Cornelius Adebahr reports on how the next generation of leaders view the the future of global governance in a world where consensus-based, technocratic rulemaking can no longer be considered the norm.

Every year in August, the Bucerius Summer School invites young professionals from all over the world to Hamburg to discuss the most urgent global issues of the day. In my intervention this year, I asked the assembled 50+ bright minds to step back and reflect on how one should think about rebuilding global governance. Many worthy papers from governments and think tanks on the reform of multilateral institutions have been published over the past 20 to 30 years, but to little avail. (I happen to be guilty by association, most recently through a co-authored paper on “Making Multilateralism Matter”.) Yet, it is time to question some fundamentals.

As I see it today, the issue is not one of finding the right (technocratic) solution, but of starting with the right assumptions. And it appears that global governance isn’t so different from domestic politics as it is often made to be. The “rules-based international order”, as some would call it, isn’t a separate system outside of national politics but very much intertwined with the latter. And it isn’t just under attack from autocratic and nationalist governments but, more fundamentally, the system itself that has proved to be increasingly dysfunctional over the past years. (Where exactly was that order when the pandemic hit societies worldwide?)

This means that, when discussing global governance and a possible reform of its institutions, we need to look at the same mechanisms as we do on internal issues: Power, politics, and people.

Obviously, the past two decades have seen a major shift in global power relations away from the United States’ unipolar moment after the end of the Cold War. However, which category of power is most decisive? Military or economic? The military appears increasingly ambiguous as a marker, especially when used in ‘faraway places of which we know nothing’ (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq – you name it). Economically, a fundamental shift towards Asia is recognizable, reversing a Westward trend that had lasted from around 1600 to the 1950s. Yet, „Asia“ is neither a block, nor all about China, as any closer look reveals. Also, recent systemic shocks – the pandemic, inflation, the climate emergency – have underlined gross economic inequities impacting on this trajectory.

More importantly, the politics of global governance means that consensus-based, technocratic rulemaking can no longer be considered the norm. In a geopolitical and ideological confrontation, „global governance“ means different things to different people: For (Western) academics and some policymakers, it may be an intricate web of relations built across institutions; for hard-nosed politicians from any country, it means the ruthless pursuit of national interest. That said, global institutions are not going to go away soon or easily, nor is there (currently) any room for reform. If, in domestic politics, “nothing is more permanent than the temporary”, then it seems that states are equally loth to replace the international system they have with something that is as of yet undefined. Short of a systemic collapse, therefore, the most that politics will allow are tweaks to the machinery, not its replacement.

Lastly, what is the role of the people? In a world of great power rivalry, focusing on the people – one’s own, but also those in other countries – can be a tool of smart power. The past three decades have seen a fundamental shift from the state-led Westphalian order to a citizen-driven one. From the notion of human security of the 1990s and the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda of the 2000s to the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2010s and now Feminist Foreign Policy most recently – a string of human-centered policies has come to the fore. Especially when government-to-government relations have turned sour, it is wise to devise policies and programs that tangibly improve the situation of a broad swath of people – and publicize their actual effects. While the world is far from being a democracy, the standing of one country in another’s public opinion does matter for what it can achieve vis-à-vis the respective government.

Coming back to the question of reform, governments alone cannot redesign the global system – as much as they cannot, except for very exceptional cases, change a domestic political system. Instead, citizens – via civil society, businesses, unions, academia, and the like – need to be part of the discussion. Because whatever (new or altered) order should emerge from the current period, it needs to have a compelling and inclusive narrative that resonates with a global public to be convincing in a sufficiently high number of countries.

Photo by Duc Anh Nguyen

Duncan Green on whether the UK will seek to regain its lost legitimacy for thought leadership on aid.

So, apologies for the anglo-centrism and all that, but the recent series of crystal ball blogs on the future of UK Aid under (as seems likely) an incoming Labour Government has been getting lots of good comments. Here’s Andy Sumner parts one and two, and Tom Wingfield’s response. This week, Labour’s Shadow Cabinet Minister for International Development, Lisa Nandy (right), spoke at the ODI think tank (her first major speech since she first took on the role).  

Overall impression? She is very relatable, sensible, smart, listens to questions and then (shock!) largely tries to answer them. The questions were good too, reviving my faith in the UK dev cluster of academics, thinktanks and NGOs, which has taken quite a battering since the destruction of DFID. More on that later.

Some headlines and quotes from her initial presentation:

Any new government will have to mend the damage to its reputation and antagonism between EU and the South over human rights, Gaza and perceived double standards. She’s been to the Middle East a few times, and is a former Chair of Labour Friends of Palestine, and has been struck by the anger over European inaction on Gaza. That will have to involve the whole of government, not just the aid bit. For that you need a simple overall narrative – aka a ‘clear direction of travel’.

‘This is not 1997’. Her slogan for a future Labour government is ‘a world free from poverty on a liveable planet’, with a focus on poverty, climate and debt.

Big emphasis on the how, not just the what – ‘based on one word – respect’. Respect for partners, for the voices of those on the ground, including an ‘asset-based approach’ that focusses on people’s strengths, not what, in outsiders’ views, is missing. ‘People know better than we do.’

The immediate task is spending development money on development, not letting it be raided by other departments for things like refugee and asylum-seeker costs in the UK.

Words matter. The abolition of DFID was ‘not a merger, just mindless vandalism’. She was very critical of NGO ‘poverty porn’ fundraising and hates the term ‘development superpower’.

‘The thing people most miss from the UK is not money, but thought leadership. Interesting. Prior to the mindless vandalism, I argued that there was a strong cluster of organizations doing just that in the UK, between universities, thinktanks and NGOs and their partners around the world. We need a strategy for reviving that, which is not just about lobbying on our specific agenda points, but thinking more broadly about how to recreate that network solidity in pursuit of a genuinely progressive agenda.

Which brings me to my question to her, which was about institution building. Most of the discussion was understandably on policies and actions, but they can be just as easily overturned when Labour lose power (as they will, eventually). What about creating institutions that could outlive a future Labour government? Thinking back to the 1997 Labour landslide, I identified the creation of DFID, the leading role in agreeing the Millennium Development Goals and subsequently, the legislation on 0.7% (not under Labour) as 3 examples of institutional reforms that made progress ‘sticky’ and harder to reverse.

On the future institutional shape of aid under Labour, her response was a guarded ‘watch this space’. But more interestingly, she contrasted those institutional reforms that were largely overturned after Labour lost power in 2010, like the Sure Start early years childcare network, to stickier innovations like the introduction of the minimum wage and civil partnerships, which became part of the fabric of UK society. Her argument was that the difference was ‘winning the argument with the public’ on the latter, although on reflection, I wondered if it was also that Sure Start entailed costs to the Treasury, unlike the others.

As for what was missing from the speech (always the hardest part to identify), I was struck that she barely mentioned inequality, except in relation to women and girls. We were back to ending world poverty, a la 1997, but with added climate change. No mention of wealth taxes or other redistributive ideas. And although she had lots of warm words about civil society organizations on the ground, and has clearly met and been inspired by a number of these, she was much more cautious about INGOs, who were largely referenced in relation to their use of stereotyped fundraising imagery. INGOs clearly have some bridges to (re)build there.

I’d be very interested in other people’s reflections on the event – please chip in.

And here’s the full video and transcript, c/o ODI.

This first appeared on From Poverty to Power.

Patricia J. Sohn offers an alternative perspective on Trump's international engagements. 

I grew up decidedly on the Left. I have been so disgusted by local and national corruption in recent years that I may register Republican for the next major election. I know, I know. How could I think of such a thing? I am the poster-child for multicultural, mixed-race America – that is, what most of us are, really, when we are not faking it. By faking it, of course, I mean, faking that we belong, individually, to only one community – and that community is an important and powerful community in some way. Eschewing the rest. Circling the wagons. And shooting outward if anyone challenges our little communal power center, or our little ideas about our own identity. After all, we all know that Trump is a racist. A xenophobe. A wife-beater – wait, No. No one has said that about him yet. They have just called him a sexist, bigoted meany, bully, jerk, and all other things untoward and inappropriate.

Woah.  Are we talking about a U.S. President?  When I was growing up, the rule was – you salute the flag, say the Pledge of Allegiance, and you stand behind even that President whose policies you do not like.  Perhaps I was too much raised by Leave It To Beaver, out in the rural countryside of Alaska, Vermont, and then Florida, mixed, as it was, with a bit of Paris, London, Florence, Granada, Leningrad, and Hispaniola.  Perhaps I am just too naïve to understand the necessity of such things as a concerted, Pravda–esque media assault on Trump, his entire family, and his entire entourage.  Maybe I just don’t get it.

So, as a multi-racial person, how can I consider moving to “the other side”?  Here is how I see it. First, I flat out do not believe that Trump is a racist, nor a xenophobe, nor even a sexist.  He is married to an immigrant.  He happily and wholeheartedly supports his daughter, who converted to Judaism, apparently for her husband.  For a lot of people who I know, conversion can be a gut-wrenching thing.  I have seen parents respond to it abysmally.  Trump appears to have no such quandaries or hesitation in loving and supporting his own flesh and blood.  Moreover, Trump has a long history of hiring immigrants and people of color.  He is tremendously supportive of his wife and daughters – and even of his ex-wives.  And they are all tremendously supportive of him.  This is to say nothing of his support of his sons and sons-in-law.  All of this is hard to come by in this day and age.  I take high note of it.

Ex-wives?  Get over it.  So, he has ex-wives.  It is a brand-new era.  He has what looks like an extraordinarily well-functioning and supportive blended family.  Trump himself is a poster-child for multiculturalism.  So, why the scary rhetoric of the election cycle?  Because it worked.  It horrified the sensibilities of Democrats and took their eyes away from his actual victories.  And it brought glee to the hearts of those in the U.S. who are sick of the establishment – I will call it the Aristocracy – of the Eastern Seaboard (e.g., the Left).

How does the saying go?  Dress an unintelligent person in Chanel, you still have an unintelligent person.  Dress an effective, world-renowned businessman in tripe, you still have an effective, world-renowned business man.  Something like that.

