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"In some ways, the Maghreb has avoided the nightmare of civil war and internal strife witnessed by most of its Arab post-revolutionary counterparts. Both Algeria and Morocco experienced a significant level of social mobilisation after the Arab Spring, but the persistence of pre-Spring institutions suggests the existence of complex state-society relations that go beyond the simplistic dichotomy of a society striving for freedom pitted against a stubborn authoritarian state. In Tunisia, which has gone through a difficult overhaul of its political institutions, militant Salafi trends have appeared on the scene, but rather than undermining the democratising political system, they have had the cathartic effect of forcing it and Tunisian citizens more broadly to contend with and confront this type of radicalism. This article suggests that behind this apparent Instability' for Tunisia and `stability for Morocco and Algeria, hidden underlying processes are taking place, revealing a rather active civil society in both Morocco and Algeria, and the strengthening of the Tunisian democratic transition." (author's abstract)

As liberal democracies tighten membership criteria for citizenship and place greater expectations on new immigrants to adopt liberal values of democracy, this paper examines whether this is necessary if democracy support is determined by other factors other than one�s political background. The paper�s main focus is on the children of immigrants born in authoritarian regimes. While previous research has shown that pre-migration socialization in authoritarian regimes influence immigrants� democratic transition, less is known whether authoritarian values are passed onto children born and educated in established democracies. Given that findings show that immigrants from authoritarian regimes lag behind the rest of the population in terms of support for democracy, this paper seeks to find out whether the influence of education in an established democracy and perceptions of government performance may take precedence over the political values learnt at home as determinants of democratic support. Using the Australian Election Study, these findings highlight the extent of adult migration experiences and evaluations of government performance on democratic support.

Emergent social assistance programmes in developing countries are either considered to possibly signal the transition to a post-neoliberal era, or are taken to constitute a move towards neoliberal welfare governance. By examining the making of a social assistance-based welfare regime in Turkey, I argue that the expansion of social programmes are the product of the neoliberalism-plus conjuncture which takes market inequality as a given. Specifically, this article analyses the similarity of nominally opposed concepts of welfare in the Turkish debate between conservative Islamists and secular Kemalists. By examining the "sadaka culture" debate and the constitutive rights vs. belief binary, the following analysis illustrates that although these two political groups appear to disagree about welfare governance, in reality this on-going debate actually masks the consolidation of social assistance as a welfare norm. I argue that social assistance operates as a bio-political strategy that transforms state power, restructures welfare governance and generates new understandings of poverty, need and aid in the neoliberalism-plus conjuncture.

Myanmar has recently sought a new path for its development, one that includes a constitutional framework, new executive and legislative institutions, greater civil and political freedoms, and the gradual liberalisation of the economy. To help understand the recent history of Myanmar's transitions, this special issue of the European Journal of East Asian Studies offers six articles that analyse the changes from a variety of perspectives and different appropriate theoretical approaches. From democratisation to the army's role, from new economic challenges to renewed peace efforts, from the complex interaction with China to historical tensions with India, this diverse set of articles helps clarify the extent to which Myanmar is enjoying a renaissance. The country has peculiar advantages but is also limited by geography, poverty and political history. To forge a new culture of consistent popular participation in democratic life will not be easy or cheap. However, with wise leadership, economic ambition and popular participation the country could become one of Asia's great democratic and social successes.

ABSTRACTThis article situates China's local policy experimentation in the broader context of policy experiments in decentralized political systems, through a case study which represents a local state response to China's transition to a market economy. With growing regional and urban–rural inequalities evident after the initial reform period (1978–1994), local party leaders of inland provinces devised strategies for addressing these inequalities and encouraging public–private sector mobility among party officials. County and township‐level leaders pursued local policy experiments in which they selected and sent officials to find private‐sector work in China's booming coastal cities. Initiated in the 1990s and peaking in the 2000s, these policy experiments and inter‐provincial transfers demonstrate the discretion that local officials possess to conduct programmatic/policy experiments in a unitary political system and show how officials resort to extra‐institutional strategies in order to bridge perceived knowledge gaps. The ultimate demise of these programmes illuminates the challenges to extra‐institutional policy innovations in transitioning states.

