post-conflict context. In light of growing interest and investment in urban safety and security, exemplified by the provisions of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 -Sustainable Cities and Communities, increasing our understanding of the urban security sector has never been more timely.
Topic:
Security, Governance, Urbanization, Reform, and Sustainable Development Goals
Political Geography:
Geneva and Global Focus

83. Abuse of State Resources Research and Assessment Framework

Author:
International Foundation for Electoral Systems
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Foundation for Electoral Systems
Abstract:
The International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) recently concluded a two-year Technical Leadership project examining the abuse of state resources (ASR) in election campaigns. This research initiative, led by the Center for Applied Research and Learning and funded by the United States Agency for International Development under the Global Elections and Political Transitions mechanism, focused on ASR (sometimes referred to as administrative resources) for the purpose of gaining an electoral advantage. The Abuse of State Resources Research and Assessment Framework: Guidelines for the Democracy and Governance Community of Practice is an abbreviated companion document to the complete Abuse of State Resources Research and Assessment Framework developed in this effort. Both documents are based on in-depth, comparative analysis of laws and regulations that target ASR in election campaigns and the effectiveness of these provisions in deterring or remedying these abuses. In many countries, uses of state resources during electoral periods are not sufficiently regulated and enforcement of violations is weak or nonexistent due to deficits of political will or limited capacity of oversight institutions. As highlighted in an IFES publication, individuals and parties in power may capitalize on these gaps to marshal public goods – including state personnel, state funds and physical assets, and official government communications – in service of political campaigns. Beyond undermining electoral competitiveness, another often-overlooked component of this abuse of power is the role elections play in cycles of entrenched corruption. Not only do abuses during the campaign period undermine competitiveness by conferring an unfair electoral advantage, they threaten the appropriate distribution of government services and do long-term damage to the legitimacy of governance institutions. This is because abuses do not stop after parties use the assistance of the state apparatus to win elections; corrupt politicians subsequently use their access to levers of the state to enrich themselves and distribute perks to supporters. The cycle of government personnel, media, and other resources being used in service of political campaigns is then likely to continue. This ASR assessment tool focuses on legal and regulatory provisions specific to ASR, but it also delves into some other common areas of abuse (for example, government procurement and contracting, public works spending around elections, campaign finance, and vote buying). These guidelines were designed for use by international and domestic civil society actors, implementers, and advocates to evaluate the effectiveness of the ASR legal framework in a given country and develop additional tools for monitoring and advocacy. This shorter version of the tool will help these groups identify priority issues and vulnerabilities that they can use in developing their strategy for monitoring, addressing, and/or advocating for measures to mitigate ASR. Findings could also point to specific recommendations for improving transparency and enforcement surrounding ASR, including enhanced training programs, strengthened regulatory provisions, investments in investigative journalism, and increased transparency in public procurement.
Topic:
Corruption, Governance, Elections, Democracy, and Voting
Political Geography:
Global Focus

84. Domesticating the Giant: The Global Governance of Migration

Author:
Patrycja Sasnal
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Migration is a natural and defining phenomenon of the globalized world. The challenge of governing migration lies in its inevitability, volume, and heterogeneity. As a portion of the global population, migrants represent around 3 percent, but their absolute number is rising. There were 170 million migrants in 2000; today there are roughly 260 million. Migration levels will certainly grow while hostilities continue in the most conflict-ridden regions of sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, the global wealth gap persists, climate change aggravates living conditions in many areas, and the poorer half of the globe becomes more populous. Moreover, migration is a complex heterogeneous process. Depending on the cause, duration, and legality, migration can be voluntary or forced (refugees and internally displaced persons, including survival migrants such as climate and disaster refugees), permanent or circular, regular or irregular. Politically, migration poses a twofold challenge: balancing security and freedom and harmonizing international obligations with domestic laws. Traditional discussion of migratory movements divided the world into the sending global south and the receiving global north. Interests of the former lay primarily in safeguarding the rights of their citizens regardless of immigration status and ensuring remittance flow. Interests of the latter lay in accommodating the “useful” migrants and restricting the rest. With the shifts in global wealth distribution, this division is losing tenacity. Countries that once were sending migrants are also receiving them today. For nations, migration affects the most rudimentary pillar of sovereignty (national borders), the core of democratic political systems (human rights), and atavistic social needs (national identity). Perceptions of migration affect political popularity: political parties are tempted to use selective, mostly negative, aspects of migration to rally the electorate around national identities. This in turn disproportionately, and often contrary to the objective needs of the host countries, vilifies migration generally. Political opposition to migration occurs despite a consensus that the economies of both sending and receiving countries benefit economically from migration. Even though the sending countries may experience labor and brain drain, they benefit from remittance flows from receiving countries; similarly, the receiving countries get a boost of human capital.
Topic:
Human Rights, Migration, United Nations, and Governance
Political Geography:
Global Focus

