Building Global Democracy

Experiences with racism and age negatively affect how Afro-Brazilians in Salvador and So Paulo rate democracy. Older cohorts are more likely to rate democracy high compared to younger cohorts who rate it as low. Respondents in Salvador tend to rate democracy lower than respondents in So Paulo. Moreover, interviews reveal that as citizens believe they are not accorded full rights, they do not agree that Brazil's political system is fully democratic. Studies examining democracy in Brazil and racial politics throughout the diaspora would benefit from examining racialized experiences of citizens, rather than simply including the demographic variable of race. It is these experiences that affect rating of democracy rather than ascribed notions of race.

Governments, world-wide, are preoccupied with avoiding policy failure. A high level of policy capacity is considered one indicator of addressing this issue. Canada is typical of most countries where policy-related work tends to be centralized within its national capital city (Ottawa). There have been criticisms that on-the-ground perspectives are not conceded in policy decisions. Given the vast size and the decentralization of power, very little research has been dedicated to policy work conducted in its regions and whether it contributes to strengthening policy capacity. This article employs eight key hypotheses about contribution of Canadian regionally-based federal policy work to policy capacity based upon data derived from a national survey

The 2004 Orange Revolution and election of opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko, who had a stellar reputation in previous positions as National Bank Chairman and Prime Minister, was viewed as a new era in Ukrainian politics, ushering in deep seated reforms and a battle against corruption. Five years on, his opponent, Viktor Yanukovych, whose election in 2004 was annulled over election fraud, replaced him as President. The failure of the Yushchenko presidency to implement the majority of the hopes placed in it by millions of voters and protestors, specifically to decisively change the manner in which politics and economics are undertaken, is a good opportunity to analyse why Ukraine is a difficult country, an immobile state, in which to undertake change of any type. Yanukovych's first year in office points to Ukraine undergoing a regression from the only tangible benefit to have emerged from "orange" rule; namely, democratization, media freedom, and free elections

Is there a speed limit for democracy? Do the system imperatives of late-modern economic polities necessitate a shrinking of democratic oversight and control? Are the accelerated life-experiences of citizens in late modernity fundamentally hostile to the formation of civic identities, deliberative skills, and democratic habits? In this paper I examine recent work in democratic theory on social acceleration in order to address these questions. I argue that liberal theorists such as William Scheuerman focus excessively on institutional adjustments to the democratic polity rather than on ways in which democratic participation can be nurtured in an attempt to surmount the challenges of social acceleration. At the same time, radical pluralists such as William Connolly come close to romanticizing the effects of speed while ignoring its ill consequences for democracy (and for pluralism). I end the paper with an examination of the work of Sheldon Wolin, whose understanding of democracy has led him to formulate the idea of a "multiple civic self" that is nurtured through slow-time political practices. Wolin's theory of the multiple civic self, I argue, offers us the best way to think about the challenges for democracy represented by social acceleration, especially in conversation with Connolly's emphasis on "bicameral" citizenship and Bonnie Honig's treatment of the "Slow Food" movement.

In her recent work, Seyla Benhabib has appropriated Jacques Derrida's notion of iterability-or iteration in Benhabib's terminology-whereby repetition always implies alteration. This gives her a dynamic conception of democracy and citizenship that is sensitive to otherwise excluded constituencies. Nevertheless, I take issue with the ways in which Benhabib limits the effects of iterability. She does so by separating the transformative effects of iterability from, first, the content of universal constitutional principles and, second, the subject understood as narrative ability. This gives rise to some theoretical difficulties, but it also has practical implications, which I illustrate in the context of the debates about the hijab, which Benhabib also discusses at length. I argue that Benhabib depoliticizes the universals and takes the agency of the subject as given when these should be in question.

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.

The prime minister of Greece discusses the causes, dimensions, character, and contributing factors to the current global financial turmoil and points to lessons to be learned from the crisis in his own country. The essay underscores the potential consequences of inattention to emerging threats to financial stability, and warns that no economy is too small to have huge implications for broader economic stability. The author offers concrete recommendations for a new, transparent, and global financial architecture.

The 'Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness' addressed the roles of donor and recipient country governments in the achievement of development that is more 'fit for purpose'. This article considers progress on its implementation, specific to engagement with civil society. It is argued that such engagement has not been adequately addressed. Core ethical issues remain unanswered. Who is development for? What should be its objectives? Why should civil society actors continue to engage in development that remains unfit for purpose in terms of achieving desirable outcomes? Who should decide on priorities and who should evaluate activities so as to achieve an honest appraisal of outcomes? Whose voices matter most, and to whom should donor and recipient country governments be accountable?

This article takes a critical look at identity politics and conflict in Jos, a setting once regarded as "the home of peace and tourism in Nigeria." The study situates the conflict within the relationship between the "indigene-settler" syndrome and the state, with its ugly hydra-headed manifestations. It argues that the conflict with a coloration of ethnic/religious garb was orchestrated under the faade of politics. It is suggested that the commitment of good governance remains the surest means of nipping in the bud the crises in Jos. The findings have important implications for aggregate research on ethnic/religious conflicts in Nigeria.

The standard model of democratic accountability emphasizes accountability to the appropriate agents. This model has proven difficult to adapt to the challenges posed by global governance. This article critiques the Westphalian assumptions underlying the standard model and develops an alternative model of accountability to democratic norms rather than to specific agents.

Since the turn of the century, Japanese security policy seems to have taken a more proactive, assertive turn. To what extent does this new security profile on Japan's part represent fundamental change in terms of security policy formation, security norms and security practice? This article analyses post-9/11 Japanese security policy formation by examining changes to policy-making processes and norms during and after Koizumi's tenure between 2001 and 2006, and assesses whether the Koizumi legacy is likely to endure.

