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Begin New Search Political Geography Global Focus Content Type Policy Brief Publication Year within 5 Years

311. Incremental inclusivity in peace processes: Key lessons learnt

Author:
Andreas Schädel and Veronique Dudouet
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Berghof Foundation
Abstract:
This policy brief provides evidence-based lessons learnt and recommendations on the timing, sequencing and modalities of inclusion of nonsignatory armed groups and civil society actors in peace processes. It aims to inform a strategic understanding on how to design and implement peace processes that are effective in bringing about an inclusive political, economic and social transformation.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Conflict Prevention, Civil Society, Transitional Justice, Peace, and Armed Conflict
Political Geography:
Global Focus

312. Uncharted Territory? Towards a common threat analysis and a Strategic Compass for EU security and defence

Author:
Daniel Fiott
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
Words have meaning. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen took up her mandate calling for a ‘geopolitical Commission’ and Josep Borrell, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission (HR/VP), echoed this by stating that the EU needs to ‘learn the language of power’. Reflecting the current geopolitical turbulence facing Europe, the EU’s rhetorical shift could split opinion – at the very least, the choice of language is open to interpretation. It could be argued that the word ‘geopolitics’ sits uneasily alongside terms such as ‘multilateralism’, especially when one considers the historical connotations of geopolitics. The implication is that visions of peace and international cooperation cannot simultaneously sit alongside ideas such as the military control of the ‘heartland’ or mastery of the seas – to put it differently, if the EU is Monnet, can it ever survive in the world of Mackinder or Mahan? EU member states would react to this statement in different ways and this is one among many reasons why it is so difficult to form a ‘common strategic culture’ in Europe. Behind the EU’s mosaic of various national strategic cultures lie profound differences between geopolitical interests and strategic histories. As the 2017 French Defence and National Security Strategic Review observes, ‘[g]eography and history remain important factors in the manner in which European states rank threats and risks, and more generally, in the diversity of their strategic cultures.’ Despite the direction offered by the EU Global Strategy, there is as yet no common approach to how member state governments understand threats to the EU’s security. Defining ‘threats’ is not an easy task and it has split security scholars. Nevertheless, member states have stressed the need for a strategic reflection on security and defence based on ‘a shared assessment of threats and challenges.’ This echoes the EU Global Strategy, which stated that ‘European security hinges on better and shared assessments of internal and external threats and challenges.’
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, European Union, and Strategic Planning
Political Geography:
Europe and Global Focus

313. Unboxing the Future: Finding the futures hidden in plain sight

Author:
Joshua Polchar
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
To make policy is to think about the future – usually trying to shape it for the better. In policy, as much as any part of our lives, our thinking is strongly influenced by our perception of time, yet paradoxically this perception of time is usually unconscious and unquestioned.1 Policy experts and decision-makers are futures thinkers whether they realise it or not. Yet like all humans, they tend to rely largely on a set of familiar modes of thinking when it comes to preparing for the future – modes of thinking that are instinctive, intuitive or institutionalised. No one way of thinking about the future is necessarily better than another, but all of them are limited, and leave some things unchallenged or implicit. As a result, sticking to only one approach means missing potentially valuable insights that could be gained by using other perspectives. Of course there is no guarantee that learning these lessons will result in perfect preparedness for what lies ahead, but if there is great potential in ‘out-of-the-box thinking’, then it helps to better understand and challenge what is boxing our thinking in. This Brief, and the strategic foresight approaches it outlines, are therefore not intended to introduce thinking about the future where it was absent, but rather to challenge, discipline, and guide the futures thinking already taking place. It will take the reader through five of the ways in which relying only on conventional ways of thinking about the future may be keeping them from seeing a lot more. It will seek to answer the question: how can the discipline of strategic foresight make a positive contribution to the field of foreign policy? This Brief is not an instruction manual or how-to guide on methodologies of strategic foresight. Less still is it able to help the reader to better predict the future, or make the right call on what to prepare for. Instead it intends to show how thinking differently about the future can help to increase our awareness and knowledge in the present and what it means in terms of the decisions we make.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Strategic Planning, and Future
Political Geography:
Global Focus

