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2. Good Peacebuilding Financing: Recommendations for Revitalizing Commitments
- Author:
- Sarah Cliffe, Paige Arthur, and Betty N. Wainaina
- Publication Date:
- 03-2022
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- At a moment of intense global pressure due to the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, support for prevention and peacebuilding remains as vital as ever. This brief offers action-oriented recommendations to advance new and more inclusive approaches to peacebuilding financing on the eve of the UN High-level Meeting on Peacebuilding Financing.
- Topic:
- Conflict Prevention, United Nations, Finance, and Peacebuilding
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
3. Mental Health and Psychosocial Support to Sustain Peace: Four Areas to Explore for Improving Practice
- Author:
- Paige Arthur and Céline Monnier
- Publication Date:
- 04-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- After experimenting with months of lockdown and imposed social distancing measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, people everywhere now have a more immediate understanding of how prolonged crisis can create challenges for both individuals’ mental health as well as maintaining the social fabric of communities. However, social fragmentation and mental distress created by adverse environments are not new, nor are they limited to COVID-19. Gross social injustices or armed conflicts have provoked wide-spread mental suffering, broken down social norms, and undermined social cohesion since time immemorial. Generations grow up in the midst of violence, normalizing it, or losing capacity to trust others or their institutions. Hence, neglecting the psychosocial impacts of social injustices and violence on the individual and society undermines other efforts to build peaceful societies. Nevertheless, the use of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) approaches to build peace or prevent violent conflict remains anecdotal and ad hoc. This paper summarizes the existing arguments for why MHPSS should be more systematically used to sustain peace, and offers four opportunities to use MHPSS approaches in sustaining peace efforts at the UN: Support national capacities; Integrate MHPSS as a normal part of sustaining peace strategies; Increase expertise on MHPSS as part of sustaining peace; Creative partnerships to support an integrated approach.
- Topic:
- Mental Health, Peace, COVID-19, and Health Crisis
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
4. Recognizing Communities: Local Level Responses to the Pathfinders Grand Challenges
- Author:
- Tara Moayed
- Publication Date:
- 02-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- Communities are not homogenous. Within a single community, there are often divisions along class, ethnic, and gender lines. Further, not all communities are the same. Dynamics from one community to the next can widely differ, including power relations, land allocations, gender dynamics, mobility, and the level of government influence. James Scott, in Seeing Like A State, showed how much of the vocabulary of state administration carries with it the mechanisms to disempower local authority and invest it in state agents who can then wield state authority. Rebalancing this relationship requires finding ways to overcome the monopolies over information, decision-making, and convening power that state agents have, particularly in systems that emerged from an extractive colonial context. Ignoring these dynamics when designing a CDD project will most likely result in elite capture, and possibly lead to local conflict, increased inequality, and erode trust between citizens and the state. This research paper argues the importance of the role of the community within the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies discussion over inequality. The paper’s case studies are based largely on government-led community-driven development (CDD) programs that aim to ensure recognition of the complicated dynamics within the community itself. Unless the heterogeneity of communities is considered and fostered through an inclusive design and facilitation process, no program or project can hope to impact inclusion, empowerment, and the citizen-state relationship. A deep understanding of community dynamics and good facilitation are prerequisites for any CDD model to have a positive social impact.
- Topic:
- Citizenship, State, Community, Society, and Inclusion
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
5. Inequality, Lockdown, and COVID-19: Unequal Societies Struggle to Contain the Virus
- Author:
- Paul von Chamier
- Publication Date:
- 04-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- There is nothing equal about COVID-19. It is now well established that poor and underprivileged social groups have absorbed most of the pandemic’s negative impact. However, the connection between COVID-19 and inequality might run even deeper. During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, one additional point of the Gini coefficient correlated with a 1.34 percentage point higher rate of weekly new infections across countries. This difference in infection rates compounds like interest every week. This means that after twenty-one weeks of the pandemic, just one additional Gini å correlates with an approximately 1/3 higher overall number of cases in a country. More equal countries might enjoy an “equality dividend” that is associated with more shock resilience during the ongoing crisis. This new research from CIC sought to understand if pre-existing systemic inequities could be linked to higher COVID-19 infection rates, examining infection rates in 70 countries from mid-March 2020 through early August 2020, or what is widely seen as the first 21 weeks of the pandemic. It also studied these nations’ levels of inequality and other potential predictive variables: government efficiency (a measure indicating quality of public services and civil service capability), urban population share, share of the population over the age of 65, lockdown measures (calculated by stringency), and geographic mobility (a population’s physical movements as measured by Google’s COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports). The study tracked inequality by using the “Gini Coefficient,” a commonly used metric for measuring income inequality within nations--or, specifically, how far a country’s wealth or income distribution deviates from a completely equal distribution. Under this calculation, the higher the coefficient, the greater the income inequality within that country.
- Topic:
- Inequality, Resilience, COVID-19, Health Crisis, and Society
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
6. Solidarity Taxes in the Context of Economic Recovery Following the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Author:
- Attiya Waris
- Publication Date:
- 05-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- There are multiple examples of solidarity taxes imposed across country contexts over previous decades. The solidarity taxes that were levied were done to mitigate effects of a crisis such as a pandemic, as well as rebuilding of nations that had been affected by world wars (examples include Zimbabwe and Germany). Considering the renewed interest in solidarity taxes in the wake of COVID-19, author Attiya Waris reviews the history of solidarity taxes, and discusses key lessons from the past, in addition to drawing these lessons and findings into policy reccomendations moving forward.
