The paradox of humanitarian neutrality is that when humanitarians adhere to neutrality, they can be perceived as less neutral by conflicting parties. By providing aid to all, including perceived enemies, and navigating blurred lines with various military actors, humanitarians face challenges in either maintaining or signalling neutrality. In my book manuscript, I challenge the prevailing assumption that non-state armed groups are the primary obstacle to humanitarian access.

Join us at the Oxford launch of Professor Ian Goldin’s latest book - The Shortest History of Migration.

Ian will show how migration since the emergence of early humans has shaped human progress, and been at the catalyst for the development of knowledge and civilisations. Migration is seldom totally voluntary, and leads to profound changes in the sending and destination countries, and to the migrants themselves.

The Oxford Political Review (OPR) is holding an event to celebrate the launch of its 12th print issue.

Professor Duncan Bell (Cambridge) will give a keynote lecture entitled: "That Now Devastated Terrain? Utopianism in the Twentieth Century and Beyond"

Emigration has the potential to shape the political dynamics at the point of origin because it can expose migrants to new political ideas, augment their human capital, and alter their expectations of their home environment. We study the association between indentured migration from India to British colonies, following the end of slavery, and electoral competition in the first elections held in colonial India in 1920.

Domestic and international laws have been slow and ineffective at regulating firms in response to climate change. For this reason, voluntary self-regulation and private regulatory bodies have become increasingly important. Despite claims that firms oppose costly carbon mitigation strategies, previous research has shown variation in the extent to which firms signal their performance on climate change. What explains this variation? I develop a four-pronged theory of reputational pressure to answer this question.

Addressing a range of contemporary and historical conflicts and daily struggles, this series of talks will explore how violence remains integral to the global political economy, with lasting effects on gendered hierarchies which often extend far beyond immediate war zones.

Philosophers of law have spilled oceans of ink analysing how rules work, how they are read from the text, and how they make up larger systems called institutions. The knowledge gained in this way can be useful to those who analyse rules in political science. In this paper, I discuss several insights from legal philosophy that can be used to rethink the way rules are usually analysed in the social sciences.

Speaker: David Hope (KCL) with Julian Limberg and Yves Steinebach

Abstract

Social spending has fallen in the United Kingdom over the past decade and a half, reflecting efforts to limit public expenditures in the wake of the financial crisis. How do people in the UK feel about this slimmed-down version of the welfare state, and what would they like from social protection going forward? Drawing on results from the OECD Risks That Matter survey, a cross-national survey with representative samples in 27 countries, this report examines perceptions of economic risks and attitudes towards social protection in the UK.