Digital Badges in Latin America and the Caribbean

This chapter provides an overview of digital badge adoption by the Inter-American Development Bank both at the organizational level as well as for an external audience in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). It describes the value and impact of digital badges for an international multilateral organization, for its employees, and for its regional stakeholders. It discusses the challenges and opportunities of expanding the adoption of digital badges for the public sector in the LAC region. The authors believe the chapter will be of interest to policymakers in LAC, other international organizations with interest in areas of knowledge and learning, institutions of higher education interested in Latin American issues in education and training sectors, and other professionals in a variety of international settings.

The World Food Programme

The World Food Programme (WFP) has emerged as the world’s largest humanitarian organization addressing hunger and promoting food security. The chapter explores how the need for emergency assistance has increased to meet growing humanitarian needs, and particularly its relationship to conflicts. We explore the evolution of WFP’s objectives from internationalizing US food aid, as a pilot program in FAO, into a full-fledged, multilateral organization, delivering emergency assistance while addressing the disincentive effects of food aid on domestic food production, with substantial evolution from aid in-kind to cash transfers, and from emergency aid to building capacity of developing countries to address their own emergencies. WFP has filled a void that would have existed had it not responded rapidly and innovatively to meet the growing needs of emergency assistance, now serving the largest displaced and refugee population in the world. The chapter also demonstrates the differences between development aid and emergency assistance. For its achievements, WFP was awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Prize has also highlighted the need to address the underlying issues of peace and security, without which, the need for emergency aid will continue to grow. The chapter shows how cooperation across international and bilateral organizations has evolved and where it needs to go in the future.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Promoting Regional Peace and Stability: Analyzing the Case of Indo-Pak Conflict

By looking at the institutional settings of SCO, it is believed that this organization has a huge potential to maximize cooperation and minimize conflicts among the member states. Founded under the leadership of Russia and China, SCO extended not only the opportunities and roadmaps for promoting bilateral trade and security collaborations of the mentioned countries but also helped promoted regional integration across Central and South Asian states. To further analyze the viability of this platform, this article seeks to evaluate the emergence of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization from a 'security institution to a multilateral organization' perspective. It will further examine SCO's role in promoting regional peace and stability and finally elucidate how far the inclusion of new members like Pakistan and India can utilize the magnitude of SCO to mitigate their tensions.

Sino-Russia Strategic Partnership: The Case Study of Shanghai Cooperation Organization(SCO)

Since the dissolutionof Soviet Union, theUS and its Western allies have dominated the globalaffairs through numerous political and economic organizations. In the same token China and Russia have established close ties after the termination of Cold War to attain regional security so that to minimize the US penetration in the Central Asian region.Inthis article,the area of Central Asia has been taken as a case studyto demonstrate the China-Russia partnership through a multilateral organization;specifically the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Thisarticle discussesthe theoretical underpinnings of the Soft Balancing in the SCO. It furtherelaboratesthe Sino-Russian cooperation through SCO in terms of balancing the US preponderance. This paperevaluateshistoricalcompetition amongGreat Powersin Central Asian region,and furtherelaborates onthe formation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization1. While this article argues that the main focusof SCO was strengthening regional security issues, fight against terrorism, ethnic separatism and religious extremism. Howeverit also aimed to counter the US influencein the region through multilateral organization.

The Politics of Regional Integration in Africa

On the African continent, a commitment to Pan-African unity and multilateral organization exists next to a postcolonial society whose 54 Westphalian states interpret the commitment to unity and integration to different degrees. The tension between a long-term Pan-African vision for a unified continent that prospers and is economically self-empowered, and the national concerns of governing state-centered elites with immediate domestic security and political and economic interests, lies at the heart of the politics surrounding African integration and affects both the continent and its regions. The politics of integration demand that a patchwork of regionalisms be consolidated; states give up on multiple memberships; and designated regional economic communities (RECs) take the lead on integration or subordinate themselves to the strategy and complement the institutions of the African Union (AU). In the interest of widening the social base of regional organization, politics needs to recognize and give status to informal regional actors engaged in bottom-up regionalism. Of issue in the politics of integration and regionalism are themes of norm adaptation, norm implementation, intergovernmentalism and supra-nationality, democracy, and authoritarianism.

