Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alexandros Koutsoukis, Lecturer in International Relations, University of Lancashire
Recent reports about the role of Donald Trump’s special envoy, American businessman Steve Witkoff, in the Ukraine peace negotiations have raised wider questions about why political leaders turn to business figures in high-stakes diplomacy – and whether this can ever work.
A leaked recording of Witkoff advising Russian officials on how to present their proposals to Washington has intensified concern about the direction of the process. Some see it as a symptom of the US president’s personalised foreign policy, while others view the process as a sign of a broader shift away from professional diplomacy altogether.
Diplomacy is often portrayed as the preserve of seasoned professionals, and for good reason. Skilled negotiators such as the UK’s Jonathan Powell – who played a key role in the Northern Ireland peace process – understand how to manage escalation, read political constraints and build agreements that can survive leadership changes.
Yet political outsiders sometimes play constructive roles. Businesspeople can think creatively, take risks that cautious officials avoid and open up transactional trade-offs that traditional diplomats might have dismissed as impossible.
When diplomatic processes are stuck and international pressures are high, a different perspective can widen the space for compromise and create opportunities for what earlier leaders could not achieve: a working deal.
One of history’s most striking examples of a businessman-turned-diplomat is Jean Monnet. After starting his career in his family’s cognac business, Monnet was appointed by the French government in 1939 to coordinate Franco-British war supplies.
He was one of the key figures to propose and advocate the idea that became the Lend-Lease Act of 1941 to the then-US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. This agreement saw the US provide military and other supplies to its European allies without the need for immediate payment.
Monnet later conceived the plan that led to the 1950 Schuman Declaration. This produced the European Coal and Steel Community and laid the foundations for the European Economic Community, which eventually evolved into the EU.
What made Monnet successful was not only his creativity, positive political vision and ability to work behind the scenes. He was helped by a political context in which the US and Europe shared a desire to find a way to unite. This contributed to effective, cooperative and stable outcomes.
Strengths like those displayed by Monnet only matter when business envoys operate within political contexts and organisational structures that keep their transactional instincts in check. Unlike Monnet, Witkoff is operating within a context that amplifies – rather than restrains – these tendencies.
Dangerous tendencies
Witkoff’s first tendency is to lean towards a “victor’s peace”. His advising of Russian officials on how to persuade Trump of their peace plan reflects a transactional mindset that prioritises what is politically easy for the presumed victor, rather than what is just or stable.
But if negotiations begin from the assumption that Russia will ultimately win the war, and therefore Ukraine must accept the terms of its anticipated defeat sooner rather than later, the result may look less like a lasting peace and more like a humiliating capitulation.
This fear has already been voiced by European leaders. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, warned on November 25 that Europe cannot support “a peace that is in essence a capitulation” as this would leave Ukraine weakened and Russia emboldened.
Witkoff’s second tendency is to focus on the outcome of the negotiations rather than the process, neglecting to realise that peace agreements endure only when they are recognised as legitimate by those who must live with them.
The carefully calibrated balance of coercion and consent is the real art of diplomacy, and requires appreciating how the defeated can learn to live with defeat and not see it as humiliation. This occurred in Japan after the second world war, where defeat was gradually transformed into pride in a new liberal pacifist culture.
Witkoff’s third tendency is that he, like many businesspeople, appears to view negotiations as direct dealings between the most powerful players. This is what I have referred to in my research as the “great power bias”.
Approaching negotiations in this way can reinforce the idea that the US and Russia are the “real” players in the peace negotiations, while Ukraine and its European allies become peripheral. This could result in a deal based on the idea that the strongest party does what it wants and the weakest suffers what it must.
These three tendencies are manageable on their own. But the danger arises when they all move in the same direction and experience very little pushback. In an era of rising populism and a political environment dominated by Trump’s personalised style, there is little room for such counterweights. Witkoff’s influence is based on proximity to the president, not on a mandate shaped by allies, diplomats or Congress.
Ordinarily, allies would act as a counterweight to such tendencies. Yet Europe’s ability to shape the negotiations is limited by its own dependency. Without greater capacity to support Ukraine militarily or to provide the satellite intelligence on which Kyiv relies to continue fighting the war, European governments are forced to depend on the US even as they question its approach. This leaves them able to offer guidance but with diminished influence on the terms of the negotiation.
Peace in Ukraine will ultimately require a combination of creativity and restraint: an openness to new ideas but within a framework that ensures a degree of fairness, legitimacy and security. Businesspeople can contribute to such a process, but not when their tendencies are unchecked. The balance that makes outsider involvement constructive is precisely what is missing in the case of Ukraine.
Alexandros Koutsoukis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
On the western flanks of Mount Kenya lies the Laikipia plateau, an achingly beautiful landscape that is both a refuge for wildlife and a home to traditional Masai communities. Black rhinos, which were once nearly extinct, are now thriving on some of these conservation properties, thanks to the intense efforts to keep them safe.
The new documentary Rhino tells the story of the people and the challenges faced to protect wildlife in this volatile landscape. The cinematography and score beautifully captures the landscape, people, animals and pace of life, which is at times languorous and at times frantic.
The story unfolds from the perspective of two rangers. Ramson Kiluko is an experienced ranger who works with his team to watch, protect and understand the rhinos. The film gives us a glimpse into his family life, the camaraderie of the ranger team and the rich knowledge he has about the lives of individual rhinos and their landscape. Rita Kulamu is a young ranger learning about rhinos as her property prepares to welcome them. Their work takes place against a background of danger, posed by both people and animals.
Rhino focuses on the critical role rangers play in the conservation story of black rhinos, which is an inspiring change from the traditional wildlife documentary that suggests a wildness that exists without the need for human intervention or involvement. Once on the brink of extinction, it is precisely the intensive efforts made to protect rhinos by people like Kiluko and Kulamu that has seen numbers slowly rebound.
The film focuses on the role of rangers in conserving rhinos. Tom Martienssen/Dustoff Films
The film loosely follows a narrative around the planned move of 21 rhinos from the Lewa and Borana reserves in central Kenya, where they are too numerous, to Loisaba – a 58,000 acre wildlife conservation area which has long been without rhinos.
On Lewa and Borana, the rhinos fight for space and territory, on Loisaba they have the opportunity to create a new breeding population. Moving rhinos between reserves is a core part of their conservation. Poaching pressures require rhinos to be fiercely guarded. In Kenya, where my team has carried out research to understand the factors that lead to successfully breeding rhino populations, rangers are tasked with finding each rhino every day. Fences that keep rhinos in and people out mean that rhinos cannot move to avoid threats, avoid inbreeding, or to reestablish populations where they no longer are found.
