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Latest Policy Briefs and Reports
Social Media, Technology and Peacebuilding
How Big Data Can Bolster Autocratic Legitimacy (Via the Rhetoric of Safety and Convenience)
Policy Brief No.137 - August, 2022
This Policy Brief examines the different ways in which big data collection serves autocratic agendas by hiding the oppressive potential of heightened surveillance through promises of enhanced safety, convenience, and modernisation. Political actors with autocratic agendas can package their governance agenda via these promises of big data to bolster their legitimacy as leaders and avoid backlash for their invasive policies. The paper explores case studies illustrating that in some cases citizens welcome or do not object to invasive policies when autocrats frame the collection of private information as enhancing citizen safety and convenience. The paper then unpacks how the narrative push for digital solutionism and technology optimism unwittingly serves autocratic agendas. Finally, recommendations are provided for policymakers and civil society organisations seeking to resist the sinister alliance of big data and autocratic repression or what some have rightfully called, “digital dictatorships.''
Contemporary Peace Research and Practice
Official Apology: Cementing Peace, Disavowing Injustice
Policy Brief No.136 - August, 2022
Since World War II, governments, some church authorities and other bodies have apologised for specific injustices, including violence, which they deliberately committed against other countries, peoples, or their own citizens. This Policy Brief first explores the history of apology and presents a definition of official apology. It explains how apology can provide cement for a peace settlement. The post-World War II apologies referenced above are then categorised into seven types or purposes. This is followed by a discussion of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, and the difference between an effective apology and an inadequate apology. The question of apology and compensation is explored, along with the efficacy of enhancing apology with national commemoration and physical memorials and realising the potential of official apologies for promoting justice, post-conflict healing, and peace. Finally, the new and unprecedented situation of climate change, with multiple perpetrators and victims, is touched upon.
Cooperative Security, Arms Control and Disarmament
The NPT, the TPNW and the Future of Arms Control and Disarmament After Ukraine
Summary Report No.135 - August, 2022
A June 2022 international workshop of experts and diplomats concluded that the assumptions on which nuclear deterrence are based need to be challenged, and the dogma that nuclear deterrence will always be effective should be questioned. Held to coincide with the First Meeting of States Parties to the TPNW, the workshop noted that civil society and like-minded states have so far worked together to make progress on the TPNW and must continue to do so. The workshop which was convened by Toda Peace Institute and the Vienna Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, gave particular attention to the impact of the war in Ukraine on the perceived value of nuclear deterrence, and the relationship of the TPNW to other treaties and political alliances.
Cooperative Security, Arms Control and Disarmament
Managing the China, India and Pakistan Nuclear Trilemma
Policy Brief No.134 - July, 2022
In 2021, the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN) and the Toda Peace Institute launched a research project examining the nuclear and defence dynamics between China, India, and Pakistan. Building on previous APLN papers and the Brookings ‘Strategic Chain’ report, this project seeks to map the contours of the China-India-Pakistan nuclear relationship, identifying the key drivers of conflict, as well as practical nuclear risk reduction, crisis stability, and confidence building measures. The project also aims to explore the possibility of a nuclear restraint regime that includes all three countries. At a workshop organised by the project in February 2022, experts from the Indo-Pacific region, including from China, India, and Pakistan, presented scholarly and policy analyses on the trilateral dynamics in Southern Asia. This report synthesises the analysis from those discussions.
Mapping The Emerging Strategic Stability And Arms Control Landscape
Policy Brief No.133 - July, 2022
We are living in an era of transition and uncertainty in the global nuclear order where nuclear security and nuclear risks are changing and the ways, ends and means devised to manage the nuclear condition are under pressure. This is the result of a technological, geopolitical and normative change and transformation across the nuclear ecosystem. Taken together, these developments are calling into question the way that we manage nuclear threats, and particularly how we think about strategic stability and arms control. While there have been periods of unsettling, rapid, and potentially revolutionary change in the global nuclear order in the past, today appears to be different because the phenomenon is so wide-spread, multifaceted, and because the challenges go right to the heart of how we think about and conceptualise the nuclear condition.