Second, the Left lost great pluralities – if not the majority – of the population with invasive, expansionist policies that put state and national-level bureaucrats in the pockets, bedrooms, families, and otherwise in the personal lives of American citizens.  This trend stands fundamentally against the principles that most U.S. citizens believe the country represents.  Influenced by European soft-socialism (some of which has gone to the extreme of supporting euthanasia in some medical cases), the U.S. has seen an expansion of the administrative apparatus of state and national-level government agencies, as well as a trend toward the judiciary acting as an administrative agency.  The latter is a tell-tale sign of authoritarianism.  The Left lost more than it thinks it did in November 2016.

Third, meanwhile, the Left within the Media caricatures itself.  CNN has accused the standing U.S. President of nothing short of desiring after incest; and, it is apparently a horrific guffaw for the U.S. President to compliment France President Macron’s wife on her athletic physique.  However, it is just fine for ABC to wax eloquent about First Lady Melania and First Lady Macron’s high fashion sense.  Believe it or not, there are places where women enjoy being complimented on their physique – within limits, of course (and certainly by my age!).  It is better to read it as a debonair, genteel and gracious comment, standing as he was next to his statuesque super-model wife.  Have some taste.  Really.  Score one for Trump on multicultural awareness and gender sensitivity.  Perhaps the State Department even briefed him on such norms before his arrival.  You think??

The media drones on about Russia.  Russia??  Really?  The only thing with teeth happening in regard to Russia is my old favorite, the New York Times, in its unilateral lifting of Russia back into the arena of world politics.  Score one for Putin!  He must be one very happy innocent bystander to the current U.S. madness, which verges on – no, well, it is solidly situated in – pathology.

Fourth, this drive in the Media-Left appears to come directly from – let us call it “coordination with” the Democratic Party.  It really is time for the Democrats to look at themselves in the mirror.  Vanity, thy name is corruption.

The U.S. works with Russia regularly on a range of issues.  It interacts to at least some extent with enemy states such as Iran in coordinating on questions such as Syria, negotiating on nuclear issues, etc.  The few meetings or conversations noted in the case of Trump appear to be not significant of anything at all, whereas dealings on the other side drip like compost.  Hypocrisy prevails on the Democratic side of the aisle, much to my sadness as a now past devotée.

Analytical skills, anybody?  Clearly, in this case, ideology is all that matters.  Score one for me.  I have been saying that ideas supersede rationality in politics for years!  (Not necessarily good ideas, I should now add.)

And, fifth, Trump emerges a great internationalist.  Trump has made three international visits to nine countries, including a striking and unusual representation of non-NATO, non-Anglo, non-Western, and even non-Christian countries by comparison with every other President on record by this time in their presidency.  I would bet money that his international visits have been multiculturalin this way more than any other president considerably beyond their first six months in first term in office.  And, yet, a perusal of the press shows many stories up through the end of April 2017 on Trump’s lack of international visits, and almost no comparative stories on the striking number and quality of his international visits since then.  Go figure.

Patricia J. Sohn is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida, Gainesville. this post first appeared on:

Photo Credit: John LeGear Via Flcikr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

To prepare it to address pressing global challenges, Susanne Salz suggests the United Nations should be turned into the ‘United Actors’, which would include certain non-state actors alongside the current UN Member States.

The United Nations (UN) is a picture of the world 70 years ago and is no longer suitable for or representative of current global realities. To deliver on the original vision of its founders and address urgent global challenges, such as climate change, reform of the UN is needed. Such UN reforms need to go deeper than those that have already been discussed, like the inclusion of more Member States in arguably the most powerful UN body – the Security Council. While most people recognize this reform as useful and appropriate, it has been indefinitely postponed because no agreement on it could be reached. In this age of unprecedented global challenges we need better global governance. The United Nations should be turned into the United Actors, which would include certain non-state actors alongside the current UN Member States. If reform continues to elude the UN, innovative actors of global diplomacy should move ahead and create parallel structures which can demonstrate their worth to the world in terms of enhanced global consultation and more coordinated action.

It has been over two decades since the Cold War ended, and yet we lack a consensual description of the current global order. There is no simple explanation to make sense of the current complex world. The roles and relative power of nation states have not only shifted between each other – the relative decline of Russia, the rise of China, India and Brazil – but also between state- and non-state actors. Notably, three groups of non-state actors play an important role in today’s globalized world and should be included in global governance in a way that befits their influence. They are:

• Civil Society Organizations (CSOs)
• Local Government Organizations (LGOs)
• Private sector

The long list of CSOs which do important global work includes organizations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam, Consumers International and a number of foundations worldwide. The eventual role and impact of these organizations were not obvious 70 years ago but are now highly relevant to the UN’s original vision to address urgent global challenges. When one thinks of tackling corruption, the first organization that comes to mind is not any country or UN agency, but rather Transparency International. During the recent Ebola crises, organizations such as Doctors Without Borders worked hand in hand with the World Health Organization to tackle the outbreak. Attention to environmental threats has been increased in part due to Greenpeace activism. Considering how easily such examples come to mind, CSOs should be given a place at the global governance table in line with their important global roles.

Take the example of climate change and sustainability. Cities are dealing on a daily basis with issues of water and energy provision, building standards, waste management, transport and much more. The cumulative effect these actions have on global carbon emissions and on climate change is staggering. Cities of varying sizes from around the world have joined together in LGOs such as ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. C40 cities represent 21% of world GDP and are undertaking 1056 actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change as of July 2015. 20% of the world's urban population lives in ICLEI member cities, which have been cooperating for 25 years to become more sustainable and advocate for the role of cities at UN conferences. In order to better integrate these efforts and tap the transformative potential of cities, LGOs should be more fully included at the global governance table.

Since the private sector drives local and national economies as well as the global economy, companies’ decisions have a significant impact that reach beyond the economy affecting societal and environmental well-being. Going beyond Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), companies are increasingly attempting – and succeeding – in maximizing not only their shareholder value but also their broader societal and stakeholder value. The choices companies make have a profound impact on us and our environment. Increasingly, companies are realizing this and making choices that serve a broader set of goals. In order to recognize this role, encourage this responsible behavior and increase coordination with other actors, companies, too, deserve to have a real say in global governance.

This inclusion of non-state actors would not be built from zero. In current UN settings such as climate change and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) negotiations, some non-national-governments actors are given a very minor role. Nine so-called “Major Groups” are officially recognized by the UN system: Women, Children and Youth, Indigenous Peoples, Non-Governmental Organizations, Local Authorities, Workers and Trade Unions, Business and Industry, Scientific and Technological Community as well as Farmers (for details see https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/majorgroups).

These groups have their worth, but have you ever heard of these exact nine groupings outside of the “Major Groups” system? Or have you, for that matter, heard the term “Major Groups”? Having been the UN voice for cities for several years (or rather a “Local Authority Major Group Organizing Partner” in UN speak), I learned from experience that while well-intended, the current UN Major Group structure has some major flaws. The mechanism for coordination within each group is not transparent or efficient enough. More importantly, how and when each group is allowed to speak is not sufficient. Each group is allowed one or two minutes to present its case. These meetings are often timed to coincide with coffee breaks or the end of the day when delegates are shuffling out of the room. This type of atmosphere is not conducive to the participation and action needed. A real inclusion and a real say for CSOs, LGOs and the private sector would be much better for the world and for non-state actors.

The question is whether we will find a meaningful way to include CSOs, LGOs and the private sector within current UN structures, for example by forming a permanent, high-level Advisory Body to the UN General Assembly. If not, the national governments, CSOs, LGOs and businesses who are willing to jointly innovate global governance solutions should go ahead and create a new, parallel structure. They could start with a large one off-conference, the Founding Meeting of the United Actors and then decide on future mechanisms and meetings.

With CSOs, LGOs and the private sector at the table, global issues such as climate change can be tackled much more effectively than by national governments alone. It is high time that we move from the United Nations towards the United Actors by including these three groups in a way that befits both them and the global community.

Picture the UN as an exhausted grandmother who is unable to solely handle all of her extended family’s affairs... It’s time for this grandmother to hand the reins over to a younger, more energetic successor. At 70, the time has come for the United Nations to do so with the United Actors.

Susanne Salz is presently learning Mandarin in Beijing with a full scholarship. She is a Global Governance Futures 2025 alumni and previously worked as Project Manager at the non-profit ‘Think and Do Tank’ Collaborating Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production and as Head of the Secretary General’s Office at ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability amongst other positions. She holds a master’s degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Susanne is also a member of the Global Diplomacy Lab.

Photo credit: ksyz / Foter / CC BY-SA

Brad L. Brasseur explores the current problems in creating good education for the poor in developing nations and looks at some of the solutions.

The United Nations recently claimed that the Millennium Development Goal that focused on primary education increased global enrolment from 83% to 91%. Despite these gains, today it is estimated that 124 million children do not attend school and 757 million adults are illiterate.

The nearly one billion people without a proper education is distressing as a good education is a proven foundation for alleviating poverty, sustainable economic progress, healthier lifestyle and enhanced social development. Inexplicably, the international community continues to fail the global poor by not creating access to legitimate education programs that allow them to conquer poverty.

The UN’s Millennium Development Goal (MDGs) on education may have achieved some progress but overall it was ineffective as it concentrated more on the quantity of children attending classes rather than the quality of education at every age group.

Substandard education was highlighted in an UNESCO report that stated over 29 million children dropped out of school in Sub-Sahara Africa each year. The reason can be attributed to the children not receiving a high level of education as in most cases classroom sizes are too big and teachers are unpaid, inexperienced or have no training.

As a result, of the poor quality of education, an uneducated parent is more focused on their short-term needs and neglects the long-term benefits of education and thus pulls their children out of school to work. This can be seen as a result of the UN not making great gains in improving adult education. Since the parents have not personally experienced education improving their quality of life, they miss the advantages for their children and thus remain trapped in the cycle of poverty.

Other education problems include; ineffective, outdated, or irrelevant curriculum that does not teach students the most essential skills for success where they live. Plus, many children have the impossible task of concentrating without having the correct nutrition to properly think as schools lack funding for food programs. Such food programs can also be an added incentive for parents to enroll their children, as they will receive free food.

Fixing Education in the Developing World

In September 2015, the UN announced that one of the new Sustainable Development Goals (the new MDGs) would be improving the ‘Quality’ of global education. This time around the new goal is more broadly focused on all levels of education and aims to eliminate gender and wealth inequalities.

