Geopolitics and International Security

Prospects for the World Economy in the Polycrisis with Martin Wolf

In this video, Michael Hainsworth, host of the C.D. Howe Institute podcast, interviews Martin Wolf, Chief Economic Commentator at the Financial Times and host of the podcast “Saving Democratic Capitalism”, in advance of a talk that Wolf gave to the Institute. Hainsworth and Wolf discuss ongoing crises that factor into the ongoing Polycrisis—defined as “a […]

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WTW Research Network Risk & Resilience Review: Emerging Risks from Geopolitical Shifts

This report by the WTW Research Network “introduces research and opinions that provide new perspectives to support risk management and resilience.” In particular, this report focuses on WTW’s work in geopolitics, topics such as supply chains, national competition, and emerging risks and their interconnectivity. WTW posits that the topics covered “highlight a need for an

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Economic Globalization’s Polycrisis

Eric Helleiner defines polycrisis as “a cluster of distinct crises that interact in ways that they and/or their effects tend to reinforce each other” and argues that economic globalization is experiencing a polycrisis made up of five constituent crises: the deepening trade war between the United States and China; the move towards national self-sufficiency in

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Global Polycrisis: The Causal Mechanisms of Crisis Entanglement

The authors translate polycrisis from a loose concept into a research agenda by providing the concept with a substantive definition, highlighting its value-added in comparison to related concepts, and developing a theoretical framework to explain the causal mechanisms currently entangling many of the world’s crises. In this framework, a global crisis arises when one or

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Global Risks Report 2024

This 19th edition of the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risk Report is based on a risk perception survey conducted with nearly 1500 experts from academia, government, business, and civil society. Chapter 1 focuses on three risks that have grown of increasing concern over the next two years: false information, interstate violent conflict, and economic

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A Year in Crises

Tim Sahay surveys the many crises covered in The Polycrisis newsletter over the last year and identifies four key shifts: northern countries are increasingly concerned with their own economic resilience but have not reformed the international financial system, so the global south remains increasingly vulnerable and disadvantaged; the past two years have witnessed more violent

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Evolution of the polycrisis: Anthropocene traps that challenge global sustainability

Using expert solicitation, the authors identify 14 “evolutionary traps” (global, technological, and structural) that risk locking humanity into unfavorable (maladaptive) trajectories that seriously restrict its ability to adapt to the Anthropocene. These traps develop over four phases: initiation, scaling, masking (of harmful interactions), and trapping. The fourth phase involves one of five trapping mechanisms: constraints,

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Mitigating Global Warming is Not Our Only Problem: Are We “Sleepwalking” Towards a Global Polycrisis?

William White argues that climate policy around the world is lacking in dimensions of “should” (clear analysis of what must be done), “could” (the power to implement solutions), and “would” (the actual use of that power to address the problem). The even greater challenge, however, is that climate change is not the only global systemic

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