Erkan's field diary

Religion is now a potential ally of radical social change
Seumas Milne: Militant secularists are becoming apologists for capitalism and war, but the struggle is within faiths, not against them

Engels on the Ottomans

The Communist Manifesto, published by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 1848, stands as one of the most important political tracts ever written. It was written at a time when Europe had emerged as the dominant world force, economically and militarily. But even in the mid-19th century, the view in an Oriental direction proved more cluttered with opposition than casual readers of European history might think. The Ottoman Empire, not yet in the throes of its “sick man of Europe” stage, still thrived. In 1855 Engels published a series of articles in Putnam’s Monthly on “the Armies of Europe,” including his assessment of the Turkish army. Given the recent knocking on the EU door by modern Turkey, a re-read of Engel’s commentary is worthwhile…

Climate change and public sphere , Andrew Dobson

It might seem a long way from public toilets to the politics of climate change, but there's an important relationship between what is happening to such public spaces and what is happening to the climate. As so often, it is one of the "rich" countries where the notion of the public realm has been most corroded by individualist, marketised ideology - Britain - that provides a vivid illustration of a more general international trend.

George Soros on the financial sword of Damocles

By Prerna Mankad on Globalization

George Soros, speaking in a conference call hosted by the New America Foundation today, had some interesting remarks about the state of the world economy. Given that the first sentence of his new book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means, reads: "We are in the midst of a financial crisis the likes of which has not been seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s," I was prepared to hear some dire predictions about the road ahead.

Democracy as Human Empowerment: The Role of Ordinary People in the Emergence and Survival of Democracy

by Christian Welzel

This article argues that "human empowerment" is the most important driving force behind effective democratization. Though elite agreements are central to establish nominal democracy, effective democracy does not emerge because elites concede it to the masses, but because ordinary people become increasingly capable and willing to place effective mass pressures on the elites. Effective democracy is thus the outcome of a broader process of "human empowerment."

Corruption as metaphor

By Dirk Tänzler

Since the early 1990s and the founding of Transparency International, corruption has increasingly become an issue for political agendas and public debates. Based on the assumption that corruption involves value judgments with respect to specific social phenomena, Dirk Tänzler discusses empirical evidence from an ongoing comparative study of European perceptions of corruption.

Arts debate: Perceptions and impact