Diss tracks as a service ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌
Read about the domestic politics of direct cash transfers.
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… read about the domestic politics of direct cash transfers.

Direct cash transfers — a system of poverty reduction in which people receive money and make their own choices about how to spend it — have become a major part of the international community’s approach to development programming in recent years. By 2017, there were direct cash transfer programs in 46 African countries, with donor countries footing about 85% of the total bill. With donors largely calling the shots about how these programs are administered, however, there’s been little research about what African publics actually think about them, even though African governments are likely to take greater ownership of the programs in the future. In a new article in the journal Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, political scientist Ken Opalo reports the results of a survey in Kenya on perceptions of direct cash transfer programs. He finds that supporters of the incumbent government are much more likely to support funding the transfers with broad-based taxes, while opposition supporters hoped to see the transfers funded with taxes directed only at the wealthy. Opalo argues that trust and mistrust in ruling politicians are major factors in people’s preferences for financing poverty reduction.

Class distinctions in peacekeeping

In theory, UN peacekeeping is a collective proposition — soldiers from all member states deploying to respond to requests to maintain peace in or between fellow member states. In reality, however, it is soldiers from the Global South who do the vast majority of the deploying — and the fighting — in UN peacekeeping missions. 92% of peacekeepers come from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Many countries in the Global South are unhappy with this imbalance and, according to a new article in the journal International Peacekeeping, individual peacekeepers are as well.

In a preliminary survey of peacekeeping veterans, 82% of officers from the Global South reported having their perceptions of peacekeeping go from positive before being deployed to UN peacekeeping missions to negative after returning from those missions. 59% of Global North officers, in contrast, reported no change in their perceptions before and after deployment.

Everyone surveyed expressed frustration with the restrictive rules of engagement that come with peacekeeping missions, but those rules disproportionately endangered soldiers from the Global South, driving greater dissatisfaction among them.

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Talking Arctic blues

Every country with a stake in the Arctic agrees that protecting its future is important. All those countries also publicly recognize that they will have to cooperate among each other to confront arctic challenges like limiting the extent of climate change. Yet, for some reason, all of those countries won’t shut up about the need to win the “competition” for the Arctic. A new article in the journal Geopolitics asks, what gives?

By analyzing documents produced by governments and other organizations describing Arctic issues, researcher Aslak Veierud Busch finds that stakeholder governments all agree about the existence of grave environmental challenges faced in the Arctic.

Yet the closer states are to the Arctic, the more debates about geostrategic goals and economic opportunities drown out environmental concerns in their national discourse.

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• • •
DEEP DIVE
checking in on the pandemic: Part I

The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic produced a flurry of social science research, some of which we covered in earlier Deep Dives. Earlier on, it seemed like the pandemic might be a discrete event, something that would end shortly after infection rates spiked or a vaccine was produced. Yet here we are, in a world of virus variants, worldwide imbalances in vaccine distribution, and plateauing vaccination rates where the vaccine is available. As the pandemic has dragged on, so has the accompanying social science. We’ll look at some of it this week and next on Deep Dive.

 

The wide divergence in COVID-19 response between various governments has prompted vigorous debate about the extent to which individual leaders make a difference in a government’s ability to contend with a pandemic. On one hand, the disastrous records of the US and Brazil under noted advocates of COVID-19 junk science Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro seem to suggest that leaders’ personal attitudes toward the virus make a major difference. On the other, well-intentioned leadership in the Global South can’t overcome a situation in which countries in the Global North largely monopolized the most effective vaccines, delaying potentially life-saving care to millions.

 

A new paper by Raphael Bruce, Alexsandros Cavgias, Luis Meloni, and Mário Remígio tries to account for the role of individual leaders by isolating one particular characteristic of government executives: their gender. Their work tests the question of whether women mayors in Brazil outperform their male counterparts in pandemic response.

 

The idea that women leaders have been better on pandemic response than men is not new. Tsai Ing-Wen, the president of Taiwan, and Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand, have been among the most successful leaders in the world at managing the COVID-19 crisis, and garnered a great deal of attention for doing so. Bruce et. al.’s contribution is to design a study that controls for other aspects of governance to show just the effect of gender on COVID-19 outcomes.

