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In 2024, around the world nearly 60 national elections will be held involving billions of people. Many commentators see this as a make-or-break moment in terms of re-establishing democracy and pushing back against rising authoritarian regimes that have been increasing in recent years. This essay explores why –despite worldwide scientific consensus that we are facing ecological collapse –there is little discussion about the climate crisis among the upcoming wave of national elections. This silence around the climate emergency raises several pressing questions: Why is there limited political will on behalf of national leaders when it comes to mitigating the climate crisis? What does this suggest about the state of democracy when political leaders can sidestep and ignore the escalating demands of their constituencies? Finally, what actions can be taken by ordinary people who are increasingly subject to repressive anti-protest laws that prevent them from speaking out against antidemocratic leaders and their political collusion with the fossil fuel sector?

Abstract
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) identified a lack of "political will" by national leaders as the main obstacle to mitigating the climate emergency in its 2022 report. However, the report makes no mention that contributing to this political deficiency has been rising antidemocracy over the past two decades, furthered by the support of the powerful fossil fuel industry. This article explores the synergy between antidemocratic leaders embracing anti-climate agendas that prioritize oil and gas companies over the rights of their citizens. I conclude by reflecting on possible responses to this bleak reality from members of the global environmental movement. This involves acknowledging the deep complicity of liberal democratic states in extractive capitalism, while also rethinking democratic principles of social equality and political inclusion to ensure that historically underrepresented communities can engage in emancipatory pro-climate political mobilization.

This essay explores the idea of dying for the economy that has been a proposition supported by President Trump and the Republican Party in discussions about how to reopen the economy in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and massive lockdowns. While to most of us this seems like crazy talk, I argue that the loss of some peoples' lives in order to sustain a buoyant economy is a rationale acceptable to many in the corporate sector as well as their pro-business political partners. I first explore theoretical discussions about biopolitics, necropolitics, and the long historical relationship between capitalism and death. I then point to an emerging literature on "economies of death" and apply that to the opioid epidemic in the United States as an illustrative case of a "necroeconomy". I reflect upon parallels between the opioid epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic, turning to current debate in the United States about reopening the economy versus the associated public health risks of further lives being lost. The rhetoric of these debates reflects widespread economic values that prioritize some lives over others, making explicit who is ultimately "killable" in the quest to return to a flourishing and efficient economy.

AbstractWith the global political tide pushing increasingly narrow state-framed worldviews there is a retrenchment of how people understand their relational place in, and connection to, the world. This essay argues that precisely because of the rise of hyper-nationalism (and accompanying anti-democratic trends) there is an urgent need to pursue the globalizing of public education and the coproduction of global knowledge more generally. I suggest that the emerging field of Global Studies, which has been gaining ground in the United States and even more so around the world in recent decades, offers a pedagogical pathway to promoting critical interdisciplinary perspectives and fostering equality and respect for others. My basic claim is that Global Studies shares with liberal education a core mission to promote peace in a world of cultural diversity. But in calling for epistemological pluralism – and highlighting the American (western) epistemological underpinnings of the liberal arts that are deeply implicated in colonial histories of racism, oppression and silencing of non-western knowledge – Global Studies also highlights the inherent limitations of liberal education that as a new field of inquiry it seeks to overcome.

AbstractIn the United States, students of law, politics and economics are primarily trained to think in terms of state-centric analytical frameworks. This essay argues that this training is anachronistic and does not adequately prepare students for the complex geopolitics of the 21st century. Of course, not all scholarship in these disciplines can be characterized in this way since each discipline has its own internal disputes and scholarly innovations. That being said, a mainstream state-centric approach dominates the literature and the curriculum in most law, politics and economics departments. The first part of the essay describes the rise of law schools and the establishing of political science and economics disciplines in the late 19th century. It explores the implications of these disciplines' claim to do "scientific" research. It argues that this claim continues to bind the disciplines to a state-centric framework which in turn provides obstacles to developing new theories and methods.

Abstract
Social and economic indicators measure and monitor the relative level of each country's "progress", be this in education, poverty, mortality, gross domestic product and so on. This essay examines indicators in the contemporary development paradigm and their use by the United Nations, World Bank, NGOs and corporations, as well as their increasing presence in global governance decision-making. Drawing upon a critical global studies perspective, I argue that indicators are producing and privileging certain kinds of knowledge over other kinds of knowledge that may not be so easily "captured" by nationally structured numerical reductionism. Reflecting on the limitations of the Human Development Index and the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, I suggest that the empirical data produced ultimately mismeasure the fullness of human experience and often undervalue non-western worldviews. I conclude by returning to the insights suggested by a global studies perspective and offer a number of recommendations for envisaging and shaping a more inclusive post-development paradigm.