News and views from the Blavatnik School of Government community 
The United States and some of its allies have acted decisively to exclude the Chinese technology company Huawei from their national markets, yet they continue to ignore the similar threat posed by Facebook and other US digital giants. Democratic governments must now be equally decisive in dealing with this home-grown […]
Whenever a corruption scandal hits the headlines, public attention tends to gravitate towards identifying the resources that have gone missing and the scoundrels responsible. Corruption often triggers collective moral outrage, and, at least where the problem is not systemic, it can motivate citizens to hold public officials to account. But […]
Falling trust in government is a problem. It is a particular problem among the young. The Pew Research Center recently released data showing that US adults aged between 18 and 29 reported 22% less confidence in the military than those aged 50+, 18% less in the police, 6% less in […]
The question of what duties are owed to future generations is a puzzling and difficult intellectual problem. It has ceased to be only that, however. As members of younger generations – millennials, born 1981–2000, and Gen Z, born since 2000 – encounter unexpected challenges in the economy, there is a […]
In 2018, Uganda passed a daily ‘social media tax’ of 200 Ugandan shillings (around US$0.05) for several internet applications, including Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp. Policymakers hoped the measure would increase revenue. It backfired: after the introduction of the tax, use of online platforms and tax revenues from these services plummeted […]
Whatever we might say is right or wrong with cities of the 21st century, they’re indisputably a defining feature of our age. As much as we’re post-modern, post-gender or post-colonial, we’re also post-rural. Our existence, for an increasing majority, is urban. Even more than that, our aspirations are urban. This […]
Any item you can think of delivered to your home in a matter of hours and at a low price; rides taking you from one side of the city to the other quickly and conveniently; staying connected to your friends and family, seeing their every update with the swipe of […]
“Eleven years to save the world” reads a common sign at the global Fridays for Future climate strikes. Millions of people in over 100 countries, many of them too young to vote, have taken to the streets to demand governments radically increase efforts to fight climate change over the next […]