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1. Climate Change Budget Compliance Assessment Report

Author:
Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE)
Publication Date:
05-2025
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE)
Abstract:
This report presents a compliance assessment of Uganda’s national budget for Financial Year (FY) 2024/25, evaluating the budget’s alignment with climate change priorities that are outlined in the Third National Development Plan (NDP III). The assessment focuses on thirteen (13) priority programmes, selected for their climate change vulnerability, strategic importance, and potential to contribute to climate resilience and low-carbon development. With the Fourth National Development Plan (NDP IV) already approved, this analysis provides insights into the country’s progress with climate-change-sensitive development programming and action, while highlighting gaps in climate finance integration. This effort should inform more robust and inclusive planning for the future. Climate change remains one of the most pressing and persistent global development challenges. It increasingly impacts people’s livelihoods, and its effects are especially worse in vulnerable and least-prepared countries like Uganda. Climate change effects are far-reaching, contributing to environmental degradation, reduced agricultural productivity, health challenges, and disruption of livelihoods. These impacts not only threaten ecosystems and human well-being but also hinder the achievement of sustainable development and social equity, thereby deepening social exclusion. As the climate crisis intensifies, urgent and coordinated global, regional, and national action becomes critical. Effective and timely mitigation and adaptation responses are necessary to minimize harm and contribute meaningfully to the achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). On the other hand, delayed or no action on climate change is expected to result in more severe, costly, and irreversible consequences for both natural and human systems. Uganda’s long-term development frameworks, including the Vision 2040, the Third National Development Plan (NDPIII), and various sectoral policies and plans, recognize climate change as a major threat to socio-economic transformation and sustainable development. These frameworks emphasize the need for substantial investments in climateresilient development. The success of Uganda’s ambitions for inclusive growth largely hinges on the effective integration of climate action across all programmes of the country’s development plans, and adequate allocation of resources to finance climate interventions. TThe NDP III (2020/21–2024/25), now in its final implementation year, integrates climate change priorities across all its twenty (20) programmes. It specifies strategic interventions and performance targets, which are reflectedinthePlan’sResultsFrameworkandProgrammeImplementation Action Plans (PIAPs). This was intended to guide the national budgeting process, ensuring budget alignment with climate-resilient development goals. The goal of this assessment is to ascertain the extent to which the national budget of FY 2024/2025 and Budget Framework Paper (BFP) of 2025/2026 comply with planned climate change interventions under NDP III and NDP IV. The assessment involved selection of Programmes that are either most vulnerable to climate change, or have highest potential to contribute to climate change via their high greenhouse gas emission intensity. This selection was informed by Uganda’s National Climate Change priority areas captured in the country’s revised/updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs 2022) and the Uganda Green Growth Development Strategy (UGGDS) 2017-2030. This programme selection was followed by a review and analysis of national planning and budgeting documents, focusing on: (i) adaptation and resilience building; and (ii) mitigation or reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
Topic:
Climate Change, Budget, Compliance, and Sustainable Development
Political Geography:
Uganda and Africa

2. Unity Versus Division in South East Europe on Global Conflict Issues

Author:
Plamen Plantev
Publication Date:
03-2024
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
In the period after the end of the Cold War and especially after the end of the regime of Milosevic the region of South East Europe has been dialectically oscillating and slowly moving to the objective set by the EU in 2003 in Thessaloniki of integrating it in the Union. The Russian invasion and unprovoked full-fledged aggressive war against Ukraine shook the slow movement towards the integration in the geopolitical by nature EU. The realities of the reborn by Russia Nazi behaviour in occupied Ukrainian territories poses fundamental moral questions and requires brave political decisions. Graham Green’s words . in his novel “The Quiet American” – ‘sooner or later ... one has to take sides. If one is to remain human’, could be considered the moral and geopolitical compass and navigator in these turbulent times, including in the region of South East Europe. It is not easy for many people in Europe, including in the Western Balkans to realize that South East Europe has become a front-line region in a war that aims to reverse the course of history and change the way of living in free, peaceful, democratic and increasingly prospering societies. The perception of a rising danger from militarist Russia in the Western Black Sea coastal countries Romania and Bulgaria is a fact of life. The Russian aggression of 24 February 2022 marks a Zeitenwende, a watershed that makes us reconsider older concepts and inclinations. It forces us to think again what is the meaning of minimum standards of international law, how to oppose geopolitical revisionism and how to upgrade our resilience to the level of the one that Ukrainians demonstrate after 15 months of war. Olaf Scholz defined in his speech to the Bundestag on 27 February 2022 the essence of the required resilience in this new situation: “Whether we permit Putin to turn back the clock to the nineteenth century and the age of the great powers. Or whether we have it in us to keep warmongers like Putin in check”1
Topic:
Security, Conflict, Resilience, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Europe and Southeast Europe

