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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

"We are used to intervening when a crisis has erupted. We do not prepare before with some kind of preventive strategy to stop conflicts from deteriorating. The challenge is to transition from reaction to prevention."

This article seeks to shed more light on the consequences of China's aid to and trade with African states. It attempts to answer two questions: First, does China's 'no-strings-attached' policy in Africa constitute a challenge to Western aid paradigms? Sec

Research on transitions has reached a crossroad. Should it be abandoned because the third wave of transitions to democracy has ended, or should it continue because so much remains unaccounted for regarding the third wave? This paper suggests that regime h

A strengthened global governance system is crucial to ensure world food security, the head of the United Nations agriculture arm said today, calling for changes to be made to the parts of the international trade system that led to increased hunger and pov

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

Global governance in an era of human rights is beset by a number of unavoidable paradoxes. One is that as more states are increasingly held accountable for fulfilling legal obligations towards citizens, the same states are also obliged to collude in econo

Dans quelle mesure les politiques du Commonwealth refltent-elles une confusion largement rpandue entre croissance et dveloppement, dmocratie et gouvernance? A travers l'tude de la place des Dalits dans une Inde dont le libralisme, le succs conomique et la

This article takes as its starting point the current scholarly concern with democratic quality, poverty, and inequality. It notes the tendency of political leaderships at the federal level in Mexico and Chile to exclude political pressures that contravene

Citizenship is the cornerstone of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's democratic security policy. In this paper I ask what kind of citizen is formed under this policy. I examine the premises of citizenship when implemented under the double logic of democra

The following is the second of a two-part section series. The first section, 'Global capitalism and the states system', brought together a diverse group of scholars to examine a number of issues raised by Alex Callinicos's article 'Does capitalism need th

Much current thinking about democracy and how it can be promoted is based on myths about how democracy was achieved in the West. For example, the association of economic openness with democratisation - the focus of a vast literature and the rationale for

There are many patterns of internal conflict identified in the Third World-"economically vulnerable," "politically vulnerable,""heterogeneous-parochial," and "egalitarian-distributive"-and the sheer variety of these indicates that internal conflict is a c

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.

This two-part article discusses developments in the first decade of the 21st century and uses the comparative world-systems perspective to consider possible scenarios for the next several decades. In Part One that follows, we consider the likely trends of the 21st century and the major challenges that humanity will face, noting some disturbing similarities, but also some 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 century. There are three major crises looming: 1) Massive global inequalities; 2) Ecological degradation; and, 3) A failed system of global governance in the wake of US hegemonic decline. The timing and strength of these challenges and their interactions will greatly influence their severity and the possible solutions; however, as in the past, large challenges are also opportunities for innovation and for reorganising human institutions. In Part Two, published in the next issue, 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 and political hegemony; 2) Collapse; and, 3) Capable, democratic, multilateral, and legitimate global governance.