Despite the sizeable economic clout of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), the academic literature on the PIF is relatively nascent. How do domestic and international political considerations shape the PIF’s investment policies? This article contends that the PIF’s current domestic investments constitute the latest incarnation of an historic pattern of development policies in Saudi Arabia

COVID‐19 has pulled back the curtain on health system fragility to expose persistent and deepening inequities worldwide. The limited capacity of low‐ and lower‐middle income countries (LMICs) to respond to the pandemic and its impact on the health of populations – particularly the most vulnerable – presents a marked challenge. In this context, countries face the enormous task of rethinking the way

The incrementalism of carbon pricing, which includes carbon taxes and emissions trading, has led us astray. It has been proffered as a key component of climate policy, yet evidence clearly shows that its effects are marginal. It provides limited emissions reductions and has provoked considerable political controversy in key large‐emitting countries. More importantly, pricing carbon means viewing climate

Climate engineering (geoengineering) is rising up the global policy agenda, partly because international divisions pose deep challenges to collective climate mitigation. However, geoengineering is similarly subject to clashing interests, knowledge‐traditions and geopolitics. Modelling and technical assessments of geoengineering are facilitated by assumptions of a single global planner (or some as yet

In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly formally adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with the scope to shift the world on to a resilient path focused on promoting sustainable development leaving no one behind. Since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, academic research on the topic has blossomed. However, most academic research has focused on specific topics within the Agenda, with

Dahrendorf´s Quandary, an early formulation of the Rodrik Trilemma, stipulates that maintaining economic competitiveness requires countries either to adopt measures detrimental to the cohesion of civil society, or to restrict civil liberties and political participation. The global financial and economic crisis of 2008–09 offers a test case for the applicability of the Quandary. We do so by examining

If the United Nations system is to remain relevant, or even survive, the thinking to re‐imagine and redesign contemporary global governance will come from the Third UN. This article focuses on the ecology of supportive non‐state actors – intellectuals, scholars, consultants, think tanks, NGOs, the for‐profit private sector, and the media – that interacts with the intergovernmental machinery of the

The institutions and instruments of the Global Financial Safety Net (GFSN) represent the part of the global financial architecture that is responsible for providing an anti‐crisis and stabilization support to the countries in need. We argue that the standard understanding of the GFSN as a system consisting of four layers – national reserves, bilateral swaps, regional financing arrangements and the

The use and testing of nuclear weapons caused transnational and catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences. Legacies of more than 2,000 nuclear detonations in the territories of 15 states persist today, with serious implications for human rights and sustainable development. There is an inadequate global policy architecture for addressing the humanitarian and environmental consequences

The 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) not only bans nuclear weapons, it obligates its states parties to engage in assisting victims and remediating contaminated environments (Articles 6 and 7). As states and civil society consider the best methods to implement these provisions, it is important to take stock and review existing policy approaches addressing the ongoing humanitarian

Between 1957 and 1962, the UK and USA conducted 33 atmospheric nuclear weapons test detonations at or close to Malden and Kiritimati (Christmas) Islands (total yield 31 megatons), formerly British colonial territories in the central Pacific region, now part of the Republic of Kiribati. Some 40,000 British, Fijian, New Zealand and US civilian and military personnel participated in the test program and

To develop an effective and responsive global policy framework for addressing the humanitarian and environmental consequences of nuclear weapons, survivors and communities affected by nuclear weapons use and testing, and their perspectives and expertise on what is needed, must be included. Testimony from survivors was crucial to the global effort for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

With the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) having entered into force on 22 January 2021, the time has come for states parties to start operationalizing its obligations. The TPNW not only bans nuclear weapons but also includes provisions designed to reduce the ‘unacceptable suffering’ caused by past use and testing. These positive obligations require states parties to assist victims

In 2015, as part of the University of Sheffield's strategic commitment to innovation in its approaches to internationalization, as well as recognition of both the importance of student employability and growing opportunities in student‐led research, the Faculty of Social Sciences established a unique learning and research initiative in the shape of the Global Leadership Initiative as part of the Global

The authors propose a holistic approach to life and living after the coronavirus crisis of 2020 has become history. Their method is to postulate studied reconsideration of the true needs of the human species, new know‐how for all, novel codes of behavior, and drastic change to how we treat nature. Their findings name humanity's ballooning population as problem Number One. Without reverting to former

Extended reality (XR) has the potential to be a game‐changer for SMEs. It can enhance competitiveness while supporting sustainable development and labour safety. The outbreak of COVID‐19 has further forced businesses to reflect on how technology might spur creativity and how innovation can affect their future survival. XR can facilitate product development, training, marketing and problem‐solving.