3. Race Politics and Colonial Legacies: France, Africa and the Middle East

Author:
Hisham Aïdi, Marc Lynch, Zachariah Mampilly, Baba Adou, and Oumar Ba
Publication Date:
05-2024
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
In February 2020 – the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic – the Project on Middle East Political Science held a preliminary meeting at Columbia University in New York to explore the origins of the Africa-Middle East divides that treat North Africa as part of the Middle East and neglect states such as Sudan and Mauritania. Columbia was an appropriate place to begin such a dialogue. Two decades ago, when two of us (Aidi and Mampilly) were graduate students at Columbia, the Institute of African Studies was in serious crisis. The Ugandan political theorist Mahmood Mamdani arrived and launched an initiative to decolonize the study of Africa to counter Hegel’s partition of Africa by transcending the Saharan and red Sea divides, and by underscoring Africa’s links to Arabia, Asia and the New World. To that end, we co-organized a second conference on racial formations in Africa and the Middle East looking at race-making across these two regions comparatively, including the border zones often left out of both African and Middle Eastern Studies: the Sudans, Amazigh-speaking areas in the Sahel, Arabic speaking areas on the Swahili coast and Zanzibar. This workshop represents the third in our series of transregional studies across the Africa-Middle East divide.
Topic:
Politics, Post Colonialism, Race, History, Colonialism, Islamophobia, and Racialization
Political Geography:
Uganda, Africa, Europe, Sudan, Middle East, France, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, Mauritania, and United States of America

4. The War on Gaza and Middle East Political Science

Author:
Marc Lynch, Ibrahim S. I. Rabaia, Fiona B. Adamson, and Alexei Abrams
Publication Date:
04-2024
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
This special issue of POMEPS Studies offers a platform for scholars to think through what feels like a moment of rupture for the Middle East, for Middle East Studies, and for long-standing assumptions about the region’s politics. This POMEPS collection originated as an open call for papers for scholars affected by or invested in these urgent issues, in an initial effort to give a platform and a voice to those in our network who have grappled with these trends. We kept the call intentionally broad, asking potential authors to reflect on the effects of October 7 and the Gaza War on politics or scholarship. As it turned out, most of the contributors wanted to talk about academic freedoms and the conditions of public discourse in their countries – perhaps because of how profoundly they felt this crisis, perhaps because of the availability of other platforms to discuss the war itself. The issues confronting our field have never been more urgent and the need for academic networks and institutions to rise up to defend it has never been greater.
Topic:
Civil Society, Diplomacy, Education, Genocide, Political Science, Institutions, Academia, Houthis, Forced Migration, Activism, October 7, 2023 Gaza War, and Frantz Fanon
Political Geography:
Iraq, Europe, Iran, Middle East, Israel, Yemen, Palestine, Gaza, Germany, Jordan, Czech Republic, and Gulf Nations

5. The Politics of Migration and Refugee Rentierism in the Middle East

Author:
Marc Lynch, Elizabeth Parker-Magyar, Shaddin Almasri, and Rawan Arar
Publication Date:
03-2024
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
How does the rentier concept apply in the context of the regulation and governance of human mobilities? Given that the hosting of forcibly displaced populations grants political actors the ability to extract revenue in a manner akin to oil rentier states via refugee rent-seeking (Tsourapas 2019), what broader lessons may we draw if we link migration and the rentier state? Similarly, in the case of labor migration in the Gulf, state actors delegate their ‘authority over migration to private actors and turns citizens into migration rentiers’ (Thiollet 2022, 1649). How does rentier state theory explain the politics of migrants and refugees in the Middle East? The relationship between rentierism and human mobilities formed the core of a Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) workshop organized on 22–23 September 2023 at the University of Glasgow. The workshop sought to unpack the linkages between cross-border mobility and rentier state theory in the Middle East.
Topic:
Education, Health, Humanitarian Aid, Migration, History, Refugees, Borders, Far Right, Mobility, Integration, Donors, Public-Private Partnership, Rentierism, and GCC
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, Libya, North Africa, Syria, Jordan, Morocco, and Gulf Nations

