Essays Archive

21 August 2020
Harnessing the economic opportunities of digital technologies often requires changes in policy and regulation. Domestic regulation and policymaking alone are unable to deal with…
20 July 2020
COVID-19 mobile phone apps proliferate. They appear to offer easy disease detection, containment, and require little personal sacrifice. But apps designed to locate, contact trace…
12 June 2020
Are democrats or authoritarians "winning'" in their responses to the 2019-2020 Coronavirus Pandemic?  In this paper, we study the effects of political regime type on the…
12 May 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought home the fact that humans do not exist outside of the Earth’s ecological system. The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is zoonotic, meaning it has…
12 May 2020
This essay offers a general assessment of Japan’s performance in the 2019 G20 and G7 Summits, held respectively in Osaka, Japan and Biarritz, France and looks at how Tokyo…
28 April 2020
Rather than make predictions, we outline three scenarios for how the world might look once the initial phase of the immediate Covid-19 crisis has passed. - An ugly scenario of…
23 April 2020
This Essay discusses the possible longer-term impacts of the Covid-19 outbreak on political, economic and social systems. To shape the discussion, I use the concept of ‘critical…
07 April 2020
The European Union (EU) is hoping that 2020 will be a pivotal year in its relationship with Africa. As Africa becomes more of a strategic priority for Europe, European leaders are…
11 November 2019
Canada, Ireland, and Norway are vying for two non-permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council for 2021–22 with voting by the UN General Assembly to take place in June…
14 October 2019
Non-state and subnational actors active in sustainability transitions have increased considerably in recent years. However, the term “non-state actors” is not consensual in…