To be good global citizens, we must stop churning through energy-hungry devices. Earth cannot cope with the burdens, including mountains of e-waste, that electronic consumerism creates.
A young American celebrates the historic news of August 9, 1974.
flickr/Pip R. Lagenta
An individual may remember and forget what he or she likes, but once a version of past events is accepted and shared by a group, as a collective construction, it is on public record.
Outgoing Greenpeace executive director Kumi Naidoo sees the struggles against political repression, poverty and climate change as intrinsically interconnected.
flickr/World Economic Forum
The emergence of ageing left-winger Jeremy Corbyn as the unlikely frontrunner in the Labour Party leadership contest signals that many British voters reject what politics has become.
Industrial agriculture has created a food system that is inherently undemocratic in its disregard for human need.
Shutterstock/Todd Klassy
The global food production system is inherently undemocratic. Based on shared experiences of the adverse effects, the world’s citizens need to intervene as democratic publics to transform a broken system.
In a hyper-democracy the headlines are always hot.
Steven Ritzer/flickr
The out-of-the-blue move to a living wage in the UK exemplifies the ditching of methodical public policy processes for manipulative hype and spin, the ‘hyper-democracy’ that brings politics into disrepute.
Thomas Piketty’s book provides new tools to consider the property status of animals in contemporary society.
Morgan Lieberman
Should animals be treated like other forms of property such as land, machinery and “stocks”? What role do animals that are owned by humans play in the concept of global wealth?
Since the last time we were together inside his prison lodgings at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, a few things have changed. Julian Assange has grown a beard, looks more pallid and pauses when I ask…
The young aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville, sketch by an unknown artist.
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University
Last week’s visit to Berlin, peppered by many intensely interesting conversations, convinced me of one thing: Europe is beginning to resemble a political madhouse. Jan Zielonka’s brief but brilliant Is…
Hands up in the 15M movement in Madrid.
Ana Rey/flickr
Candidates from Spain’s ‘15M’ movement – born of mass protests in 2011 – have responded in various ways to the dilemma that being elected creates for those wishing to overturn the ‘old politics’.
Blogger and media critic Anita Sarkeesian in a Feminist Frequency video.
from www.feministfrequency.com
Cyberhate would deny women their full democratic rights as citizens, yet this is trivialised and dismissed – just as sexual violence, discrimination and workplace harassment have been for decades.
Nothing of what William’s subjects had in life escaped the Domesday Book. Today, more covertly, those in power are using mass surveillance to collect all the digital details of our lives.
Flickr/Andrew Barclay
Almost 1000 years after their ruler demanded every detail of serfs’ lives, the digital age and mass surveillance are creating a new and undemocratic imbalance between citizens and those with power over them.
The success of Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party has profoundly disrupted the tedious pendulum movement between Left and Right.
EPA/Robert Perry
With a steady hollowing out of membership, the cosying up to vested interests with pockets deep enough to maintain party, today’s political parties barely “represent”.
Young Ed always had something over his brother.
EPA
Nick Rowley worked at Number 10, Ed at Number 11. It was here he showed his true potential for leadership.
Notions of the ‘right to know’ forced Hillary Clinton to defend her use of a private email account as secretary of state - a far cry from the days when citizens didn’t even know how their representatives voted.
EPA/Andrew Gombert
The idea of the right to know as the ‘lifeblood of democracy’ is a surprisingly modern development. And in an age when transparency is prized, privacy and secrecy can still be justified in many cases.
Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras and Pablo Iglesias of Podemos have taken their populist parties to victory in Greece and a lead in the polls in Spain.
Flickr/Fanis Xouryas
The rise of left-wing populism challenges those who flatly denounced right-wing populism as undemocratic. Populism can appear as a democratic force in some contexts and anti-democratic in others.
In the Anthropocene, human-driven forces are shaping the planet in ways that may risk the collapse of human civilisation.
Damián Bakarcic/flickr
The Anthropocene, as an epoch of human-driven planetary change, poses huge environmental and political problems. But it could also force us to develop proper ecological and democratic accountability.
Chee Soon Juan, pictured campaigning for Singapore’s 2011 general elections, hopes to build on that success in the next election, which is widely expected to be held early, possibly even this year.
Wikimedia Commons/Dexterleezh
The Lee dynasty and their People’s Action Party have ruled Singapore since 1959, but their grip on power has weakened. Opposition leader Chee Soon Juan talks about about his long fight for change.
The Indonesian public is demanding President Joko Widodo act decisively to save the country’s anti-corruption agency (KPK) from being undermined by the police.
AAP/Dani Daniar
Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) is often hailed as an example of a successful anti-corruption agency. KPK’s workload is enormous as Southeast Asia’s biggest economy continues to be…
Professor of Comparative Political Science and Democracy Research at the Humboldt University Berlin; Associate of the Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney; Director of Research Unit Democracy: Structures, Performance, Challenges, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.