6. Protected areas, indigenous communities, deforestation and the role of institutions: evidence for the lowlands of Bolivia

Author:
Pedro Cayul
Publication Date:
03-2024
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
Protected areas and indigenous communities play a crucial role in controlling deforestation, which is responsible for carbon emissions related to land use and land use change, contributing to global warming and climate change. However, the effectiveness of protected areas is conditioned by their administration and the quality of the institutions in their countries. In this paper, I will analyze the effectiveness of protected areas (Both at the national and sub-national levels) and indigenous territories and the institutions' role in the case of Bolivia's lowlands. I computed deforestation rates for four different periods between 1986 and 2021 to test the impact of institutions on different types of protected areas by using satellite images at 30m resolution and combining them with official data on protected areas and indigenous communities, which includes specific locations and dates of creation. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design, the results show that protected areas at the national level are the most effective in controlling deforestation, particularly after the creation of institutions taking care of them. Departmental protected areas have some impact on preventing deforestation, while municipal ones have no influence. For indigenous communities, there was a significant effect on reducing deforestation with the first reservations created, but the effect wears off over time. Regarding mechanism, being close to cities and routes is a threat for indigenous communities and departmental PAs, while it is an advantage for national PAs. Finally, protected areas and indigenous communities show, in general, greater levels of deforestation when they are exposed to cattle ranching settlements, mines, and oil wells.
Topic:
Environment, Institutions, Mining, Indigenous, Deforestation, and Protection
Political Geography:
South America and Bolivia

7. Immigration Enforcement and Public Safety

Author:
Helena Gonçalves, Emily K. Weisburst, and Elisa Jácome
Publication Date:
07-2024
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The debate surrounding the enforcement of immigration laws often revolves around the impact of immigration on public safety. Recent surveys show that about half of Americans believe that immigrants are making crime in the country worse, and more Americans believe that immigrants have an adverse impact on crime than on jobs or the economy. Much research has found mixed evidence on the effect of immigration on local crime rates. Nevertheless, those advocating for the enforcement of immigration laws view it as a key policy tool for improving public safety.
Topic:
Immigration, Law Enforcement, Public Safety, and Illegal Immigration
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

8. Internationalising Indian Education: Work Visas for Foreign Students

Author:
Sifra Lentin
Publication Date:
11-2023
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations
Abstract:
This paper recommends amending India’s student visa policy to allow foreign students to work in India on paid internships while studying at Indian colleges and universities, and in jobs for pre-determined periods after they graduate. This modification to India’s ‘S’ Visa provisions would be an important step towards internationalising Indian higher education institutes (IHEIs) – a pivotal objective of India’s New Education Policy (NEP 2020), which advocates attracting more foreign students to study in Indian colleges but does not address changes in student visa rules, even though they would align India’s student visa practices with global norms. The paper supports its argument with five key findings: First, authorising foreign students to work in India surely would attract many more than the estimated 50,000 foreign students currently studying in Indian colleges either at their own cost or on scholarships. Second, India’s accredited new private and regional or state universities and colleges would benefit greatly from an increase in overseas students. New Indian universities have been seeking to build culturally and globally diverse student bodies, enrich classrooms, expand student networks and bring in foreign-exchange revenues. Allowing foreign students to work during or immediately after their time on campus will support their pursuit of all these goals, in particular by attracting students from beyond India’s neighbourhood. The success of overseas Indian doctors and engineers in these countries will encourage students from developed countries to enrol in Indian institutions, and students from established source countries in Africa and South Asia will see the opportunity to get field experience in India as a key value addition to Indian degrees. Third, work visas for foreign students would be important for Indian companies that are internationalising. Through on-campus recruitment and hiring of foreign talent on Indian campuses and hiring alumni of Indian colleges and universities who return to their home countries, Indian companies should be able to develop a natural talent cohort that is culturally acclimatised to India. Fourth, alumni of Indian institutions of higher learning who return to their countries of origin can serve as a valuable “cultural bridge” between India and other countries. Finally, for India’s foreign policy, student work visas would reinforce an important plank of bilateral relations: reciprocity. An estimated 65% of Indian students who study abroad – 7,50,000 Indian students in 2022 – avail themselves of overseas work experience. Offering one-to-three-year work visas to foreign students who graduate from Indian universities can only strengthen India’s international relationships. A student work visa policy can be implemented in a two-year phased and regulated manner. Such an implementation period will help all stakeholders – universities and colleges, companies, and ministries of education, external affairs, home, finance, and commerce – to develop and hone systems, processes, policy, regulations and coordination structures.
Topic:
Education, Students, Visa, and Internationalization
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

