Centralized sanctioning institutions have been shown to emerge naturally through social learning, displace all other forms of punishment and lead to stable cooperation. However, this result provokes a number of questions. If centralized sanctioning is so successful, then why do many highly authoritarian states suffer from low levels of cooperation? Why do states with high levels of public good ...

The notion of geoengineering the climate has been around for well over a century. Until recently, it was mostly discussed as a proposed military tool to control the weather for hostile purposes. With the onset of the growing climate crisis, the spectrum of geoengineering proposals has increased, and today, public debate about geoengineering explores whether it is a means to combat climate chang...

A great deal of energy is wasted by civil society anguishing over the harm done to people by corporations, governments and technologies. Far too little effort is invested by public interest NGOs in 'practical activism'. This paper argues that civil society must establish Standards and Process Descriptions which clearly communicate their expectations, and which provide benchmarks against which t...

Scholars have identified numerous obstacles that appear to stand in the way of democracy taking root in Russia, including the country’s religious heritage. In an attempt to understand the role of Orthodoxy in Russian society more accurately, this article explores the civic, political, and democratic values of devout Orthodox Christians and more secular-leaning “cultural Orthodox.” The findings ...

The move to an open access model in contemporary health research raises questions about the role of the scientific journal and its engagement with civil society in shaping the research agenda, as well as highlighting tensions between the public interest in science and doing science that is in the public interest. If openness is seen as fundamental to the advancement of scientific discovery, a p...

Empirically, justice might be immanently holistic—with procedural, distributive, restorative, and social justice positively correlated. Restorative justice may be about creating spaces where the various imperfectly correlated facets of holistic justice might cohere. State institutions of justice (such as criminal courts) with deeply embedded traditions of narrowing the meaning of justice (to pr...

The article analyzes the system of cooperation between state bodies, local government and public organizations in Poland. During investigation activity we came to conclusion that basic legal instrument forms administration non-governmental is Act Law on Public Benefit Volunteer Work. These mechanisms define interaction practice framework for subsidies whole range performance from activities civ...

BACKGROUND The Medicines Transparency Alliance (MeTA) is an initiative that brings together all stakeholders in the medicines market to create a multi-stakeholder dialogue and improve access, availability and affordability of medicines. Key to this multi-stakeholder dialogue is the participation of Civil Society Organisations. A recent MeTA annual review, identified uneven engagement of civil s...

Civil society and the Internet energize each other in their co-evolutionary development in China. The Internet facilitates civil society activities by offering new possibilities for citizen participation. Civil society facilitates the development of the Internet by providing the necessary social basis—citizens and citizen groups—for communication and interaction. These arguments are illustrated...