Category Policy & Politics

Asia Pacific, Economics, Policy & Politics

In Hindsight: Evaluating the Complex Legacy of China’s WTO Accession

March 8, 2024

In the 1980s, a growing amicability in US-China economic relations began to emerge despite ongoing political tensions. Policymakers in both countries concentrated their efforts on formalizing trade relations, with the declaration of China’s Most Favored Nation status in the 1990s…

Africa, Governance & Law, Policy & Politics, Security & Conflict

Don’t Call It Farmer-Herder Conflict

February 9, 2024

As violent conflict rises across West Africa, the phrase “farmer-herder conflict” has taken hold from the local to international levels. Farmer-herder conflict is an umbrella term for a range of interactions, typically describing resource competition between pastoralist herders and sedentary…

Civil Society, Energy & Environment, Middle East, Policy & Politics

A Proposal to Manage Human Migration

November 16, 2023

The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) last fall focused the world’s attention on the many climate-related crises to come, including floods and droughts; inhospitable heat; saltwater intrusion and inundation; the loss of biodiversity; the loss of agricultural regions; and more violent storms.…

Asia Pacific, Policy & Politics

The Contradictions of the Party-State: China’s Experience with the COVID-19 Pandemic

October 9, 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic has reignited the debate regarding the relative merits of democratic, illiberal, and authoritarian rule; specifically, which system has more effectively responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, and more broadly, which political system has better addressed the expectations (and…

Europe, North America, Policy & Politics

How U.S. History Can Save North Macedonia and Defeat Putinism in the Balkans

October 2, 2023

Given the spectacular killing of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the less-than-spectacular Ukrainian counter-offensive, it’s looking a lot tougher to defeat Russian President Vladimir Putin. Fortunately, the United States has a rare opportunity to defeat Putinism in the Balkans. To score this…

Asia Pacific, Economics, Governance & Law, North America, Policy & Politics

How China’s Political System Discourages Innovation and Encourages IP Theft

July 31, 2023

U.S. observers have long complained that Chinese firms steal intellectual property (IP) from American companies, universities, and research institutions.¹ Most of these complaints stress that the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) directs this theft. Other analysts focus…

Europe, Policy & Politics, Security & Conflict

Hamster on a Treadmill: Western Diplomacy and the Kosovo Status Dispute

July 10, 2023

Since 1878 the Balkan region has come under successive great power security caps, each of which has turned out to be less permanent than advertised. The war in Ukraine underscores the fact that stability in the area, and in Europe…

Governance & Law, North America, Policy & Politics

Unmoored from the UN: The Struggle to Ratify UNCLOS in the United States

June 26, 2023

On July 9, 1982, after three series of multilateral conferences spanning decades of rigorous negotiations, President Ronald Reagan formally announced that the United States would not sign the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), on the…

Africa, Policy & Politics, Security & Conflict

Sudan: A Tinderbox to All-Out War

June 19, 2023

Violent clashes between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the infamous paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have plunged Sudan into crisis and renewed instability. In mid-April of 2023, brief gun battles in the streets of Khartoum and other strategic areas…

Europe, Governance & Law, Interviews, Policy & Politics

A Conversation with Charles Dunst: On Defeating the Dictators

June 5, 2023

Charles Dunst is the author of Defeating the Dictators: How Democracy Can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman. In a world where democracy is in decline and autocracy is on the rise, Dunst argues autocracy is not the solution…

Europe, Policy & Politics, Security & Conflict

‘Not in Our Name:’ Why Russia is Not a Decolonial Ally or the Dark Side of Civilizational Communism and Imperialism

May 29, 2023

This contribution was written as part of the research project Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace & Conflict [grant number 01UG2205A], funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Though decolonial thinking has existed for as long as colonization itself,…

Economics, Governance & Law, Middle East, Policy & Politics, Regional, Security & Conflict, Topical

Rethinking Irish Migration Governance: Why Refugees and Asylum Seekers Must Be Meaningfully Included in Policymaking Decisions

May 10, 2023

Serena Clark recently finished a consultancy at the International Organization for Migration (IOM), UN Migration. She recently completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at Maynooth University. She holds a doctorate in global politics from Trinity College Dublin, where she was a…