Moving rhinos is far from easy. They can be aggressive and need to be handled with care. Rhinos are also not very resilient to being moved between properties. These moves often lead to rhinos dying from fighting, stress and disease.
The film shows how extreme drought led to a delay of several years to try to maximise the success of the move . This widespread and prolonged drought caused intense suffering of humans, livestock and wildlife. Conflicts over animals and land boiled over, leading to violence between communities but also towards rangers. These day-to-day challenges faced by conservationists are rarely touched on. Hopefully this film will help audiences understand that there are legions of passionate conservation professionals behind every success story.
The new documentary covers how the black rhino were facing extinction.
However, there is much that the story doesn’t tell. My experience researching wildlife health and disease in this landscape has highlighted how critical it is to create solutions that benefit both nature and people. Laikipia is a complicated landscape, where land rights, land ownership and power inequalities create tensions, and even violence, between communities.
This is a landscape where settlers, European farmers that immigrated, appropriated the best, most productive beautiful lands from traditional communities. High-end conservation reserves manage landscapes that teem with wildlife but are often off limits to the people that once moved widely with their animals. Our conversations with local people suggest that they view rhino conservation as a Trojan horse, moved around to justify high fences, armed security and to restrict people’s movement.
Rhino portrays the situation in somewhat simplistic terms: the good rangers and the bad “bandits”. In reality, conservation sits at a much less clear cut interface between the haves and the have nots, between those with international and national support for protecting animals, and pastoralists, a traditional way of life where people move with their herds of animals across the land, who feel their rights and traditional lands have been taken from them and that the wild animals have more rights that they do.
Violence comes not just from evil, avaricious thieves, but sometimes from frustrated, desperate people who have to deal with too many animals on too little land. Rhino tells an interesting and valuable story, but true conservation success must also address inequality, disenfranchisement and the tensions that “parachute” and colonial conservation can create in local communities.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Susanne Shultz and her group have received funding for their work in Laikipia from the Darwin Initiative, the International Science Partnership Fund, the University of Manchester, the Biotechnology and Biosciences Research Council, and the Natural Environment Research Council.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lars Cornelissen, Lecturer in Politics, Manchester Metropolitan University; Independent Social Research Foundation
Prime Minister Keir Starmer thinks that racism is returning to British society. He has accused Nigel Farage’s Reform UK of sowing “toxic division” with its “racist rhetoric”.
Starmer’s comments follow a trend that has seen senior Labour party officials portray their political opponents on the far-right as sowing division with racist rhetoric.
Recently, Wes Streeting, the Labour health secretary, warned that an “ugly” racism is on the rise again, pointing to worrying figures showing an increase of race-based abuse of NHS staff.
And in October, senior Labour officials attacked Farage’s plans to strip millions of legal migrants of their Indefinite Leave to Remain status as a racist policy. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said that Farage’s plans sounded like a “very loud dog whistle to every racist in the country”.
Labour officials portray the rise in racist incidents and rhetoric as the return of attitudes that had all but disappeared from British society. Streeting expressed his worry that “1970s, 1980s-style racism has apparently become permissible again in this country”. Starmer similarly stated that “frankly I thought we had dealt with” the problem of racist abuse “decades ago”.
This is an appealing story because it conveys a neat and simple message: racism was defeated decades ago and it is now being revived by racist agitators. But in truth, the history of post-war racism is much more complex.
In my new book, I investigate how ideas of race and racism have changed since the second world war. History shows that racism never disappeared from public life. Rather, it assumed different shapes, some of which are harder to discern than others.
The experience of fascism
The defeat of Nazism in 1945 marked a key moment in the history of racism. Prior to the second world war, ideas of racial difference and even racial hierarchy were firmly entrenched in elite society.
In Victorian Britain, for example, a belief in the racial superiority of Europeans was decisive to maintaining colonial rule across large parts of central and east Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. This sentiment was famously captured in Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem, The White Man’s Burden, which depicted colonial rule as the moral duty of white nations.
The Insights section is committed to high-quality longform journalism. Our editors work with academics from many different backgrounds who are tackling a wide range of societal and scientific challenges.
Likewise, pseudosciences like eugenics and physical anthropology enjoyed significant prestige among British elites well into the 20th century. The British Eugenics Society, dedicated to improving the genetic stock of the British population, flourished in the interwar period. At this time the eugenics movement was an ideological broad church, appealing to progressive as much as conservative elites.
But the second world war irrevocably changed this landscape. The experience of fascism made it clear for all to see just how dangerous the concept of racial superiority was. Ideas of racial purity, racial hierarchy, and eugenics had driven the Nazis to commit genocide. It had led to a world war that many experienced as a straightforward conflict between good and evil.
There was no Nazi atrocity – concentration camps, wholesale maiming and murder, defilement of women or ghastly blasphemy of childhood – which Christian civilization or Europe had not long been practicing against colored folk in all parts of the world in the name of and for the defense of a Superior Race born to rule the world [sic].
Adolf Hitler on the third day of the Nazi party conference Nuremberg, Germany, in 1929. Shutterstock/Andreas Wolochow
The cumulative effect of these experiences was that ideas of racial superiority came to be seen an unscientific relic of the past.
Squashing ‘scientific racism’
This was exemplified by the United Nations, which in November of 1945 established Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) with the explicit aim of battling racism. Unesco’s constitution, adopted on November 16 of that year, drew a direct connection between racism and the second world war:
The great and terrible war which has now ended was a war made possible by the denial of the democratic principles of the dignity, equality and mutual respect of men, and by the propagation, in their place, through ignorance and prejudice, of the doctrine of the inequality of men and races.
In 1949, Unesco appointed a panel of prominent scientists to formulate a critique of scientific racism. Reporting in 1950, the panel concluded that there is no scientific basis for any claims of racial superiority of one group over another. As the panel wrote, “the likenesses among men are far greater than their differences”.
While a small number of academics remained committed to race science and eugenics, they were forced into the margins of the academic world. The Eugenics Society, though it continued to exist, lost much of its prestige.
Going forward, race science or political appeals to racial superiority were no longer deemed acceptable, even among ruling elites. The language of race lost the scientific legitimacy and political purchase it once had.
This did not mean that racism disappeared, however. Rather, it changed shape.
Immigration and culture
Explicit appeals to race remained politically unacceptable for many decades after the war. This forced intellectuals and politicians on the right, especially those with divisive views about racial and ethnic differences, to develop an alternative language in which to express their ideas.
The backlash against these migration trends was exemplified by Enoch Powell, a Conservative MP and former Minister of Health. In the late 1960s, Powell developed a vocal critique of immigration numbers.
Powell’s rhetoric was inflammatory and racially charged. In his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, delivered in 1968 in Birmingham, Powell claimed that unless immigration was restricted, people of colour would soon have “the whip hand over the white man”. In another speech, from 1970, Powell complained that it was no longer politically acceptable to say that “the English are a white nation”.