- Topic:
- Tax Systems, Pandemic, COVID-19, and Economic Recovery
- Political Geography:
- Germany, Zimbabwe, and Global Focus
7. The Way We Voluntarily Pay Taxes
- Author:
- Ricardo Fuentes-Nieva
- Publication Date:
- 05-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- “Taxes are what you pay for a civilized society” stated US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1927. Time has shown that “civilized” means better lives and livelihoods for people where there is a solid tax base and collection–a necessary although insufficient condition for a society where people feel safe, heard, and participant in the decisions of the nation. A government that can efficiently collect taxes is a government with a solid administration and with legitimacy based on the fact that citizens pay their taxes by a combination of laws and a sense of duty and belonging. Paying taxes involves legal and moral obligations. The standard economic model for tax compliance assumes a cost-benefit calculation where someone balances the cost of being caught cheating the tax systems versus the benefit keeping some money hidden to the tax authorities. Yet there are other important reasons why people pay taxes that are not captured by a purely rational calculation. This background paper provides a framework that channels tax morale via trust and fairness directly and three elements for each one indirectly; trustworthiness of the government, reciprocity, and transparency/accountability for trust and three types of justice for fairness: distributive, procedural and retributive. This paper also makes a special distinction to the issue of corruption and how it relates to the elements within this framework. This paper will discuss the evidence on voluntary tax compliance, trust, and fairness, and the set of policies and actions that affect different mechanisms. It will provide a new framework based on the literature about the drivers of trust and fairness, with particular attention to the issue of corruption and also provide historical examples where specific interventions have successfully strengthened the tax system. Finally, it will provide ideas on how to identify the best sequence of interventions for increased tax morale in a specific context.
- Topic:
- Citizenship, Tax Systems, Peace, and Inclusion
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
8. Shared Capital Initiatives – for Redistribution and Recognition
- Author:
- Sanjay Reddy
- Publication Date:
- 07-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- Shared capital, defined as a broadly distributed pattern of rights over productive assets, can be a powerful instrument to address economic and social inequalities. We argue that initiatives to bring about shared capital can foster both redistribution and recognition, and thereby bring about more inclusive and peaceful societies. Based on experience, we suggest moreover that they are feasible and can be advanced by suitable policies and actions—at local, national, and global levels. Shared capital can involve distribution of various rights of an asset, including those of use, control, income, and transfer. This paper considers nine cases which feature some experience of shared capital involving various kinds of rights being distributed and relate these to different kinds of assets. In almost every case, the state has an important role to play in facilitating the distribution of rights.
- Topic:
- Regulation, Inequality, Peace, Sustainability, Capital, Redistribution, and Inclusion
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
9. Social Contracts: Embracing a Just Technological and Energy Transition
- Author:
- Ian Goldin
- Publication Date:
- 09-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- Social contracts determine what is to be provided and by whom. In democracies, political processes determine these outcomes, with the extent to which individuals, communities, cities, businesses, governments, and other actors and institutions provide education, health, security, infrastructure, and justice to shape what comes to be understood as the social contract. Whether prevailing social contracts produce desirable consequences, such as human rights, individual freedom, self-determination, human development, prosperity, and equality reflects their efficacy. What is considered an effective contract in the US or Europe, may however be viewed very differently in China, with the priorities and norms associated with shaping social contracts, as well as the means to achieve them, varying from country to country and over time. In this brief, author Ian Goldin shows that many existing social contracts are inadequate and require renewal to overcome countries’ failures to address the needs of the majority of their citizens. New pressures on societies arising from the pace of change associated with the technological and energy revolutions have created an urgent need to build new social contracts which ensure that no one is left behind. This need has been made all the more urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has shown the extent to which large parts of society—informal sector workers, uninsured self-employed, unemployed, migrants, and others—have fallen by the wayside due to outdated or non-existent social contracts. Establishing secure and comprehensive social contracts is not synonymous with the establishment of a welfare state, as this is only one way to secure effective social contracts. How welfare states adapt to meet the new technological and energy transition, and which other models may serve to build effective social contracts is a key question.
- Topic:
- Energy Policy, Science and Technology, Peace, Justice, Social Contract, Transition, and Inclusion
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
10. Employment Transitions
- Author:
- Ian Goldin
- Publication Date:
- 09-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- The world of work is undergoing a fundamental transformation that will impact on workers and job seekers everywhere. Among the key drivers of this change are the climate emergency, demographic shifts and technological revolutions. Far from heralding better lives, the employment transition which was created by the industrial revolution led to immense hardships, rapidly rising pollution and heightened levels of poverty, malnutrition, and civil strife, culminating in the French and other revolutions. Today we are faced with an even more rapid, radical, and wide-ranging transformation of work, which threatens to be as disrupting. This time, however, we have the means to analyze and prepare for change. The purpose of this research paper is to identify how employment is being transformed and to examine the options for a just transition, which will lead to improvements for workers around the world. Author Ian Goldin begins this paper by identifying the challenge we are facing. It then defines employment transitions and lays out the weaknesses of current models of employment. Finally, it suggests policy options which tackle transitional assistance for workers, aiming to draw overall conclusions on what works in different economies.
- Topic:
- Science and Technology, Employment, Transition, and Workforce
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
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