Global Political Instability Research Articles

A healthy state? Geopolitics, health, and safety: A keynote presentation for the European Conference of Law Enforcement and Public Health

Law enforcement and public health agencies operate in the context of their national government policies and resources. But improving and protecting health and community safety are made more difficult by four dark geopolitical forces which have been accelerating in recent years. Neoliberalism is driving governments to pursue low tax, low regulation small-state policies and aiding the expansion of uncontrolled globalization and colonialization of health-damaging manufacturing and services by multinational companies. The “Sovereign individuals,” first described in 1997, are the super-rich who have mastery over information technologies to avoid taxes and hide their wealth from governments. The vast offshoring of wealth has led to increasing inequalities in wealth and health, between rich and poor, further adding to civil distrust and unrest. Loss of revenues prevents government funding of health, welfare, and public protection whilst creating greater need for it. To explain the increasing poverty and harshness of life for the masses, there has been a rebirth and rise of populism. This has accelerated political corruption, created culture wars, fomented distrust of others, and added to global political instability. The information revolution has influenced all of these: it has created its own dark geopolitical force through the explosion of social media and industrial disinformation undermining individual critical thinking and democratic processes. Law enforcement and public health agencies face the consequences of these dark forces in their daily work, but they also need to understand more and develop more effective partnership responses to counter the worst excesses of the new geopolitical realities.

An Analysis of the Efficacy of South African MBA Programmes in relation to the 4th Industrial Revolution

Background: MBA programmes are considered flagship business programmes for business individuals. Business schools are often revered for being cutting-edge and critical business thought centres. However, over the years, programmes such as the MBA have been criticised due to their relevance. Changes such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the 4th Industrial Revolution, and increasing global political instability have resulted in harsher trading environments for business. As the business landscape evolves, so too are business schools’ programmes, such as the MBA, required to evolve. Purpose: This study explored the efficacy of a sample of South African MBA programmes concerning their perceived efficacy in developing leaders fit for the 4th Industrial Revolution. Methodology: The study conducted a series of semi-structured qualitative interviews with identified stakeholders relating to the business school ecosystem to explore perceived opinions of the efficacy of business schools in programmes such as the MBA. Findings: The analysis from the interviews revealed that MBA programmes in South Africa need to enhance their focus on aspects such as technology-linked technical skills, as this is a key driver that continues to shape the business landscape.

Psychological Resilience-Based Multifactorial Framework of Expatriate Adjustment.

Expatriates are facing more stressors, such as cross-cultural adjustment, global political instability, family separation, health concern. The black swan events of the pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian war have posed significant challenges in the current international environment. Adapting to an expatriate environment as soon as possible is critical to expatriate success. This study aims to examine the factors that affect expatriate adjustment through psychological resilience. Guided by person-environment (p-e) fit theory, an expatriate adjustment framework based on psychological resilience is proposed, and 309 valid sample data are used for structural equation model (SEM) analysis. The results show that expatriate adjustment is a psychological process based on the development of resilience. Social support plays a buffering role in dealing with environmental deviations induced stressors. The person-environment transactional process is the most critical adjustment process. The development of expatriate adjustment is divided into four stages (shock, buffer, adjustment, mastery) consistent with resilience development. Project managers can take different expatriate management strategies from multiple aspects. Finally, this study proposes the U-curve hypothesis of expatriates' psychological resilience development aligned with the U-curve process of expatriate adjustment for future research.

ПРОБЛЕМИ МІЖНАРОДНОЇ МАКРОЕКОНОМІЧНОЇ НЕСТАБІЛЬНОСТІ

The modern economic system is inextricably linked with the processes of globalization and regionalization. International economic instability becomes part of global political instability. Obvious large-scale changes in the structure, geography, management model of the world economy. However, the theoretical understanding of these changes lags behind current practices. Thus, the purpose of this article is to identify the main problematic components in the management models of economic processes and their causes, as well as to propose possible scenarios for exiting the crisis. Against the backdrop of ongoing global challenges, the current conditions of economic development (as well as its forms) are manifested in macroeconomic instability, which consists in the change of functioning system industries and objects. There is an accumulation of changes in the system, and as soon as the dominance exceeds the power of stabilizing factors, interconnection and interdependence, which maintain the system balance, oscillations are disturbed and the equilibrium positions are lost. Thus, the system becomes unstable. Considering the circumstances in which the economy develops and the periodicity of fluctuations in the economic system, its stability is disturbed, which depends on the factor of timely adjustments to the economic system itself to normalize fluctuations in the system. The economy as a system develops unevenly, wave-like, which is defined in economic theory by the law of diminishing marginal productivity of all factors. The expansion of relationships between the subjects of the world economy and the structural arrangement of its elements increasingly raise the question of rethinking the nature of economic reality and the regularity of its formation. The global economic system is getting complicated, and everything is complicated very selectively. Movement through evolutionary complication means the realization of less likely events. The principle of selection allows the existence of bifurcation states, including even the absence of stochastic factors, such as fluctuations in exchange rates, market prices, energy resources, etc., a transition to many new states is possible.

