Publications and Resources

This Policy Brief provides a distillation of a recent Small Arms Survey report that examines the Arms Trade Treaty (2013) in relation to the Indo-Pacific region. The report focuses on the different attitudes of states in the Indo-Pacific toward the Treaty: it explores how armament dynamics in this region shape states’ perceptions when defining their own security requirements and attitudes toward an instrument that aims to regulate the conventional arms trade. Further, it identifies the main challenges and obstacles to ATT universalisation and compliance in the Indo-Pacific region, and provides insights into opportunities for enhanced engagement with the Treaty by the states in the region.

This report examines the dyadic relationships between the big three in BRICS - China, India and Russia. The XVI. BRICS summit was chaired by Russia in Kazan from October 22 to 24. Over 30 countries expressed an interest in joining the present nine members of BRICS. It can be expected that additional countries will soon join the group. What does this mean for the future of BRICS? Will BRICS become the new voice of the Global South? Or will it remain a loose grouping, a “negating coalition”, that has consensus about what to reject but that lacks a vision? This report argues that rivalries and conflicts among the big three in BRICS (China, India and Russia) prevent a homogenous global governance approach, although the international influence of BRICS is likely to keep growing.

This is a report on an international workshop for 45 peacebuilders, co-hosted by Toda Peace Institute and the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies in June 2024. Emphasizing citizen participation and collective intelligence, the workshop explored the intersection of digital democracy and algorithmic technologies designed to enhance democratic processes. Central to the discussions were deliberative technologies, a new class of tools that facilitate collective discussion and decision-making by incorporating both qualitative and quantitative inputs, supported by bridging algorithms and AI. The workshop provided a comprehensive overview of how these innovative approaches and technologies can contribute to more inclusive and effective democratic processes, particularly in contexts marked by polarization and conflict.

This report introduces “massively parallel problem solving and democracy building”, the notion that the “solution” to failing democracy comes in the form of hundreds of thousands of different people and organizations, each working on their own little “thing,” which together add up to a massive societal response to all the various challenges democracy faces. Scholars, conflict resolution practitioners, politicians, and grassroots citizens all seem to agree: democracy is in trouble in many places around the world including the U.S. which is the focus of this report. However, the forces of resilience and adaptive change are here in more abundance than is often recognized. Rather than being a hypothetical theoretical idea, massively parallel problem solving is already happening on the ground – on a surprisingly large scale.