Partnerships have long been presented as transformative and effective mechanisms to overcome challenges linked to the global governance of development. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and SDG 17 call for intensified involvement and engagement of partnerships in sustainable development, formalizing a role specifically for multi‐stakeholder partnerships (MSPs). In this context, transnational

Targeted geoengineering aims to tackle a global scale impact of climate warming by addressing local or regional systemic interventions. We consider three examples: conserving the West Antarctic ice sheet by limiting rates of ice discharge or increasing snow accumulation, thereby reducing global sea level rise; transforming the Arctic permafrost zone into steppe grassland; raising the albedo of Arctic

The recent proliferation of digital technologies for development has led to a new paradigm of state‐citizen relations in which technology mediates the citizens' interactions with the agencies of government. The use of digital technologies has enabled the state to effectively distinguish between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor, so as to parse the digital subject that is worthy of the state’s

This article explores the potential contribution of the development of a code of conduct to serve as a near‐term governance instrument to guide the responsible conduct of geoengineering research. This idea is grounded in the observation that geoengineering research and development processes are emerging within a polycentric governance landscape. A key feature of such systems is the recognition of an

This contribution draws on rhythmanalysis and the political economy of assemblage to provide a framework for understanding the productive spatio‐temporal effects of physical violence on urban rhythms. The paper explores how Buenaventura, Colombia's biggest port city, is transformed both by the growth in container turnover, and through recurring, spatial and temporal practices of violence. What role

Is the internet at risk of fragmentation? Whereas the literature has examined this question with a focus on domestic policies, communication standards, and internet governance institutions, we analyze fragmentation and alternative outcomes in transnational engineering networks. These networks constitute the social foundations of the unified or ‘global’ internet. Our contributions include: (1) broadening

Addressing sources and drivers of precarity among marginalized migrant populations in urban spaces is central to making cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable for all. Yet dominant policy discourses continue to frame migrants as problematic causes of insecurity and tend to exclude them from policy processes. Deliberative democratic theory suggests that inclusive processes have the potential

Displacement is urbanizing. Urban violence increasingly contributes to displacement while a growing number of displaced people across the globe seeks refuge in cities. This article builds on original research in four Somali cities to explore the link between violence, displacement and urbanization. It identifies and comparatively explores three types of urban settlements of displaced people: urban

Big Science communities have been remarkably effective in evolving complex processes and mechanisms to enable international collaborations. Major powers such as the People's Republic of China, Russia and the USA, who are fierce rivals in other domains, form lasting alliances. Three of the most relevant case examples are the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) community, the International

Decisions about when, where and how to achieve widespread carbon dioxide removal (CDR) are urgently required. Delays in developing the requisite policy and regulatory frameworks increase the risks of overshooting climate goals and will necessitate much larger negative emissions initiatives in the future. Yet the deployment of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) at the scales assumed under

Abstract The COVID‐19 pandemic poses an unprecedented set of challenges to governments, policy makers and citizens; lockdowns and social distancing measures generate significant economic losses, fuel public expenditures and deficits and will no doubt significantly boost public debts. The burden of such measures is also likely to be disproportionately felt by the worse‐off members of society and will

We measure the economic risk of Covid-19 at a geo-spatially detailed resolution. In addition to data about the current prevalence of confirmed cases, we use data from 2014-2018 and a conceptual disaster risk model to compute measures for exposure, vulnerability, and resilience of the local economy to the shock of the epidemic. Using a battery of proxies for these four concepts, we calculate the hazard

This paper argues that the BRICS are status quo powers concerning two core norms of the international society: sovereignty and hierarchy, what conditions both the scope and depth of their security cooperation. On the one hand, this enables cooperation, as they can use the group to protect these norms and reinforce state control on transnational flows. In addition, this facilitates the formation of