While this is a step in the right direction, ultimately achieving quality education, will involve increased investment in infrastructure, teacher training, curriculum development, classroom materials, technology, food programs and lowering schools fees. Most importantly the ultimate goal should be ensuring any program is focused on learning and not just attendance.

Today no universal education model will work for every country, as each education system must be adapted to the local and cultural dynamics that exist in every unique location. This means that national governments should give local leaders, parents and teachers greater educational autonomy, including increased input in setting the curriculum in their region.

More emphasis needs to be put on teaching skills that are applicable for obtaining jobs in each specific region. For example, a place like Palawan Island in the Philippines, which was voted the most beautiful island in the world but is also one of its poorest regions in the country, should focus more on tourism skillsets, such as learning languages. Mineral rich countries like Peru or the Democratic Republic of the Congo should put more value into teaching skills aimed at securing legitimate jobs in industries by developing better math, science or geography programs that can produce engineers or geologists (one of Peru’s highest paid professions).

Education Innovations Can Be part of the Solution

There is hope for improving global education as successful innovative ideas are being used by many organizations, such as One Laptop per Child, who have developed and distributed millions of durable, economical, low powered laptops that allows rural children to digitally access updated textbooks, classes and information.

Also, in isolated rural areas Internet problems have been solved by Alphabet’s Loon project (Google’s holding company) as they have developed technology that can supply Wi-Fi access to isolated rural areas by launching balloons into the sky. In fact, India is attempting such a project to combat their low Internet user rate and fight their weak education level.

Plus, Bangladeshi based NGO BRAC, has been successfully providing quality education to the poor with their non-formal primary education program, which has a dropout out rate of less than 5%. In addition they have a thriving adult education program that puts emphasis on women by teaching them to read, write, and share their resources so they can successfully run businesses.

Another great innovator is The Economist 2015 innovation award winner Bridge International, who has developed a low cost model for building nurseries and primary schools that delivers high quality education in East Africa.

These innovations can advance global education but need to be combined with increased global investment into the education sector. Corruption and the lack of knowledge of the importance of education means that governments are not investing enough money into their education sector and sometimes even spend more on their military.

Moving Forward

Developed countries can also take some of the blame as Kevin Watkins from Overseas Development Initiative has previously stated that only two percent of yearly international global aid given to developing countries is invested into education. To combat this, countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia and EU countries must put stricter conditions on their aid and make sure that it is invested effectively in the education sectors of developing countries.

Obviously, education is not the only solution to achieve sustainable human and economic development, but it is undoubtedly the foundation for true progress. In the next decades, with the help of increased investment and utilizing advances in technology, we have a great opportunity to give the world’s poor a quality education and with it the tools to alleviate poverty.

We can use South Korea as an example, as in the 1960s, they were a poor country with a horrendous education system and today they have transformed into an economic powerhouse by having one of the best education systems in the world.

Brad L. Brasseur is a Canadian international development specialist who has traveled to over 80 countries in the world, while working in several NGOs, including extended time on education programs in Peru and Ukraine. You can follow him on twitter at: @brbrasseur.

Karl Muth lays out a plan for tackling kleptocracy.

The riches of Africa have been plundered, and are being plundered. One can argue about whether the kleptocrats on the continent are simply doing what anyone would do in their positions or whether they started from the beginning as thieves. The question of motive is less and less relevant each year, as proving up the mens rea for embezzlement on this scale (billions of dollars in Mr. Mugabe’s case?) is hardly the issue.

But recent restrictions (post-Ukraine) on Mr. Putin’s associates are unlikely to punish anyone. The people named are not the oligarchs who own much of Chelsea and South Kensington in London or much of the Upper East Side in New York City. They are not the ones whose entourages and circles of mistresses require mid-sized private jets. They are not the ones whose yachts can be seen from the beaches of St. Barth’s and Antigua.

These restrictions will do little to set back the plutocratic kleptocracy that is Russia. But new restrictions might well deal a blow to the African kleptocrats. And these restrictions, which I envision here, would take the scope of North Korean restrictions and overlay them on top of the strategic targeting of the Russian restrictions. I would focus on three key areas: credit ratings, cash mobility, and accounts availability.

First, I would attribute the credit ratings of the home country of these kleptocrats (many of the leaders of heavily-indebted poor countries, so-called HIPC’s, don’t have bad credit ratings and many carry elite credit cards or other trinkets of the global ruling class) to the individuals. Sure, the fact that Uganda is heavily in debt doesn’t mean President Museveni is missing payments on his AMEX Centurion card. But credit ratings are powerful things.

By denying good credit to these people – and hence not allowing them to profit from mismanaging their countries’ finances while maintaining their own personal accounts – we disallow everything from credit cards to mortgages to Netjets memberships. This is important, as it vastly raises the cost for these kleptocrats to maintain their lifestyles by raising their cost of capital. It also curtails the gains in their investment accounts by disallowing them anything but ordinary (fully collateralised) margin loans.

Second, I would restrict the cash mobility of these people and their henchmen. Make it illegal for any developed-world banking institution (any institution with a branch or presence in an FDIC-regulated jurisdiction) to accept deposits or transactions involving notes, bearer bonds, or negotiable instruments created by these countries. Creating extremely large-denomination bearer bonds, as Zimbabwe did, is a classic tool used by kelptocrats to tax (inflation is a tax) the population for their own gain.

By destroying the cash mobility of local currencies, the value of hard currency in these countries is increased. The hard currency premium would be initially slight, but would put increased pressure on African kleptocrats. Some, in the resource-rich countries, have had opportunities to hoard at least millions – if not tens of millions – in hard currency. But these pools of capital are finite, and have low returns over time – especially for men who are planning for dynastic wealth that needs to last generations.

Third, I would make accounts vulnerable to seizure with criminal penalties and bounties for straw men. This creates uncertainty around the developed world banking system for developing-world kleptocrats and prevents wives, mistresses, and nephews from opening accounts that are functionally under the control of the kleptocrat. I would give a bounty of 20% to any investment banker, fund manager, or bank employee who identifies kleptocrat accounts; giving two million dollars to a banker handling ten million dollars in stolen funds is more than enough to destroy any loyalty.

Bounties work well and quickly dissolve the loyalty between the kleptocrat and service providers, accomplices, and others. Most African kleptocrats, no matter how powerful, still do not have first-tier civilian passports (even the citizenship-for-sale schemes in Austria and proposed in Malta and Gibraltar are not popular among African kleptocrats, oddly) and most banks do not allow accounts to be opened with diplomatic credentials alone. While they may handsomely reward members of their circles (or their countries’ diasporas) with cash or cars or jobs or women, these reward schemes can easily be “outbid” and betrayal can be purchased.

Through this three-pronged approach, kleptocracy and macroembezzlement would not be stopped, but the lifestyles of the perpetrators would be somewhat more complex. The most effective way to injure or inconvenience a thief is to harm his trust in others (and the trust others place in him). Whether the relationship is with a fence or a pawn shop or a Swiss bank, trust is fragile and can be sabotaged easily; it’s a shame the developed world has done so little to act in its role as the saboteur. Without trust (which is what credit ratings are, for instance – a quantification of trust), the thief cannot enjoy the spoils of his thievery. And without enjoyment of the spoils, there is less reason to steal in the first instance.

Roland Benedikter argues that UNESCO's Futures Literacy approach is key to ensuring global policies are appropriate for and taken up by local communities. 

UNESCO is the educational, scientific and cultural organization of the United Nations. Its mission is to unite humanity through shared ideas – and by the joint work on those ideas. The goal is to develop common global policies that help all people on the planet.

To this end, for several years UNESCO has developed as one of its centerpieces the “Futures Literacy” approach. Futures Literacy is about the question: How can we overcome the poverty of imagination by the means of “horizontal”, participatory and equality-based communication processes to develop better policies?

To answer this question, Futures Literacy builds on the organization of futures dialogues between people of all ages, professions, genders, classes and social, ethnic and cultural affiliations. The dialogue is organized territorially within and across nations. It is intended to open up new option for participation in socially constructed futures in schools, universities and civil society – and thus to allow these futures to develop and mature together as an open social project. Politicians and citizens alike can be inspired by these processes for innovation design approaches. Employees and managers from a wide range of organizations and sectors – from the skilled trades to banking, finance, business and technology – can be trained in “futures readiness,” as recommended by the United Nations as the new transversal basic skill to master current and upcoming crises. Futures Literacy takes dealing with possible futures to a new level, as it is about “learning a new skill for deep transformation”. This strengthens the resilience and self-renewal capacity of people and organizations for times of both prosperity and crisis. It allows a diversity of ideas to sprout; makes existing ideas clearer; aligns different expectations, hopes and concerns; and is a project of joy in the panhuman spirit of UNESCO. Here, “future” is understood not primarily as a desired or projected place or space, but as a primordial human capacity accessible to every human being. It is not somewhere far away, but here and now in the existing human beings themselves.

Because of all this, UNESCO Futures Literacy is recommended by the UN as an integrative education, training and policy approach for all societal fields, and in particular to policy-makers. Applied broadly across social sectors, it can bring about change in the sign of improvement – including in people’s feelings and sense of belonging. Being included in a Futures Literacy dialogue, people feel involved, and politics achieves a broader scope. Futures Literacy also serves as a catalyst for inter- and trans-disciplinarity in the social sciences; as a basis for regional development (including economics, law, politics and the educational sector); and for the integration of strategic approaches, including territories’ sustainability and resilience strategies. Futures Literacy Design becomes important here. According to UNESCO, thinking about the future – and learning how to think about it – is an educational task in the first place that should be introduced at all levels. To achieve this, UNESCO Futures Literacy explicitly combines theory (“Futures Literacy”, short: FL) with inclusive work on the ground and by the means of practices of “real world laboratories” (“Futures Literacy Laboratories”, short: FLL). In this way, Futures Literacy is intended to serve as a bridge between science and practice and between policy-makers and citizens, managers and employees.

