Political Systems
At the end of the Cold War, the idea spread that liberal democracy was going to take over the world. In reality, authoritarian regimes have resisted, and political systems remain varied.
Caught in the Web of Bureaucracy? How ‘Failed’ Land Deals Shape the State in Tanzania
After more than ten years of hectic debates on international ‘land grabs’, academic interest in collapsed land deals or projects with unexpected results is growing.
Global Order in the Shadow of the Coronavirus: China, Russia and the West
The coronavirus pandemic has thrown a harsh spotlight on the state of global governance. Faced with the greatest emergency since the Second World War, nations have regressed into narrow self-interest. The concept of a rules-based international order has been stripped of meaning, while liberalism faces its greatest crisis in decades.
Nuclear Multipolarity: Myths and Realities of Competition
The term “arms race” does not accurately reflect the events of the Cold War, let alone the multipolar logics that have followed it.
Global Public Goods: Beyond Empty Words
As I write these lines, the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be following the pathway forecast by those epidemiologists and virologists, who have been telling us for weeks that the wave is past its peak. If it is, this does not mean that we are safe from a second wave some time later, but only that the first surge is over.
Migrant and Refugee Participation: Approaches to Rethinking Integration Policies
In France, people participating in policies and programs that affect them is not a new concept. It has been widely studied in the field of social work and the fight against poverty, and is at the heart of many experiments. How can this concept of participation, as is outlined for people experiencing poverty, be applied to refugees and migrants? Does the participation of refugees and migrants present specific characteristics?
Coronavirus: Franco-German solidarity put to the test
While the coronavirus health crisis is currently intensifying in Europe, it does not seem to be affecting France and Germany at the same pace or with the same intensity. The crisis is putting both countries' respective hospital systems to the test in different ways. France and Germany's economies are being mobilized, and social cohesion is enhanced. The crisis also impacting Franco-German and European solidarity.
Korean Democracy in Times of Coronavirus
The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare a series of troublesome truths, both about healthcare infrastructures in Western nations and the state of their democracies.
The quarantine they prescribed, albeit after periods of irresoluteness, drew embarrassing parallels to measures taken by China just a few weeks earlier. Social life has come to a near standstill without citizens being given a chance to deliberate, as procedures were discussed for the most part in closed-door meetings between the executive branch and appointed experts: the White House Coronavirus Task Force in the United States, the Scientific Council of France, etc. The general public has been hardly more involved in the West than in China.
In contrast, South Korea has thus far been the only significantly affected country to contain the spread of Covid-19 without shutting itself down or compromising even temporarily democratic institutions.
Safe and Legal Pathways for Refugees: Can Europe Take Global Leadership?
More than 70 million people were forcibly displaced at the end of 2018. In that context, more safe and legal pathways to countries of asylum is a crucial challenge for the international protection regime. A toolkit is available to States and UNHCR, more particularly refugee resettlement.
U.S. Immigration Policy: The Making of a Crisis
Donald Trump’s election to the White House appeared to be the beginning of a profound change in the United States’ immigration policy. He reneged on bipartisan consensus that recognized the “positive contribution” of immigration to the country. This resulted in an increase in policies that affected all aspects of immigration. However, it is the most symbolic of Donald Trump’s goals: building a wall between the United States and Mexico that caused the longest government shutdown in American history.
China and the New Geopolitics of Technical Standardization
China is rapidly emerging as a formidable power in the development of technical standards, transforming the international standard-setting landscape and reintroducing an element of geopolitics into what are too often considered as benign, technical processes.
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