The greatest challenge to the sustainability of our current era of globalization comes from within the United States. Most Americans have come to reject globalization. We must discern the lessons from the parts of the developed world where the backlash is also profound – France, for example – and where it has been more muted – such as Germany. In both the United States and France, gross Gini coefficients

To overcome the euro area (EA) crisis, the core pushed the periphery to cut labour costs. However, this paper documents that internal devaluation (ID) only mildly improves exports and it can significantly harm firms’ non‐price competitiveness factors. This raises the question of whether ID entered the bail‐out conditionality only for economic reasons or also with political motivations. We argue that

Most Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries have accepted, in principle at least, the 50-year-old commitment of contributing 0.7 per cent of gross national income to supporting the development of countries in the Global South. But what if all countries made a universal development commitment, meaning a scaled contribution? We propose a new universal and scaled financial commitment

The film industry is closely linked to the nation’s culture and economy. With globalization, however, it has become more engaged in international operations through film co‐production. Paradoxically, this instrument emerged as a type of discriminatory measure as well as reflected growing interest in regionalism, notably among European countries facing the dominance of US films. To strengthen this scheme

This article focuses on the ways in which museums perform peri‐urban agency in urban peripheries. The latter are defined as meeting points between rural and urban economies and zones of transition and precariousness, shaped by intersectional inequalities. In South Africa, the experiences of migrant workers include governed (im)mobilities, living on the urban periphery and seeing the continuation of

Refugee camps and reception and identification centres (RICs) have long been imagined as ‘the best’ or ‘most suitable’ places for displaced people by states and border management authorities. In contrast, informal housing often provided by activist groups, is frequently framed as a part of the urban ‘badlands’. Drawing on research carried out between 2015 and 2019 in key spaces in Greece and Serbia

During 2002–2018, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) accounted globally for 36.1 per cent of terrorist incidents, 49.3 per cent of terrorist‐induced casualties, and 21.4 per cent of conflict deaths. One focus here is to investigate how MENA's terrorist attacks and conflicts compare with those in the world's other six regions during selected periods, drawn from 1970–2018. There is a well‐defined

Contemporary media production in East Asia has been booming in recent decades, reaching consumers of various nationalities to an extent unseen before. Concurrently, various collaborations in the production and promotion of movies, TV programs, animation, videogames, music, and the like have intensified and become more effective in delivering cultural content across national borders. The state in East

Since culture has been considered as a pillar of national identity, prevailing ideas for cultural industries and policies are closely linked to protectionism and anti‐globalization. However, these moves are derived from a narrow understanding of globalization. In this regard, this paper deals with this fundamental question on how to understand globalization in cultural industries with a focus on the

In 1989, the Member States of the European Union integrated their TV markets together in order to create a larger and more open ‘single TV market’ through the Television without Frontiers Directive. The French film industry used this opportunity to extract additional revenues by implementing TV quotas and strengthening the chronologie des medias. This paper examines the impact of these two measures

The approaches taken in these articles for this Special Issue are interdisciplinary and seek to be innovative by offering public and private solutions to globalization and protectionism in the cultural industries We believe that it will be useful to practitioners and policy makers while also providing meaningful results to academics In particular, it is our aim that the articles in this Special Issue

Abstract Solutions to global sustainability challenges are increasingly technology‐intensive. Yet, technologies are neither developed nor applied to governance problems in a socio‐political vacuum. Despite aspirations to provide novel solutions to current sustainability governance challenges, many technology‐centred projects, pilots and plans remain implicated in longer‐standing global governance trends

Thomas Pogge has argued powerfully for the view that states which are responsible for severe poverty collectively share this responsibility. I claim that this rough equality of collective responsibility is not compelling. Relevant states may share collective responsibility for severe poverty, but some states possess much more responsibility than others. It may prove difficulty determining precisely

Digital technologies are often described as posing unique challenges for public regulators worldwide. Their fast-pace and technical nature are viewed as being incompatible with the relatively slow and territorially bounded public regulatory processes. In this paper, we argue that not all digital technologies pose the same challenges for public regulators. We more precisely maintain that the digital

What are the implications of the proliferating preferential trade agreements (PTAs) for the liberal trade order? Many scholars and practitioners see large increases in PTAs as a destabilizing factor that undermines core features of the post‐war international trade system. By contrast, this paper argues that the accelerated growth of PTAs since the mid‐1990s enhances the resilience of the liberal trade