ISRU technology deployment at a lunar outpost in 2040: A Delphi survey

The purpose of this study was to deploy a Delphi expert elicitation methodology to better understand the technical and policy challenges facing the development of a sustainable lunar outpost in 2040, including the types and scale of In-Situ Resource Utilisation (ISRU) deployment. We used a three-round Delphi survey with an open first round and specific questions in later rounds using a four-point Likert scale and two ranking exercises to assess energy technologies and inhibiting factors. In order to provide more certainty to our potential participants regarding their input, and boost engagement, the study deployed a three-round approach that was communicated to our potential participants and decided ex-ante. Potential participants were identified from the literature and academic networks as those who had made significant contributions to the fields of: ISRU technologies, space architecture, space-qualified power systems, and space exploration. The study identified around 20 major themes of interest for researchers in the first round and asked participants to rate their agreement with a number of statements about a hypothetical lunar outpost in 2040. From the group responses, we identified three major technical challenges for the development of a lunar outpost in 2040; developing high power energy infrastructure, lander and vehicle ascent capacity, and mission architectures and technical approaches. We also identified three major policy challenges for the development of a lunar outpost in 2040: (i) US and global political instability, (ii) possibility of an extended timeframe for the first lunar landing, and (iii) political distaste for nuclear energy in space. The group was uncertain about the precise energy mix at the outpost as a result of uncertainty regarding electrical loads, but there was general agreement that solar PV would be a significant contributor. Whether nuclear power sources might play a useful role proved to be very uncertain, with some participants noting a political distaste for space nuclear power systems. However, the proposition gained two votes in each ranking position, suggesting it has a flat distribution including both supporters and detractors.

Foolishness of COVID-19: Applying the Polyhedron Model of Wisdom to Understand Behaviors in a Time of Crisis

ABSTRACT We live in a world and a time full of challenges. Social inequality, discrimination, global political instability, wars, genocides, terrorism, nuclear and biological weapons, climate change, waste disposal, and species extinction, among others, are constant threats. These pressing issues require attention and solution. Wisdom rises as the overarching construct to holistically address complex human phenomena. Using the Polyhedron Model of Wisdom as a framework to analyze crises, the authors address the current COVID-19 pandemic. People’s and leaders’ reactions to the crisis are evaluated using seven Wisdom components: knowledge, intelligence, creativity, self-regulation, openness and tolerance, altruism and moral maturity, and sound judgment. Implications of the implementation and promotion of wisdom for ethical problem-solving are discussed.

Disruption risks to material supply chains in the electronics sector

Electronic products are an essential part of modern society, but their importance has perhaps never been as palpable as when the COVID-19 pandemic forced almost every aspect of human interaction to go online. However, the pandemic also revealed that the supply chains that provide crucial raw materials for manufacturing electronics are increasingly vulnerable to social, geopolitical, and technical disruptions. These vulnerabilities are likely to escalate in the future, due to global health crises, natural disasters, and global political instability, all of which will be magnified by looming climate change impacts. This study investigates potential supply chain disruption risks in the electronics sector by applying metrics that capture supply, demand, socio-political, and environmental risks in a multi-criteria framework to almost 40 metals and minerals that provide critical functionality to electronic products. Results illustrate that the material risks varied with the potential nature of the disruption. For example, in scenarios where disruptions led to price volatility or weakening of environmental regulations, highest risks were observed for precious metals such as gold, rhodium, platinum, and palladium. On the other hand, in scenarios where disruptions led to supply pressures or geopolitical tensions, cobalt, gallium, and key rare earth elements exhibited the highest risks. These metals are characterized by energy-intense manufacturing and highly concentrated geographic production, suggesting that recycling and supply chain diversification may alleviate some of the identified risks. The analysis also considers trade-offs that may occur across social, economic, and environmental dimensions. For example, cobalt, a critical component in lithium-ion batteries, has significant social impacts due to production concentration in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Shifting production to other regions may alleviate these risks but introduce new concerns about economic and environmental impacts.

Polycultural environment: challenges and risks to social stability

The trivial thesis about the collapse of the policy of multiculturalism has not abolished the essence of the multicultural environment in the countries of the modern world. Moreover, the trend towards an increase in the number of "non-titular" ethnic groups, which is rapidly changing the stable images of culture, has received more and more pronounced development. This creates challenges, adequate management responses to which in the transitive society require flexible invariance of mechanisms and predictive assessments of the consequences of control actions. In the context of growing global political instability, the inability of existing government institutions to minimize social risks is becoming increasingly evident. In the article we emphasize that the key cultural space where the most effective models of multicultural interaction can be developed is the education system. We draw attention to the fact that the institutional function of the education system is changing - from the mission of the enlightened mind to the actor of the financial market. We believe that the ultimate success of reforms is determined not by financial capital, but by socio-cultural capital. The meaning of the reforms is the ability to build such value systems that allow to accumulate experience of social and cultural solidarity, to motivate and support the desire of people to self-development and self-improvement. As well as in the civil participation of people in state and municipal control, in adjusting the activities of traditional democratic and administrative institutions and creating new opportunities to solve the most pressing problems of our time.

