New Publications

• Petra Alderman (with Kristin Eggeling) published an article, ‘Vision documents, nation branding and the legitimation of non-democratic regimes’, Geopolitics.

• Merisa Thompson published an article, ‘Alternative visions of “ethical” dairying: changing entanglements with calves, cows and care’, Agriculture and Human Values.

Blogs and other project news

• Nic Cheeseman (with Marie Eve-Desrosiers) launched a new report, How (not) to engage with authoritarian states), which outlines six pitfalls with the way that democratic donors engage with authoritarian counterparts, and sets out a new vision for how they can “do no harm” in the future. 

• Nic Cheeseman has started to write as an occasional essayist for the Wall St Journal, opening his account with this analysis of the Nigerian general elections. 

• Nic’s analysis on Nigeria also appeared in the Guardian and on France 24, while his column for the Africa Report addressed the alarming increase in people reporting that the feel unsafe across the continent. 

• Bizuneh Yimenu was interviewed by Klassekampen, a Norwegian media outlet, about the conflict in Ethiopia.

• Bizuneh Yimenu published a commentary: ‘Ethiopia should democratize its multinational federalism and properly implement its constitution, not amend it’.

• Kailing Xie was invited to give a talk on ‘Tokophobia as Feminist Resistance? Female Netizens’ Reproductive Experiences and Discourses in China’s Cyberspace‘ at the Chinese University of Hong Kong on the 18th of Jan, 2023

DLP news

• In Legislative leadership on environmental issues (with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy), Petra Alderman looks at single-use plastic bans in 32 countries, with a focus on Barbados, Kenya and Thailand. The report argues legislatures can play an important role in environmental policymaking, but face several barriers to which it recommends approaches to dismantling.

• Supporting women’s leadership during COVID-19: Women leading and influencing in the Pacific explores the experiences and leadership perspectives of Pacific women who received small grants to help in community responses to COVID-19, the projects they developed, and what can be learned for those supporting developmental leadership.

• Leadership development programming in rural Cambodia: Motivations and characteristics of leaders and Strengthening local leadership for sustainable sanitation promotion: Evidence from the WASH sector in rural Cambodia examine the results of an innovative leadership development programme, WaterSHED’s Civic Champions, which offered locally-elected councillors training to develop their leadership skills and improve WASH in their communes.

The Thinking and Working Politically Community of Practice (TWP CoP) news

• TWP CoP published ‘Thinking and Working Politically on African Economic Integration’, building on a webinar from June 2022, and a new guide to ‘Political Economy Analysis and Thinking and Working Politically’, in collaboration with FCDO.

• TWP CoP also organised a webinar (6 December 2022), on ‘Political Economy Analysis and TWP; Learning from 10 years of USAID experience’, in collaboration with RTI International and Adapt Consult.

• Registration is open for the next TWP Global Webinar Series event, ‘Roundtable: Alina Rocha Menocal in conversation with Heather Marquette, Laure-Helene Piron and Verena Fritz’, on Wednesday 15 March, 15:00-16:30pm GMT. The event will celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the TWP CoP and look back at the most significant innovations and lessons in TWP over the past decade, and where it may be headed next.

Serious Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme (SOC ACE) news

• Two chapters have been contributed to M. Cox (Ed) ‘Afghanistan: Long War, Forgotten Peace’: Hoang, T. (2022). Human Trafficking in Afghanistan – What Hope for Change? and Collins, J., Fazli, S., & Tennant, I. (2022). Opium, Meth and the Future of International Drug Control in Taliban Afghanistan.

• The Future of Illicit Economies in Afghanistan, a side eventin collaboration with the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) and London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE),will be held during the 2023 Commission of Narcotic Drugs (CND), Vienna, 13-17 March 2023. This event will present cutting edge policy and academic analysis of illicit economies in Afghanistan, past, present and future. 

• Russian Illicit Finance and the War in Ukraine, Monday 20 March. This event will showcase research from four projects run under SOC ACE looking at illicit financial flows from different perspectives. Focusing on Russian illicit finance and on the new dynamics that Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has entailed in this sphere, this invitation-only workshop will consider the available evidence and the policy mechanisms that have been implemented. 

• On February 7, Professor Heather Marquette chaired a webinar on ‘Creating & implementing financial disruption strategies: successes & challenges: A UNODC perspective’, organised by The Centre for Illicit Economies, Violence & Development (CIVAD) at SOAS and RUSI. 

• Professor Heather Marquette attended the first meeting of the RUSI State Threat Task Force, which aims to support the UK and its partners in detecting, understanding, attributing and responding to the spectrum of complex state threats currently facing democracies.

• There have also been a series of SOC ACE briefings for the Ministry of Defence/Defence Intelligence/Joint Narcotics Analysis Centre and FCDO/Illicit Finance & Anti-Corruption Department.

• A new SOC ACE website is currently being designed, and is due to launch at the beginning of April!

• 12 new projects have been approved for the next round of funding, and 4 pilot phase projects have also been extended. 

• SOC ACE researcher Maria Nizerro published a blog post in The Sunday Times on ‘Sanctioned oligarchs should have to list their UK assets’ and a RUSI interactive summary on ‘Assessing International Asset Recovery Mechanisms and the ‘Freeze to Seize’ Dilemma’.