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Begin New Search Content Type Special Report Publishing Institution Centre for International Governance Innovation Publication Year within 25 Years Publication Year within 10 Years

1. Next-Generation Technology and Electoral Democracy: Understanding the Changing Environment

Author:
Samantha Bradshaw, Kailee Hilt, Eric Jardine, Florian Kerschbaum, Ulrike Klinger, Michael Pal, Aaron Shull, and Wesley Wark
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
Democracies around the world are facing growing threats to their electoral systems in the digital age. Foreign interference in the form of dis- and misinformation has already influenced the results of democratic elections and altered the course of history. This special report, the result of a research project conducted in partnership with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) Canada, examines these cyberthreats from a Canadian and German perspective. Both Canada and Germany share common goals centred around protecting human rights, democracy and the rule of law, and international peace and security. Using case studies from experts in fields such as computer science, law and public policy, the special report offers recommendations to guide policy makers and stakeholders on how to protect elections from next-generation technologies and the threats they pose to democracy.
Topic:
Environment, Science and Technology, Elections, Democracy, and Emerging Technology
Political Geography:
Europe, Canada, Germany, and North America

2. The Digital Decide: How to Agree on WTO Rules for Digital Trade

Author:
James Bacchus
Publication Date:
08-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
After more than 20 years of unsuccessful negotiations, WTO member countries may be able to agree on global digital trade rules if they look to the new Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA) among Chile, New Zealand and Singapore as a model. As the first “digital only” trade agreement, the DEPA offers a modular approach that allows members to pick and choose which modules work best for them today while enabling them to adopt more legal commitments on digital trade in the future. As cross-border trade becomes increasingly digital, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring the free movement of goods and services is essential to the global economy.
Topic:
International Cooperation, International Trade and Finance, World Trade Organization, and Digital Economy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. Reimagining a Canadian National Security Strategy

Author:
Aaron Shull and Wesley Wark
Publication Date:
12-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
This CIGI special report is a "cri de cœur" arguing for a new approach to national security strategy and honest, transparent engagement with the reality of the threats we face as a country. It outlines the key threats that we now confront: a vastly altered geopolitical environment with the rising power of China at its core, ongoing and future pandemic threats, climate change security impacts, uncontrolled technological change and the undermining of economic security. Meeting these threats requires a sovereign, made-in-Canada response that protects Canada’s democracy and national interest and that operates within an environment of informed public understanding. Canada must pivot to face looming global threats and can and must do so from a position of knowledge and strength. This special report is the culmination of a project unprecedented in scale and scope in Canada. Beginning in the fall of 2020, CIGI set out to mobilize a large and diverse set of Canadian and international experts to examine Canada’s national security landscape. The CIGI project, Reimagining a Canadian National Security Strategy, features the publication of this capstone report, authored by the project’s co-directors, alongside 10 thematic reports allowing for deeper dives into critical, present-day national security issues. This report makes a series of key policy recommendations to assist the Government of Canada in addressing the challenges of a new security environment.
Topic:
Security, National Security, Governance, and Leadership
Political Geography:
Canada and North America

4. Reshaping Trade through Women's Economic Empowerment

Author:
Oonagh Fitzgerald and et al
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
At the December 2017 World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires, 118 WTO members joined forces to launch the Declaration on Trade and Women’s Economic Empowerment. The members undertook to work together to develop best practices on how to apply gender-based analysis to domestic economic policy and international trade policy to encourage female entrepreneurship and financial inclusion, remove barriers to women’s participation in trade, and develop useful gender statistics and research. The Centre for International Governance Innovation undertook this essay series to raise awareness about this initiative and contribute to increasing understanding of how the declaration might contribute to economic empowerment of women.
Topic:
Gender Issues and International Political Economy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. Data Governance in the Digital Age

