Failed States Workshop for the GEGPA Students

Why do states fail? Understanding the reasons for institutional weakness and developing early warning signals is crucial, more than ever. Last week, the students of the Joint Master in Global Economic Governance and Public Affairs (GEGPA) took part in a workshop on “Failed States”.

Now in its sixth year, the workshop has become a traditional highlight of the GEGPA programme in Nice. It offered two days of exchanges with renowned scholars and experts sharing their field experience.

Under the expert guidance of Michel Henry Bouchet, Emeritus Global Finance Professor, and Programme Director Arnaud Leconte, the analysis focussed on bad governance and risk management through a combination of case studies, datamining and socio-political risk assessment.

Alexandre Landi, Lead Data Scientist at IBM and Adjunct Professor at Skema Business School, introduced the students to their newly developed Global Governance Barometer, a risk barometer for emerging markets to evaluate governance quality. Long treated as a secondary issue governance quality proves central to economic resilience, investment appeal and development outcomes.

Integrating 6,000 data points across 130 countries, combining hard data with expert judgement, the risk barometer covers five critical dimensions: corruption, institutional development, government effectiveness, sustainability and business climate.

We thank Jonas Hoffmann from Norman Partners for his presentation on country risk strategy options and scenario planning, as well as Sara Brimbeuf, Head of the Illicit Financial Flows Programme at Transparency International France, and Thierry Apoteker, Chairman of TAC Economics, for their precious contributions and lively exchanges with the students.