Greta Thunberg has called on politicians to "listen to the science" and take climate change seriously. But climate communication strategies can be more effective when "listening to the science" is complemented with "listening to society".
ARTICLE PRESENTS AN OVERVIEW OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SOVIET REPUBLICS IN THE FIELD OF POLITICAL RECRUITMENT. THE INDICATORS OF RECRUITMENT CHOSEN ARE MEMBERSHIP OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY AND THE KOMSOMOL. THE STUDY COVERS THE PERIOD 1956-73. THE EXISTENCE OF SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES IS ESTABLISHED. THESE DIFFERENCES TEND ALSO TO REMAIN OVER TIME.
Three large-scale democratic experiments have taken place in which groups of randomly selected ordinary citizens were asked to independently design the next electoral system. The lessons drawn from the research are relevant for those interested in political participation, public opinion, deliberation, public policy, and democracy
Securitization theory (ST) has succeeded in putting the relation between politics and security at the forefront of research in security studies. Despite this success, little attention has been given to the way states themselves produce the boundaries of legitimate political activity, particularly in relation to the boundaries between civil society and the state and between the foreign and domestic. This article is concerned with how states see the boundary between the political and the non-political as a matter of security. It investigates this question by examining the international and national efforts to restrict the financing of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society actors. It demonstrates that these entities are deemed threatening to the established boundaries of legitimate political activity and thus subject to harassment, increased regulation, and eradication. This is done by the depiction of their activities as political, rather than humanitarian/cultural/social, demonstrating that the concepts of politics operative in the ST literature are already delimited through processes of securitization and depoliticization. Continued research into the relation between politics and security must therefore consider the ways that the political itself is securitized.
This book presents a new economic theory developed from physical and biological principles. It explains how technology, social systems and economic values are intimately related to resources. Many people have recognized that mainstream (neoclassical) economic theories are not consistent with physical laws and often not consistent with empirical patterns, but most feel that economic activities are too complex to be described by a simple and coherent mathematical theory. While social systems are indeed complex, all life systems, including social systems, satisfy two principles. First, all systems need to extract resources from the external environment to compensate for their consumption. Second, for a system to be viable, the amount of resource extraction has to be no less than the level of consumption. From these two principles, we derive a quantitative theory of major factors in economic activities, such as fixed cost, variable cost, discount rate, uncertainty and duration. The mathematical theory enables us to systematically measure the effectiveness of different policies and institutional structures at varying levels of resource abundance and cost. The theory presented in this book shows that there do not exist universally optimal policies or institutional structures. Instead, the impacts of different policies or social structures have to be measured within the context of existing levels of resource abundance. As the physical costs of extracting resources rise steadily, many policy assumptions adopted in mainstream economic theories, and workable in times of cheap and abundant energy supplies and other resources, need to be reconsidered. In this rapidly changing world, the theory presented here provides a solid foundation for examining the long-term impacts of today's policy decisions. Physics.
The election of a Socialist and pro-Russian candidate in December 2016 as president of Moldova marks a new turn in Moldovan politics. This is in contrast with the pro-Western attitudes of the previous government. Political instability and changing international orientations, as emphasized by this article, are partly due to political alternative victories of parties supported by different social groups. Focusing on young people's activism, the article underlines the differentiation between the political success made possible by street protests in April 2009 and the political failure in December 2016. The findings may add a new explanation to Moldova's permanent instability.
Describes the UN Truth Commission's investigation into the conduct of US foreign policy in El Salvador. It identified those responsible for human rights abuses, and recommended legal, political and administrative correctives.