Author:
CIGI
Publication Date:
05-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
Data has been hailed by some as “the new oil,” an analogy that captures the excitement and high expectations surrounding the data-driven economy. The success of the world’s most valuable companies (Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft) is now underpinned by a sophisticated capacity to collect, organize, control and commercialize stores of data and intellectual property. Big data and its application in artificial intelligence, for example, promises to transform the way we live and work — and will generate considerable wealth in the process. But data’s transformative nature also raises important questions around how the benefits are shared, privacy, public security, openness and democracy, and the institutions that will govern the data revolution. The recent Cambridge Analytica scandal has exposed the vulnerability of democracies to data strategies deployed on platforms such as Facebook to influence the outcomes of the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential race. Any national data strategy will have to address both the economic and non-economic dimensions of harnessing big data. Balances will have to be struck between numerous goals. The essays in this collection, first published online in spring 2018, by leading scholars and practitioners, are grouped into five blocks: the rationale of a data strategy; the role of a data strategy for Canadian industries; balancing privacy and commercial values; domestic policy for data governance; and international policy considerations. An epilogue concludes with some key questions to consider around data governance in the digital age.
Topic:
International Affairs and Basic Data
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. Transforming the Global Refugee System: Solidarity, Humanity and Accountability

Author:
CIGI
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
The World Refugee Council (WRC) was created to build on the momentum generated by UN meetings in New York in September 2016, which saw the unanimous adoption of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, and to develop bold approaches to transform the current refugee system, focusing on the issues of accountability, responsibility sharing and governance, and finance. The WRC offers this interim report, and other discussion and research papers, to raise awareness of these issues and to stimulate ideas for reform that will transform lives.
Topic:
International Organization and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

7. Governing Cyber Security in Canada, Australia and the United States

Author:
Stephanie Maclellan and Christian Leuprecht
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
By virtue of the constitutional division of powers into federal and provincial jurisdictions, the governance of the provision of cyber security in Canada — and in comparable federal systems with constitutionally distinct levels of government, such as the United States and Australia — raises a host of policy-making challenges. This special report’s authors ponder the division of authority and responsibility — for cyber, in general, and cyber security, in particular — between public and private actors and different levels of government. Drawing on expertise and insights from business, law, policy and academia, they posit normative models of cyber security governance and gauge the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches. Their contributions illuminate some preliminary lessons for policy makers striving to improve governance outcomes across the cyber domain in Canada.
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

8. New Thinking on Innovation

Author:
CIGI
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
Innovation is at the centre of the current economic policy discourse in Canada. Innovation drives productivity and with it, standards of living. Innovation is the process of using ideas, typically in the form of intellectual property (IP), to offer new or improved products or services for the same or lower overall cost of production. This collection of essays, which were first published online in the spring of 2017, marshalls new thinking on innovation, and brings together a community of scholars and practitioners who offer fresh approaches to innovation in Canada, and Canada’s place in the world. The essays discuss the role that international trade plays in stimulating innovation, including the nature of trade agreements; consider domestic policy on innovation; and examine how global processes such as the World Trade Organization and the Group of Twenty might foster a climate in which the innovation strategies of smaller countries could be accommodated. An epilogue maps the key themes to emerge from the discussion and suggests a framework for an IP-centric innovation strategy. Rapid developments in technologies, often referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, are upending established structures in every part of the economy and society. As in other facets of international negotiations, the starting point in efforts to bring order to and shape the current technology-fuelled environment for the global good is national policies and postures.
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

9. The Case for a WTO Climate Waiver

Author:
James Bacchus
Publication Date:
11-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
There is a looming collision between the rules frameworks of the two separate international institutions that have been created and entrusted with addressing trade and climate change. Links between trade and climate change can no longer be ignored by either the World Trade Organization (WTO) or the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Neither has considered the consequences of the trade restrictions that are likely to be part of many national measures enacted to address climate change, which will fall within the scope of the WTO Agreement and will surely lead to a lengthy WTO dispute settlement process. Such trade-restrictive national measures will be fed by domestic fears of “carbon leakage” and a loss of national competitiveness, and WTO disputes resulting from such measures will confront numerous unanswered legal questions due to an absence of relevant WTO jurisprudence. To minimize the political risks of such a collision to both the WTO and the COP, and to combine the most benefit for the climate with the least risk to trade, a WTO climate waiver is urgently needed. The adoption of a WTO climate waiver should be only the first of the ways in which WTO members revise and realign WTO rules in accordance with the objectives of sustainable development.
Topic:
Climate Change
Political Geography:
Global Focus

