Government repression and citizen support for democratic rights in Africa

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Country ownership in climate finance coordination: a comparative assessment of Kenya and Zambia

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Will REDD+ safeguards mitigate corruption? Qualitative evidence from Southeast Asia

High levels of faith and finance are being invested in REDD+ as a promising global climate change mitigation policy. Since its inception in 2007, corruption has been viewed as a potential impediment to the achievement of REDD+ goals, partly motivating ‘safeguards’ rolled out as part of national REDD+ readiness activities. We compare corruption mitigation measures adopted as part of REDD+ safeguards, drawing on qualitative case evidence from three Southeast Asian countries that have recently piloted the scheme: Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. We find that while REDD+ safeguards adopt a conventional principal-agent approach to tackling corruption in the schemes, our case evidence confirms our theoretical expectation that REDD+ corruption risks are perceived to arise not only from principal-agent type problems: they are also linked to embedded pro-corruption social norms. This implies that REDD+ safeguards are likely to be at best partially effective against corruption, and at worst will not mitigate corruption at all

Social Movements and International Relations: A Relational Framework

Social movements are increasingly recognized as significant features of contemporary world politics, yet to date their treatment in international relations theory has tended to obfuscate the considerable diversity of these social formations, and the variegated interactions they may establish with state actors and different structures of world order. Highlighting the difficulties conventional liberal and critical approaches have in transcending conceptions of movements as moral entities, the article draws from two under-exploited literatures in the study of social movements in international relations, the English School and Social Systems Theory, to specify a wider range of analytical interactions between different categories of social movements and of world political structures. Moreover, by casting social movement phenomena as communications, the article opens international relations to consideration of the increasingly diverse trajectories and second-order effects produced by social movements as they interact with states, intergovernmental institutions, and transnational actors

Greening industry: Opportunities and challenges in electricity access for Norwegian industry firms

Access to clean electricity is fundamental for reducing the carbon footprint of industry, both for existing industrial operations and for producing new climate- and environmentally friendly goods and services. But the allocation of electricity as a limited resource hinges on institutional rules. In this article we examine how the process of electricity allocation impacts the establishment, growth and geographical location of new green industry firms. We examine how process impacts electricity access for green industrial firms in the context of Norway, a country with a seemingly well-functioning electricity grid sourced from renewable energy and clear political climate goals for greening industry. Through an exploratory study based on an extensive document review and in-depth qualitative interviews with key informants, we find that the management of the electrical grid, from the quantity of available electricity to the process by which firms access electricity, hinders green industry firms in accessing power. This is for three reasons: 1) regional variation in the absolute amount of available electricity; 2) unclear rules and queue systems for accessing the grid; and 3) a lengthy and potentially costly process for gaining access. These findings indicate that formal and informal rules determine the establishment of green industry firms in industrialized countries, and could hinder progress on climate goals.Greening industry: Opportunities and challenges in electricity access for Norwegian industry firmsacceptedVersionacceptedVersio