As the Futures Literacy Summit 2020 exemplarily pointed out, the basic idea of Futures Literacy is that there is not one future, but many futures. These exist simultaneously side by side and interact with each other in a constant interplay between the people who carry them. Moreover, they all change with the passage of time. Therefore, it is necessary to consider them in their both synchronic and diachronic diversity – and to integrate them, which requires mediation and dialogue. This dialogue should not only take place for a certain period of time, but basically all the time, and it should be organized by societies as a constant work-in-progress since it is an open and never-ending process. UNESCO is therefore not so much concerned with “future education”" (singular), but rather with “futures education” (plural). Importantly, this future education should not only take place “from top to bottom”, but also “bottom up”, ie. reciprocally and transversally. It is thus not only an individual human process of development, but also a social process.

The goal of this process is easy to tell. Futures Literacy as a new basic human capacity should make it possible to work better with those futures which play an essential identity- and reality-forming role in individuals as well as in communities. It should make people more aware of the role of futures and allow them to make better use of these as consciousness-forming building blocks through community reappraisal and renewal. This involves images and feelings, thought and action in equal measure. Special attention is given to “teach the teacher”, i.e. to the training of teachers, stimulators, leaders and multipliers. As the main framework for this, the UNESCO Strategy 2022-29 is concerned with gender, the Global South and, in particular, with the youth, which, according to the UN, will play a crucial role in the post-Covid 19 phase of transnational and global development. To inspire, reduce uncertainty and provide courage the task is to train the new generations in futures knowledge, and even more in futures preparedness. This is a skill that, given the ever-shorter half-lives of skills and technologies in our time, must become a fundamental cross-cutting capacity – and thus also a school subject as part of social and participatory education.

All of this should be accomplished according to a few guiding principles. In them, the spirit and goals of this initiative are nicely summarized in a short form and are easy to remember. It is first the UNESCO motto: “Building peace in the minds of men and women”. And it is, then, the three “Futures Literacy” slogans in particular: “Overcoming the Poverty of Imagination,” “Building Learning Futures,” and “Democratizing People’s Images of the Future.” Together, these four slogans describe a grand and inspiring task.

The formal foundations of UNESCO’s Futures Literacy are found in UNESCO’s 2022-29 Strategy, and in the strategy for the UN Decade 2030, on which the achievement of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) depends. But Futures Literacy is also related to the overall UN vision for the same period, as presented by UN Secretary-General António Guterres in two speeches on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the United Nations in 2020, where he sketched a comprehensive future of humanity. Together with other UN sub-strategies, the image of a desirable future is to gradually appear by means of futures education – a “futures nod” that is not “made only from above” but is also actively shaped “from below”, ie. by as many people as possible and shared in feeling, thinking and wanting in concrete life environments.

In essence, UNESCO’s future education is based on three core methodological approaches in dealing with futures. These are

1. planning ahead (“Forecast”);

2. looking to future scenarios (“foresight”); and

3. anticipating futures in the present (“anticipation”).

These three approaches address different levels of expectation and reality. They use different, complementary methods.

1. Forecast. Governments, diplomats, public officials, and business leaders usually operate in criteria of “planning ahead”: i.e., planning for 4-5-year terms in office in the short term, with a high degree of precision in details and particulars.

2. Foresight. In contrast, beyond-tenure strategy advisory bodies such as the “Future Circle” (Zukunftskreis) for the German federal government, which is supposed to anticipate the society of the future for Germany, operate in terms of “looking ahead”: that is, drafting possible and probable scenarios in the medium- to long-term perspective of 10-30 years.

3. Anticipation. UNESCO adds to this the nascent discipline of “anticipation”. Anticipation is the work with possible futures in the present. Here, individual and community expectations of the future in the macro-perspective of 30-50 years are confronted with each other in conversation and concretized in options for awareness and action here and now, ie. in the present. This creates an atmosphere of readiness and inspiration. The people concerned become more awake, attentive, flexible, and joyful. They acquire an array of futures, instead of concentrating only on one while neglecting others.

UNESCO’s goal is bringing these approaches together. This goal is connected to the emergence of a first veritable “glocal” future consciousness of a population in a particular and concrete – and for a particular and concrete – territory, but in global exchange and in cross-language, cross-generational, cross-social and cross-cultural stimulation.

To this end, UNESCO has developed sophisticated theoretical foundations and a unique methodology. It includes the broad application of “Futures Literacy Laboratories” (FLL) for civil society or for individual groups by means of an adapted “real world laboratory” approach on site. This can happen in the village or in the city, in public or private institutions. A variety of different formats and events for large and small groups are conceivable. The only important thing is that the UNESCO approach is only called so if it is also applied exactly according to its rules. There are many methods of “working with futures” nowadays, and most if not all of them are of great value. But there is only one UNESCO “Futures Literacy” approach.

If we summarize all this and look at the options: what can the UNESCO futures education approach bring to global policy? Can it help to better implement the fundamental tool of anticipation for fostering and shaping forward-oriented policies? Can it better connect the periphery and the center of discourses and narratives? Can it motivate the younger generations to participate more actively in policy life? Can it maybe even... just be fun, provide for conversations and bring people together both in their ideas and hearts, thus strengthening the contextual politics of policy-making? Can it get generations and genders, leaders and employees thinking and talking together about the essence of what is needed? As diverse these paths are, they all converge in the need for future(s).

Conclusion? The UNESCO “Futures Literacy” approach incorporates both traditional futures research, transformation research and sustainability research thus inspiring global policy by searching for syntheses in a strategic direction of vision. While traditional futures research and futures education are usually about the development and application of “tools”, UNESCO’s “Futures Literacy” is about understanding futures as a personal and collective human capacity. To this end, UNESCO includes the mentality aspect, both individually and collectively. This has to do with personal maturation processes as well as with the organization of processes of collective intelligence, as recommended today by brain research and cybernetics.

With the upgrading of the future to a human ability, a grand task of humanity in times of re-globalization is described. Because networking is so important in our fast-moving times, a network of UNESCO/UNITWIN “Futures Literacy Chairs” is emerging world-wide. These are “chairs” at research and teaching institutions that investigate, theorize and practice Futures Literacy. Their activities are intended to reflect the global spirit of UNESCO, to take it up locally, to apply it in a “glocal” perspective and to constantly develop it together with people in their practical living environments – in all liveliness and diversity and in the meeting space between imagination and policy.

In the end, the UNESCO “Futures Literacy” approach is concerned with reforming global policy by means of a “re-globalization” process that today opens up a new field of research and teaching. One of the aspects of this field is exactly “glocalization”. It involves adapting global policies more precisely to specific territories, in other words: to “contextualizing” them so that they have less negative and more positive effects that are better suited to the needs of local populations. “Re-globalization” and “glocalization” are to be transformed from slogans into concrete abilities, activities and practices of global policy. Global policy can benefit from futures education – especially from one that, among many other effects, features a community-building effect.

Roland Benedikter is Co-Head of the Center for Advanced Studies of Eurac Research Bozen-Bolzano, Italy, and Research Professor of Multidisciplinary Political Analysis in residence at the Willy Brandt Centre of the University of Wroclaw, Poland. Homepage / Contact: roland.benedikter@eurac.edu.  

C.J. Polychroniou looks back at the October Revolution and its ramifications.

Exactly one hundred years ago today, in the evening of October 25, 1917, the Winter Palace in Petrograd (today's St Petersburg) was stormed. This event marked the beginning of the Great October Revolution, one of the most significant political events of the twentieth century that shaped the course of history for decades ahead.

Leading up to the events of October 25 was another revolution in late February 1917, which brought to power a group of leaders from bourgeois political parties that formed a provisional government headed initially by Georgy Lvov, a liberal reformer, and then by Aleksander Kerensky, a socialist. In early March of that year Tsar Nicholas II, who had ruled imperial Russia since 1894, abdicated. Five months later, Russia was pronounced a republic.

Although the provisional government did introduce some reforms on the political front, prompting even Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin to declare Russia in April 1917 "the freest country in the world", it was the Red October Revolution that turned the old order completely upside down by inaugurating a socialist regime and making Soviet-style communism a global ideological and political force that lasted until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991.

Still, one hundred years later, the rise of the Bolsheviks to power continues to divide scholars, the chattering classes and even the educated public. There are several issues that are particularly divisive, such as whether the October Revolution was a popular insurgency or essentially a coup, and whether Stalinism evolved naturally from the basic principles and political strategies of Lenin or was an unexpected development.

Likewise, there is still a great deal of ambiguity, disagreement and confusion over the nature of the regime that flourished in the Soviet Union after Lenin's death in 1924. For example, did the Soviet Union represent an "actual socialist society", a "degenerated workers' state", or simply a "totalitarian state economy" in which the communist ideology functioned as a mere instrument of political legitimisation and imperial rule?

When it happened, the Great October Revolution produced global hysteria, untamed enthusiasm and hope about the possibility of the creation of heaven on earth (a new utopia) in equal measures. For the bourgeois classes everywhere, the inauguration of the Soviet regime was anathema to core values of the "western civilisation", while for radicals and communists it signified a natural culmination of the inevitable march of history towards human freedom and a social order devoid of exploitation.

No room for mourning or celebration

On the centenary of the Great October Revolution, an objective evaluation on socialism and the legacy of Soviet communism gives no room for mourning or celebration. It was essentially the epic story of an impossible dream that turned in due time into a political and historical nightmare because of the interplay of a vast array of factors that included "backward" socioeconomic conditions, outside intervention, an absence of democratic traditions, and misconceived notions about socialism and democracy. Hence, while you can easily romanticise about the October Revolution, the cold reality of history smacks you in the face. 

For starters, the Great October Revolution was unlike the February Revolution which erupted as a result of spontaneous action by hundreds of thousands of hungry and angry men and women workers and militant troops. What happened in October 1917 was the outcome of a well-designed strategy on the part of the leader (Lenin) of a minority party (the Bolsheviks) to wrest control from the provisional government because of a strong ideological aversion to "bourgeois democracy" and desire for power. Unsurprisingly Lenin's call for "all power to the Soviets" ended up being something entirely different: all power went to the party and its politburo.

The October Revolution was not a coup in itself, but neither was it a popular uprising that enjoyed the kind of mass support that the February Revolution had. In fact, it was not until the autumn of 1917 that Lenin's "land, peace, bread" slogan had been embraced by some workers in St Petersburg and Moscow.

Yet, even this does not mean that the Bolshevik programme and Lenin's ideas of rule were accepted by the majority of the Russian people: In the November 1917 elections, the first truly free election in Russian history, Lenin's party received only one quarter of the vote, while the Social Revolutionaries managed to receive over 60 percent.