10. UNDRIP Implementation Braiding International, Domestic and Indigenous Laws

Author:
CIGI
Publication Date:
05-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
In Canada, implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) is an opportunity to explore and reconceive the relationship between international law, Indigenous peoples’ own laws and Canada’s constitutional narratives. In May 2016, Indigenous and Northern A airs Minister Carolyn Bennett addressed the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations and o cially endorsed UNDRIP1 — without the quali cations attached by the previous government, which held the declaration to be aspirational and not legally binding. While this announcement did not change the legal relevance of UNDRIP in Canada, it does express the political will to begin implementation and signals that Canada may be on a path toward reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. us, the announcement also raised legal and policy questions about how the federal government intends to adopt and implement this soft law instrument.
Topic:
Human Rights, International Law, and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Canada

11. Canada' s Trade Minister Is Ready to Make a Difference at the WTO

Author:
François-Philippe Champagne
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
There is an inverse relationship between the number of kilometres François-Philippe Champagne travels and the amount of attention he receives. Canada’s trade minister was in Morocco over the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend for a World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting, and in Mexico less than a week later for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first official visit to the country.
Topic:
International Political Economy and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Canada

12. The Kurds Have Opened Pandora’s Box

Author:
Bessma Momani
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
The Kurds of Iraq have been patiently waiting for the right time to secede from the troubled state. Monday's referendum turnout was high and the result was clear: 92 per cent are overwhelmingly in favour of independence. While many Kurds felt the time was right to have a referendum on the question of independence, it is the worst time for all regional stakeholders and the Kurds may have made it more difficult for themselves to realize their national dream.
Topic:
International Security and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Iraq and Kurdistan

13. Is Canada Really Moving beyond Its Colonial Past?

Author:
Joshua Nichols and Robert Hamilton
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
Justin Trudeau’s government has made a number of policy decisions which would refocus Crown-Indigenous relations. Joshua Nichols and Rob Hamilton place these changes in the context of the last 150 — if not 250 — years of Canadian history
Topic:
Post Colonialism and International Development
Political Geography:
Canada

14. Mapping the Global Legal Landscape of Blockchain and Other Distributed Ledger Technologies

Author:
Julie Maupin
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
Blockchain, tangle and other distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) are pushing a broad array of previously centralized global economic activities toward decentralized market structures. Governments should tackle the new regulatory conundrums of an increasingly disintermediated global economy by focusing on DLTs’ individual use cases rather than its underlying enabling technologies. Grouping the known use cases by common characteristics reveals three broad categories of blockchain-law interfaces. For ease of reference, this paper labels these the recycle box, the dark box and the sandbox. Each raises distinct legal, regulatory and policy challenges deserving of separate analysis.
Topic:
Science and Technology and International Security
Political Geography:
Global Focus

15. Environmental Gems in Trade Agreements: Little-known Clauses for Progressive Trade Agreements

Author:
Jean-Frederic Morin and Rosalie Nadeau
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
Trade agreements contain an increasing number of environmental provisions. Some of these provisions now relate to precise environmental issues, such as biodiversity or hazardous waste management. Certain trade agreements even devote entire chapters to environmental protection. However, the rate of innovative environmental clauses per agreement has declined over the years. This paper draws attention to some of the lesser-known provisions encountered in five agreements or fewer. These “legal one-hit wonders” do not often reach the billboard, despite their uniqueness and creativity.
Topic:
Environment and International Political Economy
Political Geography:
Global Focus