Global Policy最新文献

This research explores the mechanisms through which member states informally shape staffing decisions in the United Nations, extending the traditional view of influence beyond mere structural power within international organizations. Interviews with UN officials uncover three primary informal governance tactics: leveraging financial contributions, nurturing social networks, and fostering educational and institutional pathways for grooming candidates. These strategies subtly impact UN staffing, policy development, and access to sensitive information. The study points to the UN's structural challenges, such as reliance on voluntary funding and decentralized administration, which, coupled with the intertwined interests across organizational levels and the lack of effective oversight mechanisms, enable member states' informal influence. This environment not only restricts the involvement of developing countries but also undermines the UN's legitimacy and effectiveness. The findings illuminate the intricate dynamics of power within IOs, underscoring the need for a comprehensive understanding of influence and its implications for global governance.

The private sector can play important roles in closing the infrastructure investment gaps in emerging market and developing economies. However, private participation in emerging market and developing economies' infrastructure has declined over the past decade, reflecting persistent structural challenges and risks in the business environment. The decline was broad-based and gained momentum following the 2013 taper tantrum and the end of the commodity super cycle. Incentivizing greater private sector participation in infrastructure will require policies to improve access to long-term finance and to derisk the business environment. This will require efforts to strengthen the banking sector regulation and supervision, to improve the legal and contractual environment, and to limit information asymmetries. Deepening local financial and bond markets can make it possible for infrastructure bonds to be issued in local currencies and minimize potential currency mismatches. Improvements in the broader business environment can benefit from greater macroeconomic stability and stronger institutional frameworks. Policies that improve the quality of projects at entry, address currency risk, relax capital controls, and enable cost recovery pricing can unlock private sector participation in infrastructure financing. Strong government support, including ensuring regulatory quality, and providing well-targeted guarantees and subsidies, can play a critical role.

As a subset of remote work, digital nomadism crosses jurisdictions and generates fears that it unfairly escapes regulation and taxation. Alongside other circuits of an emerging world society, it fails to fit neatly into the longstanding template of relatively self-contained nation-states. Most efforts to address this new phenomenon merely aim to tweak tax treaties and other rules, so as better to slot mobile individuals back into existing schemes of regulation and redistribution. But digital nomadism suggests a more fundamental need to rethink the entire modern framework of social citizenship. Social citizenship bundles together immobile populations, territorial sovereignty, and the state as the main clearinghouse of justice and solidarity. In mapping out an alternative, this article draws on resources in political thought dealing with a plurality of spheres of life. Unbundling the strictly territorial functions of the state from other functions of risk-sharing and solidarity would better correspond to the new and varied scales of cross-border living.

India's neutrality and failure to publicly criticise Russia is driven by the Modi government's quest to be a great/leading power. It believes that Moscow can aid New Delhi in achieving this goal by enhancing the security pillar of its foreign policy strategy. However, publicly criticising Russia will undermine India's security pillar and will prevent India from becoming a leading power. Thus, India's response to the Ukraine war might be best described as ‘varied consequentialism’. Additionally, India has also exhibited ‘strategic opportunism’; that is, it has employed norms and values strategically to pursue its aspirations to emerge as a leading power. It has sought to use the Global South's discontent with the US-led Western liberal order aggravated by the Russia–Ukraine war, to seek leadership of the Global South. It seeks to act as the leader of a new ‘non-alignment’, which has emerged as a consequence of the war.

The text traces Brazil's pacifist stance back to the early 20th century, rooted in a pragmatic approach to conserve resources and foster economic growth. It discusses the role of public opinion in shaping Brazil's response to the conflict, highlighting a pro-neutrality tendency within the populace. The article also analyses the continuity of Brazil's stance under two different presidents, emphasising that despite a change in leadership, there has been no structural shift in foreign policy concerning this matter. We then reflect on Brazil's evolving role on the global stage, considering its historical alignment with the West and the changing dynamics driven by factors such as China's rising influence and the BRICS grouping. The continuing conflict in Ukraine is portrayed as an illustrative case, providing insights on the prospective foreign policy conduct of Global South actors.

This article assesses Saudi Arabia's ambivalent response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. On the one hand, the Kingdom has publicly condemned Russia's military aggression as contravening international law. Yet, on the other, it has also failed to take serious measures against Moscow, notably by refusing to join in Western attempts to prevent Russia from earning hydrocarbon revenues on the international market. Saudi Arabia has adopted a neutral position instead, offering to mediate between the warring parties while simultaneously repeatedly rebuffing its longtime ally the United States. By reviewing the Kingdom's foreign policy moves and narratives since the war's onset, it is argued Saudi officials are acting perfectly rationally in that they strive to achieve the optimum outcome as per their definition of Saudi national interests in this conflict, thereby pressing ahead with the diversification of Saudi foreign policy initiated roughly one decade earlier. In concluding, the implications of the Kingdom's stance on the war for future global order-making are discussed.

This special section explores how nine key countries from the Global South have responded to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. As the Western attempt to build a global anti-Russia coalition has largely failed, the focus on countries from the Global South becomes more important but remains under-researched in the discipline. This introductory article offers the conceptual framework for the following empirical contributions. Based on the rational and constructivist school of thinking, we develop four guiding assumptions. Accordingly, we assume that foreign policy positioning to the war relates to the varied consequences of the conflict, can be related to strategic opportunism, displays pragmatic indifference or is value-driven. Contributions to this special section offer a detailed empirical analysis according to these four conceptual categories.

Despite the recent prominence of intelligence in post-Ukraine global policy, it is a Cinderella in international relations studies. Using English School (ES) theorisation, we locate intelligence within the constellation of primary and secondary institutions in international society. Through looking at the Five Eyes, we explore where intelligence sits within widespread claims of a crisis of the post-1945 liberal international order (LIO) and what role intelligence plays in diplomacy, war and great power management in the context of shifting global power dynamics. Following major twenty-first century Western intelligence controversies, we argue against raison d'état approaches and for raison de système thinking. In the face of claims of a new Cold War between Russia, China and the West, we see an urgency for policymakers in open societies to re-think intelligence from an international society perspective that is realistic and normative, and that pays attention to Global South dynamics. Insulating intelligence from politicisation is more important than ever but does not mean that intelligence is a value-neutral government function.

Teleworking in the banking sector has increased considerably as a result of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This work examines the role that home work environment and organisational support for teleworking played in the health of bank employees who were forced to work from their homes during the health emergency. For this, the authors propose and test a structural equation model and a moderated serial mediation model using a sample of 1037 bank employees in Spain, obtained through an online self-administered survey. The results reveal the direct and indirect effects of home physical conditions on health, mediated by family interference with work and technological overload. The results also show that the organisation's support for teleworking enhances the impact of home physical conditions on family interference and technological overload, also detecting that the indirect effects of physical conditions on health have been conditioned by the organisation's support for teleworking. The study therefore provides a better understanding of the impact of home environment on teleworkers' health and identifies useful strategies to improve the well-being of bank employees who wish to work from home.