Lenin had stomach neither for parliamentary democracy nor for sharing power with any other political organisation. His unwavering intent to establish socialism in Russia, regardless of the ripeness of the social and economic conditions, and his firm conviction that only the Bolsheviks represented the true interests of the workers, would compel him to adopt strategies and policies that would soon deprive the Revolution of whatever potential it had originally had for the establishment of a new social order based on workers' control of the means of production and democracy (which Lenin, sadly enough, associated with the "dictatorship of the proletariat").

Indeed, not long after the November elections, Lenin would ban several opposition newspapers and unleash a campaign of "Red Terror" against all class enemies (with the Social Revolutionaries being the first victims following their uprising in Moscow in early July 1918). The orchestration of the "Red Terror," which lasted until the end of the Russian civil war, was assigned to Cheka (a Bolshevik police organisation that reported to Lenin himself on all anti-communist activities), thereby laying the foundations for the emergence of a full-fledged police state under Stalinism.

The clearest illustration of how far to the "right" the Bolsheviks had moved following the outbreak of the October Revolution is the brutal repression of the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921 by Red Army troops. Disheartened by the Bolsheviks' dictatorial tendencies, a garrison of the key fortress of Kronstadt revolted in March 1921 against the communist government and the ideas of "war communism" - even though the Kronstadt sailors had been, back in 1917, among the strongest supporters of the October Revolution and the idea of "Soviet power". To be sure, they were, until then, in Lev Trotsky's own words, "the pride and joy of the revolution".

With the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion, it became clear that Lenin's concept of the "vanguard party" and his understanding of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" did not permit dissent of any kind and that a socialist political order was to be based on one-party rule.

As for the policy of "war communism", it ended a complete disaster. Lenin himself admitted as much in a speech on October 17, 1921, when he said, "we made the mistake of deciding to go over directly to communist production and distribution".

But this did not mean that all Bolsheviks shared Lenin's views on "war communism" or that they embraced the policy that was followed in the 1920s by a partial return to the market system of production and distribution. The soon-to-be "new Tzar" Joseph Visarionovich Stalin, regarded the New Economic Policy as the betrayal of the October Revolution. His "revolution from above", launched in 1928 with the policy of collectivisation and dekulakisation (a campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, and executions of millions of the more "well-to-do" peasants ) reopened the gates of hell and converted Soviet socialism once and for all into a barbarous and murderous regime.

Stalinism did not merely formalise the worst aspects of Leninism but became, in reality, an actual stumbling block for the transition into socialism both inside the Soviet Union and throughout the rest of the world where the ideas of social justice and equality continued to move the minds and hearts of millions of decent people.

Hence, the end of Stalinism and the collapse of Soviet communism (which in the course of its 74 years did manage to turn a "backward" country into an industrialised nation that was able to defeat Nazism and make undeniable advances on several economic, cultural, and social fronts) mark simply the end of a dream turned into a nightmare.

In this context, the legacy of the Russian Revolution obliges, one hundred years later, neither celebration nor mourning. Dreams are surely renewable, and a new world is waiting to be born, but the possibilities available to create an egalitarian, socially just, ecologically friendly, and decent society lie outside the ideas, practices and policies of the October Revolution.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy. It waa reposted with permission.

Image Credit: Pedro Ribeiro Simões Via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Chris Ogden and Olivia Hagen provide the conclusion to Global Policy's e-book on 'Digital Repression: Causes, Consequences and Policy Responses'. The e-book's chapters can all be found here and the full e-book will be available in late summer.

This e-book has provided an in-depth analysis of digital repression, which is a growing threat to democratic governance globally. Comprising eleven chapters written by leading scholars and policymakers, it has highlighted how the rapid expansion of new and emerging internet and communication technologies (ICTs) has significantly increased any state’s capacity for repression and social control. This ever-growing technological capacity poses a serious threat to internet freedom and human rights, which can potentially have a devastating – and irrevocable – impact upon our societies worldwide. Although digital repression is often associated with autocracies, many of the contributors have also shown how democracies utilise repressive technologies, albeit less frequently, as they are subject to more significant normative and constitutional constraints (Feldstein 2021).

Through the diverse perspectives presented in this book, stakeholders at the local, national and global levels can now better understand the intricate environment of digital repression and develop effective strategies to combat this growing threat. As such, this E-Book serves as a valuable resource for those seeking to safeguard internet freedom and human rights in the face of digital repression. Exploring the various facets of digital repression, this project encompassed four distinct themes, each delving into important aspects of this phenomenon.  

The first theme, emphasised by Steven Feldstein, Andrea Kendall-Taylor, and Erica Frantz, focused on identifying and understanding digital repression. In Chapter 1, Feldstein shed light on the underlying causes - and dispelled some common misconceptions - surrounding digital repression, noting that ‘policymakers should look at regime incentives, political interests, and resource capacity to better understand why regimes acquire and deploy repressive technologies’. Frantz and Kendall-Taylor’s Chapter 2 then considered the complex and multi-faceted reasons behind states adopting or abstaining from digital repression tactics and specifically considered regime type, digital capacity and levels of wealth.

The second theme then looked into the question of responsibility in digital repression, with contributions from Marcus Michaelsen, Xiao Qiang and Adrian Shahbaz. In Chapter 3, Michaelsen illuminated how autocrats employ digital repression tactics beyond their borders, including phishing campaigns, and examined the associated risks of such a strategy. Chapter 4 by Xiao then investigated China’s role in global digital repression through three key dimensions, namely the export of surveillance technology, investment in digital infrastructure and influencing international organisations. Finally, in Chapter 5, Shahbaz investigated private sector companies’ involvement in the digital repression nexus, elucidating their complicity as either unwitting or unscrupulous agents of state repression.

The third theme accentuated the perils of digital repression, and featured insights from Jessica Brandt, Anita Gohdes and Jaclyn Kerr. In Chapter 6, Brandt scrutinised the utilisation of digital repression by democracies and the resulting implications for democratic governance. In turn, Gohdes, in Chapter 7, examined whether or not ICTs primarily benefit states or civil society, ultimately identifying three spheres of control relating to criminalising civil society content, weaponising digital infrastructures and manipulating the information space. Finally, Kerr, in Chapter 8, assessed the ‘dictator’s digital dilemma’, exploring how autocracies navigate the delicate balance between complete internet control and fostering economic development, which enhances how to decipher the evolution of digital repression. 

The concluding theme then underscored effective policy responses to digital repression, featuring contributions from Allie Funk, Richard Crespin, Caroline Logan, Ana Blanco and Jennifer Earl. In Chapter 9, Funk outlined practical strategies for states to counter digital repression at the local, national, and international levels, including having more effective multilateral coordination, bolstering national protections for human rights online and increasing investment in local actors. Subsequently, Chapter 10 by Crespin, Logan and Blanco highlighted eight ways in which multinational corporations can combat digital repression, so as ‘to ensure their platforms promote an open exchange of information and are not used as the weapon of choice by autocrats and their allies’. In the final chapter, Earl discussed how non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and people’s movements can oppose digital repression, specifically by applying existing resistance techniques, making repression risky, and keying mitigation tactics to combat different kinds of digital repression.

Generative AI’s Exponential Threat

In light of the recent release of generative AI language models such as Open AI’s ‘ChatGTP’ and Google’s ‘Bard’, understanding how governments employ digital repression and how to respond to it has become even more crucial. Disinformation researchers have voiced concerns that these models could be harnessed as potent tools for spreading misinformation at an exponential rate. Whilst disinformation ‘is not a new problem’ (Sanders and Schneier 2023), with Facebook, for example, removing over a billion fake accounts a year that generate ‘fake news’ (Ibid), experts warn that rampant AI technology can make disinformation easier to produce on an industrial scale, and thus more challenging to stop.

With personalised chatbots that can mimic language, tone and human logic, disinformation could be spread in ever more credible and persuasive ways (Hsu and Thompson 2023). A 2020 study by the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism from the Institute of International Studies at Middlebury found that GPT-3, the technology behind ChatGTP, had an impressive knowledge of extremist communities and could create online content that mimics the content created by such groups (Hsu and Thompson 2023). Although Open AI has policies in place to prevent the creation of harmful or biased content and offers moderation tools to protect against misuse (OpenAI 2023), these measures are unlikely to be entirely effective. As ChatGTP itself has acknowledged, it ‘may occasionally produce harmful instructions or biased content’ and Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT’s Open AI, has noted that AI can be used to manipulate voters and target disinformation (Fung 2023).

In addition to concerns about the spread of disinformation, ChatGTP and similar AI technologies could also make ‘democracy even more messy’ (Cowen 2022), as they have the potential to intervene in democratic regulatory processes. In the US, for example, there is a comment period before new regulations take effect, which interested parties could potentially flood with the help of ChatGTP, similar to the Russian Internet Research Agency’s attempt to influence the 2016 US elections (Sanders and Scheiner 2023). Experts note that currently, there are no effective mitigation tactics to combat such disinformation, adding to the complexity – and ambiguity – of democratic processes (Hsu and Thompson 2023). As a result, stakeholders must be aware of the potential impact of both known and unknown AI technologies on democratic systems and develop appropriate strategies to mitigate all risks.

In autocracies, where digital repression has become a large part of the autocrats’ repressive toolkit, the threat to internet freedom and human rights is further amplified by the advent of AI technologies. For example, in the years leading up to the 2021 military coup in Myanmar, Facebook turned into an ‘echo chamber of anti-Rohingya content’ (Amnesty International 2022), allowing the military junta and radical Buddhist nationalist groups to spread disinformation targeting the Muslim community. The consequences of the disinformation campaign were devastating, resulting in the military junta’s crackdown on the Rohingya in 2017, where the Rohingya were subject to widespread atrocities, including murder, rape, and torture, which forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee to nearby Bangladesh. 

An Amnesty report from 2022 also revealed that Facebook ‘knew or should have known’ (Amnesty International 2022) that their algorithms were not only spreading but also actively intensifying the dissemination of anti-Rohingya disinformation. This active role played by Facebook’s platform ultimately contributed significantly to the Rohingya genocide (Amnesty International 2022). Facebook later revealed that the key reason disinformation was allowed to flow on their platform was the lack of Burmese-speaking content moderators, with the company having only two such specialists available as of early 2015 (Solon 2018). This example underscores how AI has the capacity to contribute to the rapid spread, intensification and even normalisation of digital repression across different ICT platforms. Furthermore, it highlights the urgent need for stakeholders to proactively recognise the implications of AI technologies and develop robust strategies –regulatory, educational and practical – to counteract their negative impact on internet freedom and human rights.

