The role of central banks has always evolved in response to political and economic events. In 2015, when the UN Agenda 2030 and the Paris Agreement were signed, awareness of the importance of climate change and other sustainability risks for their mandates began to grow in the central banking community. Physical risks and transition risks can act as powerful channels impacting banks’ businesses and balance sheets and the economy more broadly, affecting both price and financial stability. Laying the analytical groundwork for the following chapters of the book, this chapter embeds their recent concern for sustainability risks and policies in the dynamic role central banks have played historically. It also discusses how central banks have coordinated their policies internationally, such as through the Network for Greening the Financial System and the Financial Stability Board. While climate change and climate-related risks have been dominating these policies, central banks have started shifting their attention also towards other aspects of environmental sustainability, including biodiversity loss. Aspects of social sustainability have received significantly less attention in central banking policy circles. However, the potentially dis-equalizing side effects of extended periods of quantitative easing have fostered central banks’ interest in the inequality dynamics of monetary policy.

This chapter introduces mandates in mediation and provides a rationale for why we need to study them if we want to understand the process of mediation. The chapter also provides a list of Nordic mediation interventions stretching over a period of over seventy-five years. Mediators are individuals. Yet an overwhelming majority of those individuals who act as mediators between warring parties do so as representatives of what we here call a mandator – an organization, a country or countries, or both – that has sent them to mediate, and mediators can utilize the connections, reputation, leverage, and resources that the mandator possesses. The link between the mandator and the individual is the mandate. The mandate comprises the goal, instructions, and authority that together create the foundations for all that the mediator sets out to do. Still, despite their fundamental role in the mediation process, previous research on international mediation is largely silent on how mandates create the framework for the mediation efforts.

This chapter develops a conceptual framework in order to understand the role of mandates in the process of mediation. It draws on what previous mediation research has theorized in terms of mandates and tries to develop a broader basis for how mandates can be systematically taken into account when studying mediation processes. It provides a definition of mediation mandates and explores how mandates might affect the various phases of the mediation process. A mediation mandate is an externally given formal or informal authorization to a third party for what it could/should do concerning settling or managing a threatening, ongoing, or stalemated armed conflict. We show how mediation mandates may differ depending on whether they originate from the conflict parties or externally to the conflict. The mandate is one of the key ways in which the trilateral relationship between sending organizations, conflict parties, and individual mediators are regulated. Mandates also vary in terms of being explicit or implicit as well as general or specific.

An innovation in this book is the introduction of the mediation staircase as a way to estimate the “success” of mediation efforts by connecting achievements to mandates. The steps in this staircase (levels 0 to 5) extend from establishing direct contacts to arriving at accords between the warring parties and include participation in agreement implementation. Most of the Nordic cases that had been terminated by the end of 2024 are assessed in this way. It is hoped that this approach to evaluating success will provide a better understanding of what mediation wants to – and can – achieve. The chapter shows that mediation is more than a one-person commitment, as it involves a more long-term effort. It also discusses the impact of military developments on the outcome.

Here, the significance of mandates is shown for the initiation, pursuit, and outcome of mediation, as demonstrated by the Nordic cases of mediation from the past seventy-five years. Mandates influence the selection of mediator, but we argue that mediators can influence the mandate and develop it, within the confines set by the warring parties and the mandator. Some mandates are vague, which can allow space for the mediator, and mandates may change over time. Either way, they are important for the pursuit and outcome of the mediation. Five general conclusions are proposed for research and practice, including the mismatch between mandates and support for mediation efforts. In particular, the chapter emphasizes the utility of the mediation staircase for assessing outcomes. It also encourages the study of non-Nordic cases of mediation.

The national populism of the Brexit movement builds up its political worldview on the basis of an ethnocentric myth of continuous homogeneous British nationhood. This was a construct of the imagination that included nostalgia for lost British empire. It was tightly bound up with the Brexiters’ concept of ‘the people’, which brought into their campaign rhetoric the idea of ‘the will of the people’ and ‘the mandate of the people’, as well as ideas from social contract theory. ‘The will of the people’ was a phrase that ran throughout Brexitspeak, deployed by the ex-Remainer Theresa May and ardent Leavers alike, and backed up by the populist press. Brexitspeakers knew what the people’s will was, by implication at least. And the claim that this ‘will’ gave the government an unquestionable mandate followed automatically, despite the narrow margin by which the Leavers had won, and despite the fact that before it the result had been defined as ‘advisory’ only. There was also the question of who precisely constituted ‘the people’ at the referendum, for there were important groups of potential voters who were excluded by the Brexiter-influenced Referendum Act.

