Regulation by visibility: New forms of global social governance

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 188-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Drubel

Nation states, networks and international organisations provide huge amounts of quantified information on all fields of international politics. This is done in an effort to regulate them. Besides the increase of numbers, recently, pictures emerge as visual practices of regulations. Parts of the political effort of the International Labour Organization (ILO) to abolish forced labour build a valuable example. The ILO publishes both estimates on forced labour and Global Reports. In addition, illustrated narrations on how a person is trapped in forced labour are provided at its website. Hence, the decent work discourse on regulating forced labour as a Core Labour Standard (CLS) no longer exclusively draws on texts, but increasingly includes image representations. Thus, the article asks how quantitative knowledge on forced labour is produced and visualised as a mode of regulative governance. In order to understand the content of the ILO’s discursive regulative governance, its strategic alignment and to infer on its possible strengths or weaknesses, discursive and pictographic practices are made accessible.

2001 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 92-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Weber

It has long been recognized that environmental concerns transcend borders. As a result, they pose problems, the solution of which requires new forms of cooperation beyond the conception of international politics as structured by the interests of nation-states. Today, such cooperation has to be sought in the context of emerging global governance. This article traces differing conceptions of the political nature of global governance in the context of the debate over the trade-environment link. This link is being constructed for the global level at the WTO, and contested either with reformist intent or in more radical terms by environ-mentalists. Following an exposition of the genesis of the trade-environment link and of the different conceptions of it held by proponents of the free trade agenda and environmentalists, the article concludes by arguing for a more sustained appreciation of the issues raised by the radical critics.


Author(s):  
Chris Armstrong

The status quo within international politics is that individual nation-states enjoy extensive and for the most part exclusive rights over the resources falling within their borders. Egalitarians have often assumed that such a situation cannot be defended, but perhaps some sophisticated defences of state or national rights over natural resources which have been made in recent years prove otherwise. This chapter critically assesses these various arguments, and shows that they are not sufficient to justify the institution of ‘permanent sovereignty’ over resources. Even insofar as those arguments have some weight, they are compatible with a significant dispersal of resource rights away from individual nation-states, both downwards towards local communities, and upwards towards transnational and global agencies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 304-320
Author(s):  
Ryszard Cholewinski

AbstractThis paper explores the role played by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in the consultations and stocktaking during 2017 and the negotiations during 2018 leading up to the adoption of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM). It examines selected parts of the text of the GCM, with particular reference to the ILO's mandate of securing social justice and decent work, as well as the protection of migrant workers and governance of labour migration. The final part of the paper looks ahead to the ILO's role in the implementation of the GCM, with specific reference to the Arab states region, where migration for employment is significant and the governance challenges, particularly in relation to the protection of low-wage and low-skilled workers, are especially acute.


1989 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 787-797 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akhil Gupta

Economists and political scientists have become increasingly interested in the political economy of India during the past decade and particularly during the past three or four years. The titles under review will be valuable not only to India specialists but also to comparative scholars because of the intriguing mix of conditions found in India. More like a continent than a country in its diversity, India is in some ways very similar to densely populated, predominantly rural and agricultural China, differing most perhaps in the obstinacy and depth of its poverty. In the predominant role played by the state within an essentially capitalist economy, it is closer to the model of Western social democracies than it is to either prominently ideological capitalist or socialist nation-states; like other countries in the “third world,” the state in India plays a highly interventionist developmental role. Finally, since Independence it has pursued, more successfully than most nation-states in Latin America and Asia, policies of importsubstituting industrialization and relative autarchy. In terms of its political structures, India differs from most newly industrialized countries (NICs) in that it generally continues to function as a parliamentary democracy. The federal political system creates an intriguing balance of forces between central and the regional state governments, which are often ruled by opposition parties with agendas, ideologies, and organizational structures quite different from those of the central government.