314. A Blacklist is (Almost) Born: Building a resilient EU human rights sanctions regime

Author:
Clara Portela
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
In December 2018, the Council of the European Union initiated discussions about the creation of a new sanctions regime designed to address gross human rights violations, following a proposal from the Netherlands. So far, the EU only operates three thematic sanctions regimes: those targeting terrorism, cyberattacks and chemical weapons attacks. Unlike classical sanctions packages addressing crises in specific countries, such as Guinea or Venezuela, horizontal sanctions regimes apply to individuals and entities considered to have committed severe human rights abuses. Once approved, the planned blacklist is set to become the EU’s fourth horizontal sanctions regime, enlarging its vast body of autonomous sanctions regimes, i.e. restrictions adopted in the absence of a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) mandate. Over a year after the initial Dutch proposal was tabled, the sanctions regime is still under discussion, which contrasts with the rapid adoption of previous thematic regimes. On first inspection, the slow pace of preparations is puzzling: the vast majority of EU sanctions regimes were traditionally imposed in response to human rights breaches.3 Most EU autonomous sanctions regimes currently in force cite human rights violations as the rationale for their adoption. Indeed, the emphasis on human rights as a key motivation for the imposition of sanctions sets EU autonomous sanctions apart from the practice of other international sanctions senders like the United Nations (UN).4 Given that the promotion of human rights is a centrepiece of EU foreign policy, consensus among member states in support of such a regime should be forthcoming. If human rights breaches constitute the dominant motivation for the imposition of EU autonomous sanctions, what is holding up the approval of the prospective regime? Designing a horizontal sanctions regime in the EU is a much harder task than meets the eye. The present Brief aims to unravel the challenges that make it difficult for this regime to take shape, and suggests ways in which the obstacles identified may be surmounted or, at the very least, mitigated.
Topic:
Human Rights, Sanctions, European Union, and Transnational Actors
Political Geography:
Europe and Global Focus

315. Who's First Wins? International crisis response to Covid-19

Author:
Florence Gaub and Lotje Boswinkel
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
The Covid-19 pandemic appears to be not just a test for healthcare systems around the world, but an international contest for which country has the best political system. As the People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), boasted in an article published in early March, “China’s battle against the epidemic showed that the CCP, as China’s ruling party, is by far the political party with the strongest governance capability in human history.”1 It pointed the finger at Europe for “acting too little and too late, and largely failing to stem the tide”.2 Slow response time, high rates of transmission, and a general unwillingness to impose restrictive emergency measures were ascribed to the inherent deficiencies of open democratic, liberal systems, making them appear unfit to deal with health crises or indeed for governance generally. In this Brief, we put this hypothesis to the test: did democracies really respond less swiftly than authoritarian systems – and if the determining factor is not the political system, what are the key elements in crisis response?
Topic:
Transnational Actors, Crisis Management, COVID-19, and Strategic Interests
Political Geography:
Global Focus

316. Gender Counts: Assessing Global Armed Violence Datasets for Gender Relevance

Author:
Anna Alvazzi del Frate, Gergely Hideg, and Emile LeBrun
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Small Arms Survey
Abstract:
Sound and timely gender-relevant data is key for adequately and comprehensively addressing armed violence. Global databases have the potential to highlight relevant gendered dynamics, but currently lack crucial information related to the sex and gender of victims as well as the context of the violent events monitored. Gender Counts: Assessing Global Armed Violence Datasets, a Briefing Paper from the Small Arms Survey, highlights these knowledge gaps and indicates ways towards filling them. Reviewing global, regional, and national datasets on lethal violence—including on homicides, and conflict-related fatalities—the study finds that gender relevance of the available data across the board is still low. However, recent developments in the 'Data Revolution' connected to efforts to implement the 2030 Agenda have demonstrated that it is possible to move in the direction of better data on the gendered dimensions of violence. Increasing political support and civil society commitments have started producing more gender-relevant data for a range of related lethal violence, small arms, and gender indicators. The study therefore sees room for optimism, and data for gender analyses will likely be more inclusive and gender-relevant in the near future.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Gender Issues, Violence, and Survey
Political Geography:
Global Focus

