Design of matching systems between refugees and states or local areas is emerging as one of the most promising solutions to problems in refugee resettlement. We describe the basics of two-sided matching theory used in a number of allocation problems, such as school choice, where both sides need to agree to the match. We then explain how these insights can be applied to international refugee matching in the context of the European Union and examine how refugee matching might work within the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Refugees, and Resettlement
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Canada, and North America
Testimony by CTR Distinguished Fellow and former Irish Prime Minister John Bruton at the Seanad Special Select Committee on the
UK’s Withdrawal from the European Union on Thursday, April 27 2017.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Treaties and Agreements, Border Control, European Union, and Brexit
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Europe, Ireland, and European Union
William McDermott, Kim Piaget, Lada Sadiković, Mary McFadyen, Riina Turtio, Tamar Pataraia, Aida Alymbaeva, Bogdan Kryklyvenko, and Susan Atkins
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
Ombuds institutions for the armed forces are key actors in establishing good governance and implementing democratic controls of the security sector. These institutions are tasked with protecting the human rights and fundamental freedoms of armed forces personnel, as well as providing oversight and preventing maladministration of the armed forces. This publication highlights good practices and lessons learned in seven case studies of ombuds institutions for the armed forces from the following OSCE states: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Finland, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, United Kingdom.
Topic:
Security, Human Rights, Governance, and Armed Forces
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Europe, Central Asia, Ukraine, Canada, Finland, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, North America, and Bosnia and Herzegovina
Institute for Development and International Relations (IRMO)
Abstract:
The United Kingdom and Spain have many things in common. Both countries are former empires, constitutional monarchies and parliamentarydemocracies;of�iciallytheyare unitary states, however, devolution in the UK and the model of autonomous communities in Spain make them “federations without federalism”. Furthermore, they are both plurinational, in the sense that Britishness and Spanishness serve as overarching identities for the stateless nations of the English, Scots and Welsh within the UK, and the Castilians, Catalans, Basques and others within Spain (although, one could argue that the English and the Castilians are the real “owners” of the two countries). In the past, London as well as Madrid fought minority nationalisms with violence, triggering terrorist attacks by armed separatist and secessionist groups like the IRA and ETA.
More recently, the central governments of the UK and Spain have been faced with peaceful and democratic independence movements in Scotland and Catalonia, to which they responded quite differently. While London allowed the Scottish independence referendum of September 2014, and promised to honor its result, Madrid remains adamantly opposed to a similar plebiscite in Catalonia, and vows to disrupt it with all legal means at its disposal (which, ultimately, includes the use of force). The differing approaches of British and Spanish governments to secessionism within their borders are mirrored in their foreign policies: the UK recognized the Serbian breakaway province of Kosovo as a sovereign and independent state, while Spain (along with four other EU members) refuses to do so.
Topic:
Federalism, Autonomy, and Independence
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Spain, Catalonia, Scotland, and Western Europe
AUSTRAL: Brazilian Journal of Strategy International Relations
Institution:
Postgraduate Program in International Strategic Studies, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the historical process of ascent of the pound sterling to the condition of the international monetary standard in the late nineteenth century. It intends to show that England, led by its geostrategy, diplomacy and war, was able to build a colonial empire and negotiate favorable international treaties, at the same time that it constructed a monetary international territory based on its currency.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Military Strategy, Monetary Policy, and Empire
AUSTRAL: Brazilian Journal of Strategy International Relations
Institution:
Postgraduate Program in International Strategic Studies, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Abstract:
This article utilises International Relations role theory to analyse a number of potential roles for the United Kingdom as an actor with vested interests in the South Atlantic. It assesses the contemporary context of the UK’s trading relationship with the South Atlantic in light of the ongoing dialogue between the EU and the UK with regard to BREXIT. It also recognises the strategic realities of the South Atlantic and the UK’s Overseas Territories in the region. It posits that the UK, as a strategic actor in the South Atlantic, is limited in its role choices and that the role of ‘Opportunistic Partner’ in terms of its relationship with Argentina, offers the most scope as the basis for future mutually beneficial trading relations to normalise further political relations between the two countries.
