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Begin New Search Topic Health Political Geography Europe Content Type Working Paper Publication Year within 25 Years Publication Year within 10 Years

1. FACTORING THE SMART POWER IN THE INDIA-EUROPEAN UNION ENGAGEMENTS: A SCOPING REVIEW

Author:
Nippun Gupta, Bawa Singh, Aslam Khan, and Jaspal Kaur
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Research and European Studies (IRES)
Abstract:
Power is a critical factor in several types of diplomacy. India-EU relations are a classic case of how changing geopolitics prompted diplomatic acumen. This scoping review assesses the changing relations of both partners as a manifestation of Smart Power. The dynamic relations from normative-based to pragmatic and inclusive interests based are evaluated. Their value-based relations are put under international relations theories. Their changing factors of cooperation are used to justify their smart diplomacy, where contemporary relations are less likely to be affected by multilateral interests. To solidify claims of smart power in their relations, the recent TRIPS waiver schism illuminated health diplomacy between the two regions. This health diplomacy discourse promotes smart power diplomacy between India and the EU, where new avenues of cooperation emerge despite pandemic disagreements. The article explores how hybrid power is better than soft and hard power in silos by systematically searching and selecting the existing knowledge in the contemporary context.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Health, Bilateral Relations, European Union, Soft Power, Hard Power, and Smart Power
Political Geography:
Europe, South Asia, and India

2. The Labor Market Effects of Disability Benefit Loss

Author:
Anikó Bíró, Cecília Hornok, Judit Krekó, Dániel Prinz, and Ágota Scharle
Publication Date:
09-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW)
Abstract:
Disability benefits are costly and tend to reduce labor supply. While spending can be contained by careful targeting, correcting past flaws in eligibility rules or assessment procedures may entail welfare costs. We study a major reform in Hungary that reassessed the health and working capacity of a large share of beneficiaries. Leveraging age and health cutoffs in the reassessment, we estimate employment responses to loss or reduction of benefits. We find that among those who left disability insurance due to the reform 58% were employed in the primary labor market, 6% participated in public works and 36% were out of work without benefits in the post-reform period. The consequences of leaving disability insurance sharply differed by pre-reform employment status. 81% of beneficiaries who had some employment in the pre-reform year worked, while only 33% of those without pre-reform employment did. The gains of the reform in activating beneficiaries were small and strongly driven by pre-reform employment status. This points to the importance of combining financial incentives with broader labor market programs that increase employability.
Topic:
Health, Employment, Economy, Disability, Fiscal Policy, Insurance, Labor Market, and Welfare State
Political Geography:
Europe and Hungary

3. Radioactive Consequences of a War in Ukraine

Author:
Rico Chandra
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on International Policy (CIP)
Abstract:
A war in Ukraine could lead to thousands of radioactive sources getting lost, or worse, getting stolen and repurposed for political destabilization. So what is a radioactive “source”? It is a material that is specifically manufactured for the purpose of emitting radiation. For example, some forms of cancer are treated using radiotherapy whereby intense gamma radiation, emitted from a pencil-sized lump of radioactive metal, is directed at the tumor. This lump of highly radioactive metal is a radioactive “source”.
Topic:
Health, Military Strategy, Radiological Weapons, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

4. Deindustrialization and Deaths of Despair: Mapping the Impact of Industrial Decline on Ill Health

Author:
Gabor Scheiring, David Stuckler, and Lawrence King
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
A growing literature on deaths of despair has argued that workers’ declining life expectancy in deindustrialized rustbelt areas in the U.S. and the associated deepening of health inequalities signal the profound existential crisis of contemporary capitalism. Competing explanations downplay the negative consequences of “creative destruction” and focus instead on unhealthy lifestyles. This article contributes to this debate by presenting the first empirical analysis of the role of deindustrialization in the deaths of despair epidemic that hit Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Drawing on the thematic analysis of 82 semi-structured interviews in four deindustrialized towns in Hungary, the article constructs a general sociological framework for analyzing deaths of despair applicable to other rustbelt areas. Deindustrialization engenders individual and social processes that affect health by increasing stress and eroding coping resources. By conceptualizing deindustrialization as a fundamental cause of ill health, sociology has great potential to contribute to understanding the root causes of deaths of despair.
Topic:
Health, Political Economy, Capitalism, Mortality, Industry, and Deindustrialization
Political Geography:
Europe and Hungary

5. Urban Land Use Fragmentation and Human Wellbeing

Author:
Christine Bertram, Jan Goebel, Christian Krekel, and Katrin Rehdanz
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW)
Abstract:
We study how urban land use fragmentation affects the subjective wellbeing of city residents. Therefore, we calculate fragmentation metrics based on the European Urban Atlas for 15,000 households in the German Socio-Economic Panel. Using random and fixed effects specifications, we find that fragmentation has little impact on wellbeing when aggregating over all land use types. Looking at particular land use types, however, we find that wellbeing is positively affected by lower average degrees of soil sealing, larger shares of vegetation, and a more heterogeneous configuration of medium and low density urban fabric, especially in areas with above average population density.
Topic:
Agriculture, Health, Natural Resources, Urban, Land, and Farming
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

