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Begin New Search Political Geography Global Focus Content Type Working Paper Publication Year within 3 Years

202. Lessons from the COVID-19 Crisis: 6 Opportunities to Strengthen Conflict Sensitivity across the HumanitarianDevelopment-Peacebuilding Nexus

Author:
Céline Monnier and Leah Zamore
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on International Cooperation
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic, and efforts to control its spread—including lockdowns, social distancing measures, and border closures—have led to unprecedented health, humanitarian, and socioeconomic shocks worldwide. These shocks, in turn, are raising the likelihood that risks for many forms of violent conflict—crime, armed conflict, violent extremism—may increase. It is crucial for the United Nations (UN) to adopt a conflict-sensitive lens in all relevant operations across the humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding (HDP) nexus to prevent an increasingly volatile situation from deteriorating further.
Topic:
Development, United Nations, Conflict, COVID-19, and Peacebuilding
Political Geography:
Global Focus

203. Good Peacebuilding Financing: Recommendations for Revitalizing Commitments

Author:
Sarah Cliffe, Paige Arthur, and Betty N. Wainaina
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on International Cooperation
Abstract:
At a moment of intense global pressure due to the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, support for prevention and peacebuilding remains as vital as ever. This brief offers action-oriented recommendations to advance new and more inclusive approaches to peacebuilding financing on the eve of the UN High-level Meeting on Peacebuilding Financing.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, United Nations, Finance, and Peacebuilding
Political Geography:
Global Focus

204. Raising awareness about the increased threat of the criminal and terrorist use of cryptocurrencies

Author:
Nicolo Miotto
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Centre for Security Studies
Abstract:
Criminal and terrorist organisations are increasingly using cryptocurrencies, thus leading to emerging threats in the cyberspace. Money-laundering, tax evasion, ransomware extortion, trading in illicit goods and services, purchasing of child sexual abuse material and terrorist financing are concerning criminal and terrorist activities involving the use of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin and Monero are the most used cryptocurrencies among both criminals and terrorists, however other cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin, Dash and Ethereum are being growingly used in criminal and terrorist financial activities. The anonymity/pseudo-anonymity and security characterising cryptocurrencies can challenge law enforcement investigative efforts aimed at countering criminal and terrorist activities. There has not been a widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies by terrorist and criminals yet, however this is likely to change in the next future.
Topic:
Security, Crime, Terrorism, Counter-terrorism, Cryptocurrencies, and Illicit Financial Flows
Political Geography:
Global Focus

206. Does Deplatforming Work? Unintended consequences of banning far-right content creators

Author:
Danny Klinenberg
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC)
Abstract:
Social media has become an outlet for extremists to fundraise and organize on, potentially leading to deadly consequences. While governments deliberate on how to regulate this challenge, some social media companies have removed creators of offensive content—deplatforming. I estimate the effects of deplatforming on revenue and viewership, using variation in the timing of removals across two video-streaming companies- YouTube, and its far-right competitor, Bitchute. I construct a novel dataset including Bitcoin wallets linking YouTube and Bitchute accounts for 79 far-right content creators, including propagandists for violent domestic extremist movements. Being deplatformed on YouTube results in a 30% increase in weekly Bitcoin revenue and a 50% increase in viewership on Bitchute. This increase in Bitchute activity accounts for about 65% of the estimated foregone revenue and 5.9% of viewership lost from YouTube, implying a negative net effect of deplatforming.
Topic:
Media, Social Media, Far Right, Censorship, and Digital Space
Political Geography:
Global Focus

207. Accountability Keywords

Author:
Jonathan Fox
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Accountability Research Center (ARC), American University
Abstract:
‘What counts’ as accountability, and who decides? Accountability is often treated as a magic bullet, an all-purpose solution to a very wide range of problems—from corrupt politicians or the quality of public service provision to persistent injustice and impunity. The concept has become shorthand to refer to diverse efforts to address problems with the exercise of power. In practice, the accountability idea is malleable, ambiguous — and contested. This working paper unpacks diverse understandings of accountability ideas, using the ‘keywords’ approach. This tradition takes everyday big ideas whose meanings are often taken for granted and makes their subtexts explicit. The proposition here is that ambiguous or contested language can either constrain or enable possible strategies for promoting accountability. After all, different potential coalition partners may use the same term with different meanings—or may use different terms to communicate the same idea. Indeed, the concept’s fundamental ambiguity is a major reason why it can be difficult to communicate ideas about accountability across disciplines, cultures, and languages. The goal here is to inform efforts to find common ground between diverse potential constituencies for accountable governance. This analysis is informed by dialogue with advocates and reformers from many countries and sectors, many of whom share their ideas in blogposts on the Accountability Keywords website (see also #AccountabilityKeyword on social media). Both the working paper and blogposts reflect on accountability-related words and sayings that resonate with popular cultures, to get a better handle on what sticks. The format of the working paper is nonlinear, designed so that readers can go right to the keywords that spark their interest: The introduction maps the landscape of accountability keywords. Section 2 addresses what counts as accountability? Section 3 identifies big concepts that overlap with accountability but are not synonyms- such as good governance, democracy, responsiveness and responsibility. Section 4 shows the relevance of accountability adjectives by spelling out different ways in which the idea is understood. Section 5 unpacks widely used, emblematic keywords in the field. Section 6 considers more specialized keywords, focusing on examples that serve as shorthand for big ideas within specific communities of practice. Section 7 brings together a range of widely-used accountability sayings, from the ancient to the recently-invented—illustrating the enduring and diverse nature of accountability claims. Section 8 makes a series of propositions for discussion.
Topic:
Corruption, Accountability, and Keywords
Political Geography:
Global Focus

