Arts and Culture in Building and Sustaining Peace

Peace, harmony and development are essential conditions for any society, developed or developing, to progress. The 2011 World Development Report revealed that growing recognition of the link between social services, conflict and peace has helped in inclusion of social services’ provision in peace agreements. A report from ‘Policy Link’ gives equitable development as the key to peace. Music plays a great role in building peace in conflict situations, so does religion, media, performance, theatre. For achieving peaceful conditions there is a need to strike a balance between two extremes including inner and outer peace. Salzburg Global Seminar (2014) focused on using soft power, especially arts and culture, since cultural engagement helps transform perceptions. Case studies referred to in this write up provide sufficient evidence of the high usefulness of arts and culture in every phase of conflict. A detailed portfolio of case studies covering seven countries including Nepal of Asia describes the importance of ‘narratives’ and ‘story telling’, preservation of historical artifacts, photographs etc. for building peace mostly in post conflict stage. The researchers were of the view that the affected persons or beneficiaries needed to be involved right from the beginning of a peace project. British Council’s publication named ‘The Art of Peace’ emphasizes on the importance of local actors’ engagement as well as arts and cultural programs in linking culture, security and development. A project launched by the World Bank and the United Nations, entitled pathways to peace, offered guiding principles, namely, target institutional failure responsible for conflict, to be of inclusive nature, and form sustainable overtime character. Arts and Culture have a distinct place in resolving conflict thus it deserves adequate government support and a networking with other actors such as local municipalities, societies and groups.

Conserving Economics for Biodiversity

The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review (Dasgupta 2021), henceforth the Review, tells us that we are embedded in Nature and our economies are bounded within Nature. It helps us estimate the value of natural capital and include it in estimations of economic output. The Review’s key messages concern (i) keeping our demands well within Nature’s supply, (ii) moving away from gross domestic product (GDP) towards inclusive wealth as a measure of economic success, and (iii) acknowledging the institutional failure in addressing global environmental problems and resolving them through institutional reforms in the financial and education systems. However, this commentary suggests that the Review is about conserving economics for biodiversity. It offers little opportunity for transformative change in our thinking and acting, to change our relationship with Nature so that we can conserve its diversity and dynamism...

Theoretical Investigation for the Failure of Lehman Brothers and Merril Lynch: A Lesson for Banking Institutions in Nigeria

The study theoretically examines the failure of Lehman Brothers and Merril Lynch as a lesson for the banking institutions in Nigeria. Hence, the instability experience in the Nigeria financial system in recent time; especially, banking sub-sector was as a result of institutional failure. Banking experts in Nigeria viewed that the failure of the two banks was an enough signal to the Nigerian banking industry. Hence, the study reveals that the two banks were absolutely limited to the size and age in determining their future instead of depending on the effectiveness and efficient management of risky assets. Hence, the conventional lending procedures are not instituted; rather than depending on subprime mortgage arrangement that has no collateral securities. The declining home prices has make refinancing more difficult as a result of inadequate innovations in securitization. The recommends that the regulatory authorities should not only relied on the conventional tools of bank supervision, but, they should employ more non-conventional methods of obtaining classified information. The financial institutions should train and retrain their employees to meet the current reality on ground. The conventional lending procedures should be instituted rather than depending on subprime mortgage management that did not have collateral securities. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) should be proactive to ensure effective supervision and risk management principles.

JUST HOW RISKY? COMPARATIVE INSTITUTIONAL RISKS OF MISSION-BASED DEPOSITORY INSTITUTIONS

We examine the relative institutional failure risks for three sets of bank depositories: Community Development Banking Institutions (CDBIs), Minority Depositories (MDIs) and what we term Non-Mission Depository Institutions (NMDIs). CDBIs have primary missions of community development and serving underserved populations; MDIs are typically led by minorities and serve minority populations (a single institution can be both a CDBI and an MDI, either or neither). In this analysis, NMDIs represent all other depository banks. Given their operation within lower-income and minority communities, MDIs and CDBIs appear, prima facie, to face greater institutional failure risks. We examine these risks across each set of institutions, ceteris paribus. Utilizing data from a number of sources, including the Reports of Condition and Income (call reports) for a substantial set of FDIC-insured banks in the United States, we apply a modified Capital, Assets, Management, Earnings and Liquidity model (CAMEL) to measure the predictive likelihood of failure. Recognizing that MDIs are not homogeneous, we also examine relative institutional failure across types of depositories. The results indicate that CDBIs and MDIs are systematically at lower failure risks and that there are differences across service designations.

The Democracy of Everyday Life in Disaster

Neighbors inhabit a distinct social sphere whose regulative ideal is the democracy of everyday life. Its chief elements are reciprocity and a practical disregard for the differences and inequalities that shape interactions in the broader society and in democratic politics. The democracy of everyday life has heightened significance during disasters. Neighbors hold our lives in their hands. But COVID-19 differs from physical disasters in ways that alter neighbor interactions. Contamination makes relations more fearful at the same time that isolation makes them more valuable. When the meaning attributed to the virus is not shared experience of disease and mortality but rabid partisanship, neighbor relations become distorted. This degradation of the democracy of everyday life signals that democracy itself is imperiled more deeply than political paralysis, corruption, and institutional failure suggest.

Coercive Investigation of Corporate Crime: What Investigators Say

This study investigates the use of coercive investigation powers in the context of corporate crime, based on a series of interviews with former Australian Securities and Investments Commission (‘ASIC’) enforcement officials and corporate lawyers. It argues that ASIC’s powers are well equipped to investigate corporate crime, but that ASIC rarely exercises these powers. In this respect, the article draws similar conclusions to the recent Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, but delves further, revealing how coercive powers are used and why they are seldom exercised in corporate criminal investigations. In accounting for this institutional failure, this study implicates a neoliberal agenda of deregulation and austerity that has permitted the regulator to be ‘captured’ by wealthy and powerful regulatees. The analysis is informed by a critical regulation approach to corporate crime that explains corporate or ‘white-collar’ crime and its enforcement through a sociological lens: as a result of unequal social relationships, primarily that of social class, that create disparities in legal and political power.