 

To accomplish that, the researchers relied on the outcomes of Brazilian mayoral races. In Brazil, mayors have significant public health powers, which were reinforced by an April 2020 ruling from the country’s supreme court holding that the federal government could not intervene to repeal local measures designed to control the pandemic. Mayors, therefore, are important players in Brazil’s COVID-19 response. To differentiate the effects of gender, the researchers looked only at mayors who had won election in close races against someone of a different gender. In these thin-margin municipalities, the public did not have a clear preference for the gender or political affiliation of their mayor. As a result, COVID-19 policies in those municipalities more likely reflect mayoral decisions rather than pre-existing popular preferences.

 

Based on public health data from those municipalities, the researchers estimate that having a woman mayor makes a sizable, positive difference in COVID-19 outcomes. They predict that a municipality going from a man to a woman in the mayor’s office would see an average of 25.5 fewer COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 residents, and about 47 fewer COVID-19 hospitalizations per 100,000 residents. These effects appear to be the result of measurable gender differences in implementing social distancing and mask requirements. Women mayors were significantly more likely than their male counterparts to require face coverings, prohibit large public gatherings, and enforce lockdowns.

 

Notably, the observed gender effects were greater in municipalities that supported President Bolsonaro. In cities and towns where Bolsonaro won a vote share above his national median, having a woman mayor reduced COVID-19 deaths by roughly 42.5 per 100,000 residents and reduced hospitalizations by 80.5 per 100,000, much higher than the overall effect.

 

The researchers attribute the difference to a preference among women leaders for life-saving measures over vote-getting, but it is easy to imagine other explanations. Bolsonaro labeled those attempting to control the virus “sissies” and has urged Brazilians to embrace an ostentatious masculinity in the face of the pandemic. It may be easier for women to exempt themselves from that rhetoric when balancing policy preferences against considerations of their political future. Women, they may reason, are less likely than their male counterparts to be dinged by surviving voters for failing to join what amounts to a masculine death cult. In the end — if there is an end — that freedom of political action could end up saving a lot of lives.

LEARN MORE

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• • •
SHOW US THE RECEIPTS

Monica Campbell spoke to an Afghan family that was able to escape the county just before the Taliban retook Kabul and is now setting up a new life outside Sacramento, California. The father of the family — who fled with his wife and their two young children — had worked for the US military and was able to secure a Special Immigrant Visa after waiting for several years. In Sacramento, they are working with refugee resettlement nonprofits to find long term housing and employment. With such a large population of Afghan refugees entering the US at once — due in part to outrageous visa processing delays throughout the US war in Afghanistan — those nonprofits are now struggling to keep up with demand for their services.

 

Alexandra Stark highlighted the importance of considering how the US will withdraw from its many military interventions around the world, not simply whether or not it will end combat operations. Conflicts, even ones that have been inflamed by US military actions, have local logics that continue to operate when US troops leave the conflict zone. The structures that the US military builds to support itself in countries where it intervenes are often intensely vulnerable after a US withdrawal. Stark urged policymakers to make plans to protect the local people implicated in US intervention when planning ends to the US’s endless wars.

 

Halima Gikandi reported on Afghan refugees who have sought shelter in Uganda. Some 2,000 Afghans are expected to arrive in Uganda, as part of an offer the Ugandan government made to assist the US in evacuating Afghans whose lives are at risk due to the Taliban’s return to power. Uganda has little connection to Afghanistan, but it is a major destination for refugees, hosting more than any other African country. In theory, Afghans evacuated to Uganda will eventually receive clearance to come to the US.

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• • •
WELL PLAYED

When military officials say that Instagram is a threat to operational security, presumably this is what they’re talking about.

 

Copy editors are some of our most vigilant defenders of human rights.

 

A reminder of how important it is, if you work in communications for an armed group, to make sure your bodyguards have media training.

 

Nothing to see here, just a breakthrough in a real version of the world’s favorite story: the search for cube-shaped Macguffins.

 

This is just extremely good design.

 

The best kind of internet freelancing.

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Critical State is written by Sam Ratner and is a collaboration between The World and Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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