Topic:
Diplomacy, International Trade and Finance, European Union, and Brexit
Political Geography:
Africa, United Kingdom, Europe, South America, and South Atlantic
On 23 June 2016, the United Kingdom voted by a 52 to 48 margin to leave the European Union. The result of the EU referendum was the latest and most dramatic expression of long-term social changes that have been silently reshaping public opinion, political behavior, and party competition in Britain and Western democracies. In this essay, we consider the underlying social and attitudinal shifts that made “Brexit” and the rise to prominence of the populist, right-wing U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) possible. Finally, we consider what these momentous developments reveal about the state of British politics and society.
Topic:
Nationalism, Regional Cooperation, European Union, and Brexit
Politics, News Analysis, and National & provincial initiatives
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Finland, France, Belgium, Serbia, Romania, Hungary, Albania, Italy, Sweden, Netherlands, Portugal, Austria, Czech Republic, and Bosnia and Herzegovina
Aaron Brantly, Charlie Winter, Devorah Margolin, Michael Knights, Kristina Hummel, and Raffaello Pantucci
Publication Date:
08-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
CTC Sentinel
Institution:
The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
Abstract:
After a respite from mass-casualty terrorism for more than a decade, the United Kingdom this past spring suffered three such attacks in the space of just 73 days, making clear it faces an unprecedented security challenge from jihadi terrorism. In our cover article, Raffaello Pantucci outlines what investigations have revealed so far about the March attack on Westminster Bridge, the bombing at a pop concert in Manchester in May, and the June attack on London Bridge and Borough Market. The early indications are that the Westminster attacker, Khalid Masood, had no contact with the Islamic State and the Manchester and London Bridge attackers were, at most, loosely connected to the group. The current threat environment, Pantucci writes, continues to be mostly made up of individuals and smaller scattered cells planning lower-tech attacks with very short planning and operational cycles—sometimes remotely guided by the Islamic State—rather than cells trained and dispatched by the Islamic State to launch large-scale, Paris-type attacks, but this could change as more British Islamic State recruits return home.
Our interview this month is with Edward You, a Supervisory Special Agent in the Biological Countermeasures Unit in the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. While the full liberation of Mosul last month effectively ended the Islamic State’s caliphate pretensions, Michael Knights warns the Islamic State and other jihadis are already bouncing back in several parts of Iraq and more strongly and quickly in areas where the security forces are either not strong enough or not politically flexible enough to activate the population as a source of resistance. As the Islamic State transitions from administering territory to a renewed campaign of terrorism and insurgency, Charlie Winter and Devorah Margolin examine the Islamic State’s apparent lifting of its moratorium on using women as suicide bombers. In a commentary, Aaron Brantly argues that creating back-doors in encryption, or banning it, would create significant societal costs without stopping terrorists from accessing the technology.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Science and Technology, Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Insurgency, Counter-terrorism, Women, Islamic State, and Encryption
Political Geography:
Iraq, United Kingdom, Europe, Middle East, and Global Focus
Company law in the US and UK fails to acknowledge that authorities’ propensity to rescue giant banks from the consequences of insolvency assigns taxpayers a coerced and badly structured equity stake in too-big-to-fail institutions.
The entrenched managerial norm of maximizing stockholder value lends a misplaced legitimacy to efforts by TBTF managers to take on dangerous levels of tail risk because their bank’s deep downside is effectively eliminated by the prospect of unlimited taxpayer support. Conventional tools of prudential regulation constrain but do not de-legitimate this behavior. To accomplish that end, this paper calls for: (1) a formal recognition of the fiduciary duties that TBTF firms owe to taxpayers and (2) criminalizing aggressive pursuit of safety-net subsidies as “theft by safety net.”
Topic:
Finance, Ethics, Banks, Banking, and Ethos
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Europe, North America, and United States of America