Scandinavian social democracy represents one of the most systematic attempts to shape economic institutions and policies in pursuit of equality and full employment. Increasingly, however, these goals have eluded governments, and their institutional supports have eroded. This paper seeks to understand this shift through a comparative analysis that places particular emphasis on the interaction be...

This paper argues for a return to the social thought of the often ignored early 20 Century English thinker G.D.H. Cole. Cole combined a sociological critique of capitalism and liberal democracy with a well developed alternative in his work on Guild Socialism bearing particular relevance to advanced capitalist societies. Both of these, with their focus on the limitations on ‘free and unfettered ...

Recent theories of political development have emphasized redistributive demands as the main drivers of democratic transitions and consolidation. The authors employ Cox duration models to evaluate a number of economic, institutionalist, and sociological theories of regime transition, using global data from 1970 to 1999. This study suggests that demands for redistribution are insufficient explana...

The representative system of the young Mexican democracy is systematically situated in a vulnerable position by several facts: the lack of transparency in the exercise of public administration, the embezzlement of state and municipal finances, the use representative positions in trenches defending particular interests and use of public resources for private purposes. Corruption, impunity, poor ...

Recent international policy literature on Education for Sustainable Development puts forward utopian concepts of sustainable development and transformed learning as objects for educational thinking and practice. This paper, drawing on three illustrative educational investigations with youth in a South African context, critically examines how we might engage with utopian concepts such as those p...

This article explains why democracy and the important process of democratisation include but go beyond the ambit of the state and state laws, and how democracy and democratisation are both negotiated, contested, engaged with and made up by diverse state and non-state actors within plural legal orders and across multiple sites and transnational networks. This article aims to re-imagine the conce...

The relationship between democracy and environment has always been controversial. Some scientists found that democracy had a positive impact on reducing environmental disruption. Other scholars claimed that democracy tends to accelerate environmental degradation. Ther are many studies focusing on main determinants of environmental degradation. More recently, democracy is considered to be one of...

This paper describes the key role that city authorities and their civil societies should play in mediating the relationship between economic globalization and human development so that cities act not only as engines of growth but also as agents for greater social justice and environmental sustainability. In a globalizing and urbanizing world, urban governments have a much more important role in...