9. The Great Supply Chain Shift from China to South Asia?

Author:
Ganeshan Wignaraja
Publication Date:
07-2023
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations
Abstract:
Global supply chains connect world industry and international trade in manufactures. East Asia’s dominance with China as the preferred assembly hub in global supply chains has brought unprecedented regional prosperity, but South Asia remains a latecomer. However, pandemic-related and post-pandemic continuing disruptions to supply chains and slowing growth are being keenly felt, dampening China’s attractiveness. In an uncertain global economy, increasingly footloose foreign investors are looking for alternative production locations. Is it South Asia’s turn to prosper through supply chains in this uncertain world? This is the topical public policy question facing India and the others in South Asia. This paper discusses the concept of global supply chains, the industrial rise of East Asia, drivers of supply chain relocation from China, South Asia’s prospects, India as a complementary hub and policy lessons from East Asia’s industrial success. For the purposes of this paper, South Asia is broadly defined as the India and its contiguous countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Topic:
Industrial Policy, Monetary Policy, Foreign Direct Investment, Industrialization, COVID-19, Supply Chains, and Geoeconomics
Political Geography:
China, South Asia, Asia, Southeast Asia, and United States of America

10. Café Evropa: The future of energy in the Czech Republic - how to further reduce dependence on fossil fuels?

Author:
Barbora Kociánová
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Europeum Institute for European Policy
Abstract:
As part of the Café Evropa debate series, a debate was held on the topic The future of energy in the Czech Republic - how to further reduce dependence on fossil fuels? Is the Czech Republic succeeding in diversifying its resources and reducing its dependence on fossil fuels? Will the Czech Republic be energy independent from other countries if it moves away from coal? You can read a summary of the outputs of each guest in the report written by our intern Barbora Kociánová.
Topic:
Fossil Fuels, Coal, Energy, and Debates
Political Geography:
Europe and Czech Republic

11. Will the poverty-related SDGs be met? Global projections for 2030

Author:
Arief Anshory Yusuf, Zuzy Anna, Ahmad Komarulzaman, and Andy Sumner
Publication Date:
10-2023
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The 1980s are sometimes referred to as the ‘lost decade’ for development. Many countries in the Global South experienced weak or no improvement in poverty indicators. Our projections are equally dire for the current decade and prospects for the SDGs unless action is taken.
Topic:
Poverty, Sustainable Development Goals, and Economic Development
Political Geography:
Global Focus

12. The rise of social protection in the Global South – the role of foreign aid

Author:
Miguel Niño-Zarazúa, Ana Horigoshi, and Alma Santillán Hernández
Publication Date:
10-2023
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Despite the rapid expansion of social protection across the Global South in recent decades, the ILO (2021: 19) estimates that more than half of the global population still have no access to any form of protection against poverty vulnerability and social exclusion.
Topic:
Poverty, Foreign Aid, and Protection
Political Geography:
Global Focus and Global South

13. Beyond Compliance: A Performance Assessment of Statutory Boards and Commissions in Uganda’s Local Governments FY 2021/2022