Powell made no appeal to the idea of biological difference. Instead, his emphasis was on cultural difference. He claimed that migrants and white British people were culturally too dissimilar for assimilation to be possible in large numbers.
Powell’s speeches on immigration cost him his political career. He was dismissed from the Shadow Cabinet following his “Rivers of Blood” comments. Yet his views were soon echoed by other political figures.
In 1976, Ivor Stanbrook, a Conservative MP, said in the House of Commons: “Let there be no beating about the bush. The average coloured immigrant has a different culture, a different religion and a different language. That is what creates the problem.”
And in 1978, Margaret Thatcher said in a TV interview that British “people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture”. Migration was a threat to Britain’s national identity.
Thatcher added: “We are a British nation with British characteristics. Every country can take some small minorities and in many ways they add to the richness and variety of this country. The moment the minority threatens to become a big one, people get frightened.”
In the 1979 general election, which Thatcher won with a landslide, the Conservative party manifesto pledged to tighten immigration controls and restrict citizenship. This pledge was enacted in 1981.
The denial of racism
The rhetoric of people like Powell, Stanbrook, and Thatcher represented a new kind of racial vocabulary. What is striking about this rhetoric is that it pretended not to concern race at all. Each of them explicitly denied that their rhetoric appealed to racist sentiment.
Powell often distanced his critique of immigration from concerns over race. In a 1970 interview, Powell said:
I’m not talking about race at all. I am talking about those differences, some of which are related to race, between the members of different nations which make the assimilation of the members of one nation into another nation more difficult or less difficult.
Stanbrook also denied that his comments about “coloured immigrants” were racist. In a parliamentary debate, he insisted that to highlight problems with cultural integration “is not racialism, if by that one means, as I do, an active hostility to another race”. This was because, in his view, “a preference for one’s own race is as natural as a preference for one’s own family”. A dislike of immigration, therefore, is not based on racist animosity. “It is simply human nature,” Stanbrook added.
Even Thatcher complained that whenever she tried to address concerns about immigration she was “falsely accused of racial prejudice” by her political opponents. She claimed that because mainstream political parties were not willing to talk about immigration, voters were instead turning to the far-right National Front. “If we do not want people to go to extremes, and I do not, we ourselves must talk about this problem and we must show that we are prepared to deal with it,” she said.
These denials of racism indicate that during this period, the language of race itself remained socially unacceptable. Powell, Stanbrook and Thatcher all felt the need to distance themselves from it.
This helps to explain why they preferred to focus on ideas of cultural difference and national identity. These ideas did not carry the same negative connotations as race, yet could be used to convey a similar message – namely that some groups did not belong in Britain.
The rise of inflammatory rhetoric surrounding immigration in the 1960s and 70s had an immediate impact on policy. During this period, successive governments responded to the growing clamour over immigration by selectively tightening migration controls and nationality legislation.
However, this rhetoric has also had a more gradual, long-term effect on racism’s place in society. Powell’s and Thatcher’s views on immigration have been echoed again and again, often framed in the same vocabulary. This continues to this day.
Last month, Katie Lam, the shadow home office minister, appeared to argue that Ukrainian and Gazan refugees should be treated differently because the former are better able to assimilate to British culture, as well as being more likely to go back to rebuild their country of origin.
And earlier this month, nationalist writer and academic Matthew Goodwin, who is formally linked to Reform, wrote in his personal newsletter that the “cultures that our hapless politicians are now importing into our country at speed are not just radically different and incompatible to our own; they are inferior, primitive, stuck in cultural codes and practices we moved on from centuries ago”.
The gradual normalisation of this kind of rhetoric has allowed it to re-enter mainstream public discourse. This has caused the erosion of the anti-racist norms established in the wake of the second world war. For many years after the war, these social norms meant that public figures who expressed views that were considered racist paid a high social or professional cost. Powell’s dismissal from the shadow cabinet following his Rivers of Blood speech is a forceful example of this.
Today, these anti-racist norms are under increasing pressure. To be sure, they have not fully disappeared. In recent years, anti-racist movements like the Black Lives Matter have enjoyed broad popular support in Britain and elsewhere.
Likewise, officials who express inflammatory rhetoric can still expect to be challenged. Politicians including Starmer, Robert Jenrick and Katie Lam have recently been met with criticism for divisive comments or policies on race, migration, and culture.
Starmer, for instance, was criticised for saying that migration numbers are turning Britain into an “island of strangers”. This comment was likened to Powell’s rhetoric on immigration, who also said that immigration left Britons feeling like “strangers in their own country”. When confronted with criticism, Starmer said he deeply regretted using that phrase.
Meanwhile, Farage has faced pressure to distance himself from racist comments he is alleged to have made in the past – allegations which he has strongly denied.
Yet, the prospect of a politician being dismissed from a cabinet role for racially inflammatory comments is very remote today. Neither Jenrick nor Lam has been dismissed from the shadow cabinet for their comments, with Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch expressly defending Jenrick.
Various forms of racism persist. Today, cultural racism is the most widespread and politically consequential kind. Derogatory and stereotyped views on cultural differences and national identity are now an everyday feature of public discourse, especially in debates over immigration.
Yet cultural racism remains poorly understood. In most media reporting and political discourse, the term “racism” continues to refer primarily to individual prejudice based on outward appearance or group belonging. When Streeting talks about “1970s, 1980s-style racism” he specifically means “abuse based on people’s skin colour”.
While it is undeniably a good thing that racist abuse is being vocally challenged by politicians, this narrow definition of racism obscures as much as it reveals. It fails to challenge forms of racism that do not appeal to physical traits but to cultural traditions. And it gives political agitators intent on sowing division on themes like immigration the opportunity to deflect criticism by denying that their ideas are racist.
At the structural level, racism causes certain individuals or communities to be more vulnerable to violence, exclusion, marginalisation, poverty, and other harmful outcomes on the basis of their membership of a particular racial, cultural, or religious group. Rhetoric that intensifies this vulnerability feeds racism, even when it is not expressed in the language of “race” or when there is no prejudicial intent.
So long as these structural factors are not taken into consideration, more subtle forms of racism will continue to hide in plain sight and exert a corrosive influence on the health and wellbeing of those it targets.
To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. Subscribe to our newsletter.
Lars Cornelissen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Deception is everywhere in nature. Animals and plants routinely cheat, lie and manipulate for their own benefit. One example is mimicry, where one species (the mimic) has evolved to resemble another (the model).
No group of animals takes this to greater lengths than hoverflies – bean-sized bullets that zip around your garden, cosplaying bees and wasps.
As some new research by ourselves and others show, hoverflies surprise not just their predators, but evolutionary biologists too.
