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While the transnational public sphere has existed in the Arendtian sense at least since the mid-19th century, a new kind of reflexively political global civil society emerged in the late 20th century. However, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), advocacy groups, and networks have limited agendas and legitimacy and, without the support of at least one state, limited means to realise changes. Since 2001, theWorld Social Forum (WSF) has formed a key attempt in forging links and ties of solidarity among diverse actors. Although the WSF may seem a party of opinion when defined negatively against neoliberal globalisation, imperialism, and violence, in more positive ideological terms it remains a rather incoherent collection of diverse actors; while itself defined as a mere open space. There is a quest for new forms of agency such as a world political party. Various historical predecessors of global political parties, real and imagined, provide conceptual resources, useful experiences for envisaging the structure, and function of a possible planetary partyformation. H.G. Wells's 'open conspiracy' is a particularly important future-oriented leftdemocratic vision. Wells believed that only a mass movement of truly committed individuals and groups could have the power to transform the world political organisation, by creating a democratic world commonwealth. Recently, for instance, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have formulated similar ideas. I argue that transformative political agency presupposes a shared programme, based on common elements of a wider and deeper world-view, and willingness to engage in processes of collective will-formation in terms of democratic procedures. From this perspective, I outline a possible organisation and some substantial directions for a global political party. The point is also to respond to the criticism of existing parties and cultivate the critical-pluralist ethos of global civil society, but in terms of democratic party-formation

CAIRO | January 21, 2012 Two days before the assembly's first meeting following the thwart of Hosni Mubarak close to 1 year ago, it is apparent that the Muslim Brotherhood Islamists led by the Freedom and Justice Party emerged as the largest group in Egypt's new parliament winning 235 of the 498 elected seats in the lower house. . The new parliament, due to hold its first session on Jan. 23, "is the best celebration of the Egyptian revolution," Freedom and Justice said in a statement according to a report in Bloomberg. A breakdown of election results from party lists: 332 members of parliament Freedom and Justice - 127 Nour party - 96 Wafd party - 36 Egyptian Bloc - 33 The assembly is to select a committee that will write a new constitution, though the exact powers of parliament remain unclear. Protesters that ousted Mubarak continue to call for mass rallies on January 25, the anniversary of the beginning of the Egyptian uprising against Mubarak. And although Egyptians have had seven weeks of democratic elections, it has failed to calm tensions between activists and the military council that took power from the ousted President. The military council has said it would cede power when a president is elected in a national vote by the end of June. Due to the state of unrest and lack of tourism, Egypt's economy has seen better days. Egypt formally requested a $3.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund on Jan. 16 to help it support its economy.

"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

the main aim of the opposition parties -- including the People's Justice Party, the Islamic party PAS, and the Democratic Action Party -- to deny the NF (or Barisan Nasional) a two-thirds majority, and thereby block unpopular amendments to the constitutio

This study examines the impact of international administrations on the development and functioning of political parties in post-conflict settings, using Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo as case studies. These cases show how, next to the establishment of a functioning institutional framework, the development and maturity of local political elites are crucial factors of post-conflict democratization, as a genuine handover of power has yet to take place in both countries. Notwithstanding the international political relevance attached to the establishment of democratic governance in post-conflict areas, the local dimension of (enforced) democratization, especially the role and relevance of political parties, has been largely overlooked in academic research. This analysis therefore explores the institutional and cultural dimensions of 'external' democratization and international administrations' influence on political parties and politics in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.

Since the late 1980s, Northern Ireland has seen a radical electoral shift away from the historically dominant parties in the Catholic and Protestant blocs - the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), respectively - towa

Beginning in 1961 there have been repeated calls in Guyana, one of the most ethnically divided societies, for either modification or abolishment of the Westminster model, in particular its winner-take-all and government-opposition component, and its replacement with a consociational power sharing model; but after almost five decades, a power sharing government has not materialized. This paper examines the various proposals and initiatives to tease out their content, the motivation behind them, the discourse they spawned and the possible reasons for their failure to evolve into actual power sharing governments. The paper makes four major arguments. First, there has been a general desire for national reconciliation, mainly on the part of civil society actors and parties that embrace multiethnicity as a guiding philosophy. Second, while the major political parties have supported power sharing in principle, they have been reluctant to embrace it fully when in office. Third, political parties have been reluctant to subordinate their agendas and programs to a common national agenda. Fourth, although some political actors support the need for ethnic unity and peace, they have been reluctant to relinquish their fidelity to some core tenets of liberal democracy.

"This article explores the literature on democratization to account for the proscription of political parties in democratizing states. A survey of 22 party bans in 12 European states identifies two distinct classes of proscription derived from the 'degree of democratization' present in a banning state. I identify features of 'new' and 'incomplete' democracies that help explain proscription. Case studies on Germany, Austria, Russia, Latvia and Greece illustrate the impact of 'modes of transition', heightened uncertainty, political tensions and instability on 'new democracy bans', and the impact of illiberalism, limited checks on executive power and circumscribed political participation on 'incomplete democracy bans'."