Christian Alterglobalization: How the World Council of Churches Is Inspired by the World Social Forum?

Globalization becomes one of the chief issues of the activity of the World Council of Churches. As the biggest ecumenical organization, the WCC grasps globalization as being responsible for many tendencies that cause a global social and economic crisis: global poverty, global political instability, wars, economic depressions, crisis of the social institutions and a growing gap between the poor and the well-offs. As the driving force of globalization the WCC indicates the neoliberal free-market philosophy, the one, which is also assumed to be a tool of the global capital to achieve political power. This economic globalization is confronted with a so called alterglobalist vision promoted by the WCC. According to the Genevian organization, alterglobalism understands its objectives as a transformation towards more just social structures and social institutions. Many inspiration of the ecumenical interpretation of globalization is derived from the activity of the World Social Forum, the biggest platform where meet many alterglobalist organizations. Article discusses a basic components of Christian alterglobalism and inquires how they are inspired by the alterglobalist movement.

Rare disaster risk and the expected equity risk premium

AbstractConsistent with the predictions of rare disaster models, we find that a proxy for the time‐varying probability of rare disasters helps to explain fluctuations in expectations of the equity risk premium. Our proxy for disaster risk is a recently developed measure of global political instability, and the expected market risk premium is from Value Line analysts' expected stock returns. Consistent with long‐run risk models, uncertainty about expected GDP growth and expected consumption growth is also significantly positively related to the expected market risk premium. We obtain similar results when we use the earnings–price ratio and the dividend–price ratio as proxies for the expected market risk premium.

Modulation of lignin deposition/composition via phytic acid reduction in seed improves the quality of barley straw for sugar release and ethanol production

Biomass-based fuels provide a promising route to avoid environmental issues and the global political instability that arise from depending on petroleum. Currently, biomass conversion remains costly primarily because of the intrinsic recalcitrance of biomass. Improved manipulation of lignin can be a promising path to solving this problem. Through evaluation via fiber analysis, enzymatic hydrolysis, ethanol fermentation, thermogravimetric analysis, and pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, we show here that the modulation of lignin deposition/composition of barley straw produced phenotypically normal plants that reduced thermo-chemical, enzymatic, and microbial recalcitrance. This study reveal mutation of barley for low phytic acid content in the grain decreases lignin content modestly, preferentially decreases the guaiacyl (G) lignin conterpart, moreover, enhances the ethanol yield by up to 21.1% using conventional biomass fermentation processes after diluted acid pretreatment. Therefore, this apparent reduction in the recalcitrance of mutant has the potential to significantly lower the processing costs for biomass-derived fuels and chemicals, and be valuable for developing improved cultivars of biofuel crops.

Plant genetic engineering for biofuel production: towards affordable cellulosic ethanol

Biofuels provide a potential route to avoiding the global political instability and environmental issues that arise from reliance on petroleum. Currently, most biofuel is in the form of ethanol generated from starch or sugar, but this can meet only a limited fraction of global fuel requirements. Conversion of cellulosic biomass, which is both abundant and renewable, is a promising alternative. However, the cellulases and pretreatment processes involved are very expensive. Genetically engineering plants to produce cellulases and hemicellulases, and to reduce the need for pretreatment processes through lignin modification, are promising paths to solving this problem, together with other strategies, such as increasing plant polysaccharide content and overall biomass.

Ethnonationalism: A Quest for Understanding

Walker Connor, perhaps the leading student of the origins and dynamics of ethnonationalism, has consistently stressed the importance of its political implications. In these essays, which have appeared over the course of the last three decades, he argues that Western scholars and policymakers have almost invariably underrated the influence of ethnonationalism and misinterpreted its passionate and nonrational qualities. Several of the essays have become classics: together they represent a rigorous and stimulating attempt to establish a secure methodological foundation for the study of a complicated phenomenon increasingly, if belatedly, recognized as the major cause of global political instability. The book opens by reviewing a wide range of scholarship on ethnonationalism. Connor examines nineteenth- and early twentieth-century debate among British scholars on the viability and desirability of the multinational state, the American nation-building school of thought that dominated the literture on political development in the post-World War II era, and the recent explosion of literature on ethnonationalism. In the second part of the book, he shows how progress in the study of ethnonationalism has been hampered by terminological confusion, an inclination to perceive homogeneity even where heterogeneity thrives, an unwarranted tendency to seek explanation for ethnic conflict in economic differentials, and lack of historical perspective. The book closes with a consideration of the inherent limitations of rational inquiry into the realm of group-identity.