85. Global Governance to Combat Illicit Financial Flows

Author:
Council on Foreign Relations
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
International efforts to curb illicit financial flows (IFFs) resemble post–Cold War collaboration in other issue areas that have risen on the global agenda: climate change, global health, internet govern- ance, and cybersecurity. Nongovernmental actors, including private corporations and nongovern- mental organizations (NGOs), have often driven agenda-setting in those domains. The focus has shifted over time, as new issues have been added and as older issues have assumed renewed im- portance. That reshaped agenda has in turn affected the institutional ecosystem of global action, which is captured only in part by formal and informal intergovernmental institutions. These new is- sue areas are characterized not by a single dominant institution or core set of institutions but by mul- tiple clusters of institutions that have each claimed a segment of the agenda and the instruments of cooperation. The result is a fragmented landscape with disjointed actors and organizations that often compete, collaborate, and act in parallel in pursuing their collective ends.1 The term of art for such an institutional landscape, one with several institutional or legal founda- tions, is “regime complex.”1 The regime complex for combating IFFs differs in its complexity from other, similar issue areas. Defining IFFs produces disagreement among researchers, activists, and policymakers. “Illicit” captures a normative judgment perhaps broader than “illegal.” For law en- forcement, IFFs are framed by predicate crimes, activities that are illegal in one jurisdiction or anoth- er and often of greater interest to authorities than IFFs. For those interested in broader global out- comes, such as the effects of IFFs on economic development, “illicit” could include cross-border fi- nancial flows associated with activities that they believe should be forbidden, such as tax avoidance by multinational corporations (MNCs). Those activities may not be illegal, however.2 These categories shift over time: bribery of foreign officials by corporations based in Organization for Economic Co- operation and Development (OECD) countries was made illegal in the United States well before it was criminalized in other industrialized countries. Variations in national treatment of both IFFs of certain kinds and the underlying predicate crimes have made harmonization of national policies and their implementation in many IFF domains difficult. IFFs are also one of the most important features of globalization’s dark side. Unlike other illicit or dangerous cross-border flows, however, IFFs bear almost no markers in and of themselves: pecunia non olet. Tainted food, endangered species, and dangerous individuals all present fewer problems of identification. For IFFs, it is suspicious activity rather than a characteristic of the funds themselves that generates the attention of those attempting to curb the flows. These definitional and identification problems make measuring the effectiveness of counter-IFF policies more difficult than assessing the effectiveness of policies in other issue areas. As many skep- tics and critics have pointed out, without a clear grasp of the scale of underlying flows, the scale of effects, though perhaps not the direction, of policies to counter those flows cannot reliably be deter- mined.3 If the costs of enforcement and compliance or unintended negative effects are included in estimates, the balance sheet becomes even more uncertain. International collaboration to curb IFFs and domestic measures to support that collaboration are directed to a wide array of predicate crimes that produce IFFs (drug trafficking, terrorism, or tax eva- sion) or to negative externalities (global “bads,” such as corruption) that both support IFFs and are sustained and promoted by them. This diversity of IFF sources and effects, and the public policy goals that follow, mobilize an unusually large number of actors: law enforcement agencies, financial super- visors and ministries, private financial institutions, and NGOs. These actors are interested more in certain IFFs and predicate crimes than in others. The links between specific crimes or categories of crime and larger global outcomes of interest, whether economic development or international securi- ty, are often second or third order. As a result, political attention to these issues—and willingness to bear the costs of implementation—fluctuates over time and across jurisdictions. As Peter Reuter and Edwin M. Truman observed in their classic 2004 account, the anti–money laundering (AML) regime (a subset of the complex countering IFFs) “reflects shifting priorities, compromises, and trade-offs.”4 This variation over time is particularly important in combating IFFs, because enforcement depends largely on national governments and both their incentives and their capacity to enact anti-IFF poli- cies. Financial markets and naming-and-shaming campaigns can strengthen those national efforts; they can also direct attention and effort against particular IFFs. However, they cannot substitute en- tirely for government action. What follows is a summary and introduction to organized international efforts to combat IFFs. In order to limit the policy universe, the narrower definition of IFFs used by the World Bank—“money illegally earned, transferred, or used that crosses borders”—will be used to define the wider interna- tional regime complex to combat IFFs.5 Mapping the institutions and actors involved in this issue area over time will capture the evolution of the global IFF agenda and the politics surrounding its de- velopment and implementation.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Governance, Institutionalism, and Illegal Trade
Political Geography:
Global Focus

