No abstract

Jean-Marc Coicaud's article begins by stressing the contemporary importance and the current trend of political apology. Recent political apologies offered in Australia and Canada to their indigenous populations form a significant part of this story. He then analyzes a number of intriguing paradoxes at the core of the dynamics of apology. These paradoxes give meaning to apology but also make the very idea of apology extremely challenging. They have to do with the relationships of apology with time, law and the unforgivable. The most intriguing of these paradoxes concerns apology and the unforgivable. Indeed, the greater the wrong, the more valuable the apology. But, then, the more difficult it becomes to issue and to accept an apology. This latter paradox is namely examined in the context of mass crimes, taken from Europe, Africa and Asia. As a whole these paradoxes are all the more intriguing considering what apology in a political context aims to accomplish, for the actor who issues the apology, for the one who receives it, for their relationship, and for the social environment in which this takes place. Jean-Marc Coicaud concludes his article by outlining what the rise of apology means for contemporary political culture.

The current statistical picture of the world is probably the best it has ever been. But it also entails major limitations. In this article we show the limitations by focusing on three key areas: security, economy of development and the environment, and argue that they undermine the performance of global governance, and the possibility of global policy. In particular they do not allow taking the full measure and managing optimally the changes underway at the global level. To overcome this state of affairs, upgrading statistical capabilities is critical. To achieve this objective, the article suggests, among other ideas: adjusting and adapting the conceptualization, collection and implementation of statistical data to a world that is on its way to becoming global; improving the conditions of compilation of statistical data in developing countries; and investing in institution-building and innovation, in developed and developing countries, and in national and international organizations. Policy Implications• Optimizing policy and management in a world partially or fully globalized calls for the need to adjust data that is 'part and parcel' of public policy.• It is necessary to continue to improve the modalities of compilation of statistical data. Hence, making more efforts for standardization and helping support further developing countries to collect data.• The need to invest in institution-building and innovation, in developed and developing countries, and in national and international organizations. This entails improving the ways in which data professionals are trained, conduct research and then exercise their profession.• Increase the level of transparency of data conceptualization, production and dissemination in order to address the growing problem of lack of trust, especially in the financial and economic areas following the mismanagement of information in the context of the 2008 economic crisis In recent years taking the global governance and global policy agenda seriously is emerging as a more and more pressing requirement. The growing globalization of the world (Aart Scholte, 2008), with developments such as the spread of information technology (IT), the Janus face of economic globalization (generating within and among nations, integration and disintegration, winners and losers (de la Dehesa, 2006)), and the 2008 financial and economic crisis and its impact, makes countries increasingly interdependent and in need of being better globally managed in order to optimize opportunities and minimize risks. At the same time, this global governance/global policy agenda continues to be an uphill battle. One of the reasons for this is that the data that global governance and global policy rely on to formulate and implement governance and policy has serious shortcomings.Indeed, although the statistical data available today amounts to the best picture ever put out at the national, regional and global levels, 1 it is not necessarily good enough to satisfy the demands of the present time, let alone the ones of tomorrow....

Abstracts The paper focuses on the conceptualization and measurement of global justice and discusses theories, concepts, evaluative principles, and methodologies related to the study of global justice. In this paper, we seek to clarify how to conceptualize global justice, how conceptual indicators can be selected and justified by theories, and how those indicators can be conceptually consistent with the concept of global justice. Global justice is a broad concept that is composed of multi-level and multidimensional aspects belonging to both normative and empirical realities. A coherent and integrated theoretical framework that covers the normative basis and various empirical dimensions is therefore much needed in order to address some of the basic and important questions under study. The paper seeks to synthesize the multiple theories and conceptions of global justice that exist in the academic discourse and literature into three main theoretical approaches to global justice—rights based, good based, and virtue based. These three approaches are a good sample of and reflect well the strengths of the different theoretical, intellectual and cultural traditions at play in the study of global justice. From this perspective, the synthesis of the three approaches is meant to provide us with a coherent theoretical framework that serves as the normative basis and justifies the selection of indicators for measurement.