Africa

Jacqueline L. Hazelton's Bullets not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare (Cornell University Press, 2021)is the subject of a Roundtable Review.

The Covid-19 pandemic has drastically disrupted people’s lives, livelihoods, and economic conditions around the world. The global shock has resulted in a tourism standstill (Djankov 2020), significant capital flight (Djankov and Panizza 2020), and a slowdown in remittances (Nonvide 2020), resulting in an urgent balance-of-payments need. Egypt responded to the crisis with a comprehensive package aimed at tackling the health emergency and supporting economic activity. The Ministry of Finance acted swiftly to allocate resources to the health sector, provide targeted support to the most severely impacted sectors, and expand social safety net programmes to protect the most vulnerable. Similarly, the Central Bank of Egypt adopted a broad set of measures, including lowering the policy rate and postponing repayments of existing credit facilities. The next section highlights the experience of firms in Egypt following these policies.

Kaveri Iychettira and Afreen Siddiqi explain why computational modelling is a useful tool, especially when stakes are high and resources are constrained, and detail why developing countries should build capacity for it. 

The coronavirus pandemic has already devastated the international economy.  Stephen Walt explores what history and theory say about the military fallout.

During times of crisis, the most effective leaders are those who can build solidarity by educating the public about its own interests. Sadly, in the case of COVID-19, the leaders of the world's two largest economies have gone in the opposite direction, all but ensuring that the crisis will deepen.

Bruce Schneier explains why accurate information will be just as important as effective treatments when the next pandemic strikes.