Building Global Democracy

Through the Orange Revolution in 2004 Ukraine turned its back on authoritarian politics and started on the bumpy road towards democracy, says Andreas Umland, reviewing the cream of recent scholarship in this second article marking the fifth anniversary of

In recent years the United Nations Environment Program, UN Conference on Environment and Development, and other international organizations have acknowledged the importance of civil society for engaging stakeholders in environmental change-especially at t

This article shows that the idea of global democracy has been a driving force in UN discourse and policies for the past two decades. In the first part, we use official rhetoric to explain that the promotion of global democracy by the UN rests on a particu

This country's government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee's tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I've broken my self-imposed ba

Political instability has been an enduring feature of the post-colonial landscape in Africa. The scholarly literature has offered various reasons for this phenomenon - the Cold War, ethnic antagonisms and rent-seeking behaviour, among others. However, thi

Chile is a classic example of the concentration of media ownership in too few hands, says Chilean journalist María Olivia Mönckeberg in her latest book "Los magnates de la prensa" (The Press Magnates). If the state does not exercise stricter regulation, d

An ongoing theme in Filipino history has been the exclusion of the left from electoral politics. Something that may provide an aperture facilitating left-wing participation are the provisions of the 1987 Constitution providing for the election, based on p

Although there have been many studies that address the representation of women in parliament, there are few analyses that compare the current state of gender representation between democracies and non-democracies. Focusing on Africa, Central and South Ame

Choice, in our Webby world, may be one click away. Representative, elected democratic policy-enactment is a far clunkier, compromised, and beset process. Pundits in early America worried that the novel would make readers "unrealistic" in their expectat

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

By breaking the spell of neoliberal triumphalist discourse that for almost a decade paralyzed broad sectors of the left, subaltern mobilization has created the conditions for the re-emergence of progressive forces. Electoral successes of these forces were

In search for answers to what is wrong and where to locate what is wrong with African democracy, this paper attempts to establish the validity of the nexus between elections, democracy and governance in Africa. The paper further argues that the feasibilit

There has been a lack of analysis of the relationship between participation and human rights concerning the purpose and content of a right to participation. What analysis exists tends to focus on rights of political participation. However, the concept of

Fears that we are experiencing a crisis in citizenship have been increasingly directed towards youth. Popular political and government rhetoric has frequently positioned young people as a threat to the healthy functioning of citizenship and democracy. Pol

The boundaries of democracy are typically defined by the boundaries of formal status citizenship. Such state-centered theories of democracy leave many migrants without a voice in political decision-making in the areas where they live and work, giving rise

News that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is withdrawing a billion dollars from the country's Foreign Reserve Fund in order to complete Phases 15 and 16 of the gigantic South Pars gas project has generated concern among Iranian analysts, who believe the

The article addresses the puzzle of how societies still grappling over the common values and shared vision of their state draft a democratic constitution. It argues that an incrementalist approach to constitution-making enabled such deeply divided societi

This paper critically examines the ways in which global-local flows interpenetrate each other and mesh, simultaneously undermining and empowering the forces of local resistance, using the Niger Delta as a case study. It explores the response of local resi

This paper analyzes critically the appeal the unpolitical is enjoying among contemporary political philosophers who are democracy's friends. Unlike a radical critique of democracy, what I propose to call "criticism from within," takes the form of dissatis

This article explores the tension between place, space, and memory as they relate to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and are enacted in the arena of tourism. Tourism seeks to produce an appealing, easily narrativized experience that distinguishes one local