In an authoritarian context, the development of potent AI software can, therefore, potentially turbocharge digital repression and authoritarian tactics. In countries like Myanmar, where the state lacks the incentive to moderate online content, AI could facilitate the mass production of disinformation. Consequently, this could perpetuate hatred and exacerbate the persecution of marginalised groups and activists. In more advanced autocratic states, led by the poster child of China, AI technology could also be used much more systematically by leaders to deeply manipulate information and heighten social control and regime survival. Once developed domestically, such technology could then be exported to other autocracies.

- - -

AI technology can – and most likely will – be exported in efforts to influence and subvert political processes in established democracies. Such efforts are entirely conceivable vis-à-vis the coming 2024 general elections in the United States and India and those in the United Kingdom in 2025. We can thus expect new AI-powered versions of Cambridge Analytica to personally and collectively target voters on an industrial scale, and in a highly specific, evolving and manipulative manner. Such a tactic will embolden a highly polarised political - and emotionally charged - atmosphere within these countries and elsewhere, significantly disrupting the conduct and outcome of these elections. If unchallenged, this technology will therefore be a destabilising, frightening and destructive force that poses a major existential threat to the world’s oldest, largest and most essential democracies. Such an attack will invigorate authoritarian regimes, and tip humanity into an autocratic future. 

Dr Chris Ogden is Senior Lecturer / Associate Professor in Asian Security and Asian Affairs in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.  His research interests concern the global rise of India and China, great power politics, shifting world orders, authoritarianism, the Asian Century, Hindu nationalism, and the interplay between national identity, security and domestic politics in South Asia (primarily India) and East Asia (primarily China).  Chris’ latest book concerns The Authoritarian Century: China's Rise and the Demise of the Liberal International Order (Bristol UP) and he was also the Series Consultant for the 2023 BBC Documentary Series, India: The Modi Question.  For more information, see http://chris-ogden.org 

Olivia Mills Hagen is currently in her final year of an MA (Hons.) in International Relations at the University of St Andrews and an intern for Global Policy Online. Before university, she decided to do her National Service and spent a year in Northern Norway in the Norwegian Army's Artillery Battalion. During her time at St Andrews, Olivia has been the director of the Lumsden Leadership Summit, a platform that invites successful and inspiring women to speak to inspire the student body and help them become the next generation of leaders. As the director, she focused the summit on sustainability and invited women whose diverse careers shared sustainability as the common denominator. Her academic research is centered on the intricate and multifaceted phenomenon of digital repression, as well as international development, foreign policy of India and China and force and statecraft.

Photo by Brett Sayles

References

Amnesty International. 2022. “Myanmar: Facebook’s Systems Promoted Violence against Rohingya; Meta Owes Reparations – New Report.” amnesty.org. Amnesty International. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/.

Cowen, Tyler. 2022. “ChatGPT Could Make Democracy Even More Messy.” Washington Post, December 6, 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/chatgpt-could-makedemocracy-even-more-messy/2022/12/06/e613edf8-756a-11ed-a199-927b334b939f_story.html.

Feldstein, Steven. 2021. The Rise of Digital Repression How Technology Is Reshaping Power, Politics, and Resistance. Oxford: Oxford University Press USA - OSO.

Fung, Brian. 2023. “Mr. ChatGPT Goes to Washington: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Testifies before Congress on AI Risks” CNN Business. May 16, 2023. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/16/tech/sam-altman-openai-congress/index.html.

Hsu, Tiffany, and Stuart A. Thompson. 2023. “Disinformation Researchers Raise Alarms about A.I. Chatbots.” The New York Times, February 8, 2023, sec. Technology. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/technology/ai-chatbots-disinformation.html.

OpenAI. 2023. “OpenAI API.” Platform.openai.com. OpenAI. 2023. https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/moderation/overview.

Sanders, Nathan E., and Bruce Schneier. 2023. “How ChatGPT Hijacks Democracy.” The New York Times, January 15, 2023, sec. Opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/15/opinion/ai-chatgpt-lobbying-democracy.html.

Solon, Olivia. 2018. “Facebook’s Failure in Myanmar Is the Work of a Blundering Toddler.” The Guardian, August 16, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/16/facebook-myanmar-failure-blundering-toddler.

The “Third” United Nations: How a Knowledge Ecology Helps the UN Think by Tatiana Carayannis and Thomas G. Weiss. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2021. 200 pp., £65 hardcover 9780198855859

Every other year, gatherings of academics, policymakers and civil society happen under a common theme: discussing the future of the United Nations (UN). The arguments exchanged at these events can usually be summarized as follows: one camp sees a future for the UN because it has become larger than life and developed into the world’s conscience. The other camp is more critical but sees a future for the UN because it is unlikely that we would get another organization with global membership and mandate and it will thus continue to exist because, well, at least we have it. To my knowledge, and I attended many of these events over the last decade, no arguments are presented for a future without the UN. Of course, the end of the UN might be predicted in other fora with more distance to the research subject and likely by people whose income and legacy are not intimately linked to the UN’s existence. But despite all criticism and constant calls for reform: the present book for review makes it clear that the UN is and remains the catalyst for innovative ideas about how to practically achieve peace and security, human rights, and sustainable development for all. That the world organization continues to be this catalyst in the future will depend on supportive research networks and communities, in short, the “Third UN”.  

“The ‘Third’ United Nations” will become a standard source to refer to when discussing how and why actors not belonging to the intergovernmental “First” UN or the civil servant “Second” UN bureaucracy matter. It is accessibly written by two UN scholarship and policy heavyweights whose privileged access to the UN ecology provides for rich insights into how the UN is able to innovate global governance. In particular, the authors focus on the Third UN’s contribution to ideas and, as the subtitle highlights, “how a knowledge ecology helps the UN think”. This ecology is defined as “supportive non‐state actors like intellectuals, scholars, consultants, think tanks, NGOs, the for‐profit private sector, and the media” (p. 2). The authors argue that if the UN system is to remain relevant, or even survive, the thinking to re‐imagine and redesign contemporary global governance will come from the Third UN.

The book presents the most comprehensive overview to date of external actors’ contribution to the formulation of ideas for decision‐making in the UN’s policy processes. It provides chapters on the role of NGOs (chapter 2), individuals (chapter 3), academics, think tanks and knowledge brokers (chapter 4) and “alternative voices” (chapter 5), some of which the authors see as challengers of the UN postwar normative order. Empirical illustrations in all chapters draw on a wide array of UN programs, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, the Responsibility to Protect or the Global Compact. The book is suitable for readers from all academic or policy backgrounds, although the authors develop their arguments mainly from a global governance perspective. This perspective is introduced in Chapter 1, which gives the reader an overview of International Relations scholarship on non-state actors and locates the Third UN within the discipline. The authors introduce their contribution as “another step in conceptualizing global governance in terms of free-flowing networks rather than rigid formal structures” (p. 19).

The concept of the three UNs is of immense analytical value to scholarship on the world organization and probably beyond the UN as a case. But the main argument about the Third UN provokes more conceptual questions: to argue for a knowledge ecology’s effectiveness, we need tools to theorize about which actors are more likely to bring in their ideas to the First or Second UN, and why some ideas are more likely to become policies than others. These questions are of immediate relevance to the challenges the UN is facing from both within and outside the organization. While the book’s greatest accomplishment is clearly to present a broad overview of the actors and activities that constitute the Third UN, more discussion of the Third UN as a research concept is desirable for future research. Especially since the authors depart from a reading of the literature that sees the Third UN as “poorly understood, often ignored, and normally discounted” (p. 4). Here, the authors have given UN scholars many opportunities to connect the book to scholarship on international organizations and non-state actors and advance research in this area in a more fruitful and systematic manner.

One such opportunity lies in studying the dynamics of different ideas within the Third UN. The key role of the Third UN is illustrated mainly with successful interactions of the three UNs for progressive ideas. While the authors occasionally take contestation among Third UN actors into account, for example when discussing the “Save Darfur” advocacy (p. 116), resistance against progressive ideas within the UN does not only come from states and not only from those the authors depict as challengers to the postwar normative system (pp. 120-138). The Third UN is itself divided on key UN issues: for example, we find individuals and organizations committed to women’s rights along with those opposing them. Both camps are building coalitions with individuals from the First and Second UN, which have blocked progressive development in this area for decades. Another example for more contested than progressive idea potential is the UN’s partnership with the for-profit sector. The authors rightly point to crucial knowledge broker functions (p. 107) like that of John Ruggie for the Global Compact and how his network across all three UNs helped the UN established new panels and partnerships with the business sector and foundations for innovative policy ideas (e.g. p. 133). Yet, what does that tell us about how the UN thinks when on the other side, in Geneva, the development of a treaty on business and human rights stagnates? Also, most of the Third UN’s successful partnerships are built in and with Western states. The authors remind such knowledge brokers that they “have a moral and practical obligation to diversify their networks” (p. 117). But how and by whom should they be held accountable? The Third UN might be seen as the “free-flowing network” (p. 19) from afar, but it might resemble elite clubs by closer examination. In the end the question persists: whose ideas matter more to help the UN think – and why?  

Tatiana Carayannis and Thomas G. Weiss have written a fascinating book of immense value to every student and scholar researching the UN, that will also give UN experts and global policymakers fresh insights, thanks to the original data the authors were able to assemble because of their unique expertise. They raise relevant questions on their findings throughout the book, all of which invite in-depth and comparative analyses of how and why which actors of the Third UN interact with the First and Second UN. Answering these questions supports theory development on which actors in which configurations can most effectively provide ideas for a future UN – one that is more diverse, equal, and effective than the present institution. 

Dr. Nina Reiners is a researcher in International Relations at the University of Potsdam, member of the interdisciplinary research group ‘International Rule of Law: Rise or Decline?’ at Free University in Berlin and research associate at the Global Governance Centre at the Graduate Institute Geneva.