Mimicry is most often for protection. Harmless mimics evade predators by evolving to resemble dangerous species. Some can even mimic several species. But mimicry can also be aggressive, where dangerous species dress up as innocuous ones to ambush unsuspecting prey, like the spider-tailed viper – or to steal food, like the rove beetle with a fake termite on its back.
It can be sexual. Flowers such as bee orchids resemble female insects to trick males into trying to copulate with them, unwittingly pollinating them in the process. Weedy male bluegill sunfish adopt the dark colouration of females to sneak into the brightly coloured alpha male’s harem and mate with the females. Some female damselflies even mimic males just to cut themselves a break from constant harassment by males for mating.
But sometimes it’s not enough just to look like your model; you have to behave like them too.
Take hoverflies, for example. Some hoverflies are highly accurate mimics, like Temnostoma. These amazingly wasp-like hoverflies have one notable flaw in their mimicry: typical short stubby fly antennae. Wasp antennae are long. But a recent study shows that Temnostoma species have evolved to mimic the long, ever-moving antennae of wasps by waving their forelegs in front of their head. Their legs have also changed from orange to black for that purpose. Stilt-legged flies do the same thing.
In a new paper out this week, we and colleagues from the Universities of Hull and Nottingham showed how bumblebee-mimicking hoverflies take behavioural mimicry to the next level.
Bumblebees love blue and purple flowers, unlike wasps and many solitary bees and most flies which usually visit yellow and white flowers. A keen-eyed predator could theoretically spot a tasty fly – even one that looks like a bee – just by the colour of the flower it is visiting.
We predicted that those hoverflies that mimic bumblebees would have switched their preference to visit blue flowers. To test this we looked at nearly a thousand pictures of insects visiting flowers posted on the web by amateur enthusiasts. We looked at the colours of the flowers in the photos, comparing their “blueness” and “yellowness”.
When in Rome
Bumblebees tended to be snapped on flowers with more of a “blue” component than other insects (and less of a “yellow” component). What surprised us was how closely the mimics followed the bumblebees in the blueness of the flowers they visited.
Most likely these flies have evolved to hang out in the right places to enhance their cover story as a bumblebee. It could also be that they may have been visiting blue flowers since before they ever evolved to be mimics. This would have brought them close to bumblebees, which may have been how mimicry began evolving in the first place.
Why would this happen just in bumblebee mimics? We think we have an idea.
In nature, while some mimics are downright astonishing, like Temnostoma, or like these moths, others are really pretty ropey to the point where it’s difficult to see what they are even trying to mimic.
For protective mimicry to work, predators have to have at least one experience where they try attacking something brightly coloured to see if it is tasty, with unpleasant consequences. This teaches them to avoid these bright colours in future. In wasps, the bright colours are all broadly the same – yellow and black. This helps each individual wasp, because one clear warning signal is better than many different ones.
Do the best mimics resemble the nastiest species? Actually in many cases it’s the other way round. A recent study using 3D-printed models showed that, if your model is super-nasty, even a passing resemblance to the model will be enough for predators to avoid you.
The stronger and clearer the warning signal, the easier it is for harmless charlatans to take advantage. So you can get away with looking only a bit like a wasp.
But if you mimic a species that is only mildly noxious, you need to be super-accurate, because the predator doesn’t care as much if it makes a mistake. Bumblebees are not as nasty as wasps or honeybees. They are more palatable to predators and don’t sting as readily. So if a fly is going to mimic a bumblebee, it had better be pretty good.
And bumblebee-mimicking hoverflies are some of the best mimics in nature – right down to the kinds of flowers they visit.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Les Centrafricains éliront leur président, le 28 décembre 2025, dans un contexte toujours fragile, où l’insécurité persiste et où le spectre des groupes armés continue de peser lourdement sur le processus électoral. L’élection présidentielle s’annonce sous haute tension, avec la candidature du président sortantFaustin-Archange Touadéra, mais aussi de figures comme Anicet-Georges Dologuélé ou l’ancien Premier ministre Henri-Marie Dondra. La chercheuse Alexandra Lamarche jette un éclairage sur les principaux risques entourant le processus électoral en Centrafrique, et évoque les actions prioritaires et nécessaires pour prévenir des violences post-électorales.
Quels sont, selon vous, les principaux risques entourant l’élection du 28 décembre ?
L’élection présidentielle du 28 décembre en République centrafricaine (RCA) se déroule dans un climat d’insécurité marqué par la présence persistante de groupes armés et les tensions avec les Forces armées centrafricaines (FACA). Cette situation fait planer un risque réel de violences et d’affrontements. Dans de nombreuses régions, les électeurs pourraient être confrontés à des intimidations venant tant des forces nationales que des groupes armés. Certains combattants issus d’anciennes coalitions dissoutes ont rejoint de nouvelles factions.
Bien que les membres de certaines milices aient été intégrés aux forces nationales, cette intégration présente des lacunes et bon nombre d’anciens combattants pourraient ne pas se montrer loyaux envers l’État en cas de conflit. Cela accroîtrait encore les risques liés au scrutin. Cette insécurité, combinée à une profonde frustration politique et à un désengagement, suggère que le taux de participation sera faible.
Le référendum du 30 juillet 2023 — boycotté par l’opposition et largement perçu comme un « coup d’État constitutionnel » – a supprimé la limitation du nombre de mandats présidentiels. Il permet à l’actuel chef de l’Etat, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, de demeurer au pouvoir indéfiniment. Cette situation renforce l’impression que les règles du jeu démocratique sont biaisées.
Enfin, les difficultés persistantes pour de nombreux citoyens musulmans à obtenir une carte d’identité nationale risquent de les exclure du scrutin. Elles exacerbent les frustrations communautaires et sapent davantage la crédibilité du processus électoral.
Quel rôle jouent les groupes armés et les acteurs étrangers dans ce scrutin ?
Les groupes armés demeurent des acteurs centraux, surtout dans les zones où ils peuvent perturber les opérations électorales, restreindre l’accès des électeurs ou interrompre le vote afin de préserver leur influence locale ou de se positionner pour d’éventuelles négociations post-électorales.
À leurs côtés, les acteurs étrangers jouent un rôle tout aussi déterminant. La Russie, via ses instructeurs et sociétés militaires alliées, sécurise certaines zones tout en renforçant l’avantage du pouvoir en place. Le Royaume-Uni accuse même Moscou d’envisager de réprimer des voix politiques et de mener des campagnes de désinformation pour influencer le débat électoral.
