The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is a mega regional trade deal involving sixteen nations from Asia-Pacific. RCEP will impact the lives of billions of people, from the quality of the food they eat to the energy they consume and the affordability of life-saving medicines. Yet, RCEP negotiations are being conducted almost completely in secret, with limited to no meaningful public participation. Most elected officials have, at best, limited access to the negotiating texts, which remain out of reach for civil society.

In December 2017, the Transnational Institute (TNI) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany (BMZ), in collaboration with the Thai Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) and the Mae Fah Luang Foundation under Royal Patronage (MFLF), jointly organised the 9th Asian Informal Drug Policy Dialogue (IDPD) in Chiang Rai, Thailand. 

The EU has made migration control a central goal of its foreign relations, rapidly expanding border externalisation measures that require neighbouring countries to act as Europe's border guards. This report examines 35 countries, prioritised by the EU, and finds authoritarian regimes emboldened to repress civil society, vulnerable refugees forced to turn to more dangerous and deadly routes, and European arms and security firms booming off the surge in funding for border security systems and technologies.

The 2016 death of J. Jayalalithaa, chief minister of Tamil Nadu and head of the ruling party, destabilised a two-party dominated system of elections. How has this led to the political turmoil and new kind of populism that has arisen in the state since?

This paper explores if and how the dynamic of authoritarian populism relates to concrete spaces – as already produced through the process of accumulation – from the grounded vantage of Noida, a city adjacent to New Delhi.

This paper looks at communalism as a discourse, rather than using causal-based explanations, to understand how knowledge around communal issues are maintained and circulated through various institutions and practices to serve the interest of those in power.

Analysing the rural roots of Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party's political power in Turkey and providing an alternative to existing explanations, by identifying its material basis.

Situating questions about neoliberalism, nationalism and populism in Sri Lanka helps to broaden understanding of historical and political developments. Do neoliberal policies emerge in the West and then spread to the Global South, or do neoliberal policies evolve in confrontations with nationalist, populist and other political projects and go through considerable innovation in the Global South?

In January - February 2016, 8,058 former members of the Fajar Nusantara Movement (Gafatar) were forcibly removed from several locations in Kalimantan, Indonesia where they had established egalitarian agrarian settler communities.

This paper explores the potential impacts of an Indonesia-EU CEPA on human rights in Indonesia and the state’s duty to protect human rights.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade deal under negotiation between 16 Asian countries would grant corporations exclusive rights to sue governments at international tribunals. This report reveals that investors have launched 50 lawsuits at secret international arbitration tribunals against governments negotiating the RCEP agreement for a total of at least $31 billion US dollars. These lawsuits provide a warning of the potential high costs of the proposed RCEP trade deal. RCEP will deepen the rights of investors and lock in place this system of privatised justice.

After three decades of privatization and anti-state rhetoric, government ownership and public management are back in vogue.