Global Policy

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• Issue Information
• Effective Orchestration? The 1540 Committee and the WMD Terrorism Regime Complex

  In 2004, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1540, the central international tool to prevent terrorism with Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). In spite of the resolution's strong mandate, its implementation body, the 1540 Committee, has remained weak in terms of enforcement powers, budget allocation and human resources. This article addresses this gap between mandate and implementation capacity. It examines specifically how the 1540 Committee has tried to overcome its structural constraints to achieve its objectives. This has led to two important findings: first, building upon theoretical insights from the management of regime complexes, the article shows that the 1540 Committee has resorted to the orchestration of intermediary actors in the form of other international organizations belonging to the so‐called WMD terrorism regime complex. This demonstrates that – contrary to what the current literature suggests – orchestration is used on a large scale in high profile cases of international security. Second, the analysis of the performance of the process of orchestration reveals significant variation. While a large number of intermediary actors have integrated the provisions of Resolution 1540 in their own agendas, the coordination of these actors by the 1540 Committee has remained largely ad hoc and lacked the systematic exchange of relevant information.

• AIIB at Three: A Comparative and Institutional Perspective

  The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) joined the field of multilateral development banks (MDBs) in 2016 as a US$100 billion international financial institution, providing finance for public and private infrastructure projects in Asia. AIIB has been created with the experience of existing MDBs with an aim of innovating for the future. AIIB's establishment is compared here with the origin stories of major MDBs—all born in a mix of geopolitics and development needs. AIIB's policy and strategy framework has continued to be filled out in its first three years, supporting its approved portfolio of over US$8 billion in 45 investment operations. Innovative features in its otherwise classic MDB governance structure are also in operation, such as AIIB's non‐resident board, streamlined decision‐making and uniquely detailed oversight arrangements. For the future, factors that have affected other MDBs may also affect AIIB. Cycles in the global economic and financial environment and shifts in international relations and geopolitics will have an impact on AIIB's members. Institutional governance and leadership have been another source of uncertainty for some others. Time will tell how well AIIB's unique blend of old and new will enable it to serve its mandate and its clients around the world.

• On the AIIB’s Non‐resident Board: Strategic Trade‐offs, Roles and Responsibilities

  The AIIB’s non‐resident Board of Directors has drawn a lot of attention among experts and in the literature, although it is not an unprecedented feature among the existing international financial institutions. A non‐resident Board setting has implications for how the respective Board undertakes its role and responsibilities. This essay analyses the characteristics of the AIIB’s non‐resident board in regard to four roles or functions as defined in the literature on Board evaluation (Martinez‐Diaz 2008), that is, the roles of strategic thinker, political counterweight, performance police, and democratic forum. AIIB’s Board of Directors is particularly apt to perform the role of a strategic thinker, while taking on the other roles to different degrees of effectiveness.

• C40 Cities Inside Out

  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 popular names like ‘C40’ and ‘Arup’ to remember that these entities are complex organisational arrangements with internal (within their own organisation) as much as transversal (across them and other similar organisations) politics and, not least, often highly mobile people shaping the ways they act and react internationally.

• The Role of AIIB in the ‘New Normal’ Era for Indonesia and ASEAN

  History shows that trade and industrialization were the keys to economic development in East Asia and Southeast Asia. But situations change. The current rise in economic nationalism leads one to ask: Can Southeast Asian nations, including Indonesia, still use the old recipe of open trade and industrialization? Does economic cooperation still have a place? Against the backdrop of a changing trade environment and creeping protectionism under the Donald Trump US administration and amid lackluster global growth, the question that we must ask is, what can Indonesia and other Southeast Asian nations do given these conditions? This essay will specifically examine how the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) can play a role in this situation. This essay argues that to overcome the anti‐globalization sentiment, it is necessary to create regional cooperation success stories from policies that are politically feasible and economically sound. There are several candidates for such success stories, including using the ASEAN Infrastructure Fund to develop ASEAN connectivity. The AIIB together with the ADB can play an important role here.

• A Decade of C40: Research Insights and Agendas for City Networks

  In the last decade, there has been a marked growth in formalised city networks. City networks of late have transcended beyond municipal collaborations towards more complex networked governance arrangements. City networks are noted also to raise the level of ambition among cities learning from and competing with each other with regard to the deployment of low‐carbon technologies and policies. Over the last two decades, at least nine urban climate networks have been established around the world. This article consolidates the academic literature on C40 within the context of three key themes that are drawn upon from earlier work of Davidson et al. with the goal of drawing out the key implications of researching, and putting into practice, urban studies in an age of increasingly networked urban governance and the role of city networks. We conclude the paper with articulating a new research agenda that places a focus on the effects of city networks on institutional relevance of traditional planning in ways that have not yet been considered in practice and scholarship. We argue a key challenge is to align and potentially synthesise these traditional and new forms of city shaping in an urban age era of rapidly unfolding endangerment.

• The New War Thesis and Clausewitz: A Reconciliation

  Mary Kaldor's work constitutes an exceptionally sustained, cohesive, and also broadly aimed argument for often radical – and generally cosmopolitan – changes to state's approaches to security. Informing the project's various proposals is a theoretical foundation derived from earlier work on ‘new war’. This ‘new war thesis’ holds that the nature of war has changed from involving a Clausewitzian logic of extremes to one of ‘persistence and spread’. This thesis is presented as an ideal type that should inform scholarship and policy. The essay finds fault with the way this foundation is constructed, in particular its rejection of Clausewitz. Rather than reject the new war thesis, though, the essay shows that a reconciliation between it and the Clausewitzian theory of war is not only possible, but results in more cogent arguments for the policy proposals Kaldor contends are the real test of the theoretical underpinning of her project.

• Unpacking the Politics of C40: ‘Critical Friendship’ for a Second Decade
• Leveraging Asia's Financial Hubs for the AIIB: Hong Kong and Singapore

  The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) appeared at its inception to be a Beijing‐led multilateral development bank that is focused on the financing of mega infrastructure projects. The role for meaningful participation by offshore financial centers such as Hong Kong and Singapore was less defined. This article maps the growing role and influence of these two city‐states within the ongoing development of the AIIB. It analyzes the respective and distinct motivations of Hong Kong and Singapore as members in the AIIB, and assesses how each city is positioning itself to make unique contributions to the new multilateral development bank.

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