This article explores how the emerging tourism sector in Johannesburg is intertwined with current processes of urban regeneration and development. Using walking tours as a case study, I illustrate how tour operators navigate insecure urban spaces and contribute to their (re‐)development by performing (in)security, by offering ‘authentic’ experiences and by actively engaging in social and economic activities

Abstract The concept of ‘One Health’ (OH) has gathered momentum among the public health and animal health communities as an important global policy agenda for drawing together these disciplines to inform urban planning and health security policies. OH research, from a risk governance perspective, is generally concerned with identifying preventative programmes that can minimise the threats posed by

This brief reviews the evolution of the role of export credit agencies (ECAs) and their impact on trade and investment. It argues that regional cooperation in Asia would foster regulation and facilitate access to trade and investment finance. Regional cooperation could take the form of regulation aiming at levelling the playing field; or it could go further, with the creation of a multilateral agency

Abstract We look at classifying extinction risks in three different ways, which affect how we can intervene to reduce risk. First, how does it start causing damage? Second, how does it reach the scale of a global catastrophe? Third, how does it reach everyone? In all of these three phases there is a defence layer that blocks most risks: First, we can prevent catastrophes from occurring. Second, we

In an important article published in this journal, Dryzek, Bachtiger and Milewicz (2011) champion the convocation of a Deliberative Global Citizens’ Assembly (DGCA). In this article, I aim to further strengthen the case for a DGCA by addressing: (i) why a DGCA is likely to take a long-term perspective in the global interest and (ii) why it is so vital that a global institution should do so. I start

This paper analyzes the relation between the 2008 European financial crisis and firms’ cash holding policies from a precautionary motive perspective. After considering how the European financial crisis affected the cash holding policy across different period times, we focus on whether these variations come from changes in precautionary motives. We find a positive effect for the short crisis period

Weak and ineffective corporate governance mechanisms in banks have been pointed out as the main factor that contributed to the 2007–08 financial crisis. The purpose of this study is to analyze empirically how the global financial crisis of 2007–08 has impacted on banks’ governance mechanisms, comparing the differences between the two most important models of corporate governance (the shareholder and

We analyse the implications for international banks of two contemporary megatrends: corporate sustainability (CS) and digitalization. The digital environment and the availability of massive data from customers generate asymmetric information for banks to the detriment of customers, who experience individual vulnerabilities such as privacy rights. This can hinder the positive influence of digitalization

Banks all over the world are investing in new banking technologies at a time when bank customers are progressively going digital in several dimensions of their economic and social interactions. Together with their existing perceptions of digital services, new banking technologies may path the way to accelerate the digitalization of bank customers, thereby achieving private and social efficiency gains

The recent financial crisis revealed limitations and deficiencies in the corporate governance of many financial institutions on both sides of the Atlantic that, to some extent, could have facilitated excessive risks. Specifically, it was observed that the composition of the board, its organization and functioning, its relation with risk management and its control, and even the way in which managers

This article adopts a diachronic view to compare patterns of institutional evolution of cooperation between the International Monetary Fund (IMF or Fund) and the World Bank (or Bank) before and after the global financial crisis. While the rules for Fund-Bank cooperation had typically been tightened in response to crisis episodes, on balance they were loosened in the wake of the global financial crisis

SDGs progress measurement approaches are diverse in their underlying assumptions and statistical features. They do not measure the same thing and should not be interpreted in the same way. Nonetheless, this is not obvious to the general user as all methods are often referred to as “SDG progress”. This paper aims to answer two questions: what is an appropriate method for assessing SDG progress? and

C40, and city networks more in general, need to be seen 'inside out' too. In response to Davidson, Gleeson and Coenen, we argue that it is imperative to acknowledge more explicitly how networks like C40, or international urban policy programmes more generally, are situated within a broader political economy of ‘global urban governance’. We detail that this means unpacking the often convenient use of

The responses by Acuto, Frantzeskaki, Gordon & Johnson, Pinault and Smeds all draw attention to the need to situate C40 in a wider political and economic context. Global city networks such as C40 facilitate, orchestrate, test and diffuse critical innovations for urban climate action through processes of experimentation. How these processes of on-the-ground experimentation in networked cities relate