Author:
Arthur Bainomugisha, Wilson Winstons Muhwezi, Walter Akena, Jonas Mbabazi, and Rebecca N. Mukwaya
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE)
Abstract:
This report presents findings from the first assessment of Statutory Boards and Commissions comprising the District Service Commissions (DSC), District Land Boards (DLB), and LG Public Accounts Committees (LGPAC) in 26 District Local Governments. This cutting-edge Assessment was the first of its kind and provided a ground-breaking opportunity to examine these important structures designed to provide regulation, oversight and additional citizen representation and voice, within the ambit of Uganda’s Decentralisation Policy. The report offers interesting and intriguing insights into the operations of the Statutory Boards and Commissions which point to an urgent need to revitalise and strengthen them as critical pillars of Local Governance in Uganda. Uganda’s Decentralisation Policy devolved powers to the Local Governments. These powers rest on three key pillars, namely the Local Council (including the Executive), the Technical Staff and the Statutory Bodies. As such, Uganda’s Decentralisation Policy is both a political and a technical process. At the political level it involves leadership, participation, inclusion, representation, decision-making, and power relations between Central and Local Governments, and between Higher and Lower Local Governments. On the technical level, it involves administration, planning, budgeting, financial management, human resources management and development, monitoring and evaluation, supervision and mentoring. Thus, the success of Decentralisation is highly contingent on the careful and effective synchronization of political and technical elements and functions. At the commencement of the decentralisation policy, the government, through several legal instruments, created an elaborate institutional framework for support and oversight at the local government level. These institutions include the District Service Commission, District Land Board, Local Government Public Accounts Committees, and the District Tender Boards (now contracts committee) which later morphed into the District Contracts Committees (Mushemeza, 2019). The assessment of these statutory boards and commissions was underpinned by a series of ACODE’s scorecard findings that consistently revealed that the functionality of committees and statutory boards and commissions have a bearing on the general performance of district local government councils and subsequently the quality-of-service delivery in local governments. Furthermore, a number of studies indicated structural and operational gaps in the functionality of various accountability organs at the Local Government level1 . Given the importance of this tripartite relationship highlighted above, the functionality and strength of the Statutory Boards and Commissions is an important yardstick and litmus test for the overall functionality of a given Local Government. It is against this background that the assessment sought to examine the performance of the statutory boards and commissions. Specifically, the assessment sought to; (i) Explore the extent to which statutory boards and commissions have complied with their roles and responsibilities; (ii) Analyse how statutory boards and commissions are accountable to council and citizens; and (iii) Explore key issues impeding and or facilitating Statutory Boards and Commissions in delivering on their statutory roles and responsibilities and make appropriate recommendations. The assessment largely drew from the methodology of the Local Government Scorecard Assessment (Tumushabe, Mushemeza, Tamale, Lukwago, & Ssemakula, 2010). The assessment is further grounded in rigorous methodological approaches that adhere to scientific rigour. This assessment focused on FY 2021/2022 and was carried out in the 26 districts of Agago, Amuria, Amuru, Arua, Buliisa, Hoima, Gulu, Jinja, Kanungu, Kabarole, Kamuli, Lira, Luwero, Mbale, Mbarara, Moroto, Mpigi, Mukono, Nakapiripirit, Nebbi, Ntungamo, Rukungiri, Sheema, Soroti, Tororo and Wakiso. The overall finding of the Assessment was that the Statutory Boards and Commissions exist at the Local Government level and are attempting to discharge their duties and functions, in spite of the stiff challenges that their face. Notwithstanding their regulatory import and function, their role as an added citizen representation and voice, the Statutory Bodies were noted to have declining visibility and significance – across all the 26 districts assessed. Different Boards and Commissions in the different districts exhibit varying levels of resilience and functionality. Overall, there seemed to be a general “neglect” of the Statutory Bodies, across the Board.
Topic:
Regulation, Decentralization, Compliance, Assessment, and Local Government
Political Geography:
Uganda and Africa

14. Assessment of the economic inclusiveness of the Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme (UWEP): The case of Luwero,Wakiso, Mpigi, Mukono and Kampala districts

Author:
Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE)
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE)
Abstract:
This study aims to assess the economic inclusiveness of the Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme (UWEP). UWEP, a flagship program initiated by the government in the fiscal year 2015/2016, is specifically dedicated to women’s economic empowerment and enhancing their contribution to economic development.
Topic:
Women, Inequality, Entrepreneurship, Assessment, and Economic Inclusion
Political Geography:
Uganda and Africa