208. From Passive Owners to Planet Savers? Asset Managers, Carbon Majors and the Limits of Sustainable Finance

Author:
Joseph Baines and Sandy Brian Hager
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
City Political Economy Research Centre (CITYPERC), University of London
Abstract:
This article examines the role of the Big Three asset management firms — BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street — in corporate environmental governance. Specifically, it charts the Big Three’s relationships with the public–owned Carbon Majors: a small group of fossil fuels, cement and mining companies responsible for the bulk of industrial greenhouse gas emissions. It finds that the Big Three much more often than not oppose rather than support shareholder resolutions aimed at improving environmental governance. Notably, this is even the case with the Big Three’s environmental, social and governance funds. A more fine–gained analysis shows that the combined voting decisions of the Big Three are more likely to lead to the failure than to the success of environmental resolutions and that, whether they succeed or fail, these resolutions tend to be narrow in scope and piecemeal in nature. Based on these findings, the article raises serious doubts about the Big Three’s credentials as environmental stewards.
Topic:
Environment, Finance, Fossil Fuels, Sustainability, and Corporate Governance
Political Geography:
Global Focus

209. Financial eschatology and the libidinal economy of leverage

Author:
Amin Samman and Stefano Sgambati
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
City Political Economy Research Centre (CITYPERC), University of London
Abstract:
Apocalyptic thinking has a long religious and political tradition, but what place does it occupy within the temporal universe of contemporary capitalism? In this essay, we use the figure of the eschaton to draw out the loaded and ambiguous character of the future as it emerges through the condition of indebtedness. This entails a departure from political economy accounts of capitalist futurity, which stress the structural logic of financial speculation, in favour of an existential account that begins instead with the cosmology of money and debt. We argue that finance capital’s fixation on the future has produced a very specific form of apocalyptic imagination, characteristic of financial society and built on a libidinal economy of leverage. Rather than offering an ecstatic end to the global process of financialization, financial eschatologies bind the contemporary subject to debt and indebtedness to the very end: an endless apocalypse, premised on the ends of finance itself.
Topic:
Debt, Finance, Money, Eschatology, Futurity, Leverage, and Libidinal Economy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

210. New Rules, Same Practice? Analysing UN Development System Reform Effects at the Country Level

Author:
Silke Weinlich, Max Otto Baumann, Maria Cassens-Sasse, Rebecca Hadank-Rauch, Franziska Leibbrandt, Marie Pardey, Manuel Simon, and Anina Strey
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)
Abstract:
With its unique multilateral assets, the United Nations Development System (UNDS) should be playing a key role in assisting governments and other stakeholders with their implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. But this requires change. Despite improvements in recent decades, too often the UNDS has continued to act as a loose assemblage of competing entities, undermining its effective support for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) implementation. It is against that backdrop that the UNDS has been undergoing an extensive reform – that was decided on in 2018 and has been implemented since 2019 – to provide more coherent, integrated support in line with requirements of the 2030 Agenda to United Nations (UN) programme countries. What effects have the reforms yielded at the country level? This paper presents the main findings, conclusions and recommendations from our research on UNDS reform implementation. It does so with a focus on reform-induced changes towards what we call a strengthened, collective offer at the country level. Overall, our research shows that reform implementation is moving the needle on the quality of the collective offer. In particular, with regard to its institutional element, we observed that the reform has fostered change in how UN country teams work together that is in line with what the 2030 Agenda demands. Institutional changes allow for increased cross-organisational and cross-sectoral coordination, which could potentially lead to increased policy coherence. But while we see substantial progress, it remains incomplete, fragile and subject to structural limitations. A more critical picture emerges with regard to change in the substantive component of the collective offer in the areas of SDG integration, cross-border work and normative approaches. While there were positive examples, we found little evidence of a systematic repositioning in these areas. The adjustment of the UNDS to the 2030 Agenda does not (yet) meet the expectations derived from the UN’s own reform ambition.
Topic:
Development, United Nations, Reform, and Sustainable Development Goals
Political Geography:
Global Focus