Global Trends
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
The Crisis of Democracy in the New Cold War View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Daniel Benson
Whether or not the analogy is apt, it is difficult to avoid characterizing the relationship between the U.S. and China as one of a “New Cold War.” Unlike the previous Cold War characterized by the conflict between socio-economic systems of capitalism and communism, the New Cold War is characterized by the political binary of “democracy” vs. “authoritarianism.” Indeed, defending and defining democracy is one of the main fronts of the ideological battle, as the recent U.S.-led “Summit for Democracy” and the counter-summit from Chongyang Institute entitled Ten Questions for American Democracy reveal. The following study sets out to establish three points. First, the inherent association of democracy with legitimate government is a relatively recent one (dating to the late nineteenth century). Western Enlightenment thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau made no such association. Secondly, democratic governments are fast losing legitimacy with the increasing electoral success of populist/nationalist/xenophobic political formations, from the U.S., to Europe, to India and Brazil; and with abstention rates winning most democratic elections across the world. Thirdly, the actual track record of democratic governments has been less than stellar, given the patent failures of U.S.-led nation-building efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Haiti, or the human rights abuses committed by India or Israel, among other democracies. I conclude my paper by arguing that the democracy/authoritarian binary is inherently unstable, and singularly unhelpful for understanding the current restructuring of the global political and economic system characterized by the rise of China.
New Regional Responses to New Global Challenges View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Brendan Howe
The global impacts of climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the humanitarian crisis of refugee and forced migration flows, have demonstrated that old, state-centric models of peacebuilding and development are insufficient to address the contemporary threat environment. These non-traditional security (NTS) issues pose additional challenges to policymakers in East Asia (both Northeast and Southeast), a region dominated by traditional state-centric approaches, and overshadowed by conflictual legacies. These challenges have also, however, given an opportunity to actors which are little regarded in the traditional paradigms, including small and medium-ranked powers, NGOs, and representatives of civil society. Furthermore, new policy platforms related to good governance, human security, sustainable development, the responsibility to protect (R2P), and the humanitarian-development-peace nexus (HDPN) are increasingly prominent. This paper advocates disruptive policy innovation, through a form of regional international commission driven by East Asian middle powers and civil society organisations (CSOs) engaging in track 1 and track 2 diplomacy, to address the new global challenges.
Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: The Strategic Rationale of Vaccine Donations
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Zhengqi Pan
As Covid-19 continues to ravage the world, countries scramble to secure vaccine supplies. Within this frenzy, some countries have emerged as donors of vaccines -- beyond the COVAX initiative -- albeit their motivations are unlikely to be purely altruistic. Under what conditions do countries donate Covid-19 vaccines to another country? More broadly, how is the donor-recipient vaccine network structured? This paper argues that donor countries have strategic political and economic incentives to provide vaccine doses to carefully selected recipient countries. Notably, these donations not only constitute targeted diplomatic efforts in times of crisis but are also important to safeguard strategic trading partners that would in turn affect the donors. Examining a novel up-to-date dataset comprising 17822 observations across 134 countries, and leveraging the Exponential Random Graph Model (ERGM), this paper finds strong support for the formation of donor-recipient ties between robust trading partners. Moreover, political homophily effects are also significant, where donor countries tend to target recipients with similar political culture and regime. However, given supply shortages, coupled with the highly targeted nature of vaccine donations, triadic closures are not salient in the network. This paper contributes to the structural analysis of Covid-19 vaccine networks through political and economic lens.
Crisis as Inspiration to Create New Ideas
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Piotr Kimla, Anna Citkowska Kimla
The aim of the study is to show the crisis as an inspiration to create new ideas. The area of research is political thought. The argumentation for the hypothesis that the crisis may inspire the creation of new concepts will be carried out on the example of political theories from antiquity to the 21st century. Some examples: Socrates and Plato (crisis of Athenian democracy); Thomas Hobbes (crisis of absolutism); the political philosophy of Edumnd Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville and the French theocrates - Joseph de Maistre and Louis de Bonald (crisis caused by the French Revolution); Carl Schmitt's concept (crisis of the Weimar Republic, parliamentarism); Hannah Arendt's political philosophy (crisis of democracy and the emergence of totalitarianism); Slavoj Žižek (crisis of liberal democracy). The main part of the considerations focus on the identification and talking over the attitudes adopted by political thinkers towards the crisis in the political sphere and on showing the inspiring aspects of the crisis. It is worth emphasizing that the chosen thinkers represent various political options - from right-wing to left-wing.
