Power In Play

How power is distributed, used and held accountable - and why it matters for people and planet.

May 26, 2023

Join us as we delve into frank conversations on pressing governance challenges!

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)’s Global Policy Centre for Governance, The Oslo Governance Centre invites people who impact on the way that governance systems form, perform and are understood. Together with guests we raise acute questions of how systems of power impact people & planet. We get up to date on the latest research and ask challenging questions to those who have power.

The UNDP Global Policy Centre for Governance (OGC) provides advice to UNDP country programs and informs UN senior leadership on frontier governance issues. It aims to create insight, data and knowledge by gathering the experiences and expertise of people who really know these challenges and how they can be solved. Policymakers, practitioners and researchers engage in the work of OGC to create definitive value to the UNDP’s programmatic responses to complex governance questions and to enrich the global conversation about how to best allocate, use and control power. This podcast supports OGC goal to serve as a conversation starter on governance issues that impact on people and planet.

Episode 1

How to remake a constitution: deep governance reforms and the case of Chile

In this episode we examine how challenging it is to undertake deep governance structure reform. Constitutions form the basis of governance institutions, and are therefore a good place to start to understand how reform can be brought about. In this episode we talk about the case of Chile to understand these challenges better. In 2019 a popular uprising began that called for broad reforms, including a new constitution. In September 2022 a majority of Chileans rejected a new constitutional draft that would have replaced the existing one that dates to the Pinochet dictatorship. What were the main lessons learned from this process? We invite Dr. Marcela Rios, who was Minister of Justice in Chile for the critical first year of the new government that was expected to deliver on reforms. Dr. Rios has over twenty years of governance related experience, and served in UNDP for almost 15 years. As a practitioner, policymaker and researcher, she specializes in democracy, governance, public policy and institutional design with a gender focus. In this episode we get her reflections on her time as Minister of Justice and the role of legitimacy in transition processes. Furthermore, we invite two experts to reflect on the conversation with Dr. Rios. Benedicte Bull and Alfredo Zamudio bring their unique perspective and discuss what the world can learn from these processes in Chile.

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Episode 2

The global circus of tax policy: a source of state building or cause of injustice

Taxation is essential for our governance systems and has become a key issue of contention in global development policy. Alongside a growing recognition that the international tax system is broken, a global effort is underway to reform it. Yet this is not without debate. Who will decide how these systems work and what sorts of arrangements will the future tax system consist of? And what is most important for legitimacy - outcome or process? We discuss why taxation is fundamental to the establishment of the social contract between governments and their citizens, the connection between illicit financial fraud, corruption, and taxation, the OECD BEPS two-pillar system, as well as the trade-offs between inclusion and efficiency when addressing tax justice.

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