Blog archive

kids on the beach
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Studying Governance through Participatory Theatre and Sketch-Making: Dialogical Research with Organized Working Children

By Nadine Benedix – How can we explore the diverse relational engagements of children and youth in global governance processes? Looking specifically at participatory action research methods, Nadine Benedix advances a dialogical approach that emphasizes the collaborative dimension of research in practice. Drawing on experiences with organizations of working children in Senegal, she shows how dialogical contextualization can open up avenues for different knowledge generation practices such as participatory theater performances.

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Back from the Bonn Climate Change Conference. Can we still oppose science and equity?

In this blog, Kari De Pryck reflects on the Bonn Climate Change Conference organized in June 2023. While these intersessional meetings are less known than the Conferences of the Parties (COPs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), they constitute essential sites for the preparatory technical work of the COPs. With discussions about the implementation of the Paris Agreement becoming increasingly politicized, this year’s talks were particularly interesting to take the pulse of the negotiations for the next COP in Dubai (COP28). Disagreements about the conclusions provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were especially tense, revealing the growing divide between Parties over the need to consider equity when implementing climate action.

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Infrastructural Clashes: Induced Scarcity and Governing Refugees through Depletion

By Martina Tazzioli – Asylum seekers stranded in refugee camps in Greece are exposed to multiple infrastructural breakdowns that contribute to the depletion of their lives. In this piece, Martina Tazzioli introduces the concept of “infrastructural clashes” to highlight the apparent clash between high-tech control systems, on the one hand, and, on the other, the failures and scarcity of basic infrastructures in camps – such as electricity, running water, and food. Infrastructural clashes are analyzed not as side effects but rather as constitutive components of modes of governing by debilitating refugees. 

photo of waves
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Epistemic Orders and Global Governance

By Christian Bueger and Annabelle Littoz-Monnet – The authors argue to take note of the fundamental re-organization of knowledge production for global governance. Developing the concept of epistemic orders, they show how epistemic foundations have transformed in three waves. While wave 1 centered on the state, and wave 2 on international organization, wave 3 stands for the centrality of proprietary knowledge production by companies and their foundations. The authors argue that moving to such a macroscopic understanding helps us grasp why and how the problems of global governance come to be identified, delineated, and acted upon.

Image of people carrying hand written signs in a demonstration for climate action
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Lone Wolves, Mobilizers, and Organizers: How Members Matter for Advocacy

By Nina Hall – Digital advocacy organizations like MoveOn in the United States and Campact in Germany are experts at rapid response mobilizing their millions of members. However, there are limits to a mass-mobilizing model. Here I build on my recent book, Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era, alongside the works of Wendy Wong, Hahrie Han, Margaret Levi, and John Ahlquist, to examine how advocacy organizations can use their members to exercise influence.

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A New International Treaty to End Plastic Pollution: From Ambition to Concrete Commitments, Meaningful Action and Effective Governance

By Frederic Bauer and Carolyn Deere Birkbeck – This post reflects on the new Plastic pollution resolution adopted by the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) on 2 March 2022.

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Inequality in global health expertise – and steps toward a pragmatic critique: Advantages of a comparative perspective

Luis Aue discusses the possibility of a more pragmatic critique of expertise. When we think in a comparative manner, he argues, ‘we start to understand that there are different ways in which politics and expertise can interact’.

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Re-establishing congruence: UN peacebuilding in a shifting world order

By Sara Hellmüller – The effectiveness of the UN as the guardian of international peace and security has been questioned in recent years over its failure to bring armed conflicts, such as in Syria or Libya, to a negotiated end. When analyzing these challenges, we need to pay particular attention to structural factors related to changes in world politics.

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Global Experts in Local Contexts: Why Legitimation Strategies Matter?

By Sapna Reheem Shaila – International experts must rely on diverse strategies to legitimise their expert knowledge and its application in particular settings. I make a case as to why we need to pay more attention to such legitimation strategies undertaken by experts in local contexts and how and whether these strategies enable the pursuits of global governance and democratic governance.

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Self-Reflexivity on the Judicial Bench

By Lys Kulamadayil – This post reflects on the appointment of Professor Hilary Charlesworth to the judicial bench of the International Court of Justice. By reviewing some of her work, it concludes that her appointment promises to be a step towards reconciling realism and idealism in the practice of international law.

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When should the United States use hard-hitting sectoral and financial sanctions?

By Erica Moret – On 18 October 2021, the US Treasury Department released its sanctions review, concluding sanctions remain an important policy tool but face important challenges. As part of ongoing feedback supplied by Dr. Erica Moret to the US Government on the topic, this article outlines concrete recommendations about how and when US sanctions should be used.

