Tweede World Trade Day | Verschuivende machtsblokken zorgt voor nieuwe realiteit voor Europa
Tijdens de tweede World Trade Day in Eindhoven schetsten Rob de Wijk en Jesse Kommandeur een wereld waarin geopolitieke spanningen steeds grotere gevolgen hebben voor Europa, internationale handel en het bedrijfsleven. De Wijk analyseerde de verschuivende machtsverhoudingen tussen de VS, China, Rusland en Europa en benadrukte de noodzaak van meer Europese strategische autonomie. Kommandeur presenteerde de Geopolitical Annual Trade Risk Index (GATRI), die laat zien hoe diplomatieke, militaire en economische ontwikkelingen handelsrisico’s beïnvloeden. De centrale boodschap: Europa moet sneller handelen, investeren en zich aanpassen aan een fundamenteel veranderende wereldorde.
Expert Analysis | Europe’s Regulatory Power Needs a Geopolitical Strategy
As global competition intensifies over technology standards, supply chains, and digital governance, the European Union finds itself in a paradoxical position: it remains the world’s most influential regulatory power, yet continues to treat this influence largely as a by-product of governance rather than a tool of geopolitical strategy. While Brussels has successfully exported its rules across areas such as data protection, sustainability, and competition policy, other major powers are increasingly leveraging regulatory frameworks and standard-setting processes as instruments of statecraft. Drawing on China’s strategic use of legal and regulatory influence, Benedetta Girardi argues that the EU must begin viewing its regulatory power as a geopolitical asset if it wants to preserve and advance its position in an increasingly contested international order.
New publication | No Bang for Buck: Exploring the Heterogeneous Relationships Between Official Development Assistance and Intrastate Conflict Casualties
What determines whether Official Development Assistance (ODA) can reduce casualties in intrastate conflicts? In the newly published master’s thesis, HCSS Data Scientist Emma Bokel examines 156 countries between 1989 and 2022 using Dynamic Panel GMM and a Causal Forest model to assess both average effects and underlying heterogeneity. The study finds that ODA does not reliably reduce conflict deaths on average, with a persistent “conflict trap” driven by prior-year fatalities. Instead, effectiveness depends on four key conditions: political stability, aid fragmentation, delivery channel, and purpose-specific aid dynamics, leading to policy recommendations emphasising context-sensitive allocation, multilateral delivery in fragile settings, and prevention over de-escalation.
