Global Policy最新文献

Small and middle states such as Canada have been integrating drones into their militaries for over 20 years, but their drone use has been understudied. Delving into the data from interviews with 33 army drone operators, this paper proposes two arguments about how drone operators negotiate their identity-based reflections on their roles. First, the paper argues that drone operators in the Canadian army center their identity on the idea that they are part of the combat arms and construct their role as drone operators through this lens. Second, this paper argues that drone operators connect this combat arms identity to broader ideals of what the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) should do and be: a peacekeeping or an expeditionary force. In turn, ideals of what the CAF should do and be affect how drone operators think about drone use. On the one hand, those who viewed the CAF as a helping, peacekeeping military argued for limited and unarmed drone use, whereas those who encouraged the expeditionary elements of the CAF wanted weaponized and further integrated use of drones. These complex reflections from drone operators themselves are important for understanding how emerging technologies are thought of by their users in military contexts.

This contribution examines the tension between political inclusion and informal hierarchy found in the Hybrid Institutional Complex (HIC) for sustainable development. By drawing attention to the managerial logic underpinning the making of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), I highlight how increased inclusion leads to weaker obligations and institutional fragmentation if not simultaneously accompanied by proper resourcing of governance orchestrators such as the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF). However, I argue that the SDGs have been successful at the level of ‘metagovernance’, specifically in reshaping the meaning of political inclusion within global governance. The growing emphasis on quantitative metrics and disaggregated data has shifted what counts as meaningful inclusion from having a seat at the table to translating political demands into measurable indicators. I use the human rights community to explore these dynamics. The analysis concludes with policy recommendations for state and civil society actors about strengthening coordination, balancing metrics with normative appeals and more radical democratic politics, and carefully balancing the utility of big data with other ethical concerns.

In this Practitioner Commentary, we develop the argument that the 21st century polycrisis has widened the gap between the demand side and supply side of governance. State capacity is put to the test while the policy space to deliver public goods has shrunk. The region state is a unit of governance, often overlooked and underutilized, to boost state capacity across siloed policy domains and institutional stovepipes. The European Union provides a laboratory to showcase and test the comparative advantage of governance solutions that reconnect the local, state, and supranational policy levels.

Africa has long remained a blank spot in carbon pricing policy implementation, except for South Africa, which adopted a carbon tax in 2019. Multiple other Sub-Saharan African countries, however, have since 2015 articulated their intentions to implement carbon pricing. This article zooms into these volatile early-stage developments and explores how and why carbon pricing has emerged on the political agenda in Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal, the two countries that have considered the issue for several years but with varying levels of activity. The article combines Kingdon's Multiple Streams Framework with elements of policy diffusion to fully grasp the interplay between the domestic and international processes at play. The analysis shows that the Paris Agreement served as a focusing event, opening a policy window for carbon taxation in Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire. Yet, the main motivations to consider carbon pricing are economic, though indirectly environmental, through the generation of revenues for the implementation of NDCs. International actors play a pivotal role in this process, but ultimately, domestic political structures and actors enable the carbon pricing agenda setting. This paper provides novel insights into how the carbon pricing policy process unfolds in Sub-Saharan African countries, a hitherto under-researched region.

The need to adapt existing global policy instruments to achieve sustainable development objectives is increasingly recognised worldwide. Responding to the global need to help countries progress towards transforming food systems, the EU proposed, negotiated and agreed to adopt a chapter dedicated to Sustainable Food Systems in its free trade agreement with New Zealand and its advanced framework agreement with Chile. This study aimed to identify the origins, rationale and enablers of this policy innovation. A theory-informed qualitative study methodology was applied based on interviewee data. We found that the idea of the Sustainable Food System Chapters originated from the need to respond to domestic and global pressures to maintain public and political support for pursuing trade and investment agreements. The adoption of the Sustainable Food System Chapters was enabled by political pressure; pre-existing global, foreign and domestic policies; and shared thinking that was previously translated into joint action. Policy-makers may use this evidence to support efforts to achieve greater policy coherence in trade agreement negotiations across economic, social and environmental domains.