Fragile states expose their societies to the risk of meltdown or collapse, endangering the lives of their citizens and leaving them unable to sustain ordinary life. When this happens, famine, violent disorder and economic distress can displace many millions of people, with consequent impacts on surrounding regions. State fragility can also threate…
The way in which these six problems interact has far-reaching consequences for the day-to-day conduct of public affairs, the rights and freedoms of citizens and the legitimacy of the democratic system. The assessment points to the economic vulnerability of the lower middle class, due to the fragmentation of the labor market (formalityinformality, low-high productivity) and the segmentation of …
What ought we do about the bomb? The official answer given by effectively all the world’s states is abolition. To be sure, the current nuclear-armed states are for all intents and purposes resolved to retain and renew their arsenals for the foreseeable future. Disarmament rhetoric has persistently been belied by enormous investments in warheads, missiles, bombers, and submarines. Yet, on the …
Am 7. und 8. Juli 2017 versammelten sich in den Hamburger Messehallen Vertreter*innen der reichsten Länder der Welt für das Treffen der Gruppe der 20. Verschiedene Bündnisse und Initiativen riefen zu Protesten gegen das Treffen auf. Organisiert wurde ein vielfältiges Repertoire an Protest-aktionen, das von einem Gegengipfel und Protestcamps über Performan-ces, …
Criminal justice systems are barometers of social development. This claim, putforward by German criminal law scholars,1alludes to the fact that inherent in thecriminal justice process are conflicting interests between the need to ensure comprehensive fact-finding on the one hand, and the wish to safeguard individual rights,especially those of defendants, on the other hand. In all criminal justi…
For scholars of the Arab world, the state remains an elusive, unsettled, and unsettling presence. Since mandatory and then independent states emerged in the Arab world in the aftermath of World War I, theorizing the Arab state has been a central preoccupation for generations of regional specialists. The gravitational pull of the state is not surprising. As a pr…
The Pacific Islands region has entered a new period of uncertainty precipitated in large part by the emergence of China as a major regional actor as well as the reaction of more established powers to perceived threats to their longstanding influence. In March 2019, in the wake of a flurry of activity on the part of Australia, New Zealand and the United States …
According to legend, the Jade Emperor called all twelve celestial animals to his palace to assign them their place in the zodiac. The Pig, a lazy if intelligent creature, was still in dreamland when the other eleven turned up to claim their places. He ended up last. And so 2019, the eventful Year of the Pig (coincidentally also marked by swine fever and a severe pork supply shor…
This work is the result of research started in 2014, on the processes of urban transformations in Bamako Juba, Nairobi and Abidjan in relation to the pres-ence and security policies of UN missions and international aid. The results of this research highlight an uneven process of territoriality where humanitarian organisations operate.The focus of this work or…
Haruki Akamatsu had not felt the ocean crust heave 10 metres upward. He was not there to see the 6-metre tsunami surge inland, drowning thousands and clawing the earth bare with its retreat. He had, however, clutched the carpet beneath his desk as the twenty-first-floor office in Tokyo swayed sickeningly, thinking the worst was over when the swaying stopped. It was not, b…