86. UN Police and Conflict Prevention

Author:
Marina Caparini
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
This discussion paper connects the sustaining peace agenda and conflict prevention with the police component in United Nations (UN) peace operations. UN Police (UNPOL) play a critical role in conflict prevention through: (a) direct operational actions aimed at mediating disputes, defusing tensions and deterring violence; (b) structural prevention linked to mentoring, training and advising host state police, and the development of more effective, accountable and legitimate law enforcement institutions; and (c) systemic prevention through support for international norms and mechanisms to combat transnational organized crime, illicit arms flows and human trafficking. UNPOL’s role in conflict prevention can be further developed by a stronger focus on relationships with host state counterparts and civil society; more qualitative assessments on drivers of conflict and the inclusion of such assessments in early warning systems as well as UN reporting; and greater integration of UNPOL contributions to UN conflict prevention efforts.
Topic:
Security, Development, United Nations, Governance, Conflict, Peace, Police, and Justice
Political Geography:
Global Focus

87. Brazil in the global anticorruption regime

Author:
Marcos Tourinho
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional (RBPI)
Institution:
Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI)
Abstract:
Brazilian anticorruption law and institutions were significantly transformed in recent decades. This article traces those transformations and explains how the international anticorruption and money laundering regimes contributed to their development. It argues that those international regimes were internalised in the Brazilian system through three mechanisms: inspiration and legitimation, coercion, and implementation support, and were critical to the transformation of Brazilian institutions.
Topic:
Corruption, Governance, and Financial Crimes
Political Geography:
Brazil, South America, and Global Focus

88. China-Global governance without hegemony

Author:
Pan Zhongyin
Publication Date:
05-2018
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Pangoal Institution
Abstract:
Where is global economic governance heading? What will the future of global economic governance hold? These questions are on everyone’s lips. In the report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, President Xi Jinping reaffirmed China’s foreign policy principle of ‘never seeking hegemony’, but this does not mean that China should disavow the role of international leadership. Indeed, it is now engaged in what might be called a non-hegemonic leadership, which is sure to be hugely significant in the future of global economic governance.
Topic:
International Relations, Governance, Hegemony, and Economy
Political Geography:
China and Global Focus

89. he Other Fissile Material: Strengthening National and International Plutonium Management Approaches

Author:
John Carlson, Leonard Spector, and Miles A. Pomper
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Abstract:
CNS Occasional Paper #42 discusses issues relating to separated, or unirradiated, plutonium in civilian nuclear programs, that is, plutonium that has been chemically separated from spent nuclear reactor fuel by reprocessing but has not been reintroduced into a nuclear reactor after separation and subjected to further irradiation. Efforts to limit the spread of reprocessing in the civilian sector crystalized in the mid-1970s. Two developments triggered the intensified attention to this issue: (1) India’s 1974 test of a nuclear explosive device, which used as its core plutonium produced in an ostensibly peaceful nuclear-research program, and (2) attempts on the part of several states that had not renounced nuclear weapons to obtain reprocessing plants for their civil nuclear power programs. In the intervening forty-four years, in those states that proceeded with civilian reprocessing programs, stocks of separated civilian plutonium have continued to grow in the aggregate. Taken together today, they are substantially greater than worldwide military plutonium stocks. Multiple approaches to limiting the separation of civil plutonium have been implemented, and still others have been given serious study, but stocks have increased regardless, while options for working down these stocks appear to be diminishing. Meanwhile, concern has deepened over the possible theft or diversion of this material, which could bring weapon-sufficient quantities of plutonium into the hands of violent extremists. International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards are valuable, but they do not fully address the risks of breakout from nonproliferation or disarmament commitments. Safeguards are intended to provide timely warning of diversion, so as to provide an opportunity for intervention. However, even if diversion of plutonium is detected immediately, the plutonium could be weaponized too quickly for effective preventive measures. Nor are safeguards designed to address nuclear-material security issues. Accordingly, there is a need for institutional and technical measures to mitigate risks from separated plutonium. This report recommends steps to address the risks posed by existing reprocessing programs and stocks as well as ways to discourage potential new programs.
Topic:
Nuclear Weapons, Governance, Nuclear Power, and Mining
Political Geography:
Global Focus

90. A Broader View of the Data Revolution and Development Agenda

Author:
G. Thomas Kingsley
Publication Date:
02-2017
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
In 2015, the United Nations adopted an ambitious new agenda for global development, and its proponents have called for a “data revolution” to further its goals. How to mobilize this data revolution? Much of what has been written about it so far implies only the mounting of expanded surveys to track progress under each goal. Although surveys are essential, there are good reasons to believe that surveys alone would be insufficient and probably impractical.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Governance, and International Development
Political Geography:
United Nations and Global Focus