Le Rwanda, pour sa part, soutient activement le président Touadéra afin de consolider sa présence militaire et protéger un réseau croissant d’investissements dans les secteurs minier, commercial et de la construction, tout en étendant son influence régionale. Cette dynamique s’ajoute à l’appui que la Russie, notamment via Wagner, accorde à Touadéra pour sécuriser leurs propres intérêts miniers et maintenir un régime favorable à son implantation stratégique en Afrique centrale.
Si la force de maintien de la paix onusienne, la Minusca, tente de promouvoir un processus plus crédible, sa marge de manœuvre reste limitée par la fragmentation territoriale et les alliances politiques du régime. Parallèlement, le gouvernement de Touadéra apparaît de plus en plus dépendant de ses partenaires étrangers, au détriment de la souveraineté de la RCA.
Comment la situation des déplacés affecte-t-elle la crédibilité du vote ?
La situation des déplacés internes et des réfugiés centrafricains compromet sérieusement la représentativité du scrutin. Alors que les réfugiés — majoritairement musulmans — avaient pu voter en 2015-2016, ils en sont désormais exclus par le gouvernement, malgré les appels des Nations Unies en faveur de leur inclusion et les offres de soutien pour faciliter ce processus. Cette exclusion prive l’élection de milliers de voix. À l’intérieur du pays, de nombreuses personnes déplacées, de toutes confessions et d’origines ethniques, vivent dans des zones isolées ou se cachent pour échapper aux violences et peuvent hésiter à se rendre aux bureaux de vote par peur d’être ciblées.
Cette combinaison d’exclusion administrative et de contraintes sécuritaires crée un processus électoral qui laisse de côté certaines des populations les plus affectées par le conflit, remettant en doute l’inclusivité et, par conséquent, la légitimité globale du scrutin.
Quelles actions prioritaires sont nécessaires pour prévenir des violences post-électorales ?
Prévenir les violences post-électorales nécessiterait une action anticipée et coordonnée, mais j’ai peu d’espoir que ce soit possible. Même si les bulletins de vote sont déposés, si une partie importante de la population se sent exclue ou contrainte, le résultat pourrait déclencher un retour à la violence.
Bien que le mandat de la Minusca ait été renouvelé année après année, celle-ci ne dispose pas des fonds ni des effectifs nécessaires pour mener à bien sa mission ambitieuse. L’une des principales priorités est de travailler en étroite collaboration avec l’Autorité nationale des élections (ANE). Bien que celle-ci fasse de nombreux efforts positifs, notamment sur les plans technique et logistique, elle n’est probablement pas encore en mesure de garantir que tous les risques majeurs (sécurité, portée, légitimité) soient atténués.
Les élections ne sont qu’une étape. Le véritable test consistera à déterminer si l’État sera capable d’exercer son autorité après les élections de manière à renforcer la paix plutôt qu’à accentuer la polarisation.
La protection des civils doit être assurée de manière impartiale, notamment par un déploiement ciblé de la MINUSCA dans les zones sensibles afin d’éviter l’usage excessif de la force par les FACA ou leurs alliés étrangers.
Il est également crucial de décourager tout discours identitaire inflammatoire et de garantir un accès rapide à la justice pour enquêter sur les violences, protéger les témoins et poursuivre les auteurs, quel que soit leur camp. Cette combinaison de prévention, de transparence et de responsabilité est indispensable pour réduire les risques de violences après le scrutin.
Alexandra Lamarche receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada.
Source: The Conversation – in French – By Bonnie Campbell, Professeure émérite en économie politique. Département de science politique de l’Université du Québec à Montréal., Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)
Les activités d’extraction d’or ont récemment repris dans le complexe de Loulo-Gounkoto, dans l’ouest du Mali, après plusieurs mois d’interruption. En janvier, le gouvernement malien a commencé à bloquer les exportations de la mine appartenant à la société canadienne Barrick Mining (anciennement Barrick Gold).
Ce cas particulier est trop complexe pour être abordé ici. Cependant, les conflits concernant la distribution des revenus soulèvent des interrogations majeures quant à la façon dont les nations dotées de ressources naturelles tirent profit de leurs richesses.
Pour améliorer leurs infrastructures et leurs services de santé, ainsi que pour atteindre leurs objectifs de développement social, l’apport des recettes publiques générées grâce à la taxation de leurs ressources naturelles est d’une importance critique pour les pays d’Afrique subsaharienne.
Plusieurs raisons expliquent pourquoi les pays d’Afrique riches en ressources minérales ne tirent pas suffisamment profit de leurs ressources.
De plus, les incitations fiscales régulièrement accordées pour attirer des investissements miniers, telle qu’une réduction significative des taux d’imposition et de redevances, sont rarement justifiées au regard de la perte de recettes publiques qu’elles entraînent.
Malgré ses importantes ressources minérales, le continent est en proie à un mécontentement généralisé, à la pauvreté et au sous-développement en raison des concessions excessives obtenues par les sociétés minières étrangères. Cette situation a été condamnée par les dirigeants de tout le continent.
En réponse, la Vision minière pour l’Afrique de l’Union africaine et les politiques qu’elle a inspirées, notamment la réforme des codes miniers, visent à garantir une contribution plus durable des ressources minérales du continent.
Or, les déséquilibres de pouvoir entre les entreprises étrangères et les gouvernements africains persistent et orientent les négociations relatives aux codes miniers, aux contrats et aux pratiques.
Bien que la situation varie d’un pays, d’un secteur et d’un site à l’autre, des recherches ont été menées pour déterminer les principaux obstacles à l’augmentation des recettes minières des États.
L’inégalité d’influence dans le cadre des négociations, qui favorise les sociétés minières, entraîne de nombreuses irrégularités. On peut citer, par exemple, la prolongation des clauses de stabilité malgré les réformes réglementaires, ou encore la priorité accordée aux contrats miniers par rapport aux cadres réglementaires nationaux plus larges.
Le secteur minier est un pilier de l’économie malienne. En 2022, il représentait 9,2 % du produit intérieur brut (PIB), 76,5 % des recettes d’exportation et 34,8 % des recettes publiques.
Comme dans d’autres pays du continent, la nouvelle législation minière vise à remédier aux dommages environnementaux et aux recettes minières décevantes qui sont l’héritage du passé. Le code minier de 2023 propose des réformes qui ont pour but d’améliorer les retombées nationales du secteur, à l’instar des mesures prises en Tanzanie, en Zambie et en République démocratique du Congo.
Ces réformes comprennent des exigences plus importantes en matière de participation de l’État (généralement de 10 à 30 %), des redevances et des taux d’imposition plus élevés, des exigences concernant le contenu et les emplois locaux, des dispositions plus strictes relatives à la responsabilité environnementale et sociale, ainsi que des obligations accrues en matière de développement communautaire.
Le code de 2023 vise à renforcer la souveraineté du Mali sur ses ressources et à garantir une répartition plus équitable des bénéfices.
