Andrea Binder

Freie Universität Berlin | FUB · Otto-Suhr-Institute for Political Science

Offshore finance allows foreign banks to create US dollars under the laws of an offshore jurisdiction. How and why does this affect international monetary power? Conceptually, I argue that offshore finance bifurcates across borders the shared power of the state and banks to create money, combining the US dollar with mostly English law. Empirically,...

Offshore finance is a set of financial services deliberately codified in law so as to circumvent national regulation predominantly in an invisible way. It is used by wealthy individuals and multinational corporations to minimize tax bills, to avoid government regulations, and to create money, legally and illegally. Offshore financial services there...

At first sight, Mexico appears to be a textbook example of a state affected by offshore finance. Offshore financial services allow corporations and the wealthy to plan taxes, avoid regulations or to launder money. The literature holds that large, developing, open economies, with geographical proximity to offshore centers and problems of crime and c...

This article asks how success is defined and measured for humanitarian action and military interventions aimed at protecting civilians from violence and harm in situations of armed conflict. It starts by illustrating how humanitarian and military protection actors differ in their ability or willingness to mobilize coercive force to achieve their co...

With several rising powers emerging as new actors on the humanitarian scene, viewing all ‘emerging donors’ as a homogenous group inevitably undermines efforts to constructively engage with them. With Turkey’s widely recognized engagement in Somalia and Syria, the country merits a nuanced analysis. How does it conceptualize humanitarian assistance?...

It has become common sense in humanitarian circles to refer to the emergency responses to the 2010 Haiti earthquake and subsequent cholera outbreak as a failure. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) began doing so publicly in a December 2010 article published in The Guardian. In this regard, Jean-Marc Biquet’s article – ‘Haiti: Between Emergency and Reco...

Die globalen Machtverschiebungen zwischen dem Westen auf der einen Seite und Asien, Lateinamerika und Teilen Afrikas auf der anderen Seite haben die humanitäre Hilfe erfasst. Gelder für Nothilfeoperationen kommen nicht länger nur aus Nordamerika und Europa. Mit Brasilien, Indien, Saudi-Arabien und der Türkei als neue humanitäre Geber wandelt sich d...

Non-Western countries such as Saudi Arabia, China, Brazil, and Turkey have all started to take part in global humanitarian action. Their engagement raises a number of fundamental questions: how will the diversification of government donors affect humanitarian activities and principles; and how will it affect the people and governments of crisis-aff...

The only international treaty governing food aid, the Food Aid Convention (FAC) needs urgent reform. Signatories agreed a decade ago that "food aid should only be provided when it is the most effective and appropriate form of assistance" and "should be based on an evaluation of needs by the recipient and the members" (Art. VIII). These goals have n...