15. Analysis of the Implementation of Auditor General’s Recommendations in Local Governments to Enhance Accountability

Author:
David Andrew Omona, Isaac Katono, Jeremy Waiswa, Maurice Olobo, Alfred Wonyaka, and Simon Peter Mukisa
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE)
Abstract:
This research paper presents the findings of the study on the status of implementation of the Auditor General’s (AG’s) recommendations in Local Governments (LGs) in Uganda. In implementing their mandates, local governments are expected to ensure compliance with existing laws and guidelines. As such, the Local Governments, through the National Performance Assessments conducted by the Office of the Prime Minister, are assessed on their level of compliance and accountability. The findings noted that contrary to the other requirements beyond the timely submission of information to the Permanent Secretary/ Secretary to the Treasury, the status of implementation of the Internal Auditor General and the Auditor General’s findings from the previous financial years remains a challenge for most Local Governments. It is on this basis that this study was conceptualised. The main objective of the study was to analyse the level of implementation of the Auditor General’s recommendations in local governments to enhance accountability. Specifically, the study sought to: (a) Establish the status of implementation of the Auditor General’s recommendations in selected districts, (b) Establish the status of Action on Parliament’s resolutions on District Local Governments (DLGs), Auditor General’s recommendations, (c) Examine challenges that affect the implementations of the Auditor General’s recommendations at District Local Governments and Parliament levels and (d) Make proposals to improve on the level of implementation and enforcement of the Auditor General’s recommendations. The study has important implications for promoting transparency, accountability, and good governance in local governments in Uganda.
Topic:
Governance, Transparency, Compliance, Local Government, and Implementation
Political Geography:
Uganda and Africa

16. Analysis of the National Budget Estimates FY 2023/24: Budget Lines for Local Government Mandates under Central Government MDAs and Proposals for Re-Allocation

Author:
Daniel Lukwago
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE)
Abstract:
To enable Local Governments (LGs) to provide services to the citizens, the Central Government (CG) of Uganda is required to provide them grants in the form of unconditional, conditional and equalisation. However, over the last decade, there has been a decline in the share of transfers from CG to LGs. The share of the national budget allocated to LG programmes has reduced from 22 per cent in FY 2010/11 to 13 per cent in FY 2015/16 and fell further to 9.8 per cent in FY 2023/14. The decline is largely attributed to recentralization of functions and resources which by law are mandated under LGs. A study by ACODE in 2020, which was a follow-up study, found that despite recommendations of the 2019 study, the allocation of funds meant for LGs to Central Government Ministries Departments and Agencies n(MDAs) had not only persisted, but the absolute amounts as well as the proportion of the budget being retained at the CG had increased. The total amount retained at CG MDAs had grown to UGX 1.32 trillion in FY2020/21 from UGX 1.066 trillion in FY 2019/20. Consequently, with funding from the Royal Danish Embassy (RDE), ACODE commissioned this follow-up study to examine the approved national budget estimates for FY 2023/24 to identify budget lines for devolved services under CG MDAs. The study extensively reviewed all relevant budget documents, focusing mainly on the approved estimates of revenue and expenditure (recurrent and development) FY 2023/24. The study analysed ten programmes with decentralised functions as prescribed in the Local Government Act, CAP 243 (second Schedule) and identified funds retained by the CG MDAs, yet they are mandated for LGs. The programmes analysed were Agro-Industralisation; Natural Resources, Environment, Climate Change, Land and Water Management; Private Sector Development; Integrated Transport Infrastructure and Services; Sustainable Urbanization and Housing; Human Capital Development, Community Mobilization and Mindset Change Regional Development; Public Sector Transformation and Tourism Development.
Topic:
Budget, Decentralization, Assessment, and Local Government
Political Geography:
Uganda and Africa

17. The South China Sea and Indo-Pacific in an Era of “Multipolar” Competition

Author:
Zachary Paikin, Gilang Kembara, Andrew Mantong, and Steven Blockmans
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
Abstract:
A longstanding territorial dispute between claimants in the South China Sea now finds itself nested within a new imagined ‘Indo-Pacific’ region, which itself has become a key theatre in a deepening great power conflict. The EU is geographically distant and a relative newcomer to the strategic terrain in these two regions, yet it cannot afford to ignore them given their crucial economic and geopolitical importance. While the EU’s ability to reduce the constraints on its freedom of manoeuvre is limited, the Union should nonetheless gradually nurture its strategic autonomy by carving out a delineated hard security role in the South China Sea while maintaining a degree of distance from the US approach towards China and the Indo-Pacific.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, European Union, Strategic Competition, and Multipolarity
Political Geography:
Asia, Indo-Pacific, and South China Sea

