Adam Tooze examines the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on finance and business, highlighting just how unprepared and vulnerable economic systems were to the crisis. He highlights the ways in which institutional failures, political interests, economic policies, and geopolitics interacted with the pandemic to shape its impacts. Characterizing the situation as a polycrisis, he applies […]
Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy Read More »
This guide defines global catastrophic biological risks (GCBRs) as “risks that threaten great worldwide damage to human welfare, and place the long-term trajectory of humankind in jeopardy… [and are] broadly biological in nature”. The author then analyzes historical, current, and potential biological risks (e.g., The Black Death, horsepox, etc.) and argues that some historical biological
Reducing Global Catastrophic Biological Risks Read More »
This article introduces a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy on Europe’s polycrisis, setting out the mechanisms of its “politics trap” and the strategies that have been utilized to try to deal with its constraints. It argues that “this ‘polycrisis’ is fracturing the European political system across multiple, simultaneous rifts, thereby creating a ‘polycleavage’.”
Melanie Hart, Jordan Link, and Ngor Luong of the Center for American Progress translate and discuss Chinese Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission Secretary-General Chen Yixin’s effort to explain President Xi Jinping’s “ten fundamental insights” on “preventing and resolving major risks”. Yixin considers black swan events and risk interactions, noting that “All categories of risk
Taking Strategic Initiative to Prevent and Defuse Major Risks Read More »
Global catastrophic biological risks (GCBRs) are hazards caused by biological agents that result in massive disruptions to society. The authors analyze historical GCBRs, such as H1N1 and the Black Death, and their interactions with other complex aspects of society. The rapid depopulation caused by the Black Death, for example, generated “broad, lasting, and complex effects
Global Catastrophic Biological Risks: Toward a Working Definition Read More »
In this essay, Joseph Masco argues that the word “crisis” has become a counterrevolutionary term in American media and politics, used to stabilize existing conditions rather than address problems of militarism, economy, and the environment. By assessing nuclear and climate dangers, he suggests alternative approaches for creating positive futures without relying on the current discourse
The Crisis in Crisis Read More »
Writing in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis, Barry K. Gills argues that the world is actually in “a multidimensional set of simultaneous and interacting crises on a global scale” that he terms a “triple conjuncture.” It involves: A capitalist crisis of over-accumulation that includes the externalities of neoliberalism. A world system crisis
Going South: Capitalist Crisis, Systemic Crisis, Civilisational Crisis Read More »
