Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus 
Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus is a fortnightly series of articles on the role of art in public policymaking. This series invites WPI fellows and project leaders as well as external practitioners to contribute pieces on how artists have led policy change and how policymakers can use creative strategies.
In Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World, World Policy Institute Senior Fellow Ian Bremmer illustrates a historic shift in the international system and the world economy—and an unprecedented moment of global uncertainty.
World Policy Journal: Spring 2013
(Subscription to World Policy Journal available through SAGE Publications)
Beyond Borders
Brave individuals and new technologies are breaching once impenetrable frontiers. The world’s biggest threats—terrorism, climate change, and pandemics—spill rapidly across boundaries. Yet, traditional border disputes still provoke violent wars and revolutions.
While many borders have been drawn wisely, following natural divides like mountain ranges or rivers, others were haphazardly imposed by a colonial power with the stroke of a pen on some distant map. As empires fell and global trade and migration accelerated, boundaries became complex—but increasingly porous—barriers to the free movement of people and ideas. Even the most isolated countries can only with considerable difficulty de-link themselves from the world around them.
World Policy Journal explores these issues in our Spring cover package with essays on finding strength in diversity and overcoming obstacles through migrant education. We examine what it takes for the world community to recognize de facto states as legitimate nations and investigate the migration of Muslims away from stagnant economies on the Iberian Peninsula. World Policy Journal talks with Sudanese telecom pioneer Mo Ibrahim, discussing the role of mobile phones in connecting people across frontiers and creating identities that go beyond borders.
Our Spring issue captures hunger on the restive island of Mindanao; probes the dangerous roots of Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki; assembles a roundtable led by Dave Eggers on art and politics in Saudi Arabia; explores a way out of Europe’s economic upheaval; investigates how Russia can slow the its brain drain; and warns of the growth of Pentecostalism as a political and social force in Europe; while editor David A. Andelman alerts us to the dangers of judicial overreach and suggests how to prevent it.
*****
*****
UPFRONT
The primacy of the state is under increased scrutiny as the telecom revolution erases once impermeable divides. We have asked our panel of global experts how borders should be drawn on land, on sea, and on the web.
The secretary general of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland, argues that leaders must harness diversity to strengthen transnational communities. Extending citizenship to all long-term residents, he argues, will help boundaries disappear for the common good.
Map Room: Borders on Top of the World
As Arctic waters open up, northern countries are vying for oil no longer imprisoned beneath a mantle of ice. Explorer Mark Terry and Adam Scholl reveal how the opening of the Northwest Passage will transform politics, industry, and the environment across the northern hemisphere.
Carol Bellamy, longtime head of UNICEF, the Peace Corps, and now both the International Baccalaureate and the Global Partnership for Education, makes a passionate plea to prioritize the education of migrant children.
Anatomy: World's Most Isolated Countries
Using a five-factor scale, World Policy Journal ranks the World’s Most Isolated countries, revealing what nations—either through political chaos or dictatorship—have sealed off their citizens from the world.
Courtney Brooks investigates what constitutes a state and who should sit in judgment. The UN General Assembly, she argues, should invoke an obscure resolution to bypass a perpetually deadlocked Security Council, allowing the General Assembly to determine when a de facto state becomes an official nation.
Moving On: Iberia's New Muslims
From her perch in Portugal, veteran New York Times correspondent Marvine Howe describes how Spain and Portugal are looking to the Islamic world for investments to pull Iberia out of its economic morass. Meanwhile, Muslims on the Iberian Peninsula head elsewhere for work, jeopardizing the two countries’ largely successful integration program.
Linking People, Crossing Borders: A Conversation with Mo Ibrahim
World Policy Journal talks with billionaire Mo Ibrahim, the Sudanese telecom pioneer whose enterprises and eponymous foundation traverse borders across Africa. Ibrahim argues that investment in African infrastructure—especially in broadband technology—will reap dividends in democracy and government transparency.
PORTFOLIO
Hunger: The Price of Rebellion
The extraordinary Philippine photojournalist Veejay Villafranca captures the hunger crisis on the island of Mindanao, a legacy of decades of secular and religious conflict.
FEATURES
Notes from the Underground: The Rise of Nouri al-Maliki
Ned Parker, veteran Middle East correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, joins Reuters’ Raheem Salman to provide a groundbreaking profile of Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. The potentially malevolent prototype he represents for post-Arab Spring Islamist leaders stands as a cautionary tale.
Dave Eggers' Roundtable: Arabia Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
Author and publisher Dave Eggers gathers three young Saudis—producer Mamdouh al-Harthy, photojournalist and musician Hasan Hatrash, and film director Haifaa al-Mansour—to discuss the roles of religion, art, and politics in the Middle East. The Saudi artists predict a gradual opening of Saudi Arabia, so long as religious fanaticism doesn’t take hold in its neighbors.
The Euro Crisis: Mission Accomplished?
From Brussels, Hungarian economist Zsolt Darvas describes southern Europe’s dismal predicament, presenting his plan to exit the economic crisis by increasing wages in Europe’s north, cutting interest rates, investing in southern Europe, and weakening the euro.
Khristina Narizhnaya chronicles Russia’s emigration patterns, revealing a sick nation losing its best and brightest. Futuristic buildings, like the new Skolkovo Innovation Center, will not keep innovators in the country. Only a free and open environment can do that. If the brain drain continues to cripple Russia’s economy, Narizhnaya argues, unrest will spread, and Putin’s regime will fall.
Pentecostal missionaries from former colonies are moving to Europe to “re-Christianize” the continent. Damaso Reyes forecasts a rapid rise for Pentecostalism as a potent political and social force across Europe—one that will be both socially conservative and fight for the rights of minority communities. Secular leaders need to treat Pentecostals as a constituency, not a threat, or else they risk reinforcing a narrative that allows Pentecostals to feel righteously persecuted.
CODA
World Policy Journal editor David A. Andelman examines the broad spectrum of justice and judicial systems, evaluating how effectively they respond to the needs and desires of the people they serve. The judicial system, he argues, can be used as a prism to determine the level of democracy of a government and its leadership, and he suggests how to cope with these challenges from the outside and inside.
