GIGA Working Papers

How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted civic space worldwide? Contrary to mainstream assumptions of “shrinking space,” analysis of five world regions in the Global South and non-OECD Europe and the Caucasus shows that civil society actors have, in fact, often still been able to sustain civic space.

How do autocrats communicate everyday acts of repression? This paper introduces and analyses a novel dataset on justifications for incidents of repression in Morocco and Tunisia during the years 2000–2010, showing that the chosen forms thereof influence how officials subsequently talk about them.

Using a Comparative Area Studies approach to Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and South Asia, we discuss how regional issues shape global non-proliferation and disarmament politics. Focus is on the nuclear-weapon-ban norm, recently codified in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

What effect has the COVID-19 pandemic had on different armed actors across the Global South? This comparative analysis of regional trends and different armed actors provides evidence for regional specificities and an overall brief decline in violence before a return to pre-pandemic levels.

How do large-scale land acquisitions increase the risk of conflict, and what kind of policies can mitigate this effect? The authors address these questions with a policy-oriented synthesis of prior research and develop policy recommendations in highlighting the need for regulatory frameworks, consultation, and transparency.

In the spring of 2020, observers and practitioners warned that COVID-19 would increase violence in sub-Saharan Africa through an economic shock that would lead to distributional conflict and state repression – and violence did indeed increase in 2020. An analysis by Prof. Dr. Matthias Basedau and Mora Deitch.

What is the role of Latin American constitutional and supreme courts in social media? We investigate the accounts of 17 high courts on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook for a one-year-period, distinguishing between two dimensions: intensity of use and influence in each social media.