Global Policy最新文献

There is increasing recognition of women suffering a ‘pink tax’, paying higher prices for (near) identical products than those marketed to men. One potential cause of this is governments charging different import tariffs on men's and women's clothing, facilitated by the fact that the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (HS) splits all apparel by gender. This article examines four questions: why are the HS codes disaggregated by gender in this one sector; to what extent do countries charge different tariffs on men's and women's clothing; where they do, who is being discriminated against; and how is the level and direction of discrimination changing over time? The analysis finds that around three quarters of countries do not discriminate in their tariff schedules. However, among those that do, contrary to the expectations of the pink tax literature states overall employ higher tariffs on men's clothes than women's, though there is some evidence that this is reversing over time and the result is heavily driven by a few outlier countries. The conclusion sets out some routes to tackling this discrimination if moves to mainstream gender into trade policy are to amount to more than rhetoric.

The international landscape in mid-2025 is characterized by a retreat from liberal institutionalism, exemplified by the United States' withdrawal from the Sustainable Development Goals and its adoption of transactional, power-based international relations, as well as its potential withdrawal from some multilateral bodies. In this context, this paper argues that traditional models of universal multilateralism are increasingly untenable, and that new forms of collective action grounded in shared interests and normative alignment are both necessary and feasible. This paper revisits and applies the historically rooted concept of “like-minded internationalism,” arguing for its renewed relevance under current geopolitical conditions. Drawing on two illustrative cases—UNITAID, a global health financing mechanism, and the High Ambition Coalition, a climate and environmental diplomacy initiative—the paper outlines the characteristics, formation, and operational logic of like-minded internationalism. The paper concludes by considering implications for the future of global development. We argue that the “Plan B” presented is not a retreat from multilateralism, but an adaptive response to its breakdown—one rooted in coalitional agency, institutional pluralism, and strategic pragmatism.

This paper adopts a Critical Political Economy (CPE) perspective to analyse the success or otherwise of the UN Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs) Hybrid Institutional Complex (HIC). The paper takes a counterintuitive approach in that it is less concerned with the institutional form of that HIC but rather their socio-economic content. The paper does this by building on Abbott and Faude's governance outcomes of ‘substantive’ and ‘political’ fit, emphasising the notion of ‘ideological fit’, understood as a crucial part of hegemony-building in the current conjuncture. Key to hegemony-building is that the greater degree of institutional diversity of HICs constitutes a way to reorganise inter-and intra-class relations to co-opt a greater variety of policy actors at multiple transnational scales. Rather than focusing on the SDGs' performance against specific development goals, the paper argues that the institutional coherence of the HIC lacks hegemonic depth that is translated into the uneven implementation of the SDGs and the disappointing progress against individual targets. Instead, the CPE approach shows how shallow hegemonies have failed at generating substantive development transformations but have instead succeeded at hegemony-building for class-based governance, just not for meaningful development.

Countries either converge or diverge in their social and governance performance. This dynamic directly influences the ability of social and governance indicators to differentiate between countries, with divergence increasing their information content and convergence diminishing it. Tracking the evolution of these indicators' information content over an extended period provides insights into shifts in their relative importance and, most importantly, allows one to uncover the various phases that the global policy landscape undergoes. Using a wide range of indicators across 170 countries, we examine the evolution of information content from 1990 to 2020 of various social and governance constructs. The results reveal a notable shift from social to governance dimensions. Initially, disparities were more pronounced in basic human needs and wellbeing. However, countries have since converged in these areas. In contrast, countries' performance in governance dimensions, such as state capacity and democratic accountability, has seen increased divergence, reflecting widening disparities. These findings highlight that contemporary global policy challenges are increasingly rooted in governance disparities across countries.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the focal point for coordinating global efforts toward promoting sustainable development. However, progress toward the SDGs has stalled. This article shifts attention to the behaviors of development partners as a key determinant of SDG attainment. It argues that lukewarm donor commitment to recipient-country ownership has prevented greater SDG attainment. While ownership is a procedural goal in its own right (SDG-17), it is also perceived as critical for achieving substantive development outcomes. The analysis synthesizes data from two monitoring frameworks—the Paris Declaration Monitoring System (PDMS) and the Global Partnership on Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC)—to examine the relationship between changes in ownership and changes in SDG attainment over the 2015–19 period. Using linear regression analysis of up to 257 donor–recipient dyads covering 23 donors and 66 recipients, the analysis shows that increases in ownership are significantly related to increases in SDG attainment. Instrumental-variable analysis supports a causal interpretation of these results. These results corroborate findings from qualitative studies about the role of ownership for sustainable development.

Macdonald, K., Bahruddin, Hartoto, A.S., Unger, C., Cisneros, P., Pugley, D.D. et al. (2024). The politics of accountability in global sustainable commodity governance: Dilemmas of institutional competition and convergence. Global Policy, 15, 838–854. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.13426

The name of one of the authors of the article is listed incorrectly. The correct spelling is ‘Dámaris Herrera Salazar’.

We apologize for this error.

In recent IR literature, the term “regime complexity” has described the phenomenon that international regimes are increasingly overlapping, involving more institutions and actors. Pandemic prevention using a One Health approach represents one example of regime complexity as health threats for humans, animals, and ecosystems become more intertwined, causing a need for widely integrated governance systems. The self-called “Quadripartite of One Health,” consisting of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH, former OIE) represents a unique collaboration in a situation of regime complexity and global health threats. These cooperative structures that evolved along the COVID-19 pandemic were scrutinized by analyzing semi-structured interviews with 10 employees of the organizations and 15 official documents of the four institutions using a tailor-made analysis framework derived from three selected dimensions of regime complexity: competition, legal inconsistencies, and fragmented accountability. Regime complexity is likely causing negative as well as positive effects on the Quadripartite collaboration, confirming some of the selected arguments of regime complexity literature. It was found that despite their efforts to make use of the positive effects that regime complexity brings about, like data-sharing, exchange of expertise, and increased innovation, several negative effects like discrepancies in terms of rules, procedures, human and financial resources, and understandings of mandates, as well as competition and protectionism, were observed.

As the global landscape of Artificial Intelligence (AI) governance rapidly evolves, research has increasingly moved beyond state-centric perspectives to investigate the role of non-state actors. This paper focuses on an underexplored category of such actors: think tanks, specifically two prominent Chinese institutions—the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) and the Centre for International Security and Strategy (CISS). Drawing on the Communities of Practice (CoPs) approach, this study investigates how these think tanks shape the emerging governance framework for AI technologies by leveraging their position at the boundaries between various CoPs. Specifically, this position of in-betweenness enables them to influence AI governance through acting as boundary brokers. They bridge different Chinese CoPs—including the government, the private sector, and academia—and, in some cases, international CoPs, facilitating engagement and exchange across these communities. This paper also finds that due to differences in their organisational types and relationships with the Chinese government, CAICT and CISS influence AI governance in subtly distinct ways. This paper contributes to CoP scholarship by examining its applicability in an authoritarian context and is among the first to provide a timely empirical analysis of the role of Chinese think tanks in AI governance.