18. The Unfulfilled Promise of EU Foreign and Security Policy towards Iran

Author:
Riccardo Alcaro, Steven Blockmans, Akin Unver, and Sine Özkaraşahin
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
Abstract:
With the 2015 nuclear deal dead in all but name, Iran is getting closer to Russia and more repressive at home, while EU member states’ priorities about the Islamic Republic now extend beyond nuclear proliferation to human rights and European security. This shift in priorities cements a re-orientation of the EU’s approach to Iran from conditional engagement to confrontation. EU member states’ options are limited, however. Pressure worked prior to the nuclear agreement because the EU cut off significant trade with Iran. But US extraterritorial sanctions, re-imposed after the United States left the deal in 2018, have rendered EU-Iran trade so modest that cutting it would have little impact. The EU could get more leverage by providing incentives, yet the political inexpediency of rewarding Iran at a time of rising belligerence of the Islamic Republic greatly restricts the range of benefits potentially on offer. Still, in the mid- to longer term, the EU and its member states will need to combine pressure with some form of incentives if they want to defend their interests in non-proliferation, European security and the protection of human rights in Iran. They also need to resort to a variety of international partnerships in order to maximise their residual leverage.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, European Union, and JCPOA
Political Geography:
Europe, Iran, and Middle East

19. How to Reduce the Impact of Internal Contestation, Regional Fragmentation and Multipolar Competition on EU Foreign and Security Policy

Author:
Sarah van Bentum, Caterina Bedin, Gregor Walter-Drop, Steven Blockmans, Agnès Levallois, and Tiffany Guendouz
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
Abstract:
In a Union of 27 Member States, differences in (geo)political interests, socio-economic realities, historical trajectories and national identity construction constantly threaten internal unity and thus also the external coherence of the EU’s Foreign and Security Policy (EUFSP). The following three factors and their mutually reinforcing interplay appear to have a significant impact on the creation and shaping of EUFSP, especially when it comes to managing international crises and conflicts: internal contestation, regional fragmentation and multipolar competition. The analysis in this paper draws on the main findings from nine case studies carried out under the Horizon 2020 JOINT project. The paper first assesses the (generally negative) impact of the three factors on EUFSP in these contexts of international crises, identifies common patterns and divergent approaches. The second part of the paper identifies strategies to mitigate and/or reduce the (negative) impact of these challenges on EUFSP and points towards windows of opportunity to take action moving forward. The ultimate aim of this research is to provide experts and officials with concrete ideas about how EU policy decision-making processes can enable greater coherence among EU institutions and Member States in their response to international crises and conflicts.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, European Union, Regional Integration, Multipolarity, and Fragmentation
Political Geography:
Europe

20. Urban Politics in the Middle East

Author:
Mona Harb, Marc Lynch, Jillian Schwedler, Gehad Abaza, and Munqeth Othman
Publication Date:
10-2023
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
Urban politics has received growing attention in the anthropology, sociology, and political science of the MENA region. In line with global trends, questions of scale, territory, flows and connectivities and materialities have come to the fore, with a wide range of creative and novel lines of inquiry connecting the global to the hyper-local and every scale in between. In February 2023, POMEPS partnered with the Beirut Urban Lab at the American University of Beirut and The Policy Initiative think tank for a workshop in Beirut to bring together an interdisciplinary group of young scholars from across the region to explore questions of urban life, politics, and culture. The papers moved beyond more traditional political science topics such as municipal government, decentralization, clientelistic voting, protests, and clientelism. While those themes certainly operated in the background, the authors assembled in Beirut pushed to shift the lens towards multi-scalar ethnographic modes of inquiry, highlighting the materialities and relationalities of the hyper-local, examining sites and places which concentrate power dynamics.
Topic:
Economics, Migration, Politics, Race, Religion, Sectarianism, Culture, Syrian War, Mobility, Urban, Trade, Music, Transportation, Cities, Heritage, Resistance, Labor Market, Domestic Work, and Urbicide
Political Geography:
Iraq, Iran, Middle East, Tehran, Baghdad, Algeria, North Africa, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Beirut, Cairo, Tunis, and Aqaba