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Patrick Müller

Byzantium: always an Empire, never a Nation | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...lways_an_empire_never_a_nation

byzantium opendemocracy

shared by Patrick Müller on 14 May 08 - Snapshot
    • Patrick Müller
      Patrick Müller on 14 May 08
       
      It does indeed sound a lot like the European Union, and not by accident. But actually it makes more sense to compare the Union to the Holy Roman Empire than to Byzantinium as in contrast to the later, they both lack an imperial center, a metropolis like Rome for the Roman Empire or Constantinople for Byzantinium, but are federal political structures. A comparison that has actually been made in the political science, for example by Jan Zielonka (Europe as Empire. The Nature of the Enlarged European Union).

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Arabica Robusta

Tibet, Palestine and the politics of failure | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...ne-and-the-politics-of-failure

independence opendemocracy palestine postcolonial sovereignty tibet

shared by Arabica Robusta on 12 May 08 - Snapshot
  • The victims of "post-colonial sequestration", by contrast, failed to make it past the barrier of independence and international recognition. Instead they fell into a state of half-recognised, but contested, existence. After the war of 1948-49 the "Palestine question" disappeared almost entirely from the international scene, only to re-emerge with the defeat of the Arab armies in the six-day war of 1967. Tibet too has undergone long years of neglect in the international arena, punctuated by periodic (and notably near-half-century) reincarnations of interest: the bloody British occupation of Lhasa in 1904-05, the insurrection against Chinese rule and flight of the Dalai Lama in 1959, and now the uprising of March 2008 (see Gabriel Lafitte, "Tibet: revolt with memories", 18 March 2008).
  • Arabica Robusta
    Arabica Robusta on 12 May 08
     
    The victims of "post-colonial sequestration", by contrast, failed to make it past the barrier of independence and international recognition. Instead they fell into a state of half-recognised, but contested, existence. After the war of 1948-49 the "Palestine question" disappeared almost entirely from the international scene, only to re-emerge with the defeat of the Arab armies in the six-day war of 1967. Tibet too has undergone long years of neglect in the international arena, punctuated by periodic (and notably near-half-century) reincarnations of interest: the bloody British occupation of Lhasa in 1904-05, the insurrection against Chinese rule and flight of the Dalai Lama in 1959, and now the uprising of March 2008 (see Gabriel Lafitte, "Tibet: revolt with memories", 18 March 2008).
Arabica Robusta

Can democracy save the planet? | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...can_democracy_save_the_planet

democracy development international opendemocracy sustainable

shared by Arabica Robusta on 05 May 08 - Snapshot
  • The questions addressed included: can a world of 9-10 billion people
    vote its way to a sustainable future - or are new forms of leadership (even
    forms of authoritarian rule) going to be necessary? Are the rising global
    powers (China, India and Brazil among them) best placed to move towards more
    sustainable forms of development?
  • What of the link between democracy and
    sustainable development? Most respondents held that voter pressure meant that
    democracy was of benefit to sustainable development. Yet consultation with
    a more specialised group of experts found that only 28% believed that
    capitalism (often paired with democracy in its liberal variant) aided
    sustainable development, against 36% who said that capitalism inhibited it.
    Overall, Doug Miller saw in the figures an activation of people's survival
    instinct: as the planet "speaks" through extreme weather events, citizens are
    starting to listen.
  • Many of the issues the roundtable addressed had been
    highlighted in a keynote paper commissioned ahead of the meeting from Ian
    Christie. This made four basic propositions about democracy, ecologically
    sustainable development, and environmental/sustainability campaign
    organisations (SD-NGOs). He argued that together, these phenomena offer a
    paradox about the relationship between democracy, civil society and
    sustainability; and that resolving it is now an urgent and complex task - for
    the west, for newly industrialised democracies, and for emergent democratic civil
    society in the global south.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Democracy poses huge problems
    for sustainable development. In the advanced liberal capitalist states, democracy
    is tightly coupled to the promise of economic growth, ever-rising consumption
    and individual freedom. Democracy in such states now entrenches the interests
    of the affluent majority and well-funded lobbies in the political system (a
    point analysed by, among others, JK Galbraith and Mancur Olson).
  • Environmental/sustainability
    campaign organisations (SD-NGOs) are a massive success for civil society
    worldwide. Without them, we would not have anything like the progress we have
    seen in the past half-century in protecting the environment, cutting pollution,
    raising resource efficiency, highlighting linked issues of environmental and
    social injustice, and saving wildlife and habitats from destruction. Without
    them, the discourse and practice of sustainable development would not have
    become established in governments worldwide, and huge issues such as climate
    disruption would not have been acknowledged or tackled sufficiently by
    governments and businesses.
  • SD-NGOs are a massive failure by their own
    standards. For nearly fifty years they have campaigned and educated citizens
    and governments and businesses worldwide; yet ecological damage continues on a
    vast scale, environmental injustices abound, and dangerous climate disruption
    seems to be unavoidable. SD-NGOs have achieved limited gains in specific areas
    of policy but have failed to mobilise and energise citizens on a large enough
    scale to put real pressure on politicians and businesses in the west and
    beyond. Moreover, they lack clear answers to challenges to their own legitimacy
    and accountability, and have sometimes spoken as though they were representative
    voices of "civil society", when in fact they constitute a small and highly
    unrepresentative section of it in many countries.
  • Arabica Robusta
    Arabica Robusta on 05 May 08
     
    a Consultation on Democracy and Sustainability was held at the Science Museum in London on 18 March 2008. It was convened by the Environment Foundation, the 21st Century Trust and SustainAbility, and supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

    The questions addressed included: can a world of 9-10 billion people vote its way to a sustainable future - or are new forms of leadership (even forms of authoritarian rule) going to be necessary? Are the rising global powers (China, India and Brazil among them) best placed to move towards more sustainable forms of development?

    Democracy has a central role to play in any discussion of the future of the planet. But democracy is in trouble in many parts of the world, and must - if it is to deliver, remain relevant and meet people's needs and aspirations - mutate and evolve (see Larry Diamond, "The Democratic Rollback", Foreign Affairs [March-April 2008]).
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