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"A new authoritarian order is taking shape, this time within rather than against the capitalist world order. Globalization, in short, is shedding its liberal cloak. Post-Cold War triumphalism was premature in the funeral it staged for the Second World, defined in terms of its autocracy rather than communism. The capitalist character of the new Second World lulls Western globalists into moral as well as geopolitical (hence moral realist) indifference. For many in high places, it is still inconceivable that global capitalism could be a house divided. "Globalization" turns out to be anything but the steadfast ally of democratization it purports to be. It is in fact the greatest gift to a new breed of authoritarian capitalists. The case of China alone is enough to dispel the notion that capitalism and democracy are two sides of the same globalist coin. But Sino-globalization is only unique in that it makes no pretense about its authoritarian ends and means. To revitalize democratization as a global force, a radically different mode of globalization will have to be fostered. We call this the Global Third Way, but what it amounts to is People Power without borders."

"Democracy, civil society and likewise their 'promotion' have for a long time shaped foreign policies inside as much as outside the countries of the Middle East. Since January 2011, however, these notions and policies have been challenged by a seemingly new concept, that of the 'Arab Youth'. While the term 'Arab Youth' is coined to denote the grassroots nature of the uprisings, as a political category it may be reinforcing the paternalistic presumptions of authoritarian regimes and global hegemonic power structures, which use it to undermine the capacity of the wider population for democratic change. Without empirically grounded and theoretically challenging works, 'Arab Youth' may perpetuate the same inequalities and top-down misunderstanding that 'democracy promotion' connotes within the Middle East. By locating Syrian youth within contemporary struggles through ethnographic case studies, this paper aims to sketch a nuanced, complex and colourful picture of the multifaceted ways that young people reinforce, resist and negotiate power relations in contemporary Syria. Specifically, it looks at youth responses to different forms of authority such as external power (Israeli occupation), the Syrian state and the authority of parents and sectarian communities."

"This article provides a broad, cross-disciplinary overview of scholarship which has explored the dynamics between social movements, protests and their coverage by mainstream media across sociology, social movement studies, political science and media and communications. Two general approaches are identified 'representational' and 'relational' research. 'Representational' scholarship is that which has concerned itself with how social movements are portrayed or 'framed' in the media, how the media production process facilitates this, and the consequences thereof. 'Relational' scholarship concentrates on the asymmetrical 'relationship' between social movements, the contestation of media representation and the media strategies of social movements. Within these two broad approaches different perspectives and areas of emphasis are highlighted along with their strengths and weaknesses. The conclusion reflects on current developments in this area of study and offers avenues for future research."

"This study examines online collective action concerning grievances of farmers whose land was expropriated by the Chinese government for economic development. Such actions have resulted in numerous conflicts between officials and farmers who fear losing their sole survival source without adequate compensation. The authors examine two cases of such grievances: the Wang Shuai and Wu Baoquan Incidents. These cases were initiated by aggrieved 'netizens' and reinforced by the news media through the Internet. Data include online material from a sample of seven Chinese websites discussing the cases. Using perspectives on framing and its connection to online activism, the authors examine how protest on behalf of initiators and varied support from the media produced different outcomes. Concise framing and continuous media attention are essential to mobilizing support for successful collective action. These techniques and new technologies are part of an expanding trend in grassroots activism in China."

"International law is currently undergoing a major transformation that has provoked a 'legal turn' in the field of International Relations. At the heart of this transformation are the juridification of international politics and subsequently the judicialisation of international law. This contribution argues that scholars of critical International Political Economy have not yet paid enough attention to this process. What is needed is a theory of international law that is able to grasp the societal implications of this transformation. In a first step some accounts drawing on Antonio Gramsci and Evgeny Pashukanis are presented, with a view to making their theory fruitful for analysing international law. Against the background of an empirical study that compares the global regulation of trade in goods with the trade in services, delivered notably through natural persons, some major shortcomings of these accounts are outlined. The last part of the contribution presents some ideas on how to further develop a critical theory of international (trade) law that introduces a communicative dimension into the legal turn with a view to distinguishing between different extra-economic dynamics."

Participatory democracy has been studied as an auxiliary to state processes and as an institutional and cultural part of social movements. Studies of the use of participatory democracy by the Zapatistas of Mexico and the Movimento Sem Terra (Landless Movement-MST) of Brazil show a shared concern with autonomy, in particular avoidance of demobilization through the clientelism and paternalism induced by government programs and political parties. Both movements stress training in democracy (the experience of "being government") and the obligation to participate. Detailed examination of their governance practices may be helpful to communities building democratic movements in other places.

Labor law was traditionally a domestic project, defined on the basis of a geographic territory or a synthetic community; its norms were determined by the state and applied to employers and workers who resided within the state. Commonly, labor law is admin

International migrants are agents of democratic diffusion. They spread attitudes and behaviors absorbed in democratic host countries to their less democratic home countries by way of three processes: (a) migrant returns, (b) cross-border communication bet

Instead of repeatedly trying to foist a Western style top-down state structure on Somalia's deeply decentralized and fluid society, the international community needs to work with the country's long-standing traditional institutions to build a government f

This article discusses the programme of assistance to community-based organisations carried out by the European Union in South Africa during the years 1996-2004. As part of what the author defines as 'micro-assistance to democracy'-since it encourages dem

Does the emerging parallel Community administration share a common set of beliefs about governance and the broad policy direction of European integration? Or do different policy arenas, institutions, and types of committees shape governance beliefs? This

Post-genocide Rwanda has become a 'donor darling', despite being a dictatorship with a dismal human rights record and a source of regional instability. In order to understand international tolerance, this article studies the regime's practices. It analyses the ways in which it dealt with external and internal critical voices, the instruments and strategies it devised to silence them, and its information management. It looks into the way the international community fell prey to the RPF's spin by allowing itself to be manipulated, focusing on Rwanda's decent technocratic governance while ignoring its deeply flawed political governance. This tolerance has allowed the development of a considerable degree of structural violence, thus exposing Rwanda to the risk of renewed violence.

The venue from which President Obama addresses Muslim communities is integral to the substance of his message. While the president and his team are to be commended for extending a hand of cooperation and understanding to the world's Muslims, Egypt's democ

In this article we consider the forms of democratic participation that revolve around issues of religious faith and Islam. The context of such work is one in which a concern with the levels of participation in the political institutions of Western Europe

In some left political theory, democracy is an aspiration that occupies a place once held by communism. One might think of Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau's work on radical democracy, accounts of deliberative democracy influenced by Jrgen Habermas' theo

After the fall of communism the ascendancy of neoliberalism seemed assured. Democratic government and free market capitalism had been universalized and any serious alternatives to them had disappeared. Rather than the end of ideology, neoliberalism is the

Today there is a widespread recognition of the erosion of political community on the territorial basis of the nation-state. Instead, alternative framings of "being" political or of engaging in politics have argued for a more radical post-territorial space

Windhoek, Mar 7 (IPS) - The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Parliamentary Forum has set its sights on becoming a regional parliament with law-making powers. The body was established in 1997 to create a platform for the region's legislators t

Three specific themes appear. First, there is a danger of oversimplification of these conflicts as between the international community and national governments. The political struggles tend to be more complicated than generally presented, and internationa

After nearly a year of seemingly endless talks brokered by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Zimbabwe's long-ruling ZANU-PF party and the two factions of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) formed a coalition government in