Archives: Journal Articles

There is a widening civil-military “gap” in India today which stems from developments on both sides of the divide. The liberalisation and rapid growth of the Indian economy over the last 25 years have considerably increased the gap between the economic profi les of the civilian and military personnel.

The social and economic consequences of poor mental health in the developing world are presumed to be significant, yet remain underresearched. This study uses data from nationally representative surveys in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia, and Mexico and from special surveys in India and Tonga to show similar patterns of association between mental health and socioeconomic characteristics. Individuals who are older, female, widowed, and report poor physical health are more likely to report worse mental health. Individuals living with others with poor mental health are also significantly more likely to report worse mental health themselves. In contrast, there is little observed relation between mental health and consumption poverty or education, two common measures of socioeconomic status. Indeed, the results here suggest instead that economic and multidimensional shocks, such as illness or crisis, can have a greater impact on mental health than poverty. This may have important implications for social protection policy. Also significant, the associations between poor mental health and lower labor force participation (especially for women) and more frequent visits to health centers suggest that poor mental health can have economic consequences for households and the health system. Mental health modules could usefully be added to multipurpose household surveys in developing countries. Finally, measures of mental health appear distinct from general subjective measures of welfare such as happiness.

Vol. 61 (2018) of the German Yearbook of International Law deals with a variety of topics in the General Articles section. Its Forum section analyses the Donald Trump administration and international law. Its Focus section assembles a selection of articles based upon presentations which were discussed at an international conference on International Law and Human Health convened by Sebastian von Kielmansegg and Nele Matz-Lück, and supported by the Thyssen Foundation, from 26-27 September 2018. The German Practice section analyses, among other topical matters, the activation of the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction over the crime of aggression, German practice concerning the use of force in Syria, and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, adopted in Marrakech, Morocco, in December 2018.

Co-benefits rarely enter quantitative decision-support frameworks, often because the methodologies for their integration are lacking or not known. This review fills in this gap by providing comprehensive methodological guidance on the quantification of co-impacts and their integration into climate-related decision making based on the literature. The article first clarifies the confusion in the literature about related terms and makes a proposal for a more consistent terminological framework, then emphasizes the importance of working in a multiple-objective–multiple-impact framework. It creates a taxonomy of co-impacts and uses this to propose a methodological framework for the identification of the key co-impacts to be assessed for a given climate policy and to avoid double counting. It reviews the different methods available to quantify and monetize different co-impacts and introduces three methodological frameworks that can be used to integrate these results into decision making. On the basis of an initial assessment of selected studies, it also demonstrates that the incorporation of co-impacts can significantly change the outcome of economic assessments. Finally, the review calls for major new research and innovation toward simplified evaluation methods and streamlined tools for more widely applicable appraisals of co-impacts for decision making.

The challenges inherent in energy policy form an increasingly large proportion of the great issues of global governance. These energy challenges reflect numerous transnational market or governance failures, and their solutions are likely to require a number of global components that can support or constrain national energy policy. Governing energy globally requires approaches that can simultaneously cope with three realities: the highly fragmented and conflictual nature of the current inter-state system’s efforts to govern energy; the diversity of institutions and actors relevant to energy; and the dominance of national processes of energy decision making that are not effectively integrated into global institutions.

Policy Implications:

The lack of clarity on and priorities for the objectives of global energy governance impedes coordination and communication.
The energy landscape is littered with governors and institutions. But because they have emerged in a path-dependent fashion, often in response to serial crisis, the result is an uncoordinated and inchoate landscape. There is now a compelling need to harness this diversity productively.
An emergent array of partnerships and networks are coming together, particularly with regard to clean energy finance, which provide possible sources of governance innovation but also have the potential for low levels of legitimacy and transparency.​
National decision making continues to drive energy policy, in ways that are poorly coordinated both internally and with regard to global processes of governance. National energy policy processes need enormous improvement and need to be consciously coordinated with global processes. The Asian giants will be crucial actors in this regard.

The nuclear deal between Iran and the Western powers could lead to some major changes in the geopolitics of West Asia. Even though there remains fairly strong domestic opposition to the deal in both camps, the historically important strategic location of Iran makes this deal eminently justifiable for all parties. However, the consequences for India could be mixed, as it neglected strengthening its relations with Iran when the window of opportunity was open the widest.

Read edited excerpts of the CPR panel discussion on ‘How India Voted: Making Sense of the 2019 General Election’ featuring Yogendra Yadav, Tariq Thachil, Shekhar Gupta, Vandita Mishra, G Sampath, moderated by Yamini Aiyar.

The reforms of 1991 and 1996 were branded pro-rich as people with better initial endowments benefited disproportionately from the significant positive impacts, thus exacerbating both income and regional inequalities. This must change. Therefore, rather than minimising the role of the state as per the Washington Consensus, the presence of a development state is a necessary condition for implementing structural reforms in India.

Book Review of Low Income, Social Growth, and Good Health: A History of Twelve Countries

The Belt and Road initiative is part of a broader Chinese policy reorientation where its leaders are responding to the challenges and opportunities of a fraying United States–led international order. The B&R was envisaged to gain strategic depth in the inner Asian hinterland to counteract geostrategic pressure from the US–Japan alliance as well as to buy time to reform a highly imbalanced domestic political economy.