Le régime fiscal a notamment été réformé pour supprimer certaines exonérations dont bénéficiaient les sociétés minières. Le nouveau code met aussi fin à l’allégement fiscal de 25 % accordé par les codes précédents pour une durée de 15 ans. Il introduit également une redevance de 10 % sur la production excédant les prévisions.
Par ailleurs, le Mali a créé plusieurs fonds pour répondre aux besoins du secteur et favoriser l’inclusion sociale.
Comme d’autres pays riches en minerais, le Mali a dû faire face à une forte résistance, notamment de la part des entreprises les plus importantes et les plus influentes. Cela a conduit à une escalade de conflits plutôt qu’à des solutions négociées.
Il convient de noter que plusieurs sociétés, comme Robex Resources, ont conclu des accords avec le gouvernement malien. L’entreprise britannique Endeavour Mining a négocié avec le gouvernement des conditions d’exploitation dans le cadre du nouveau code minier.
Déjà des milliers d’abonnés à l’infolettre de La Conversation. Et vous ? Abonnez-vous gratuitement à notre infolettre pour mieux comprendre les grands enjeux contemporains.
Deux autres producteurs d’or ont également signé des accords pour exercer leurs activités en vertu du nouveau code minier : Faboula Gold et Bagama Mining.
Bien que moins importants en termes d’investissement, ces projets illustrent la possibilité de mener à bien des initiatives conformément au nouveau code. Ils offrent aussi de nombreuses possibilités d’emploi dans les zones rurales.
Une souveraineté accrue
Certains analystes du secteur ont critiqué les pays riches en minerais pour avoir adopté une approche de « nationalisme des ressources ». Des études montrent toutefois que des revenus miniers bien gérés, transparents et stables pourraient contribuer à améliorer l’accès aux soins de santé et aux services sociaux au Mali et au Sénégal.
Le fait d’exercer une plus grande souveraineté sur les ressources naturelles afin d’assurer le bien-être de la population d’un pays pourrait en fait être salué comme un nationalisme responsable.
Le Mali et ses voisins sont confrontés à d’importantes menaces militaires et sécuritaires. L’industrie minière peut jouer un rôle clé dans la lutte contre ces problèmes en générant des revenus et des emplois.
Pour ce faire, elle devra respecter les réglementations nationales et contribuer de manière équitable aux recettes fiscales. En fin de compte, la rentabilité et la responsabilité sociale de l’industrie sont étroitement liées à la stabilité sociale du pays ainsi qu’au bien-être sanitaire, social et économique de sa population.
Bonnie Campbell a reçu des financements du Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada (CRSH) et du Centre de recherches pour le développement international (CRDI) du Canada.
Moussa Doumbo ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Benedict Carpenter van Barthold, Lecturer, School of Art & Design, Nottingham Trent University
Frida Kahlo’s 1940 self-portrait, El Sueño (La Cama), or The Dream (The Bed), has sold for US$54.7 million (£41.4m) at Sotheby’s New York. It is now the most expensive Latin American artwork in history, and has set the auction record for a female artist.
Kahlo’s canvas was the standout lot in a collection titled Surrealist Treasures. The painting appears to be a quintessential surrealist nightmare: a skeleton stalking a sleeping woman. But there is more to Kahlo’s work than the surrealist label might imply.
The painting (which is 74×98 cm) shows a four-poster bed floating in a cloudy sky. The perspective is disquieting. The bed tilts away from the viewer, as though seen from below. The upper part of the painting, where the skeleton lies, is light and airy. Its elbow almost touches the upper edge of the canvas, suggesting the structure is floating upward. The bottom tier, occupied by Kahlo, appears heavier. The cloudy backdrop is more threatening and the palette is earthier.
Frida Kahlo as photographed by her father in 1926. Wiki Commons
Kahlo sleeps under a blanket covered with a plant motif, something like a thorned and blossomless rose. The vines escape the confines of the blanket to surround her head. Curling roots can be seen at her feet. Implicitly, her body is anchored, like the plant, in cycles of growth and decay, a theme familiar from other paintings.
The two figures, death and life, mirror each other. Their heads face the same way, with two pillows under each. The skeleton is covered with wired explosives, mimicking the twining stems and roots. He holds a bouquet of flowers in his left hand, like a suitor.
The skeleton is not a surreal invention. It is a Judas figure, a painted papier-mâché “guy”, a real object from Kahlo’s collection.
In Mexico, these figures are personifications of evil that are burned or exploded on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter Sunday, in a symbolic triumph over evil. Their destruction, a brief spin of sparks, ends in an almighty bang. This Judas figure also resembles a calaca, a skeleton from the Mexican Day of the Dead. Its apparently bizarre placement on the canopy of Kahlo’s colonial-era four-poster bed is how it was displayed in her home. This is death as a roommate.
The composition reminds me of a “double-decker” late medieval cadaver tomb. These European tombs show the deceased, recumbent on the top layer as in life, and below, their skeleton or rotting corpse. Here, in an inversion of that layering, death appears to be an escape: from earth, to foliage, to flower, to sky. Furthermore, the way the bed imposes a grid on the painting is structurally similar to a Mexican retablo or “miracle painting”.
These typically depict a moment of miraculous recovery, or rescue from danger, accompanied by a dedication to an intervening saint. Kahlo adapts this format by substituting the saint with the Judas figure, moving from the reality of her body to a world of tradition, signs, symbols.
Art and death
Art and the body are often linked in Kahlo’s life, which was short and traumatic (she died in 1954 aged 47).
She contracted polio aged six, which left her with a stunted leg. At 18, she was terribly injured when the bus she was riding collided with a tram. An iron bar pierced her lower back and exited through her abdomen, damaging her spine and several organs. She required more than 30 operations throughout her life. Yet this incident was also her birth as an artist. Confined to bed for months, her body in a plaster corset, as stiff and white as the skeleton in this painting, she began to paint.
Frida Kahlo aged 11, five years after contracting polio. Museo Frida Kahlo
In addition to physical anguish, her marriage to the celebrated muralist Diego Rivera was fraught. She suffered multiple failed pregnancies. The pair separated for a year when she discovered his infidelity with her younger sister, Cristina.
The bed, a site of convalescence and recovery, is a frequent motif in Kahlo’s work. Her constant physical and psychological pain is a central subject in her art. But this doesn’t come from dreams, conjured from automatic drawing, or psychological play as it was for many of the surrealists. Her art reflects a life defined by events that exceed the human norm of what is tolerable. In El Sueño, the Judas figure is a symbol of incipient pain – a double, a lover and a complex form of promised escape. She is asleep, but he’s awake.
