Letter from the Editor

December 28, 2021

Hello everyone! I would like to officially welcome you to issue XVIII.2 of the Observer, entitled “Tightly Knit: Intergovernmental Relations over the Past Decade”. Like the previous one, this issue will be released in two parts, and I am very excited for you to read what our writers have to say. 

It is no secret that, over the last 10 years, the world has changed considerably. There has been an increase in global communication, interconnectedness, and access to information, and all three of these changes have massively impacted the way in which our world operates. At the beginning of the decade (around 2010), iMessage was invented, Barack Obama was the U.S. president, and Stephen Harper had recently been re-elected about a year prior, in October of 2008. Not to mention, Britain was still part of the EU. By the end, iMessage is commonplace, and none of the political facts mentioned remain true. Thus, that is the topic of this issue: intergovernmental relations over the last decade. In this first section, you will find a detailing of the issue of climate change from Vanessa Ellia, an overview of arctic politics from Alexandra Paul, and a discussion of the “Nuclear Family” of countries in power from Claire Parsons. The second section will be released later in the week.

I hope you enjoy reading the articles from our talented group of writers, and hopefully learn something from them as well. I’d like to thank the team for their hard work this past semester, and am excited for future issues to come! If you have any comments or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us at theobserver@qiaa.org. If you’d like to contribute an article in the future, or apply to join our team, follow us on Instagram (@theobserver.qiaa) or Facebook (The Observer - Queen’s University) for updates.

Hope you enjoy the issue, and thank you for reading!

Noor Yassein

Print Editor-in-Chief, The Observer