Many of the justifications for the electoral college focus on maintaining the harmony and cohesion of the Republic. Upon closer scrutiny, however, we find that the electoral college does not contain the results of fraud and accidental circumstances within states. Instead, it magnifies their consequences for the outcome nationally. Direct election, by contrast, would create disincentives for fraud and recounts. Similarly, the electoral college does not produce concurrent majorities around the country and force winning candidates to moderate their stances to appeal successfully to all segments of society and all geographic locations. Equally problematic is the view that victory in the electoral college ensures presidents effective coalitions for governing. Moreover, the electoral college does not produce compromise within states, and it is fundamentally different from constitutional provisions that require supermajorities to take positive action. The electoral college produces neither majority-vote victories for presidents nor mandates for their governing. It is also not a bastion of federalism. Direct election of the president would not diminish the role of state and local parties and officials or the nominating conventions, and national standards for elections are already in place and not to be feared.

This chapter explores the simple mandate contract which is governed by Articles 394–406 of the Swiss Code of Obligations. This chapter commences with the sources of this contract, its main characteristics as well as its delimitations with other contracts. This chapter then moves on to discuss the formation of the simple mandate contract before discussing in detail the obligations of the agent and the principal. These include the agent’s obligation to provide the promised services, duty to render the services in a diligent and faithful manner, duty to give an account, duty to return and duty to transfer vested rights as well as the principal’s duty to reimburse expenses, duty to discharge the agents from their obligations, duty to compensate for any loss incurred and obligation to pay fees. Finally, this chapter explores the end of the simple mandate contract either by termination or due to legal reasons.

This chapter provides an introduction to the evolution of IOM’s mandate and obligations from its founding in 1951 to 2022. In contrast to the tendency in some scholarly literature to portray IOM as a static actor devoid of normative obligations and available to unquestioningly advance state interests, however nefarious, this chapter paints a more complex picture. Focusing in particular on IOM as a “multi-mandated” organization, the chapter charts how IOM’s mandate and conceptions of its obligations have shifted over time, including in light of the development over the past two decades of a significant set of internal policies, frameworks and guidelines. Without minimizing the significant gaps and opacity that remain, the chapter explores changes in the organization’s perceived purpose and obligations, and explanations for these shifts, drawing on insights from international relations scholarship on international organizations’ legitimation efforts. Gradually, IOM has transformed from a logistics agency strapped to the interests of the United States, to a global organization with a still nascent but growing sense of its obligations not only to states but also to people on the move—changes that have ultimately advanced IOM’s efforts to secure its own position and power in the international system.

In the absence of an international framework applicable to cross-border capital flows, there is little doubt that the Fund had to assert its authority over capital movements. Without the Fund, a legal lacuna would exist and financial movements would go largely unregulated. Yet, it is less certain whether the Fund ever had the formal legal authority to empower itself to act as a de facto financial authority. A strict reading of the Articles of Agreement suggests that the Fund historically had no mandate over capital movements. Yet, several decades ago the Fund began slowly but steadily appropriating and assuming authority over capital movements. This chapter explores the legal instruments used by the Fund to organise the shift and expansion of its mandate. The chapter makes two major points. First, while the Fund grounded its mandate expansion on the text and wording of the Articles of Agreement, it relied on an Article IV byroad to interpret its constitutive instrument to escape the historical distinction between capital movements and current international transactions. Second, the Fund’s Institutional View of 2012 was not a radical break from tradition but merely a formalization and crystallisation of the ideas and direction it has pursued since 2008.

After formally adopting their competition laws, India and Pakistan were faced with the task of implementing them. However, although both countries established their national competition authorities, the CCI and the CCP, almost immediately after adopting their respective legislations, the enforcement of these legislations has not been without complications. This chapter compares the structures, mandates, and compositions of these authorities and their decision-making strategies, and provides a comparative overview of implementation of competition laws in the two countries by reference indicators derived from the orders issued by the CCI and CCP in respect of anti-competitive agreements and abuse of dominance. The chapter also links the performance of the CCI and CCP and their interactions with their countries’ pre-existing legal systems to the mechanisms and institutions employed by the countries in the adoption stage and the compatibility and legitimacy generated through them.

The period of the British mandate can be divided into two. Until 1929, there were relatively few clashes between the settlers and the local community and were even areas of joint living based on one’s socio-economic class or interest and not just national identity. However, the Zionist plan of turning Palestine into a Jewish state led to an aggressive policy of taking over the labour market and as much of the land as possible. This led to a Palestinian revolt in the 1930s and double pressure on Britain that decided eventually to leave Palestine in 1947

This chapter provides a detailed discussion of the steps involved in preparation for plan-writing.

This chapter looks at the effects of World War I on Palestine and the Zionist movement. During the war, the entente powers viewed Ottoman territories as spoils of war, although they differed on who would get what. This was because the secret treaties they signed with each other and pledges to others were mutually contradictory and/or ambiguous. One pledge, the Balfour Declaration, promised the Zionist movement a home for the Jewish people in Palestine, thereby giving political Zionism the victory it needed to ensure the survival of the movement. After the war, the entente met to decide the future of Ottoman territory and came up with the “mandates system,” which created a new political form comparable to a temporary colony. Britain received the mandate for Palestine. The Jewish community there cooperated with the British and established structures compatible with the mandate. The indigenous community rejected both the Balfour Declaration and the mandate. As a result, it lacked the structures that might have prevented the nakba (catastrophe) of 1948.