Contemporary analyses commonly attribute the global credit crisis to faulty regulation. What have been the roots of these deficient rules, particularly in Europe, where rapid spill-over from US markets took policy makers and observers by surprise? This article focuses on regulatory liberalism as the paradigm guiding European Union (EU) regulation. It has dominated regulatory thinking for decades, but it has been implemented throughout Europe only since the mid-1990s. This shift can be traced to political institutions that have filtered policy ideas. EU financial reforms have pushed policy from pragmatism, under which it was adapted to political contingencies, to dogmatism, which adapts it to the intellectual exigencies of rapid policy paradigms. Inadvertently, reforms had created an epistemic community in which 'professional' rule setters systematically ignored external criticisms. The institutionalised ambition to craft 'intellectually sound' policy-rather than policy that simply 'works' -generated rules that persistently ignored the financial markets' self-reflexivity and thereby aggravated the crisis.

The goal of this article is to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the impacts of finance and corporate governance reforms on organised labour since 1980. The argument is made that contemporary institutional and 'Varieties of Capitalism' as well as 'Varieties of Unionism' perspectives on labour market reform have overstated the power of states, institutions and organised interests in deflecting global economic pressures. Drawing on a range of recent Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) statistics and qualitative studies, it is claimed that current developments in finance and corporate governance mark a fundamental break with post-war developments. Capital has reasserted its power over organised labour and labour markets not only in the US and UK, but throughout Western Europe as well. In assessing how far this reversal has gone, the article focuses on three key political economic changes: i) the rise in finance and adoption of corporate 'shareholder' systems; ii) the expansion of mergers and acquisitions and their negative effects on unionisation and manufacturing jobs; and iii) the effects of financial pressures and corporate reform on collective bargaining and wages. This is the first study to report on comparative changes and qualitative reforms to both finance and labour in 13 OECD countries between 1980 and 2005.

The purpose of this article is to analyse one of the very first European-level instances of trade union and social movement interaction in defence of the public sector, namely, the Coalition for Green and Social Procurement, an alliance of European trade unions and green and social non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and its campaign for an amendment of the new public procurement directives from 2000 to 2003. It will be examined to what extent this campaign was able to change the directives and counter neoliberal restructuring effectively as well as what the possibilities but also limits of trade union and social movement cooperation are as exemplified in this particular case study.

This article addresses the effects of inequality on the globalisation process. It is argued that the recent financial and economic crisis is a manifestation of a tendency of the aggregate demand to fall relatively to aggregate supply, generated by an asymmetric income distribution, which in turn both increases, and is reinforced by, the mobility of goods, capital and labour, in a process of cumulative causation. This process has not become manifest earlier due to counteracting tendencies generated by the financial system, that were disrupted during the crisis. It is also argued that mainstream economics does not have the adequate framework for explaining the crisis, and actually contributed to the crisis through its theories and policies. Hence an alternative economic framework is suggested for addressing the crisis, drawing upon the contributions of several heterodox economic traditions, especially post-Keynesianism.

Amartya Sen's enlarged conception of freedom has augmented the scope of economic analysis but it also has had the surprising effect of being more supportive of the free market than conventional welfare economics. It is argued here that a comparison of Sen's position with that of the American institutionalist, J R Commons, highlights some problems with Sen's approach and points to possible ways in which they might be addressed.

Research in the areas of global civil society and political violence has tended to reinforce a dichotomy between the two in normative and descriptive terms. This paper uses a qualitative analysis of interviews with participants in both armed and non-armed groups in the Burmese opposition movement to understand how armed struggle and non-violent action operate in this context. In discussing the needs and strategies of their groups and communities, participants demonstrated that armed and non-armed groups often had more in common than is sometimes assumed. A range of viewpoints on political violence existed across the groups, with many armed group members supporting peaceful solutions and many members of non-violent organisations defending aspects of the armed struggle. This paper argues that in view of the degree of overlap in the political attitudes and experiences of armed and non-armed groups in the case study, both categories of organisation should be considered as elements of global civil society

This article argues that in order to make Confucian communitarianism a viable political vision, namely, Civil Confucianism, its emphasis on civility must be balanced with what I call 'Confucian incivility', a set of Confucian social practices that temporarily upset the existing social relations and yet that, ironically, help those relations become more enduring and viable. The central argument is that 'Confucian civility' encompasses both social-harmonizing civilities that buttress the moral foundation of the Confucian social order and some incivilities that upset that foundation, albeit temporarily, in order to revise and thereby revitalize it. The article presents Confucian civility as both deferentially remonstrative and respectfully corrective (in the familial relations) and uncompromising and even intractable (in the political relations). It concludes by examining the implications of the virtue of Confucian incivility for constructing a less conservative and more socio-politically vibrant version of Confucian communitarianism than the prevailing suggestions of it.

This article presents an overview on the state of the art of research on interregional relations. It clarifies underlying concepts and focuses on the theory-guided literature exploring the functions of interregional forums for the emerging global governance architecture. Empirical evidence provided by many of the reviewed studies suggests that interregional relations are part of complex institutional balancing games played by regions which curtail their potential as multilateral utilities. Empirical studies examining norm diffusion between regions are still in their infancy. This leaves considerable space for innovative research going beyond the notion of the EU as a 'normative power' trying to persuade other regions to adopt its model of regional integration.

Is Internet freedom an absolute, universal value like freedom of speech? If there are limits, how and by whom can they be established? Is crying fire or scaling firewalls anymore acceptable in cyberspace than in physical space? What is the impact on the discourse between nations, cultures and individuals? In this section, we gather a collage of comments from various key players from Google to Wikileaks to the US State Department along with comments by one of the most cogent analysts of the Net and the president of Turkey.