Any decision-maker in government or business who is concerned about the planet’s sustainable future and is looking for serious guidance, might consider studying the “2011 State of the Future” report. Published by The Millennium Project, an international participatory think tank established in 1996, this year’s report is the fifteenth of its kind, and it is…
Organized violence, be it politically or criminally motivated, poses the most prominent risk to the socio-economic development of a country. Some 1.5 billion people worldwide are affected by violence, a disturbing number, revealed by the World Bank in “The World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security, and Development”. The Report contains a major shift in focus…
The second part of the article on conflict resolution draws the conclusions from the previously developed argument, that mitigating the risks of peace negotiations, as perceived by the conflict parties, is the key to ending protracted conflict (see Conflict Resolution (I): Peace-Making and Risk-Taking). The risk evaluation tool introduced below, aims to identify and assess…
Political Risk Analysis is the child of two parents: political economy and area studies. Both academic fields are, per se, interdisciplinary and multifold in their approaches to studying the interrelations between political, economic, social and cultural developments in specific countries and regions, and are therefore a perfect match. As outlined in the first part of…
The rules of political survival call for the governments meeting at the G20 summit in Paris on February 18 to improve food security. While the scandal of almost one billion people worldwide affected by chronic hunger persists, it is the political risk of food riots that might give the matter a new priority. Various factors…
The popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt pose the fundamental question of how best to analyze regime change driven by the power of the people. This article explores dynamic patterns of behavior both on part of civil protest movements and targeted autocratic regimes. These patterns of interaction rule the confrontation and its ultimate outcome, and…
In the lead-up to its annual meeting at Davos, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum (WEF) issued the report Global Risks 2011. The report is set in the context of the WEF’s new platform, the Risk Response Network. The organization’s proclaimed objective to translate analysis into the development of practical solutions for the planet’s future, gives…