It might seem odd to have viewed Darkest Hour and Padmaavat on the same day, and even more odd to then reflect on regional and global politics and international differences. But there is a link.

Darkest Hour charts the desperate May 1940 days when British forces retreated to Dunkirk and Neville Chamberlain surrendered the Prime Ministership to Winston Churchill before the recreational armada saved the day (as also reflected in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk). Padmaavat recounts how Alauddin Khalji, a fourteenth century Delhi Muslim ruler invaded the Hindu Rajput state of Chittor (Chittorgarh in present day southwest Rajasthan) driven by desire for Hindu King Ratan Singh Rawal’s wife, Padmavati. Unlike Darkest Hour, the fiction here is immediate: Ratan Singh Rawal existed, as Ratnasinha, but Padmavati appeared first in an epic poem written two hundred years later to become part of Rajput folklore.

Darkest Hour has six Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture and Best Actor. The first half hour or so verges on caricature. Stuffy old school politicians dither while the eccentric Churchill drinks his way towards brilliant insights when not terrorising a new typist. The last half hour, however, shows why Gary Oldman won the Golden Globe for Best Actor. He channels Churchill’s greatest speeches brilliantly, and the closing shot of him leaving the House of Commons chamber under a shower of approving agenda papers will likely become one of the great art house images. Padmaavat is Viacom’s first Bollywood blockbuster, created in association with Sanjay Leela Bhansali, among contemporary India’s best film makers. It has all the usual singing and dancing, clearly good guys versus even more clearly bad, elaborate costuming, great cinematography and elaborate action. It is also controversial.

When Bhansali began shooting at the Jaigarh Fort, up the hill from the Amber Palace near Jaipur that so many people know, news had already spread about his project and the protestors arrived. He shifted to Kolhapur in Maharashtra but sets there were vandalised. Four northern state governments (Haryana, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan) petitioned the Indian Supreme Court for the film to be abandoned. The Supreme Court declined, ruling that the Indian censors would exercise their normal and proper work if necessary. The states banned screenings anyway.

Like India itself, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi (a former Chief Minister of Gujarat), all those states have BJP governments. As is well known, the Bharatiya Janata Party has right wing and Hindu nationalist roots, local inflections and differences aside. Even before the film was released, one Haryana BJP leader offered a $US1.5 million reward to anyone beheading Bhansali for making the film and actress Deepika Padukone for disrespecting Padmavati, the Queen who never existed.

Hindu-Muslim divide politics inevitably came into play. Long before the film appeared, rumours abounded that it contained either a love scene involving Delhi Muslim Sultan Alauddin and Hindu Queen Padmavati, or a dream scene in which he imagined having sex with her. Bhansali denied that strenuously, as the film’s main writer as well as maker, but the rumours spread and fuelled protests. No scenes like that appear in the film, but one might be construed as Khilji having some imagination like that, while another obviously references an historically-allowed suggestion he and his slave, Malik Kafur, had a gay relationship.

Most protests, however, have turned on the idea that Rajputs are portrayed badly. The conservative caste group Shri Rajput Karni Sena, having emerged in 2006 to protect Rajput rights by pressing for reservation of government jobs and challenging perceived slights on Rajput rights, certainly thought so. Now splintered into three factions, the Sena has led the protests.

But they are not alone, given India’s complexity. Long time Indian National Congress boss and now General Secretary Digvijay Singh has also criticised the film, and/or any other that damages any community’s sensitivities. This at the same time his new and troubled Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was trying to blame the BJP over the affair. A Rajput himself, Digvijay Singh is the son of a former Gwalior Raja who was also a prominent member of the Jana Sangh that presaged the BJP. As political scientists have long pointed out, caste politics are a mainstay of Indian politics to which all parties must pay attention.

If anything, the film lionises Rajputs. Throughout, they act honourably only to be betrayed by amoral, ambitious and grasping Muslims led by Khilji who is assisted by a disgruntled former Brahmin guru to Ratan Singh Rawal. The caste lines are clear here. At the end, Ratan Singh Rawal faces Khilji in honest man-to-man battle and is about to win but killed by the unscrupulous Muslims.

To Western eyes, then, Muslims probably have a greater right to grievance here.  As Aijaz Zaka Syed writes, we see “marauding, meat-gorging, horny Muslims” in a “deliberate vilification and misrepresentation of a whole community as bloodthirsty, violent savages who live to kill, rape and eat”. Alauddin Khilji, as played by the muscled up and ever-menacing Ranveer Singh, is certainly close to that representation, with nary a word about his many and historically verified administrative and social reforms. Indian Muslim journalist Bobby Naqvi sees the film as the “demonisation of an entire community that is increasingly coming under attack from various quarters”.  

The film has already been banned in Malaysia on the grounds that it misrepresents Islam. Indian Muslim responses have been slower, and fewer, with Asaduddin Owaisi’s criticism of the Modi government on behalf of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen among few public comments. In many respects, that reflects the growing anxiety concerning the present state of communal relations in Modi’s India.

That misrepresentation of Alauddin Khilji provides a link to Darkest Hour because, in many ways, its characterisation of Churchill is similarly puzzling or bothering but also carries a political twist.

The film was made by Joe Wright whose Atonement, based on the Ian McEwan book, also followed a Dunkirk theme while his Pride and Prejudice was a big hit. New Zealand–born Anthony McCarten wrote the script as a long time obsession. He also wrote The Theory of Everything about Stephen Hawking for which he and actor Eddie Redmayne won Oscars among other awards.

McCarten says that he found in the records a different, more self-doubting Churchill than the pugnacious one found in history books.  Kyle Smith in The National Interest, however, declares that McCarten “butchers history”.  The National Interest, of course, champions “realism” in international relations, invoking Machiavelli and Henry Kissinger among others. Smith argues that McCarten cherry picks the records. Public management academic Sandford Borins elaborates that case, tracing May 1940 War Cabinet records in detail.

The most obvious fabrication has Churchill leaping from his car at traffic lights and, having been urged to “listen to the people” by King George V (played spectacularly well here by Australian Ben Mendelsohn), dives into the underground to chat with an astonished group that includes an African-Caribbean man who can quote Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome. There were Afro-Caribbeans in London then, but this is a purely “inclusive” artifice. So is the idea this meeting steeled Churchill to resist the Nazis and stare down his doubters.

One of those persistent doubters is Viscount Halifax, painted here as a craven appeaser of a Foreign Secretary who plots with his friend Chamberlain against the unreliable Churchill, the mad mind behind Gallipoli and other national policy disasters. Halifax was more complex than this so, again, history is reshaped to suit the story.

Halifax was the great grandson of Earl Grey, the Prime Minister who piloted the 1832 Great Reform Bill. And there is a return to India, too. As Lord Irwin, Halifax was Viceroy in India 1926-1931 and, among other things, helped commit India to at some point receiving Dominion Status. He also negotiated with Gandhi and so enraged Churchill who persistently led those opposing decolonisation. By the time World War II came around Halifax, who saw World War One service on the Western Front, was certainly among those trying to avoid conflict. But by 1939 he was also committed to war if Poland was invaded. And in his own words, though others wanted him to succeed Chamberlain he thought Churchill would be a better wartime leader. So much for the deep plotting portrayed here.

That is not the man portrayed by McCarten/Wright presentation so, as with Padmaavat, the facts of history yield to dramatic necessity, and it is from these variations that some contemporary consequences emerge.

For example, the film has Churchill meet new Prime Minister Paul Reynaud, predecessor Edouard Daladier and Supreme Commander General Maurice Gamelin at a French airport. (The first of these meetings, at least, occurred at the Quai d’Orsay). Supine, they say France is lost and dismiss suggestions they fight back. As he leaves, they suggest he is delusional. With France gone, Germany and Italy lined up against him and the rest of Europe effectively lost, Churchill returns to lead a resilient Britain.

In a BREXIT age it is so easy to read so much into this, as does literary commentator Ian Jack who sees the film’s liberties (and those taken in Dunkirk) as deliberate pandering to a now different United Kingdom, well, England anyway. He point outs both films began production before the referendum, but have emerged into a post-BREXIT environment to reinforce a strident “sovereignty” rhetoric that talks up what is a demonstrably terrible policy failure.

That is inevitably reinforced in Darkest Hour by jingoistic descriptions of Hitler and the Germans, disdain for Mussolini and the Italians, a dismissive approach to Oswald Mosley, and that underground scene where one hundred per cent of “the people” pledge to repel the jackbooted vandals from across the Channel. We can, in other words, do without all of them.

And there is an inevitable comparison with current leadership. McCarten’s Churchill might be portrayed as prevaricating momentarily, but once decided he is unstoppable. That contrasts starkly with David Cameron who scarpered at the first sign of fire and Theresa May who now seems constantly shell shocked. We need another Churchill.

At the meta level, meanwhile, there lurks the question of how now to deal with India when the United Kingdom, like other nations, scrambles to decode its changing signs and accommodate yet another rising Asian economy that often puzzles, like its culture as now demonstrated by responses to Padmaavat. One important result of the now-culminating World War One centenary investigations is wider realisation of the massive role played by Indian troops, including in Churchill’s Gallipoli disaster. Those rediscoveries are in turn further reminder of India’s disappointment when its efforts went unrewarded politically thanks to the cultural deafness of leaders like Churchill, so fuelling the Indian nationalist movement from 1918 onwards.

Padmaavat offers a further object lesson around interpretation and change. While the Shree Rajput Karni Sena and male politicians like Digvijay Singh navigate the politics of caste, Indian women sound a note that resonates in a post-Harvey Weinstein environment. Actress Swara Bhasker condemned the film’s depiction of women who are smart but given no agency. Their main role is to commit jauhar or mass suicide by fire to escape the raping Muslims, not so much for their own good but to avoid dishonouring their fallen men. Bhasker allows that history records such events, but suggests that modern depictions should condemn rather than glorify the proceedings. Her view will win favour in the West, but less universally at home.

That might be the lesson drawn from both films. History provides powerful stories and myths, but in today’s environment their resonance might take turns that their creators had not imagined and that will have unintended consequences, especially across cultures and polities.

Image credit: popturf.com via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Danny Bradlow shows how it became standard practice for multilateral financing institutions like the World Bank to have an independent citizen driven accountability mechanisms.

