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The WTO system and democratic rights are unexpected bedfellows. The GATT/WTO requires governments to adopt policies that provide foreign products (read producers) with due process, political participation, and information rights related to trade policymaking. Because these nations also provide these rights to their citizens, a growing number of people are learning how to influence trade-related policies. As trade today encompasses many areas of governance, these same citizens may gradually transfer the skills learned from influencing trade policies to other public issues. Thus, the WTO not only empowers foreign market actors, but also citizens in repressive states. We use both qualitative and quantitative analysis to examine whether membership in the WTO over time leads to improvements in these democratic rights. Our qualitative analysis shows that these issues are discussed during accessions and trade policy reviews. Quantitative analysis examines how members of the GATT/WTO perform on these democratic rights over time. We use a cross-national time series design of all countries, accounting for selection issues of why countries become members of the GATT/WTO regime. We find that longer GATT/WTO membership leads to stronger performance on our metrics for political participation, free and fair elections, and access to information.

Univision, the premier media company serving the U.S. Hispanic community, announces that it will host a Historic Education Town Hall with with President Barack Obama that will be taped and then later aired as a television news special entitled Univision News Presents: The Moment is Now - The President, Hispanics and Education. The Town Hall will be held on Monday, March 28, 2011 and hosted by Univision's news anchor Jorge Ramos at the following location: Bell Multicultural High School 3101 16 Street, NW 9405 Washington, DC 20010 The Town Hall event will give President Barack Obama the opportunity to engage with students, parents and teachers about education and Hispanic educational achievement. The event will also focus on better preparing students for college and 21st century careers, greater parental engagement in education, and the politics of reforming the educational system according to a Press Release. The Town Hall will be taped at Bell Multicultural High School from from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. EDT and will air without commercial interruptions at 7 p.m. EDT/PDT, 6 p.m. CDT on the Univision Network, and closed-captioned in English on CC3 where available. The event will also be streamed online at www.EsElMomento.com in English and Spanish as well as simulcast on Univision Radio in Spanish. PRESS INFORMATION: Beginning at 8 a.m. EDT although subject to change, pre-registered members of the press are invited to cover and will have access to wi-fi, a mult box and feed to the Town Hall taping. In addition, refreshments will be served. It is asked that all media RSVP by Saturday, March 26. RSVP/CONTACTS: Carolina Valencia - (646) 673-6494, cvalencia@unvision.net Paula Alvarez - (347) 268-7408, pmalvarez@univision.net ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: In the lead up to the Town Hall, students, parents and teachers will have the opportunity to submit an education-related question for President Obama. Questions can be submitted to Univision until Sunday, March 27, 2011 thro

For decades, China has maintained State import monopoly in cultural products. The opaque State trading operations ensure a maximum level of flexibility and efficacy in the government censorship of imports. The WTO judiciary held in the China-Publications case that this practice is inconsistent with China's trading rights commitments under its Accession Protocol and cannot be justified by the public morals exception of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. To comply with the WTO ruling, China must restructure its censorship regime, which it apparently is not prepared to do. This article analyses the implications of the WTO decision and provides a critical assessment of the new WTO jurisprudence regarding trading rights and the China Accession Protocol.

"How does the transnationalization of markets shape institution building, particularly in those countries that have few options other than to incorporate the rules and norms promulgated by advanced industrialized countries? Building on recent advances in international and comparative political economy, we propose a framework for the comparative study of the ways in which transnational integration regimes (TIRs) shape the development of regulatory institutions in emerging market democracies. The ability of TIRs to alleviate the supply and demand problems of institutional change in these countries depends in large part on the ways in which TIRs translate their purpose and power into institutional goals, assistance and monitoring. Integration modes can be combined in different ways so as to empower or limit the participation of a variety of domestic public and private actors to pursue and contest alternative institutional experiments. We illustrate the use of our framework via a brief comparison of the impact of the European Union accession process on post-communist countries and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Mexico, with special attention to the development of food safety regulatory institutions."

Why and how do issues expire? This paper applies the concept of path dependency to issue-life cycle and argues that the manner in which an issue dies is closely associated with how it comes to life. This paper argues that, on the Access to Medicines issue, the first actors (1) to have called attention to a legal problem, (2) to have capitalised on the HIV/AIDs crisis, and (3) to have used the example of Africa, were also the first to have felt constrained by their own frame in their attempt to (1) look for economical rather than legal solutions, (2) expand the list of medicines covered beyond anti-AIDs drugs, and (3) allow large emerging economies to benefit from a scheme designed by countries without manufacturing capacities. In order to escape an issue in which they felt entrapped, issue-entrepreneurs worked strategically to close the debate in order to better reframe it in other forums.

"'Information' is an enormously promising, if ambiguous term in post-Cold War development thinking. In the last three decades, international development agencies have argued that Latin American land reform policy should focus not on redistributing land but on creating more information about land and making it as widely accessible as possible. These proposals, which I call 'cadastral fixes' to rural underdevelopment, are understandably attractive and seem to fit well with democratic values of transparency and openness. But I argue that the use of the word 'information' to connote both democratic rights and the apparatuses devised by economists to improve the rural economy is misleading. 'Information' is productively vague, allowing development experts to change their projects in the face of failure without questioning the fundamental economic premises on which their reforms are built. As I show in this case study of Paraguayan cadastral reform, the history of these refinements shows a shift, under the rubric of open information, towards increasingly disciplinary forms of intervention in the politics of land."

