several severe complex emergencies (North-east Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Yemen, Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo). 4 Our research from those cases 5 finds that a dominant logic of elite political behaviour is the political marketplace (PM). This applies where transactional politics (the day-to-day use of coercion/violence or material incentives among members of the elite) trumps the functioning of formal rules and institutions. Such transactional
members of the Tutsi ethnic group with the intent to destroy the group, rather than just random killing driven by popular rage: 1 This genocide was not an uncontrollable outburst of rage by a people consumed by ‘ancient tribal hatreds’. Nor was it the preordained result of the impersonal forces of poverty and over-population. This genocide resulted from the deliberate choice of a modern elite to foster hatred and fear to keep itself in power. This small, privileged group first set the majority against the minority to counter a growing political opposition within
attention to the long history of the relationship between power and population. The cases are presented chronologically in order to align with the history of the West Africa epidemic. In the first case, Sylvain Landry B. Faye details a case from Kolobengou, Guinea, in which Ministry of Health efforts to mobilise traditional and political elites clashed with locally legitimate youth and local leaders over the distribution of Ebola-relief goods. In the second case, from Liberia, Almudena Mari
norms ‘the last protection against barbarity’. The performance of hope speaks powerfully to the sacredness that is at the core of the whole humanist enterprise. This is the spiritual heart of the cosmopolitan ethos, the constructivist efforts to give the lie to Huntington’s allegation that ‘international elites’ are ‘dead souls’ because they lack a nationalist connection and have forgotten ‘the mystic chords of memory’ ( Huntington, 2004 ). 3 Humans need some sense of spirit, belief, meaning , a vision of the future. To do anything at
and a possible handover of the facility in the next three to five years. 4 Alex de Waal has offered a different interpretation of the events in Jonglei from that of MSF-H ( de Waal, 2014 ). Looking at elite politics in South Sudan, de Waal argued that since the signing of the CPA with Khartoum, the oil and, to a lesser extent, aid revenues now available to South Sudanese leaders had been consistently used to build patronage linkages and private security loyalties, leaving
the challenge of disinformation more acute today: the behaviour of political elites. More specifically, the willingness of leaders, even those in supposedly liberal democratic states, such as the US, UK and Italy, to lie to the public or disregard evidence. Donald Trump is, of course, the most famous example of this phenomenon. According to the Washington Post fact checkers, in his first 600 days in office, President Trump made 5,001 false or misleading claims ( Washington Post , 2018 ). This disregard for facts is said to have contributed
fact they collectively represent a break with a basic consensus on American exceptionality that previously united American elites. It is possible to list the main premises synthetically, without necessarily following the order of their presentation in the strategy: the international system is a space of permanent competition for power between sovereign states, which are responsible for the construction of a peaceful world order; the world is made up of strong, independent and sovereign nations, with their own cultures
the hostage, such as supplies, the release of prisoners, and public statements. In addition, media coverage about a [government] effort shines an even greater light on the employees, who then become special targets. ( Défis, 2014 ) 3 In fact, according to negotiators for RAID and GIGN (elite tactical units of the French police), ‘[Multinational] companies, which are overinsured, have become accustomed to
than locals ( GEC, 2020 ). Inflated salaries and instances of corruption gave the impression that responders had incentives to prolong the outbreak, or even invent Ebola altogether as a business to enrich Kinshasa elites and the international non-governmental organisations competing for donor money ( GEC, 2020 ). The epidemic also unfolded in a turbulent political environment: President Joseph Kabila postponed elections from 2016 until December 2018 in an
bankrupt elites presiding over the downturn. Because of Homo inscius ’ inability to fully comprehend, together with its inherent biases, the compensatory appearance of the auto-correcting technologies and smart prosthetics of the computational turn appear fortuitous, if not providential. The necessary ignorance of Homo inscius is compensated by the signals and alerts that enfolding and surveillant smart environments are designed to supply and record ( Stiegler, 2016 ; Duffield, 2018 ). Experiencing Precarity The World Bank