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Imperial mobilities, errantry, and the displacement of the Chagos Islanders
No full textIn 1968 the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands were forcibly displaced by the British to set up a US military base on Diego Garcia, in an act which Chagossians have contested for over 50 years. At the time, and to the present, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) attempted to legitimise the displacement by disingenuously claiming that the Chagossians were a mobile population of contract workers. Through archival analysis, this paper addresses the FCO representation of the islanders as a mobile ‘floating population’ of ‘contract workers’, linked to the figure of the ‘migrant’. At the same time, it problematises the legal contestation of the islanders’ displacement through a politicisation of stasis, linked to claims to ‘indigenous’ status based on long-held ties with the islands, as well as a discrete ‘Ilois’ or ‘Chagossian’ identity category. It argues that these debates reproduce distinctions between ‘migrants’ and ‘natives’ which obscure mobile political relations, including the imperial mobilities that constitute ‘national’ polities, as well as the histories of enforced mobility of enslaved and indentured labourers. Drawing on Glissant’s concept of errantry, the paper highlights the need to multiply conceptual and legal frameworks and create additional frameworks that can recognise mobile forms of rootedness
Nations and Nationalism 2025 book debate: Aram Hur, Narratives of Civic Duty: How National Stories Shape Democracy in Asia (2022). Cornell University Press
No full textThe hitchhiker's guide to markup estimation: assessing estimates from financial data
No full textMacroeconomic outcomes depend on the distribution of markups across firms and over time, making firm‐level markup estimates key for macroeconomic analysis. Methods to obtain these estimates require data on the prices that firms charge. Firm‐level data with wide coverage, however, primarily come from financial statements, which lack information on prices. We use an analytical framework to show that trends in markups over time or the dispersion of markups across firms can still be well‐measured with such data. Measuring the average level of the markup does require pricing data, and we propose a consistent estimator for such settings. We validate the analytical results using simulations of a quantitative macroeconomic model and offer supporting evidence from firm‐level administrative production and pricing data. Our analysis supports the use of financial data to measure trends in aggregate markups
Support for liberal democracy in times of crisis: evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic
No full textSupport for fundamental political rights is a defining feature of liberal democracy. Crises may undermine citizen support for these rights. Yet, existing research does not often distinguish support for ‘illiberal’ policies that encroach on fundamental political rights from other ‘intrusive’ crisis policy responses. By conducting a series of well-powered, preregistered conjoint and vignette experiments in the US and the UK during the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, we examine the extent to which citizens are willing to support policies that violate liberal democratic rights in a crisis as well as intrusive policies. Our results suggest that support for liberal democratic rights is quite robust, although endorsements by an in-group party or trusted expert can increase support for illiberal policies. Overall, we find noteworthy resistance to illiberal policy measures, such as postponing elections and banning protests, indicating popular commitment to liberal democratic norms
Deceptive stories about scale: digital technology, public services, and the promise of efficiency
No full text“Blitzscaling”—the language and practice of rapidly scaling technology companies—can have significant consequences when pursued in public service delivery. From 2016 until it went bankrupt in 2023, health-tech start-up Babylon Health introduced discourses and practices of scaling to the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS). While the company promised that its software and Artificial Intelligence (AI) would create efficiency, automated diagnosis, and faster access to service for increasing numbers of people, its integration into the service undermined central organizing features of the NHS, including equity of care and the epistemic authority of clinicians. A focus on working at speed also led to obfuscation of the nature of the company’s AI and software products to evade regulatory responsibility and to Babylon accessing and enclosing public data. Recommendations for continued commitments to principles of public service, including attention to relationships and multiple forms of knowledge, could benefit other public services contending with promised technological transformations
Social gaps, perceived inequality and protests
No full textLatent feelings of economic vulnerability and social stagnation may have catalyzed the unprecedented uprisings that shook Latin America and other parts of the world in 2018–2019. We document this process in the context of Chile, leveraging survey data on protest participation and its potential determinants. Specifically, we construct a “social gap” index, measuring the disconnect between objective and perceived social status. Our findings suggest that this status misperception predicts protest involvement beyond factors such as perceived living costs, the subjective value of public services, peer influence, redistributive views and political demands. Notably, the social gap operates independently of broader feelings of unfairness and anger toward inequalities in explaining protests
Digital trade, data protection and the EU adequacy club
No full textBetween 2000 and 2020, the EU granted 14 so‐called adequacy decisions, permitting EU citizens' personal data to flow freely between the EU and the respective trading partners, including among the countries accorded adequacy. Most adequacy decisions are unilateral, complementing the more commonly observed and analysed mutual recognition arrangements for technical regulations. Using structural gravity to assess the relationship between EU adequacy decisions and digital trade, and applying different approaches to define digital trade, we find that adequacy increases bilateral digital trade between the EU and the adequate countries by 7–9% compared to non‐digital trade. We also provide evidence of a ‘club effect,’ with digital trade increasing between countries that have been granted adequacy, but only to the extent that the USA is part of the club. Using synthetic control methods, we show that the magnitude of the club effect varies across countries
Estimating return on investment from implementation of individual placement and support
Get PDFThe authors aimed to assess return on investment (ROI) in the implementation of individual placement and support (IPS) for employment in Norway. A four-state, 4-year Markov model was constructed to explore the costs and benefits of IPS implementation for 561 new recipients (ages 18-40) of a time-limited, health-related rehabilitation welfare benefit. Data were from multiple sources, including a difference-in-differences analysis of longitudinal registry data, detailed IPS resource use and cost data, and the literature. The primary outcome was ROI, from societal and public-purse perspectives, compared with outcomes in areas in Norway without IPS. Net economic benefits of 2025 international dollars (Int240,000, equivalent to ROIs of 4.76 and 1.34, were generated from societal and public-purse perspectives, respectively. Of the target population, 9% received IPS per year, at a cost of Int$700,000, equal to 67.8 additional full-time equivalent (FTE) years of work if employment gains were sustained over 4 years. For each additional FTE year of work, 33.1 work assessment allowance (WAA) recipients would need to receive IPS. The most sensitive model parameter, WAA benefit, would have to be reduced by 24% for IPS not to have a positive ROI. Even under conservative assumptions, the addition of IPS to supported employment approaches is likely to have a positive ROI from societal and public-purse perspectives in just over 1 and 3 years, respectively, even before broader benefits, such as impacts on health services utilization and reduction in the use of alternative supported employment services, are considered
The normalization of the radical right: a norms theory of political supply and demand
No full textThe normalization of the radical right: a norms theory of political supply and demand by Vicente Valentim, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2024, 320 pp., 88.18 (eBook), ISBN 978-019892671-
Polycrisis and global inequality
Get PDFThis article interrogates the concept of ‘polycrisis’ through a decolonial, Global South-centered lens, arguing that current polycrisis discourse inadequately addresses entrenched global inequalities and power asymmetries. It contends that the convergence of crises – ecological, economic, social, and political – is not a novel universal condition but a structural feature of neoliberal global capitalism, long experienced in the Global South. The paper conceptualizes the polycrisis as an organic crisis of hegemonic neoliberalism and imperial modernity. It foregrounds Global South epistemologies and counter-hegemonic responses to demonstrate how subaltern actors are theorizing and contesting global crises. Methodologically, it adopts an interdisciplinary, interpretive approach that privileges Southern knowledge production. The paper finally advocates for a post-neoliberal approach that center around equality, sustianability and justice to navigate the polycrisis