Plenary V: Democracy in Crisis?

On February 18, 2020, a few weeks before COVID-19 became the number one concern for politicians and the public, Emmanuel Macron delivered a long-awaited speech in Mulhouse in which he emphasized the importance of fighting what he called “Islamist separatism”. Many analysts were surprised by this declaration which differed from previous statements he’d made, following his election, about the need to institutionalize Islam. This policy brief explores the background to the institutiona ...

During the medal ceremony at the Olympic Stadium in Mexico City on October 16, 1968, two Black American athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, each raised a gloved fist during the playing of the U.S. national anthem. The two Americans received their medals shoeless, but wearing black socks to represent black poverty. Smith wore a black scarf around his neck to present black pride. Carlos, who won a bronze medal, wore a necklace of beads, which he said “were for those individuals th ...

The global spread of COVID-19 has caused widespread fear and anxiety, first because of the fear of infection, the anguish of death, and then because of enduring uncertainties about the nature of the epidemic, its modes of transmission, its degree of severity, and the effectiveness of therapeutic intervention protocols to save those infected. A distinction should be made between two situations that are often confused: on the one hand, the psychological effects caused by the fear of t ...

While many states are adopting strict measures including containment and even border closures, some countries have used surveillance technologies to control the spread of the virus, and others are considering similar solutions. The most widespread device is the geolocation of smartphone data, digital tracing, cybersurveillance and facial recognition, the aim of which is to detect the movements of potentially contaminated people, warn populations likely to have been exposed to the vi ...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released, on August 4th, its ninth annual External Sector Report, where current account imbalances and asset-liability stocks of 30 systemically large economies are approached. This time the report went beyond looking the previous year and tried to anticipate what will be some of the impacts of the still on-going COVID-19 crisis. The report shows that the global economy entered the COVID-19 crisis with a configuration of external imbalances tha ...

La pandémie Covid-19 a éclairé notre connaissance sur les limites de certains concepts pour saisir les vulnérabilités sociales. Elle invite les chercheurs et les décideurs à prendre une certaine distanciation avec les catégories conventionnelles, et à engager un débat sur la mesure de la complexité sociale. Combien y-a-t-il de pauvres au Maroc ? La pauvreté commence où et s’achève quand ? Les pauvretés monétaires et multidimensionnelles désignent-elles les mêmes réalités que seule l ...

It was notthe way you would expect a scientist to be celebrated. InStyle, an American fashion magazine showed on its cover Anthony Fauci, America’s frontline warrior against the COVID-19 virus. Fauci has been director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, and has been honored by presidents since Ronald Reagan, battling against HIV/Aids, SARS, swine flu, MERS, and Ebola. He is, BBC News stated, “the face of America’s fight against COVID-19”. The vir ...

Le Registre social unique (RSU) est un mécanisme de ciblage social dont les avantages sont attendus par toutes les parties prenantes impliquées dans la réforme des filets sociaux. Son adoption n’est pas une fin en soi. Outil technique, il est au service d’une finalité première, celle de gérer l’affectation des ressources publiques consacrées à la lutte contre la pauvreté et la vulnérabilité, dans un double souci d’efficacité et d’équité. L’atteinte de cette finalité est conditionnée ...

The aim of this paper is to assess the regional economic impact of the lockdown measures ordered by the national government to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Using an input–output model, we estimate the economic loss of extracting groups of formal and informal workers from different economic sectors. Results show monthly economic losses that represent between 0.5% and 6.1% of national GDP, depending on the scenario considered. Accommodation and food services, real estate, administr ...