Building Global Democracy

HARARE, Feb 6 (IPS) - Among the vital tasks spelled out in the Global Political Agreement (GPA) that frames Zimbabwe's power-sharing government is the drafting of a new constitution. Even before the process begins, it is under challenge from Zimbabwean ci

For the first time, there was also a tent for the Collective Rights of Stateless Peoples, initiating a reflection at the WSF about a "radical democracy" that upholds the self-determination of peoples, said Arnau Flores, a Catalonian journalist responsible

This article critically examines the discourse surrounding fragile states in relation to the security-development nexus. I draw on the case of Haiti to problematise key assumptions underpinning mainstream approaches to resolving concerns of security and d

This article examines the trajectories of democratization in India and South Africa. Both democracies are exemplary cases of democratic consolidation but face critical challenges in deepening democracy. Focusing on the notion of `effective democracy', the

This contribution uses insights from the field of critical pedagogy to study North-South power relations. It analyses the attempts of the European Union to promote democracy in the 'developing world', or Global South. The metaphor of development helps to

The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (ramsi), an Australian-led state-building intervention, has attracted considerable attention in policy-making and scholarly circles world-wide since its July 2003 inception. ramsi was lauded by the Develo

BEIJING, Feb 9 (IPS) - When China's human rights record comes up for review before a key United Nations panel on Monday, this nominally communist country will have two contrasting accounts of its human rights situation.

Two distinct approaches to international democracy assistance have emerged in recent years: the political approach and the developmental approach. They vary with respect to their underlying conceptions of democracy and democratization and their methods an

Democracies are fragile. No matter how long a regime has been democratic, it is always confronted with the possibility of becoming dysfunctional, of becoming less democratic, and possibly breaking down. Some scholars believe that polarisation is the singl

WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (IPS) - A commission led by three former Latin American heads of state has called the 30-year U.S. "war on drugs" in Latin America a failure and urged a drastic change in policy. The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy iss

MELBOURNE, Feb 12 (IPS) - There are concerns that the behaviour of Fiji's interim government indicates the possibility of a Burma-style dictatorship emerging in the Pacific nation. "Are we seeing the development of a militarised democracy [in Fiji]?" as

Disciplinary debates about the challenge of liberal democracy in the Mediterranean suggest that the underlying constraints in the region, such as the nature of authoritarian regimes, economic underdevelopment, and the nature of rentier states, pose severe

Contemporary perceptions of, and responses to, the growth of political Islam on the southern shores of the Mediterranean are still heavily influenced by traditional orientalist views on 'Islam' and by realist notions of regional security. This situation c

The article takes recent research on the difficulties for the EU in successfully promoting democracy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region as its point of departure, with a specific focus on the European Neighbourhood Policy EU-Lebanon Action

This article discusses the nature of the political transformation process that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) has undergone over the past decade regarding, first, political participation in Palestinian institutions, and second, the issue of negot

Since July 2004, Egypt has undertaken a comprehensive economic reform agenda, put forward by 'newly' emerging political and economic elites with different sources of legitimization than their predecessors. Economic reforms are accompanied by a limited pac

During the 2005 elections in Egypt, newspapers around the world widely reported on the 'judges' revolt'. The judiciary, supported by civil society, confronted the executive by denouncing the fraudulent results of the constitutional referendum, as well as

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

The literature on democratization emphasises how authoritarian constraints usually lead genuine opposition parties and movements to form alliances in order to make demands for reform to the authoritarian regime. There is significant empirical evidence to

As the European Union (EU) evolved as an international actor in the 1990s, it placed a commitment to promote certain values at the core of its foreign policy. These values include democracy, and alongside others such as a respect for human rights and the