This survey aims to analyze the state of intra-party democracy (IPD) in Thailand. IPD is defined as a characteristic of the distribution of decision-making power among members and leaders within a political party along the two principal dimensions of incl

After gaining overwhelming support in a March 2007 national referendum, long-time Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak introduced new constitutional amendments that effectively give more power to the president and loosen controls on security forces. Mubarak's amendments constitute the latest move in a set of orchestrated plans not only to entrench the stronghold of his own National Democratic Party and pave the way for his son as his successor but also to curb the power and ambition of his greatest opposition - the Muslim Brotherhood. As he steps into his fifth consecutive six-year term in office, Mubarak and his regime are being met with harsh criticism as opposition groups, human rights advocates and Western governments urge for meaningful democratic reform in the country. But promoting democracy is a complex issue in Egypt, and indeed in much of the Arab world. Mubarak and other leaders face the Islamist Dilemma, where any move toward a more democracy-friendly political system threatens to empower Islamic militants and open the floodgates for non-secular political parties.

Starting from the 1980s, institutions of direct democracy were introduced into most Latin American constitutions. To date, the practical application of these institutions remains almost exclusively restricted to the subtype of government plebiscites while the use of citizen initiated instruments remains scarce. To explain the region's low frequency of use of citizen initiated instruments of direct democracy this explorative study proceeds in three sections. The first recapitulates regulatory legislation on, and practical experience with direct democracy in Latin America. The second proposes and applies an index for the comparative measurement of legal obstacles provided by institutional frameworks and goes on to discuss further explanatory propositions on factors that may interact with these legal obstacles to obstruct direct democratic citizen participation. Finally, these hypotheses are tested through an interview-based study with actors involved in the recent practical experience with direct democracy in Costa Rica. The study concludes that the institutional design of citizen initiated instruments of direct democracy alone does not suffice to explain the frequency of their practical application. Rather than this, application frequency appears to be a function of the combined interactive effects of legal institutional factors with sociological and political party factors such as strategic action preferences and party elites' attitudes.

This two-part paper discusses developments at the beginning of the 21st century, using the comparative world-systems perspective to see disturbing similarities, and important differences, between what happened during the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century and what seems to be happening in the early 21st. We then use this perspective to consider possible scenarios for the next several decades. In Part One, published in the preceding issue, we considered the major challenges of massive global inequalities, ecological degradation, and a failed system of global governance in the wake of US hegemonic decline. In Part Two that follows, we discuss the major structural alternatives for the trajectory of the world-system during the 21st century, positing three basic scenarios: (1) another round of US economic hegemony based on comparative advantage in new lead industries and another round of US political hegemony-instead of supremacy; (2) collapse: interstate rivalry, deglobalisation, financial and economic collapse, ecological disaster, resource wars, and deadly epidemic diseases; and (3) capable, democratic, multilateral and legitimate global governance strongly supported by progressive transnational social movements and global parties, semiperipheral democratic socialist regimes, and important movements and parties in the core and the periphery.

During the 1990s the number of African states allowing multiparty elections increased dramatically. Paradoxically, this has been accompanied in the majority of countries by legal bans on ethnic and other particularistic parties. The main official reason h

On three different occasions between 2003 and 2007, Channel 13 from Buenos Aires aired on Argentinean national TV nvestigative reports that were highly critical of the ruling party in the province of Formosa, the Partido Justicialista (PJ), also the gove

Wallmapuwen, which means "people of the Mapuche land" in the language of that indigenous group, aims to formally become a political party in July this year in the southern Chilean regions of Araucanía, Los Ríos and Los Lagos. One of its main goals is to

There has been considerable debate about the characteristics of political cleavages underlying post-Communist Central and Eastern European party competition, with views ranging from no structure, to unidimensionality, to structured diversity, to entirely

This article studies a novel factor relevant for the moderation of an Islamist party: the degree of dependency on a social movement organization. This question is examined in a case study analysing the evolution of the relationship between the Moroccan Is

"This article argues that social democracy as a political ideology has much to contribute to a narrative of British democracy. Democracy is the central tenet of social democracy and this distinguishes it from Marxist socialism. However, despite the Labour Party in Britain emanating from a rich tradition of democratic politics, Labour elites have often been reluctant democratisers. Firstly, this article evaluates the ideological role of democracy in social democracy; secondly, it weighs New Labour's record on the democratisation agenda; and finally, it prescribes three democratic reforms to aspects of the British political system consistent with the aims of social democracy."

"Global environmental politics is emerging as a key field for South African diplomacy and foreign policy, in which Pretoria is endeavouring to lead by example. Environmental summits and conferences such as Johannesburg (2002) and Copenhagen (2009) have been crucial stages for the performance of this role as an environmental leader, and in December 2011 Durban will host the seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. There are also signs from within policy-making circles that 'the environment' is seen as a field in which some of the lustre of South Africa's post-1994 international high moral standing could be recovered. However, tensions remain between South Africa's performance and rhetoric on the global stage, and domestic development paths which continue to be environmentally unsustainable. The article concludes by suggesting that while the visibility and prominence of South Africa as an actor in global environmental politics is likely to grow, it remains doubtful whether this represents a sustained and committed new direction in South African foreign policy."

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.