6. Putin and Global Health: Friend or Foe?

Author:
J. Stephen Morrison and Judyth L. Twigg
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Over the course of this decade, Russia has consciously enlarged its engagement and commitments, at home and in the wider world, in battling both tuberculosis (TB) and non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Despite these positive steps, Russia remains a serious global health security threat. There is a live risk of uncontrolled HIV/AIDS and drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) epidemics within Russia itself, as well as ongoing risk of export to neighbors in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, whose deep interdependence with Russia, including extensive migrant traffic, creates acute vulnerabilities. Beyond Eurasia, Russia stands out as one of several flashpoints in the world that could contribute to a resurgent HIV/AIDS and DR-TB epidemic that reverses the global gains of the past 15 years. Russia’s social media practices deliberately spread confusion and distrust surrounding a wide range of preventive health measures, ranging from vaccines to harm reduction. This analysis weighs Russia’s positive contributions against its multiple destructive actions in global health, examines what the overall pattern of Russian behavior means for U.S. policy, and concludes with a proposal for an expanded U.S. health security alliance with Eastern Europe and Central Asia. It argues that the United States should welcome Russian contributions and collaborate with serious Russian partners in the service of broader shared health goals. At the end of the day, however, Russia will only earn a legitimate global health leadership seat through progressive, evidence-based policies and actions, which can never be wholly segregated from the noise created by its geopolitically destabilizing actions.
Topic:
Health, International Cooperation, Public Health, and Pandemic
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, North America, and United States of America

7. Antimicrobial Resistance as an Emerging Threat to National Security

Author:
Maxine Builder
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
Growing rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) pose a threat to public health that could undo many of the medical advances made over the last seventy years, eroding the global medical safety net and posing a significant threat to national security. Diseases once eliminated by a single course of antibiotics show drug resistance, often to several different classes of drugs. Some of the implications of increasing rates of AMR are intuitive, such as longer duration of illness, extended hospital stays, and higher rates of mortality. But other effects of a postantibiotics world are less obvious, such as the inability to perform life-saving operations or the ability for a simple scratch on the arm to kill. Humanity could soon find itself living in a reality in which communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, cholera, pneumonia, and other common infections cannot be controlled. This potentially catastrophic problem still can be abated, and the global health community, including the World Health Organization (WHO), has highlighted AMR as a priority in global health. But all sectors of the international community, not simply those in public health, need to take immediate steps to reverse the current trends and eliminate the systematic misuse of antimicrobial drugs, especially in livestock, and restore the pipeline of new antimicrobial drugs. The significant health and economic costs of AMR are difficult to quantify due to incomplete data that often underreports the extent of the problem, since there are no standard metrics or consensus on methodology to measure rates of AMR. But even the piecemeal statistics that exist paint a bleak picture. In a 2013 report, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports at least two million Americans acquire serious infections to one or more strains of AMR bacteria annually, and at least 23,000 people die of these infections.1 A 2008 study estimated the excess direct costs to the US medical system attributable to AMR infections at $20 billion, with additional estimated productivity losses to be as high as $35 billion.2 With the increase in resistant infections and continuing rise in medical costs, the cost to the American medical system no doubt also has increased. This trend is not a uniquely American problem; it is truly global in scope. The European Union (EU) reports about 25,000 deaths annually due to drug-resistant bacteria, at an overall, combined cost of $2 billion in healthcare costs and productivity losses.3 There were over 14.7 million incidents of moderate-to-severe adverse reactions to antibiotics each year between 2001 and 2005 in China. Of these, 150,000 patients died annually.4 The most recent available data on China estimates that treatment of AMR infections during that same time period cost at least $477 million, with productivity losses of more than $55 million each year.5 A 2005 study of the United Kingdom (UK) found that the real annual gross domestic losses due to AMR were between 0.4 and 1.6 percent.6 Although slightly outdated, this estimate may be a useful guide in assessing the global impact of AMR, and given the trend of increasing resistance, it is likely that the impact will also increase accordingly. That said, it is prudent to repeat that the disparities in the quality of data reporting standards across China, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union make it difficult to directly compare the severity of the impacts AMR has on each entity. The primary cause of AMR globally is antibiotic overuse and misuse, be it from doctors inappropriately prescribing antibiotics to treat viral infections or individuals seeking over-the-counter antibiotics for self-treatment. But another driver, less obvious than overuse in humans, is the use of antimicrobials in livestock, and the ratio of use in animals as compared to humans is astounding. In the United States, about 80 percent of all antibiotics are consumed in either agriculture or aquaculture. Generally, these drugs are administered to livestock as growth promoters and are medically unnecessary. Resistance in livestock quickly spreads to humans, and many community-acquired infections are the result of a contaminated food supply. Although most infections are acquired in the community, most deaths attributed to resistant infections occur in healthcare settings, and healthcare-acquired (or nosocomial) infections are another driver of AMR. At this point, AMR does not pose an immediate and direct threat to national security. Rather, this is a creeping global security crisis. If current trends continue, these drugs upon which the world relies will lose effectiveness. The gains made in fighting infectious diseases will be reversed, and a wide range of routine surgeries and easily treatable infections will become much more dangerous and deadly. This will cause the health of the world's working population to deteriorate, and the economic productivity and social cohesion of the globe to decline. At any time, a “black swan” event—triggered by an outbreak of drug-resistant tuberculosis, cholera, or pneumonia, for example—could prove catastrophic, endangering the fabric of societies and our globalized economy, forcing a stop to international trade and travel to prevent further spread. The issue of AMR is a tragedy of the commons in which individual incentives lead to the overuse and eventual destruction of a shared resource. International cooperation is required to walk back from this ledge and avoid a postantibiotics world, even though it is impossible to completely reverse the damage already done.
Topic:
Health, National Security, Infectious Diseases, and Health Care Policy
Political Geography:
United States, China, United Kingdom, America, and Europe