This context firmly distances her work from the European surrealists. Kahlo herself had a difficult relationship with the movement. André Breton, the “pope of surrealism”, lauded her, saying that “the art of Frida Kahlo is a ribbon around a bomb”. But Kahlo found the surrealists fake, complacent and badly organised. In a ferocious 1939 letter to the photographer Nickolas Muray, she stated:
I would rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas, than have anything to do with those ‘artistic’ bitches of Paris … they live as parasites of the bunch of rich bitches who admire their ‘genius’ of ‘Artists’. Shit and only shit is what they are.
Years later, she was more measured: “They thought I was a surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality”. Kahlo’s work, combining realism with myth and cultural specificity, is better described as the marvellous real: experience grounded in her own culture of Mexico – and experience of pain.
Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.
Benedict Carpenter van Barthold does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Bromley has never struck me as an exciting place – perhaps because I spent part of my teenage years loitering in its aggressively grey 1980s shopping centre, The Glades. I always found it bizarre that it was technically London; it felt too stiflingly suburban to belong to any city. So it’s not a setting I ever expected for a queer BDSM (bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism) story. And yet, it turns out to be the perfect backdrop for Pillion’s main character.
Colin (Harry Melling) is a timid gay man living with his parents and working a dead-end job as a traffic warden. His drab world is changed when he meets Ray (Alexander Skarsgård), a magnetic, leather-clad member of a local biker gang. It’s a seemingly implausible pairing. But Ray clearly sees something in mild-mannered Colin.
They agree to meet outside Bromley Primark on Christmas Day. What begins as a rough, transactional alleyway hook-up escalates quickly into a strict BDSM relationship. A willing “slave”, Colin finds himself living in Ray’s house and carrying out to his every command – whether sexual or domestic.
As our reviewer, Chantal Gautier – an expert in sex therapy – observes, the film explores power, eroticism, masculinity and identity:
“For Colin, the dominant-submissive slave journey becomes a path of self-discovery, allowing him to recognise what he wants, what he excels at – his ‘aptitude for devotion’ – and ultimately who he is.”
The result is a surprisingly funny, tender film about a man who finds his way out of drudgery and towards self-actualisation. It just happens he does so through BDSM.
Pillion holds plenty of surprises – including an unexpectedly Christmassy vibe. It’s not a straight Christmas movie (pun intended), but it’s Christmassy in the way Bridget Jones is. As the holiday season approaches, we’d love to know which “accidentally Christmassy” film you think makes the best festive viewing. Cast your vote in our poll, and feel free to reply to this email with any favourites we’ve missed.
Ongoing good yarns
For a more family-friendly option, Zootropolis 2 arrives in cinemas today – and our reviewer, Laura O’Flanagan, found it a delight. Sequels to beloved films often stumble, as we explored in last week’s email about Wicked: For Good. Only a few match the magic of the original, and an even smaller handful surpass it. Judging by your poll responses, Paddington 2 still reigns as readers’ favourite second outing.
Zootropolis 2 doesn’t stumble, according to O’Flanagan, joyously returing with the laugh-out-loud animal charm that made the first film such a hit. Bunny detective Judy Hopps is back, now partnered with reformed fox-turned-cop Nick Wilde. Their latest case involves a slippery reptile suspect, a stolen journal and a mystery that leads them straight into the heart of Zootropolis.
If you want to stay at home this weekend, then you can hunker down with volume one of the final season of Stranger Things. The rag-tag team of gangly teens are set for a showdown where only one reality can survive: the real world of Hawkins or the monstrous mirror world of the villain Vecna, known as the Upside Down.
The story of Stranger Things has spun out in bursts over nine years, and fans had to wait three and a half for this final instalment. In this piece, psychologist Edward White explains the grip this ode to 80s nostalgia and sci-fi storytelling has had on people – the answer is hauntology, which is the use of elements from the past.
Stranger Things season five, volume one is available to stream on Netflix now
BBC Civilisations has long been a landmark BBC series. First commissioned in 1969 by Sir David Attenborough to showcase the new medium of colour television, its original run followed art historian Kenneth Clarke as he traced western culture from the fall of Rome to the Romantics. It then got a second outing in 2018, fronted by historians Mary Beard, David Olusoga and Simon Schama.
Now the series returns with four expansive episodes on the collapse of major civilisations: the Roman Empire, the Ptolemaic dynasty, the Aztecs and Edo Samurai of Japan. The BBC again experiments with format, blending high-tech docudrama, expert commentary and artefacts from the British Museum. We asked four specialists – one for each civilisation – to assess the episodes and suggest further reading. Their verdicts were mixed, but the series offers plenty to think about.
If you’re in Paris this winter, don’t miss the exquisite exhibition now on at the Petit Palais. Paname brings together Bilal Hamdad’s serene, contemporary visions of Paris, displayed alongside the museum’s grand masters – a pairing that captivated our reviewer Anna-Louise Milne. In this dialogue between old and new, the past feels refreshed and the present gains unexpected gravitas.
The show features three new commissions created with the permanent collection in mind. Across Hamdad’s large-scale canvases, you can see how deeply he has absorbed the city’s artistic heritage. His works are at once human, modern, and timelessly Parisian. Milne was especially struck by one painting that subtly echoes Édouard Manet’s Un bar aux Folies Bergère.
Bilal Hamdad’s Paname is on at the Petit Palais in Paris from October 17 2025 to February 8 2026
Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.
The COVID pandemic accelerated remote and hybrid working practices across the world. It also provided evidence that these approaches could work for a wide variety of jobs.
The UK has been at the forefront of the shift to hybrid working and its sustainability as a work practice in future. This year, the Global Survey of Working Arrangements calculated that the typical UK worker averaged 1.8 days of remote working per week, only just behind the more rural Canada (1.9 days).
Along with colleagues, I observed this adaptation in a research project called Work after Lockdown, which followed organisations through lockdowns and examined what they learned around hybrid working. And our subsequent research for the conciliation service Acas looked at post-pandemic working across various industries in the UK.
The employment rights bill, with its proposals to simplify decision-making around flexible working, may also prompt workers to formalise their hybrid working patterns.
At a time when working practices have been transformed for millions of employees, there is real value in drawing together what has been learned over the past five years. This should enable organisations to thrive as hybrid employers.
The House of Lords has now done this – pulling this information together in its special inquiry on homeworking in the UK. The inquiry has recently reported on its ten-month investigation Is Working from Home Working?.
Since September 2024, I have been seconded to parliament to work for three days a week as thematic research lead for business, economics and trade. This is part of an Economic and Social Research Council project to enhance the use of academic evidence in parliament.
During this time, I have supported the home-based working inquiry and observed how a range of select committees and special inquiries work. The committee on home-based working was one of four special inquiries that the Lords stage each year.