Development projects can have profound impacts on their societies. There are many benefits that flow from building new roads and power plants, and from modernising agricultural practices. But they can also have permanent negative consequences.

For example, communities may be involuntarily relocated to make way for roads or power plants. These projects can change the way natural resources are used in a particular area, making it difficult or impossible for communities to continue their traditional agricultural practices. The job opportunities that they create can challenge traditional values and ways of living.

Historically, many of these projects have been owned or sponsored by governments, eager to bring the benefits of modernisation to their citizens. They have often been funded by multilateral institutions like the World Bank, which was established in 1944 to fund the reconstruction and development of its member states.

These institutions were not unaware of the environmental and social impacts of the projects they funded. However, they maintained that each state had to decide for itself how it wished to manage these impacts. They would argue that they were merely the funders, and so should defer to the government on how to manage them. It would be an affront to the state’s sovereignty for them to interfere with the government’s decisions on these aspects of the project.

The World Bank’s confidence in its ability to avoid responsibility for its project related decisions and actions was bolstered by the fact that it was immune from being sued in any national court.

The result was that the bank supported some projects that were environmentally and socially damaging. As a result, during the 1980s the World Bank was the target of sustained protests by affected communities and their allies around the world.

To its credit, 30 years ago the bank, following an international campaign in which this author participated, recognised that its position was untenable. In 1993 it established the world’s first citizen driven independent accountability mechanism, the World Bank Inspection Panel.

This article argues that the panel’s 30th anniversary is a moment to celebrate its accomplishments. The panel has significant limitations. Nevertheless, its impact on development and the international development financing institutions has been profound.

Accomplishments

The three-member panel is independent of the World Bank’s management. It receives and investigates complaints from communities who allege that they have been harmed or threatened with harm because of the World Bank’s failure to comply with its own policies and procedures in funding a particular project. In other words, the panel’s focus is exclusively on the conduct and decisions of the Bank’s staff and management.

It sends its findings to the bank’s board. In cases of noncompliance, the bank’s management is expected to submit an action plan to the board that explains how it will correct the noncompliance and its consequences. Both the report and the action plan are made public.

Since it was established, the panel’s investigations have resulted in some relief for affected communities. For example, 70,000 people, previously ignored by the World Bank, received compensation for their losses in a bridge project in Bangladesh. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a forestry project was revised to provide greater protection to indigenous communities who had not been adequately consulted about the project.

The panel has also succeeded in establishing the principle that international financial organisations must be accountable for their own actions to the communities whose lives are affected by the projects and policies they finance.

Since its establishment, over 25 multilateral and national development banks and institutions have established their own independent accountability mechanisms. In total, these mechanisms have received 1,634 complaints, of which about 330 have been from 27 countries in Africa. Forty-five of the African cases have resulted in findings on compliance or noncompliance.

All findings of noncompliance have led to management action plans intended to correct the noncompliance.

The reports of these mechanisms are used both by their own institutions to improve their performance in development projects and to reduce the risk that they repeat old mistakes. They can also help ensure that they are held accountable when they do repeat these mistakes.

Many of these mechanisms now offer dispute resolution services in addition to compliance reviews. Many of them now also publish reports documenting the lessons they have learned about specific aspects of development projects.

It is important to note that many of the issues that arise in these cases also arise in private sector projects. This means that the reports provide guidance and help develop good practice standards for all development projects. They are also used to develop best practice in regard to the human rights and environmental responsibilities of business.

Challenges

To be sure, independent accountability mechanisms face significant challenges.

The first is that bringing cases to the mechanisms is not simple. Many of the successful cases have required communities to obtain the assistance of technical experts. This means that the cases that are brought come from communities that have access to sophisticated NGOs and advisers rather than because they are the most urgent cases.

Second, they cannot make binding decisions or determine that the communities should be given a remedy. There have been cases in which those who have been harmed by the action of the banks have been compensated. But this is not the norm. In fact, there is only one case in Africa in which a panel investigation led to victims receiving monetary compensation. The panel’s report in a case in Uganda resulted in the World Bank developing a new policy on gender-based violence and establishing a trust fund to compensate, and support the girls and women who were the victims of this violence.

Designing and funding remedies that can be used in all similarly situated cases is politically and technically complicated. But it is not acceptable that those who have been harmed by the Bank’s own failures do not receive an effective remedy that compensates them for their loss.

Third, the bravery required to bring complaints to these mechanisms must be noted. They require the complainants to go to an international forum in opposition to their own governments or powerful interests in their own countries who support the projects the banks are funding. It is therefore inevitable that in some cases, the supporters of the project will retaliate against the complainants. This suggests that the mechanisms and the banks have a responsibility to take action to protect the complainants.

To their credit, the banks and the mechanisms have foreseen this problem and do allow for confidential complaints. But the procedures that seek to protect the complainants from reprisals have not always been fully effective.

It is now standard practice for multilateral financing institutions like the World Bank to have an independent citizen driven accountability mechanism that focuses exclusively on the responsibilities of the institution. The only exception to this general rule is the International Monetary Fund.

The mechanisms have also demonstrated that they can evolve and adapt to new challenges. While their limitations have also become clear, we should celebrate the Inspection Panel’s 30th anniversary.

Danny Bradlow, SARCHI Professor of International Development Law and African Economic Relations, University of Pretoria

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Marion Labouré and Juergen Braunstein examine the structural drivers of recent turns towards populist and extremist politics, and offer Sweden as a role model.

The recent Brexit vote, as well as high uncertainty around a number of upcoming elections (e.g., the 2016 US and 2017 French presidential elections), are only symptoms of a larger underlying problem. Voting for populist and extremist campaigns is a mean of expressing discontent with the status quo, but with far reaching implications. We believe there is a critical urgency to refocus the debate back to the structural drivers behind this international phenomenon.

For a large part of the population in Western countries the current economic situation is characterized by increasing inequality, job-insecurity, and income disparity. This stands in strong contrast to what our parents and grandparents have experienced. Few decades ago, the majorities of citizens’ residents in advanced economies thought that their children will be wealthier and better off than themselves. Until the financial crisis, the majority of households in Western countries had benefited from strong economic growth and sustained employment. Specifically, the baby boomer generation had not only benefited from increasing revenue but also from social benefits.

Over the last decade, the income of the middle class, which represents the largest share of the population in developed countries, has stagnated or declined. The financial crisis has been global and the current political environment does not seem to suggest a significant improvement. Other structural factors have put additional pressure on these developments including demographic and labor market pressures, combined with fiscal problems.

Global recession

Wage stagnation is linked to the global recession that followed the financial crisis of 2008. Economic growth contracted, unemployment significantly increased and median incomes therefore diminished.

Since 2008 purchasing power has significantly slowed down. The share of the population in advanced economies with stagnant or declining income has increased significantly over recent years. Detailed McKinsey household surveys data from more than 25 advanced economies show that between 1993 and 2005 98% of household incomes have increased in the 25 countries studied. Between 2005 and 2014, only a third of households have seen their incomes rise, while two thirds saw their incomes stagnate or decline. Moreover, the figures differ significantly across countries. For instance, citizens who have seen the share of their income grow between 2005 and 2014 were “only” 37% in France, 30% in UK, 19% in the United States, and 3% in Italy, contrasting with 80% in Sweden. The study confirms that the (relative) “losers” were the people in the lower and middle parts of rich countries’ income distributions while the “winners” were the global top 1%. Alongside this, long-term structural trends have also played a considerable role.

Structural trends and demographics

The labor market in advanced economies has evolved with lower demand for low or medium skilled employees. This is partly explained by the rise of technology and by the fact that some mobile units may be relocated abroad with abundant and cheap labour. The few employees or medium-skilled workers have faced stagnant or decreasing wages over the past decade, while highly skilled workers tended to see their wages increase. Together the global recession and structural trends have had a direct impact on the sharp slowdown in revenue growth.

Another factor which puts pressure on national accounts and severely limits the ability of governments to continue increasing (if not ensuring the current level) of social benefits and transfers refers to demographics. The demographic structure has changed significantly. The developed economies face a growing aging population, due to increased life expectancy and low fertility. This result in a reduction in the number of people of working age (and therefore less revenue to fund the system) combined with a higher number of benefits to be paid (i.e. an increase in spending). The aging population is also accompanied by an increase in health spending.

The paradox

Inequalities between countries are narrowing while widening within countries. In his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty highlights that 1% of Americans now have 20% of total annual revenue in the United States, and this number has especially increased in forty years. Similar trend can be observed in other OECD countries. At the same time the differences between developed and emerging countries became less nuanced because of outstanding economic progress.

A combination of technological advances together with a benevolent international trade and investment environment made economic activity increasingly dispersed globally across production networks. While this has helped to reduce inequalities between countries, it significantly contributed to increase inequality among the population within countries.

Reversing the great stagnation: Sweden as role model

Reversing this wage stagnation can be done primarily via job creation and supporting workforce at risk. First, reviving economic growth and creating a favorable business environment would enhance job creation. Specifically, removing barriers to competition, encouraging public and private investment, as well as stimulating innovation would support this activity.

Also, supporting workforce at risk is crucial. Governmental programs should focus more on categories such as young people, women or workers between 55 and 64. These programs could include, for instance, a professionalization of education in order to have a better match between education and the skills required by companies (for example by encouraging work-linked training, sandwich courses, apprenticeships) or a support of labor mobility.

This is what the Swedish government, a country in which 80% of households increased their income between 2005 and 2014, did. The government reformed its system mainly as a consequence of the crisis in the early 1990s. Reforms include the reduction of taxes on capital income and labor to encourage work and investment, the flexibility of the pension system, in particular by modulating pensions by revenue and deregulation, privatization as well as measures to strengthen competition.

Marion Labouré is an economist with a passion for macroeconomic policy, public finance, monetary policy and politics. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University in the Economics Department. She earned a PhD in Economics from the Ecole Normale Superieure and a MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics.Juergen Braunstein is a Senior Associate with LSE Enterprise and an affiliate with SovereigNet at the Fletcher School (Boston). Currently he is working with LSE and the New Climate Economy on a project on financing green infrastructure in urban spaces. He was awarded his PhD in Public Policy and Administration at the LSE Department of Government in 2016. This post first appeared on the LSE's Euro Crisis in the Press blog.

Photo credit: Juæn via Foter.com / CC BY-NC