UN security council
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Why International Organizations Hate Politics: The case of the ILO and UNEP

By Marieke Louis and Lucile Maertens – “We don’t do politics!” is often heard within international organizations (IOs) from international bureaucrats, governmental delegates or civil society representatives engaged in multilateral action. Taking these apolitical claims seriously can unveil the politics of depoliticization within IOs, such as the ILO and UNEP, and sheds new light on the legitimacy of global governance institutions.

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Migration, work and rights: the case for human rights due diligence

By Janelle M. Diller – Migration vulnerability stems from onerous terms of entry, stay, work and life based on migration status defined by law. While affirming broad state discretion, international law requires states to ensure human rights, which involves legal reform, business due diligence, and labour market coordination.

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Proactive Governance and Citizen Engagement

By Nilanjan Raghunath – Social inequalities exacerbated by job losses due to automation and the pandemic can be mitigated by seeking collaborative and inclusive work policies.  This requires proactive governance, a model which includes multiple players providing feedback to create opportunities such as upskilling for people of all ages.  One such example is Singapore, where tripartite consensus plays a significant role in job creation and skills evolution.  Each country should create its own inclusive model.

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The Forum of Young Global Leaders and overlapping fields of power

By Julia Bethwaite – The Forum of Young Global Leaders brings together leaders from different fields across the globe, including acting ministers of state. How does the YGL programme relate to the idea of national representative democracies?

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Third World Analogies and First World Solutions

By Francisco-José Quintana – Third World analogies have long become a favoured resource of U.S. critics of Donald Trump. This essay explores the references to “banana republics” and Latin America in the analysis of the storming of the U.S. capitol and argues that these analogies are normatively, historically, and analytically deficient.

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Informed dissent or misinformed rebellion? Making sense of India’s farmer protests

By Lys Kulamadayil – This post reviews the 2020 agricultural reforms in India from a legal perspective. In doing so, it seeks to make sense of farmers’ adamant opposition to the reforms. It suggests that their protests should be understood as a rejection of food capitalism.

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20 years of Women, Peace and Security: A Call for the Perpetual (Re)Problematization of a Problematic Agenda

By Miriam Engeler & Marissa Fortune – On the 20th anniversary of UNSCR 1325, this piece unpacks feminist critiques of the Women Peace and Security Agenda and argues that applying critical methodologies to studies of peace and security can help diagnose the flaws in WPS implementation and help reclaim the radical foundations that the Agenda was built on.

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A Nobel for the WFP: A non-political Peace Prize for humanitarian multilateralism?

By Kristin Bergtora Sandvik et al – This contribution puts the award in context, showing how food is framed as an instrument of peace. It then focuses on the very political nature of the WFP as a multilateral humanitarian organization. Finally, it discusses one example of the WFP at the operational level: the politics of humanitarian technology.

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Why more inclusive measures are needed to address COVID-19?

By Michèle Audrée Ndedi Batchandji – COVID-19 widens inequalities even within specific sectors, like in Education. Fragile countries, and their most vulnerable populations in particular, have seen their situation deteriorate. Country and context specific solutions to the pandemic should therefore be adopted.

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Capitalism, COVID-19… and then?

By Pablo Martín Méndez – Is the COVID-19 crisis the end of free market capitalism? To answer this question, we don’t necessarily have to look to the future. On the contrary, we could explore the history of the free market ideas.

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Localization of Humanitarian Action: From Grand Bargain to Grand Betrayal

This article assesses the localization workstream under the so-called Grand Bargain of humanitarianism. It highlights the underlying reasons behind lack of progress on localization, which hinge on vested interests and apathy, and their implications for local organisations.

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Quenching the UN’s Data Thirst and Measuring the SDGs: An Impossible Feat?

By Monique J. Beerli – Is data the solution to achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and fulfilling the 17 Global Goals? In this piece, Monique J. Beerli reflects on the practices and politics of measuring the Sustainable Development Goals, drawing insights from a high-level panel convened by the Global Governance Centre in November 2022.

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Injecting Optimism back into the UN Human Rights Regime: The Power of Transnational Lawmaking Coalitions

By Nina Reiners – How can UN institutions ensure a future for human rights in a changing world? Based on her recent book, Nina Reiners positions transnational lawmaking coalitions (TLCs) as key to understanding how UN human rights treaty bodies change and advance international law beyond the state-led adoption of new treaty commitments.

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The War in Ukraine and Institutional Complexity in European Security: Situating the EU’s New Strategic Compass

By Ueli Staeger and Moritz Neubert – The EU’s new security strategy, the Strategic Compass aims to expedite security and defence cooperation in Europe. To do so, it embraces a variable geometry of cooperation and a pragmatic approach to institutional overlap. But can the EU deliver on these ambitious goals? Connected to broader debates on multilateral decision-making, modalities of international cooperation, and institutional complexity, this blog post assesses the potential merits and pitfalls of the Strategic Compass.