Building Global Democracy

The experience (as opposed to the concept) of homelessness is hardly part of the academic discourse in education, cultural studies, or human development. One of the central goals of our special issue is to create a bridge between homelessness as a persona

A constitution for the UK may be emerging, typically in the form of an official manual. But what if "We the people" were to begin from the popular end of the debate? Here, Andrew Blick reviews a brave book that seeks to initiate that debate; while below

Most writers acknowledge that there are both positive ways in which inter connected civil movements can act on a global scale, and negativities that may arise as a result of this. Jan Aart Scholte (left) a leading writer on Civil Society and Globalization

Today we're honored to have a guest blog post by Digital Democracy Advisory Board member Sean McDonald, taking a look at the US State Department's focus on Internet Freedom. Sean, Director of New Media Business Development at MetroStar Systems, brings a b

LIMA, Mar 18, 2010 (IPS) - A priest who is touring the country in his bid to run for president next year, at the head of a leftist movement, was indefinitely suspended by the Catholic Church for getting involved in politics. Banned from exercising any pr

After hearing Vandana Shiva's October 2009 Hagey Lecture, I would suggest that her conception of "Earth Democracy" sounds and looks a lot like ecosocialism, though it may not be called ecosocialism by those who are living it. But what is in a name? As so

This study investigates the interface between security, at both the national and regional levels, and democratisation. The paper asserts that security and democratic governance are intertwined. The paper focuses particularly on the South African Developme

In a series of lectures in the early 1980s, Michel Foucault resurrected the Greek word for frankness or truth-telling-'parrhesia'-to investigate the inter-relationships and tensions that existed between freedom, truth-telling and political power. He concl

This paper makes a departure from the dominant formalistic approach to 'democratic consolidation' to explore a range of issues, especially mutual distrust and misperception, to analyse why Bangladesh's quest for democracy remains elusive. By taking a clos

In this paper, which forms Paper Two in FDSD's project on The Future of Democracy in the Face of Climate Change, the authors review a range of definitional approaches to democracy. They discuss the relevance of existing approaches in the light of climate

Burma watchers should be urged to study the election laws exceedingly carefully rather than automatically reacting with condemnation. The popular media have already asserted that the law is a "mockery of democracy", however, only portions of the law have

South Korea experienced democratic reform relatively recently. Before its significant democratic reform in 1987, South Korea had been dominated by a series of authoritarian regimes over a few decades since its liberation from Japanese colonial rule. This

Anyone who is still trying to look for neutrality or balance in the Thai media in these days of political ferment, ahead of large anti-government protests expected in the capital, has a pretty tough job. "Thai society is very divided politically and I do

This article is concerned with the relationship between democracy and violence. The first section argues that the way in which that relationship is characterized depends on how violence is defined. Some definitions extend the ordinary understanding of vio

The New Pluralism: William Connolly and the Contemporary Global Condition . Edited by David Campbell and Morton Schoolman . : Duke University Press , 2008 . 364 pp., $34.95 paperback ( ISBN-13: 978-0-8223-4270-0 ). This is a most interesting and provocat

Two key themes of this special issue are: how violence challenges democracy and how democratic politics might, over time, diminish violence. This paper explores how violence(s) embedded in Latin America's state formation process are multiplied rather than

Britain's 'Contest' counter-terrorism strategy with its '4 Ps' codification is often held up as a paradigm of an effective liberal democratic counter-terror strategy. However, while the strategy has had some success and been widely emulated internationall

Global apartheid, like globalisation, is a buzzword that has evolved to describe a new global paradigm. Put simply, global apartheid is an international system of minority rule that promotes inequalities, disparities and differential access to basic human

Contrary to recent portrayals of a self-confident, newly assertive China assuming its place as a global hegemon, the country's leadership "is in crisis mode", according to a new Stratfor analysis.

Pettit's claim that the discovery of the so-called 'discursive paradox' bears important implications for the normative theory of deliberative democracy has been challenged on the ground that there are substantial structural differences between the fora of