Domestic Governance

Two major goals have driven Vladimir Putin’s presidency: a controlling state and a prosperous economy. His central dilemma has been to manage the tension between those objectives. He has had to consider how Russia could reap prosperity through globalization while maintaining domestic control and great-power autonomy.
To achieve that end, Russia evolved a strategy of ‘sovereign globalization’. Initially, this involved managing the terms of economic engagement to limit external influence by reducing sovereign debt, circumscribing foreign ownership rights and maximizing the balance of benefits over obligations in global economic governance.
As Russia’s confidence grew, it sought to exert broader political influence by economic means, using its position as the major market of the former Soviet Union and dominant energy supplier to Europe.
A series of adverse developments undermined that strategy: the decline of energy-export-led growth, global energy market developments and EU responses to Russian policy. Those changes led to a sharp and unfavourable shift in the balance between opportunity and risk in Russia’s engagement with the global economy.
The unravelling of Russia’s strategy propelled events in Ukraine and triggered the present crisis in Russia–West relations. As a consequence, Russia’s distorted political economy is now under strain; its regional influence is waning; and Western sanctions are depriving it of goods, capital and technology.
Russia’s experiment with ‘sovereign globalization’ was a highly ambitious attempt to harness interdependence to the pursuit of power-political ends. For the first time, Russia used economic relations – its traditional weakness – as a source of strength. The failure of that strategy encourages pessimism about Russia’s prospects but optimism about globalization.
- See more at: https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/russias-sovereign-globalization-rise-fall-and-future#sthash.katIyU1J.dpuf

Human societies have always been climate dependent, but we are only now coming to grips with the fact that our climate also depends on us. As the second decade of the 21st century gets underway, we now recognize that we are faced with two challenges created by our ever-increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. First, the atmosphere is warming, setting the stage for a host of problems from droughts, extreme weather events, coastal erosion and inundation, to which we have to adapt. And second, we must begin implementing strategies to slow down our greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate the scale of these impacts while putting in place corresponding adaptation measures.

These challenges are particularly problematic for countries and economies in the Asia Pacific. On the one hand, the region is slated to face some of the greatest climate related impacts relative to other regions of the world. On the other, developing economies in the region will see substantial expansions of their middle classes and the greenhouse gas emissions their lifestyles generate.

The future scenario(s) aimed to illustrate how social, economical and political demand could be harnessed to move the Asia Pacific along a path toward putting far less carbon into the atmosphere by 2050. Science and technology development, including technology transfer, that respond to such demand was seen a key driver of this transition and thus was a major focus of the project. The future scenarios and policy recommendations developed from this project were meant to reflect the economic and social conditions among APEC economies and be consistent with their common but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities. While the project’s main focus was on longer-term perspectives, recommendations were to be developed for APEC and member economies that spell out short-term actions that could be taken to more quickly reduce the region’s carbon
footprint.

In a changing world of work and governance, there is a widespread perception that the traditional professions are under siege. Their authority and status, their exclusive access to specialised knowledge, and their right to regulate their own affairs are all seriously being challenged. No longer able to claim special privileges as disinterested, altruistic occupational groups acting detachedly in the public interest, professions are finding their traditional values and loyalties eroded.

The challenge is coming not only from a better informed and less deferential public, but also from governments sensitive to public concerns, from the media which reflect and amplify them, and from the organisations in both public and private sectors which employ their members.

Representatives of ‘old’ professions are being asked to work in entirely different ways, and ‘new’ professions are emerging all the time in areas like management, culture, meditation, counselling and the environment.

Do we still need ‘professions’ based on the 20th century model (itself a creation of the 19th century before) – self‐appointed, self‐assessed and self‐serving guardians of standards, values and social stability?

The individual elements that come together to create the crises and problems politicians and policy-makers find themselves dealing with are generally already well-known. It is their interaction that is unpredictable, and therefore not plannable. Unplanned situations are increasingly becoming the norm, especially in the international context, as globalisation accelerates the speed of events and the number of actors exerting direct or indirect influence grows apace. Of course we cannot predict the exact situations in the foreign policy and security environment that German politicians will have to respond and adapt to. This study outlines possible future scenarios that are deserving of special attention because the situations they could create would present great challenges to Germany and Europe.