A huge volume of academic evidence was submitted, with the report providing a synthesis of the emerging evidence base. Now the inquiry’s findings can help employers make informed decisions about their own hybrid management.
What the inquiry found
First, hybrid working’s impact on productivity appears to be limited. The inquiry concluded that it’s best to assess hybrid work on a case-by-case basis, looking at what is suitable in particular industries, jobs and personal circumstances.
On the other hand, remote and hybrid working shows real benefits in terms of raising employment rates, particularly for those who find it difficult to commit to full-time site-based working. This could include disabled people and parents of young children, for example.
Giving evidence to the inquiry, one employment expert estimated that hybrid working offered a potential labour supply gain of 1-2%, with real potential to enhance UK productivity. This is relevant to the government’s commitment to address economic inactivity, set out in its Get Britain Working white paper.
Another area where hybrid working could benefit employers is in terms of retention and recruitment. In the report, it was estimated that this could save employers between £7 billion and £10 billion every year. But there was an important exception to this. New starters can benefit from more in-person time at their workplace during inductions.
The inquiry also observed that employers’ main concern was losing opportunities for staff collaboration. But this misses an important point. Well-managed hybrid work – which coordinates so-called “anchor days” when teams get together in person – offers exactly these opportunities for workplace relationships to thrive.
And perhaps it can even do so better than full-time office work, when these interactions could be ad hoc and irregular. The inquiry pointed to the “best of both worlds” offer that hybrid working made to organisations. It noted that the potential for technology to support collaboration is under-used. As digital platforms continue to evolve, it seems likely that hybrid working can become increasingly effective.
But given that organisations appear to be concerned about collaboration, they could use this to acknowledge and incentivise employees. For example, appraisals could recognise the collaborative work (such as mentoring) that often goes unnoticed within organisations.
The inquiry also took an interest in headline-grabbing return-to-office mandates. It found that the codification of office days in mandates (along the lines of “staff must be in the office four days a week”) represented a trade-off by employers between collaborative benefits and staff satisfaction. Blanket mandates fail to address the gap between employees’ and employers’ office preferences – and the reasons underpinning these. Unaddressed, this could cause employment relations problems.
Smart office design can still allow for collaboration space in smaller workplaces. shulers/Shutterstock
On a practical note, after the COVID disruption some organisations have rethought their workplace needs, with the result that they now have insufficient space for genuine collaboration. Colleagues and I are finding in our ongoing research that seat-booking systems can leave workers unable to sit with their teams when they attend the office. This clearly negates the benefits of in-person days.
A more forward-looking approach is to redesign offices in a way that better reflects the needs of collaborative work. This could include creating bespoke meeting places, more differentiated individual working spaces, and the development of hybrid policy alongside inclusive office design.
The inquiry has taken into account the views of a wide range of people, providing an important and accessible review of the evidence at a key time when many organisations are reviewing their hybrid work policy. It offers a wealth of insight as to how employers can adapt and refine their hybrid working practice to achieve both productivity and happy workers.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Milena Tsvetkova, Associate Professor of Computational Social Science, London School of Economics and Political Science
In the middle of the ongoing cost of living crisis, exorbitant displays of wealth are back. Since the beginning of his term in January, US president Donald Trump has been literally bringing the gilded age back to the White House.
In April, Katy Perry spent 11 minutes in space for an undisclosed price, reportedly as much as US$28 million (£21.4 million). In June, billionaire Jeff Bezos closed part of Venice, Italy, for his lavish private wedding party.
In news, entertainment media and fashion, luxury is becoming louder. But what are the consequences? Could daily reminders of inequality lead to collective action and social change? A new study my colleagues and I conducted provides a clue.
Social scientists like to measure inequality with the Gini coefficient – a metric that describes how wealth is distributed among a group of individuals (a high coefficient means large inequality). It is well known that people have a poor understanding of the actual distribution of wealth in the society they live in, as well as their own position in that distribution.
The reason is that people tend to associate with others who are in a similar financial position. And that can make the Gini coefficient seem lower – giving the impression of more equally distributed wealth than is actually the case. In particular, the rich are more likely to underestimate inequality than others.
It’s understandable that people don’t think in Gini coefficients. In daily life, we perceive and act on inequality through social comparison.
When we decide how much to invest in sending our children to university, what to buy, where to go on holiday, or whether to ask for that pay raise, we typically compare ourselves to those we know well. And that may include neighbours, colleagues and cousins as well as influencers or celebrities.
Social comparison, more than any national statistics, helps us understand our place in society and moulds our life ambitions, ideological preferences and even political decisions.
Attitudes to wealth distribution
In our new study, we tested whether the composition of our social comparison group dictates our preferences for wealth redistribution.
We used online game experiments to simulate mini-societies where 1,440 people were randomly chosen to be born rich or poor. They each observed the wealth of a small social circle, and voted for a tax rate in a referendum, where the median vote won and the respective tax was collected and redistributed equally among all.
These were idealised, direct democracies with unrealistic 100% tax compliance and government efficiency. Still, they allowed us to create a multiverse of different worlds where voters’ social circles differed by wealth.
In some worlds, the poor were completely segregated from the rich. In other worlds, the poor were more visible to all – think, for instance, of rough sleepers or persistent news reports about families in need. In yet other worlds, the rich were more visible, for instance via celebrity gossip about the lifestyle of the wealthy, glitzy party and ballroom gala revellers spilling out on the streets.
What we found was that wealth segregation is inequality’s best friend. It keeps the status quo by keeping the poor apathetic. In contrast, observing the rich increases support for redistribution and reduces inequality.
It should be mentioned that the rich in our experiment were not at all susceptible to social information; they always wanted the same low tax rate. It was the poor who voted for higher redistribution when they saw more rich people around them. Nearly 20% of them voted for 100% taxation. This means that redistribution preferences start to polarise in the society with stark disagreements between the rich and poor.
More disturbingly, in universes with a higher selected tax rate, the poor were better off by comparison but the least happy: they reported that they were not satisfied with their own final score and that the scores were not fairly distributed overall. In other words, observing the rich may increase support for redistribution and reduce inequality, but it also increases polarisation and discontent, presenting an inherent trade-off.
Recently, there has been a surge in popular films and TV shows portraying the life and tribulations of the ultra-rich: from celebrations (Crazy Rich Asians) to dark satires (Parasite, Triangle of Sadness, Succession, The White Lotus) and even slasher horrors.
We can speculate that this is indicative of a brewing discontent with inequality, an imminent breaking point for a maturing generation that has been burdened with educational debt, robbed of home ownership and deprived of parenthood. Dissatisfaction and polarisation might be necessary for social change in a highly unequal society.
Milena Tsvetkova receives funding from the European Research Council.
_(19339431752).jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}