This paper represents a collective contribution to an ongoing debate on the benefits and disadvantages of export-based, industrial jobs for women as well as on the implications of global labor standards on these types of jobs. On the basis of extensive research on women in Mexico's and Central America's maquiladoras (assembly plants that produce export goods), this paper aims to problematize the viewpoints that present export-based, industrial jobs as dignified alternatives for women in the South and to question the skepticism about global labor standards as a possible alternative for improving work conditions in all sectors producing for export. In so doing, the paper stresses three interrelated issues: a) the relevance of local and regional contexts that inform diverse industrialization paths over time, b) the agency the women workers represent, and c) the legal instruments already existent in our common efforts to improve working conditions.

Commenting on the state of trans-Atlantic relations in 2008, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter argued that European Union governments are "not our vassals" but "occupy an equal position with the U.S." Documents released over the past month appear to offer a different view. In a report finalised earlier in December, the European Union's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton signalled that the EU's main purpose internationally is to "help" Washington "achieve its global objectives." By coincidence, a series of secret cables from U.S. embassies around the world made public by the website WikiLeaks indicates that the U.S. expects Europe to constantly act as its subordinate.

The central challenge for theorists and practitioners of radical politics today is to develop forms of action and organisation that account for the specificity of diverse local struggles and promote the free transformation of individual and collective subjectivities through political action, but also provide the means for collective action on a global scale. This article examines the radical democratic theory of Chantal Mouffe, post-sovereignty cosmopolitanism of David Held and contemporary anarchist theory, in light of participant research in contemporary global resistance movements

When implementing democracy, local discourses of decision-making affect the ways in which the liberal democracy is comprehended, realized and practiced. One problem with the so-called 'transition paradigm' is then the neglect of local cultures and institutions and their impact on implemented democratic systems. Given this, the aim of the article is therefore to give a deep(er) understanding of the processes of change in implemented democracies through a close empirical reading of interviews with Cambodian politicians and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). A critical examination of the conditions in Cambodia reveals how liberal democracy is not only re-interpreted and hybridized but also occasionally resisted in line with the local discourses of power.

"The post-war multilateral order is in trouble. Clear, effective and accountable decision-making is needed across a range of urgent global challenges; and, yet, the collective capacity for addressing these matters is in doubt." David Held maps the pressin

Introducing certain correctives to Beck's `cosmopolitan manifesto', I explore the complexities of second modern communicative agency and the constitution of the reflexive, socio-technical subject.

Academics at the EUSP said the move was politically motivated - and followed a row last year over a programme funded by the European commission to improve the monitoring of Russian elections. The university accepted a three-year, £500,000 EU grant to run

Moyano's story was movingly retold by Villa El Salvador Mayor Jaime Zea exactly 16 years later, at the World Conference on the Development of Cities held last week in Porto Alegre in the south of Brazil. http://www.aupeace.org/node/2914 Zea had tak

A study released by the RAND corporation on 11 February 2008 focuses on "Building functioning local governments, improving security and creating jobs..."

colleagues at EUSPb have asked us "not to politicize" the situation, in order to avoid creating more problems. Right now time is an issue - this is the middle of the semester at EUSPB, as elsewhere -and we must act quickly. We have written a petit

All of these issues will be debated at a two week session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) Feb. 25 through Mar. 7, which is expected to draw over 5,000 participants from governments, civil society and international organisations. UN

Jan Aart Scholte from the School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University, asked if the voices that the civil society groups emphasise so much did not just mean the urban, western-educated elites but included less articulate grass roots groups that remain

Wang Hui is one of the leaders of the new left, a loose grouping of intellectuals who are increasingly capturing the public mood and setting the tone for political debate through their articles in journals such as Dushu. Wang Hui was a student of literatu

The Sunni insurgent strategy of flooding the U.S.-sponsored paramilitary forces with their own fighters appears to make the Sunni insurgency stronger than ever. Far from being a device for "bottom up reconciliation", the Awakening Councils have added powd

Although the minister did not clarify what those reservations will be, it could be surmised that they involve certain rights in the political sphere that the Cuban government has denied to political opposition groups on the argument that they are at the s

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

Habermas's starting point is eminently political. Like many other principled democrats, he worries that the ongoing process of globalization threatens popular sovereignty at the local and national levels, where it alone has been more or less successf

The financial crisis around the world marks the end of neo-liberal globalisation and the beginning of a new era of regulation of the global economy, political leaders and economists say.

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

Amb. Jeremy Kinsman, former Canadian ambassador to the EU; Diplomat-in-Residence, Woodrow Wilson School;Amb. Robert Hutchings, Diplomat-in-Residence, Woodrow Wilson School; former...