Politics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitry Chernobrov

Accusations of treason and disloyalty have been increasingly visible in both western and international politics in recent years, from Russia and Turkey, to Brexit and the 2016 US presidential election. This article explores ‘traitor’ accusations in modern politics, with evidence from British and American newspapers for 2011–2016. Besides British and American politics, results reveal reported ‘fifth column’ accusations in over 40 countries. I identify three dominant patterns: authoritarian states describing opposition movements as a ‘fifth column’; suspicion of western Muslim populations as potential terrorists; and the use of traitor language to denote party dissent in western politics. Employed across the political spectrum, and not only by right-wing or populist movements, accusations of treason and betrayal point at a deeper breakdown of social trust and communicate collective securitizing responses to perceived threats.


2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-154
Author(s):  
Martin Rohmer

In Zimbabwean society, what may not be spoken sometimes becomes acceptable in song – whether to avoid social taboos and enable a wife to complain against her mother-in-law, or in broadening the boundaries of political protest. In this article, Martin Rohmer looks back to the ways in which song enabled forms of protest against forced labour and other aspects of colonial rule – in times of outward compliance as well as of direct struggle – and considers how urban theatre groups in independent Zimbabwe have adapted the tradition to their own, contemporary ends. Martin Rohmer spent almost two years studying Zimbabwean theatre when a research assistant at the University of Bayreuth, and completed his doctorate on Theatre and Performance in Zimbabwe at the Humboldt University, Berlin, in 1997. Since then he has been working in the field of cultural management for the Young Artists' Festival in Bayreuth. The present paper was first presented at the Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association in San Francisco in November 1996.


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Flett

This article reviews the way in which the concept of precaution, as commonly referenced in EU law, is received in the WTO. It argues that precaution is not a principle, but one facet of a principle of making rational judgments based on available information, the other facet of which is “that risk is worth taking”. Systematically pursuing high cost measures in response to low risks is not a balanced approach, and has probably contributed to the scepticism with which the concept is viewed in the WTO. However, this article goes on to argue that, without needing to be a principle, precaution is the determining legal feature in the SPS Agreement, because, unlike in the European Union, there is no legislative harmonisation of SPS measures at international level, WTO Members being free to set their own appropriate level of protection. In fact, the concept of precaution is relevant in the context of many other WTO provisions and is in some respects quite close to the concept of subsidiarity. Notwithstanding this, the first WTO SPS cases, driven by regulatory exporters and an interventionist WTO, have excessively emphasised scientific issues, masking policy judgments that the WTO has neither the legal nor the political authority to sustain. The article concludes that the proper way forward necessitates closer political, legal and administrative links between the WTO and other relevant international organisations, and a move away from consensus in the latter.


Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 236
Author(s):  
Joanna Kulska

The increasingly acknowledged post-secular perspective has resulted in the emergence of some new approaches theorizing this phenomenon. One such approach has been the concept of religious engagement, which calls for the redefinition of the perception of religious non-state actors towards including them as important partners in the process of identifying and realizing political goals. According to this view, due to the multidimensional role played by religious communities and non-state religious actors, they need to be recognized as pivotal in creating a new form of knowledge generated through encounter and dialogue of the political decision-makers with these subjects. Among numerous others, the challenge of migration calls for enhanced debate referring to both political and ethical issues. When such a perspective is applied, the question is raised of the duties and limits of nation-states using more or less harsh political measures towards refugees and migrants based on the concept of security, but also short-term political goals. In the face of a state’s lack of will or capacity to deal with the problem of migration, the question of religion serving not only as the service-provider but also as the “trend-setter” with regard to fundamental ethical questions needs to be considered.


2021 ◽  
Vol 03 (01) ◽  
pp. 92-97
Author(s):  
◽  
Suhrab Ahmad ◽  
Nelofar Ihsan ◽  
◽  

Afghanistan has been a focal state when it comes to international politics. With the advent of Taliban in Afghanistan, it has become central point of attention. The whole world is oblivious to Taliban’s strategic moves. Therefore, it is imperative to comprehend that Afghanistan's socio-politico circumstances since the very start were dampened by the connectivity issue, which aggravated the political landscape of Afghanistan in order to understand the current scenario. This paper is an attempt to comprehend the current situation through a historical lens of understanding the emergence of Taliban in the first place. This paper shall also identify the historical emergence through chronological order and then shall see Taliban emergence and changing dynamics of neighboring countries. Keywords: Taliban, Perspective, Afghanistan, Strategic view, Neighboring Countries


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