317. Behavioural Science for the Environment

Author:
Milan Urbaník
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Europeum Institute for European Policy
Abstract:
To effectively address climate change, both structural and behavioural policies are needed. To formulate effective and efficient behavioural policies, the government should establish Behavioural Policy Team. The agency of the team should be to design policies that are conducive to facilitating behavioural changes against unsustainable behaviours, such as high energy and water consumption or polluting transportation. Furthermore, the team should test different approaches through randomization to determine the best valuefor-money policies.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, and Behavioral Science
Political Geography:
Europe and Global Focus

318. Restraining Ourselves: Helping by Not Hurting

Author:
Nathan Nunn
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Economics for Inclusive Prosperity (EfIP)
Abstract:
In this brief, I discuss the current state of economic development policy, which tends to focus on interventions, usually funded with foreign aid, that are aimed at fixing deficiencies in developing countries. The general perception is that there are inherent problems with less-developed countries that can be fixed by with the help of the Western world. I discuss evidence that shows that the effects of such ‘help’ can be mixed. While foreign aid can improve things, it can also make things worse. In addition, at the same time that this ‘help’ is being offered, the developed West regularly undertakes actions that are harmful to developing countries. Examples include tariffs, antidumping duties, restrictions on international labor mobility, the use of international power and coercion, and tied-aid used for export promotion. Overall, it is unclear whether interactions with the West are, on the whole, helpful or detrimental to developing countries. We may have our largest and most positive effects on alleviating global poverty if we focus on restraining ourselves from actively harming less-developed countries rather than focusing our efforts on fixing them.
Topic:
Development, Economics, International Political Economy, Developing World, and Economic Development
Political Geography:
United States and Global Focus

319. The Coronavirus in Iran (Part 1): Clerical Factors

Author:
Mehdi Khalaji
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
The clergy’s ambitions for global Shia revolution made the city of Qom uniquely vulnerable to the disease, and their resistance to modern medical science weakened the state’s ability to combat its spread. On February 19, two days before the Iranian government officially announced the arrival of coronavirus, an infected businessman who had recently returned from China to Qom passed away. The location and timing of his death illustrate how the Shia holy city and the religious leaders and institutions who call it home have played an outsize role in the disease’s disproportionately rapid spread inside Iran compared to other countries. How did this situation come to pass, and what does it say about the current state of the clerical establishment, its relationship with the regime, and its alienation from large swaths of Iranian society? (Part 2 of this PolicyWatch discusses the regime's role in the outbreak and its resiliency to such crises.)
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Health, Religion, Shia, and Coronavirus
Political Geography:
China, Iran, Middle East, Global Focus, and United States of America

320. What might have been: Globalization on the medal stand at the Tokyo Olympics

Author:
Soyoung Han and Marcus Noland
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
The Summer Olympic Games are the most globalized sporting event on earth. Until now, the Summer Games had been postponed only three times—in 1916, 1940, and 1944—all because of world wars. So, the announcement that in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Tokyo Games would be postponed by a year is significant, implicit testimony to the destructiveness of the pandemic. The Tokyo Games were expected to continue the evolution of the Games away from the aristocratic European milieu where the modern Olympic movement began. As poverty has declined and incomes across the global economy have converged, participation in the Games has broadened and the pattern of medaling has become more pluralistic, particularly in sports with low barriers to entry in terms of facilities and equipment. This Policy Brief presents forecasts of medal counts at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games had they had gone on as scheduled, setting aside possible complications arising from the coronavirus pandemic. The forecasts are not just a depiction of what might have been. They establish a benchmark that can be used when the Games are eventually held, to examine the impact of the uneven incidence of the pandemic globally.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, Sports, and Olympics
Political Geography:
Japan, Asia, and Global Focus