The study of ethnic riots has a substantial pedigree in the social sciences, but so far there has been no systematic attempt to unify insights from scholars working on different areas of the world, nor has there been any extensive application of existing knowledge to the study of Western Europe. We address these two lacunae by drawing on contemporary scholarship to generate testable hypotheses about state responses to ethnic riots in liberal democracies, and by conducting a preliminary test of these hypotheses on four controlled comparison cases from Britain and France. Our cases reveal that states employ a relatively even balance of repression and accommodation in keeping with thesocial controlperspective, but that the precise balance is affected by theelectoral incentivesof the party in power. This evidence suggests the external validity of findings by Fording (2001) – who emphasizes the significance of social control in the American context – and Wilkinson (2004) – who stresses the importance of electoral incentives in the Indian environment – but it implies that these separate insights may be more powerful in combination. Our study also demonstrates the limitations of perspectives that predict either simple repression or accommodation of rioters, and of those that emphasize distinctive national responses to riots.

There is increasing impetus for stronger cooperation between the US, EU and UK on digital technology governance. Drivers of this trend include the economic incentives arising from opportunities for digital trade; the ambition for digital technology governance to be underpinned by shared values, including support for a democratic, open and global internet; and the need to respond to geopolitical competition, especially from China. — Two specific areas of governance in which there is concrete potential to collaborate, and in which policymakers have indicated significant ambitions to do so, are digital trade and digital technical standards. — To leverage strategic opportunities for digital trade, the US, EU and UK need to continue identifying and promoting principles based on shared values and agendas, and demonstrate joint leadership at the global level,including in the World Trade Organization (WTO) on e-commerce. — Policy actors in the US, EU and UK should work individually and collectively to build on the latest generation of digital trade agreements. This will help to promote closer alignment on digital rules and standards, and support the establishment of more up-to-date models for innovation and governance. — Collaborating on digital technical standards, particularly those underlying internet governance and emerging technologies, offers the US, EU and UK strategic opportunities to build a vision of digital technology governance rooted in multi-stakeholder participation and democratic values. This can provide a strong alternative to standards proposals such as China’s ‘New IP’ system. — Policy actors should seek to expand strategic cooperation on standards development among the US, EU and UK, among like-minded countries, and among states that are undecided on the direction of their technology governance, including in the Global South. They should also take practical steps to incorporate the views and expertise of the technology industry, the broader private sector, academia and civil society. — By promoting best-practice governance models that are anticipatory, dynamic and flexible, transatlantic efforts for cooperation on digital regulation can better account for the rapid pace of technological change. Early evidence of this more forward-looking approach is emerging through the EU’s proposed regulation of digital services and artificial intelligence (AI), and in the UK’s proposed legislation to tackle online harms. — The recently launched EU-US Trade and Technology Council is a particularly valuable platform for strengthening cooperation in this arena. But transatlantic efforts to promote a model of digital governance predicated on democratic values would stand an even greater chance of success if the council’s work were more connected to efforts by the UK and other leading democracies.

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years have driven the rapid development of facial recognition technologies. Jurisdictions around the world have begun to grapple with the question of how to regulate their use. In Latin America, the deployment of facial recognition in public spaces for police surveillance has seen a swift take-up. With crime being an issue of great concern to voters across the region, many public officials have supported facial recognition rollouts on the grounds that this type of surveillance can enhance public safety. However, depending on how it is deployed, facial recognition has the potential to threaten a range of human rights, including rights of individuals to privacy, to freedom of expression, to non-discrimination and to freedom of assembly and association. Using the examples of recent deployments in the major urban centres of Buenos Aires and São Paulo, this research paper argues that Latin America is caught in a worst-case scenario: the technology is already in use without adequate protections in place. As a way forward, the paper recommends that policymakers in Latin America focus on building robust safeguards to protect the rights of the region’s citizens, and ensure that authorized uses of facial recognition steer clear of ‘no-go’ zones such as the indiscriminate use of live facial recognition.

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