Regionalism under Challenge: Ideas and Joko Widodo’s Foreign Policy towards ASEAN, 2014-2019

Indonesia’s foreign policy under Joko Widodo ‘Jokowi’ has significantly shifted compared with his predecessor’s era, especially regarding policies on regionalism. While former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono emphasises multilateralism with a particular focus on ASEAN, Jokowi’s administration tends to overlook ASEAN as a multilateral organization. The research investigates the causal root of the tendency by using the concept of ideas in foreign policy. The results argue that the diminished role of Indonesia in ASEAN, especially during the first term of Jokowi’s presidency, is strongly influenced by causal beliefs held by Indonesian political elites and presidential advisors. Despite varying from one individual to another, these ideas have similar characteristics in proposing that Indonesia should expand its concentric circle beyond ASEAN, arguing that ASEAN is intrinsically weak and thus can no longer accommodate Indonesian aspirations. This idea acts as a road map that defines Indonesia’s national interests amid international politics dynamics in the 21st century.

ASEAN di Tengah Rivalitas AS dan Cina: Kerja sama ASEAN dengan RCEP dalam Mengurangi Dampak Perang Dagang

Rivalry among the US and Cina about trade war gives enormous effects towards many states around the world, including ASEAN. ASEAN region is the central market on Pacific. Because of this rivalry, every Cina’s export to US will decrease about 10%, and also reduce 1.1% economy growth in ASEAN. This phenomenon emerges the big question concerning the role of ASEAN. This research paper will answer the role of ASEAN as the multilateral organization on balancing their interests in the middle of trade war. Afterwards, this paper focuses on the topics of rivalry between US and Cina related to economics. The discussion is divided into two main points, first is about the trade war, and second is the role of RCEP to establish the balance of ASEAN’s economy. International cooperation on liberal perspective is used to analyze these case problems. This paper argues that ASEAN is trying to impetus cooperation between its member for facing the challenge of the US and Cina’s trade war. Cooperation is the best way for ASEAN seeing this phenomenon.Keywords: US, Cina, trade war, economy, liberalism

What If the USSR Comes Back to Life Once Again?

The Soviet Union played the role of a great power in the international system for many decades after World War II, and the main sources of Soviet power came from its hard components of power such as large territory, large populations, and solid industrial base. However, the Soviet Union dissolved at the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as an alternative body of former great power was established. However, the CIS still attempts to overtake the symbolic image of a post-Soviet region to rebuild a powerful multilateral organization in realms of security, trade, and finance. Thus, the question is, What if the Commonwealth of Independent States turns out to a unitary coherent actor able to compete in the international system as a great power? In order to answer this question, this chapter will try to measure the composite index of national capability (CINC) of the CIS combined and compare it with the CINC scores of the United States and China to figure out the main CIS potentials in terms of hard power components such as total population, urban population, steel production, energy consumption, military personnel, and military expenditure.

Moscow’s Global Foreign and Security Strategy

Given China’s rising power and its growing influence in post-Soviet Central Asia, Russia’s active advertising of the merits of the China-inspired Shanghai Cooperation Organization looks surprising. However, when one explores the many geopolitical advantages that Moscow can extract from this young multilateral organization, its interest appears more than justified.

The Ambiguous Role of the WTO in Times of Stalled Multilateral Negotiations and Proliferating FTAs in East Asia

The world trading system is characterized by a growing number of free trade agreements (FTAs). Limited progress in the negotiations at the multilateral level within the WTO has contributed to this development, inducing countries to seek faster, alternative ways to speed up liberalization, which make it possible to take advantage of preferential treatment with key trading partners. This article discusses what role the WTO should take with regard to FTAs in times of stalled multilateral negotiations and proliferating FTAs, and how FTAs can contribute to the multilateralization of regionalism. When results at the multilateral level are scarce, there may be a shift towards other alternatives in which the WTO is left out. This may force the WTO to function reactively, simply facing facts as an organization, rather than proactively, where it may play some role in shaping the FTA development. FTAs are not an entirely separate phenomenon from the WTO, since countries that negotiate FTAs play two roles. They are members of the WTO and as such are part of the work and negotiations of the organization. They are also part of trade arrangements that are limited to a smaller number of countries, and hence can negotiate against the interest of the entire multilateral organization. This article explores how these agreements can facilitate the work and negotiations of the WTO to regionalize bilateralism and multilateralize regionalism, here named the “sticky rice” approach. Various East Asian trade arrangements are used as empirical examples.