This piece first appeared in the Toronto Star.

The striking appointment of Mark Carney as the new governor of the Bank of England can be interpreted in a wide number of ways -- from a view that highlights the global governance dimension to British and Canadian-specific aspects of...

In many ways the Republic of Korea (or South Korea) is on a roll in terms of its positive global image. In soft power terms, it has found an unlikely source of attraction in Psy -- whose dance video Gangnam Style has been a YouTube global phenomenon. And although in...

This post first appeared in the CIGI blog Worlds of Global Governance.

Argo's treatment of the escape from Tehran of six U.S. embassy staff in January 1980 offers ample psychological compensation for the image of American vulnerability. In this respect, the movie's dealing with this episode is part...

The sharing of some embassy services between Canada and the U.K. has already received a lot of attention. But it seems to me that the attention has focused on traditional considerations that have to do more with domestic political culture than the fast-changing and sensitive geo-political context.

Publications sometimes hit on an important topic that leaves more questions than answers. A good illustration is the release over the summer of a study from the PR firm Burson-Marsteller on "Twiplomacy."

How diplomats respond to new technology to reach diverse publics is a key challenge for 21st...

The relationship between celebrities from the entertainment/sports world and politics is fraught with difficulty. Celebrities have been drawn repeatedly into political life on a global basis. Yet an image remains of unpredictability and under-performance. When Clint Eastwood's cameo performance -- addressing an empty chair as though it was...

The variations between Canadian and Australian politics and policies are as interesting as the fundamental similarities between them. Both are highly globalized, mixing multiculturalism with modified versions of the Westminster parliamentary system, federalism and urban/rural contrasts and Royal in the names of their armed services. Both have long and often...

We commonly talk about the management of order in international relations. In the Cold War era this was a natural phenomenon due to the degree of stability and rules imposed by East/West bipolarity. The U.S.'s (surprisingly short) moment of uni-polarity reinforced the impression that a command and control system was...

The more I travel to the individual focal points of the eurozone crisis, the more I appreciate the difficulty of lumping these countries together. In part, this is a normative issue, as talking about the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) or the so-called Club Med countries becomes less...

A quick speaking tour to Brussels and Berlin underscores both the similarities and differences between these two very contrasting European "worlds." Both the worlds of Brussels and Berlin have elements of a siege mentality to them. Long gone is the confidence in Brussels that the European Union could act as...

Winston Churchill once whipsawed a main political rival by saying that he was "a modest man, but then he has so much to be modest about." The same could be said about May's Camp David G8. In the past, a major meeting of the U.S. and its major...

Celebrity culture has moved beyond its winter of discontent with President Obama. Only a few months ago, it seemed that Obama was losing his tight grip over the world of entertainment, and especially liberal Hollywood. Matt Damon, once one of Obama's strongest champions, expressed his disillusionment with the president in...

Boycott campaigns that target international sporting events have a very mixed record.

Most athletes see themselves as the first victims, as their opportunity for reward suffers. Athletes were the big losers during the high profile, back-to-back boycotts of the 1980 Moscow Games by the U.S. and 50 other countries, and...

It is tempting to think that good ideas will prevail, even (or especially) in technical issues such as those on the global financial governance agenda. Yet this type of advance may prevail in areas such as those relating to the highly complicated but vital "Basel III" framework, so-called because it...

I have been in Mexico City for a pre-G20 event at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). This conference, among many other matters, allowed me to reflect on the status of the country that has become a significant outlier at the global top table: Argentina. On top of the...

The intense controversy over the praise accorded to Fidel Castro by Ozzie Guillen, manager of baseball's Miami Marlins (in an interview with Time magazine) illustrates the wide-spectrum of reactions to the intrusion of figures from the world of entertainment into the world of global politics.

When celebrities...

I have been spending the last few days in Singapore at a very interesting conference sponsored by Nanyang Technological University and the Asian Development Bank Institute on the theme of the evolving de-centralized global economic architecture. Such a theme highlights the interest that a small but smart state such as...

Two trials that connect small states to different dimensions of financial mismanagement have grabbed my attention in the last few weeks.

The first -- the trial of Geir Haarde -- the former Prime Minister of Iceland -- focuses attention on who or what is culpable for a financial...

France has a long history of exceptionalism. But the manner by which the campaign against the earnings of the rich has been conducted in the current French presidential campaign embellishes the image of uniqueness. In most countries, the backlash against extreme inequality has come from the bottom up, as projected...

Youssou N'Dour's thwarted bid for the presidency of Senegal deserves attention in and outside Africa. By any standards N'Dour is a major hybrid musical/activist celebrity very different from the stereotypical image of the dominant "Big Man" in African politics.

Not only is N'Dour a 2005 Grammy winner...