91福利

The Global Slavery Index is profoundly flawed methodologically, yet it remains widely and often uncritically cited. What underlies the production and use of highly suspect statistics?

In a recent commentary piece published by the openDemocracy blog, from PAIS and Joel Quirk from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, criticize the flawed methodology and weak data used to produce rankings such as the Global Slavery Index.

The article draws upon material from a research project on global benchmarking () based in the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at 91福利. A series of papers from this project will soon be published as a special issue of Review of International Studies on ‘The Politics of Numbers: Normative Agendas and Global Benchmarking’.

The full commentary is available to view at:

On 20 February, Greece agreed to a four month extension of its current bailout programme, subject to the approval of reform measures proposed by the Greek government. In a recent commentary piece published by the London School of Economics European Politics and Policy blog, writes that while the election of the Syriza-led coalition in Greece was initially hailed as a game-changing event that could bring an end to austerity in Europe, the negotiations between Greece and the ‘Troika’ demonstrate why a sharp turn away from austerity policies in Eurozone bailouts remains highly unlikely.

The full commentary is available to view at:

The top ten ISI ranked journal Security Dialogue has recently published a Special Issue on ‘Resilience and (In)Security.’ This marks one of the key interventions on resilience from a critical perspective and is sure to become a standard reference point in the field. Impressively, the collection includes articles by no less than four members of the International Relations and Security Cluster in PAIS:

• James Brassett and Nick Vaughan-Williams (2015) Security and the performative politics of resilience: Critical infrastructure protection and humanitarian emergency preparedness, 46(1): 32-50.
• Charlotte Heath-Kelly (2015) Securing through the failure to secure? The ambiguity of resilience at the bombsite, 46(1): 69-85.
• Jon Coaffee and Pete Fussey (2015) Constructing resilience through security and surveillance: The politics, practices and tensions of security-driven resilience, 46(1): 86-105.

Resilience is an important and burgeoning theme across the Social Sciences and PAIS has led the way in developing collaborative networks and notable events and projects. Indeed, this rich vein of research activity has already produced a number of books, articles, and an already well-cited Special Issue of Politics edited by James Brassett, Stuart Croft, and Nick Vaughan-Williams (2013), entitled: ‘Security and the Politics of Resilience’, 33(4). The latter features an interview with Helen Braithwaite OBE, one of the architects of the 2004 Civil Contingencies Act, who sits on PAIS’ Impact Advisory Board.  

One of the first published pieces of work from 's ESRC Professorial Fellowship project has been included in an online collection of the most downloaded articles in 2014 from Routledge's Social Science Journals. The article in question appeared in the December issue of Economy and Society, and it is entitled 'The Great Transformation and Progressive Possibilities: The Political Limits of Polanyi's Marxian History of Economic Ideas'.

The article is now fully open access and can be downloaded for free from: .

Matthew's ESRC project is called 'Rethinking the Market', and it has its own stand-alone website: .

The overall objective of the project research is to show how the idea of the market has become fixed in public discourse through first having been used to delimit how we might think about everyday economic life. His Economy and Society article shows that this process of narrowing the debate about feasible economic alternatives can come from the most unexpected of sources.

Much has been made in the wake of the global financial crisis about the potential for activating a Polanyian voice to lead progressive demands for carving out new spaces of economic interaction that are definitively beyond the market realm. Yet here Matthew argues that Polanyi's own chosen history of economic ideas makes it more difficult to think through how these spaces might be first accessed and then activated. It appeals to a historical lineage that inadvertently serves to naturalise the market form, despite his own expressed antipathy to economic theories that did likewise.

Professor recently featured on a podcast for Chatham House, "Does Britain Matter in East Asia?"

Britain has a range of longstanding interests in East Asia, based on historic, commercial and military ties. The government has made strengthening bilateral relationships with emerging powers – in particular China – a central plank of its foreign policy, whilst trying to find a balance between an ambitious commercial agenda and the promotion of democracy and human rights. But while the UK has important interests it has limited influence in maintaining regional security, which is threatened by continuing tensions in the East and South China Seas and on the Korean peninsula.

The participants discuss these challenges, and consider how the next government can balance the UK’s sometimes competing interests in East Asia.