"This article, originally delivered in the Fall of 2011 at a seminar held in Beirut at the Centre for Arab Unity Studies, examines the 2011 amendments to the Moroccan Constitution in light of the historical background. The tumultuous events of the so-called 'Arab Spring' brought new urgency to the issue of constitutional reforms that had been broached initially on the accession of Muhammad VI to the throne in 1999. Since independence, Moroccan political society has typically been vibrant, democratic and home to numerous political parties of various orientations and, since the 1970s, has witnessed calls by various sides for constitutional reforms as well as for the institution of a constitutional or parliamentary monarchy. On 9 March 2011 Muhammad VI gave a momentous address subjecting the issue of royal authority to public deliberations. This topic had previously ranked as one of the few unapproachable taboos of the political scene. A vital driving force in the process of constitutional reform has been the youthful February 20 Movement that was instrumental in the mobilization of millions of Moroccans and led to submitting the new draft Constitution to popular referendum and its ratification on 1 July 2011. Unlike other Arab countries, Morocco's functioning democracy, its well-established political parties and the fact that the issue of constitutional reforms had already been on the table meant that when Moroccans descended into the streets they had a set of clearly defined demands - demands that were also less drastic than those being made in other countries. Yet while Moroccan politics have been highly developed and articulate since the 1940s, the events of the Arab Spring provided the necessary shock and catalyst to transform relative complacency into action. The dense topography of mature political parties and organizations in Morocco factored in two ways: first, it permitted a stable environment for democr

Aimed at reinforcing the democratic values of freedom of speech and increased diversity in civic access to the means of communication, this paper examines the concept of democracy within an information and communication technology-mediated context. Discus

Global apartheid, like globalisation, is a buzzword that has evolved to describe a new global paradigm. Put simply, global apartheid is an international system of minority rule that promotes inequalities, disparities and differential access to basic human

What if the western faith in technology and information, in the belief that the information returned are all the voices, that universal access to al information will change complicated social issues, have made us more blind to the constructedness of our o

Decentralised governments have often been presented as a formula for strengthening democracy and citizen participation, and giving women greater access to power. But experiences like that of Eufrosina Cruz, who was denied the right to run for mayor of her

This article analyses the inequality of access of people to the international policy process. It is argued that this presents an important challenge for global social policy considerations. The work explores the question of how these inequalities are prod

In this remarkably lucid and deceptively accessible little book, Tilly presents a unified theory of the processes that shape transitions to and from democracy. Although he draws upon his vast knowledge as historian and sociologist, the exposition develops

ASUNCION, Apr 7 (IPS) - The global tendency towards greater participation by women in politics has reached Paraguay, but the pace continues to be set by men, and there are still tough barriers to equal access to elected posts.

Certain Western cosmological assumptions have led to differences between Western intellectual tradition and philosophy and thus political thought currents in the Chinese tradition. Ru xue or rujia sixiang, although translated as "Confucianism" in English, does not contain any sense of "-ism" and indicates doctrine, theory, and system of principles. Confucianism preceded by "neo-" or "post-" only causes confusion and miscomprehension for the usage's Western implications. The exact issue is indeed "Confucianism in the Postmodern Era"; that is, an extension of influence from China to the West, suggesting that Confucianism go global in the global age in order to make its perspectives accessible as an important part of global culture.

"Battles over the control of information online are often fought at the level of Internet infrastructure. Forces of globalization and technological change have diminished the capacity of sovereign nation states and media content producers to directly control information flows. This loss of control over content and the failure of laws and markets to regain this control have redirected political and economic battles into the realm of infrastructure and, in particular, technologies of Internet governance. These arrangements of technical architecture are also arrangements of power. This shift of power to infrastructure is drawing renewed attention to the politics of Internet architecture and the legitimacy of the coordinating institutions and private ordering that create and administer these infrastructures. It also raises questions related to freedom of expression in the context of this increasing turn to infrastructure to control information. This article explores the relationship between governance and infrastructure, focusing on three specific examples of how battles over content have shifted into the realm of this Internet governance infrastructure: the use of the Internet's domain name system for intellectual property rights enforcement; the use of 'kill-switch' approaches to restrict the flow of information; and the termination of infrastructure services to WikiLeaks. The article concludes with some thoughts about the implications of this infrastructure-mediated governance for economic and expressive liberties."

After its first democratic elections in 1994, South Africa was often seen as an example of a peaceful democratic transition on the African continent, in which democratic institutions like the media were firmly established and safeguarded by a new constitu

Anyone who is still trying to look for neutrality or balance in the Thai media in these days of political ferment, ahead of large anti-government protests expected in the capital, has a pretty tough job. "Thai society is very divided politically and I do

Today we're honored to have a guest blog post by Digital Democracy Advisory Board member Sean McDonald, taking a look at the US State Department's focus on Internet Freedom. Sean, Director of New Media Business Development at MetroStar Systems, brings a b

Is Internet freedom an absolute, universal value like freedom of speech? If there are limits, how and by whom can they be established? Is crying fire or scaling firewalls anymore acceptable in cyberspace than in physical space? What is the impact on the discourse between nations, cultures and individuals? In this section, we gather a collage of comments from various key players from Google to Wikileaks to the US State Department along with comments by one of the most cogent analysts of the Net and the president of Turkey. ERIC SCHMIDT1, JARED COHEN2, HILLARY CLINTON3, BERNARD KOUCHNER4, JULIAN ASSANGE5