When we study the history of political philosophy, we find that the notion of 'consent' has been and is still crucial with respect to the definition of key concepts in almost all areas of inquiry: yet despite, or perhaps exactly because of its extension and centrality, the relevance of the concept of 'consent' is both persistent and elusive, and its meaning remains contested. As a consequence, the term is not included in some authoritative lexicons of political thought. This article aims to contribute to a survey of the uses philosophers have made of the concept of 'consensus' and related locutions, and suggests a strategy for delineating a semantic and theoretical field in which the main variants of meaning can be linked by gradual transitions on a single continuous scale, from pre-intentional sympathy to rationally motivated agreement under ideal conditions. The resulting configuration suggests that consent based on explicit arguments plays a limited role in regulating and coordinating human interactions.

Статья посвящена вопросу эволюции политики, изменению ее содержания, субъектности, сферы распространения в связи с глубокими социальными изменениями, вызванными переходом к постиндустриальному типу общества. Центральным в статье является вопрос, можно ли рассматривать муниципальную политику как особый, вид локальной политики, имеющий свои цели, задачи и условия реализации? Автор показывает, что муниципальное образование как локальное социально-политическое целое представляет удобную форму для реализации населением своих местных политических интересов, следствием чего является формирование реальной общественности. ; This article is devoted to the question of evolution of policy (its content, actors, spheres of spreading) caused by the deep social changes due to transition to postindustrial society. The central question of the article is «can we consider municipal policy as particular type of local policy that has its peculiar aims, tasks and conditions»? Author shows that municipal community as local social and political unit represents convenient form for realization by local population their domestic political interests. The result of this practice is forging of real sociability.

Статья посвящена вопросу эволюции политики, изменению ее содержания, субъектности, сферы распространения в связи с глубокими социальными изменениями, вызванными переходом к постиндустриальному типу общества. Центральным в статье является вопрос, можно ли рассматривать муниципальную политику как особый, вид локальной политики, имеющий свои цели, задачи и условия реализации? Автор показывает, что муниципальное образование как локальное социально-политическое целое представляет удобную форму для реализации населением своих местных политических интересов, следствием чего является формирование реальной общественности. ; This article is devoted to the question of evolution of policy (its content, actors, spheres of spreading) caused by the deep social changes due to transition to postindustrial society. The central question of the article is «can we consider municipal policy as particular type of local policy that has its peculiar aims, tasks and conditions»? Author shows that municipal community as local social and political unit represents convenient form for realization by local population their domestic political interests. The result of this practice is forging of real sociability.

The work of Michelangelo Antonioni is considered as trailblazing and as a paradigmatic expression of modernism in cinema. Even today it has an impact on film style and holds a key place in the history of film art. In my contribution I discuss and enlarge upon these interpretations of his work in the context of the political character of his aesthetics. The political in his films, my thesis suggests, is found in the aesthetic experience which becomes possible by means of his films. Antonioni has created a dissensual cinema in which can be found the aesthetic truth of cinema, the ambiguity of dumb and ephemeral things, the texture of the world as it is. His cinema makes real the transition from the representative fiction of the plot to the aesthetic fiction of the signs. Wong Kar-wai has followed him in this. Both design sensual landscapes of the surface of the world which have broken the straight line between cause and effect and are defined by aesthetic affect. Adapted from the source document.

A major global policy development in the last few decades has been the adoption of national antitrust laws by many developing and transition countries. A primarily American creation, antitrust laws have now spread to nearly all corners of the world. This study undertakes a political economy approach to understanding the global adoption of antitrust laws. We focus on the causal connection between a democratic form of capitalism and antitrust adoption. We argue that the interaction of democracy with a pure form of capitalism results in a political economy characterized as "democratic capitalism." On the basis of this understanding, we then develop a theoretically grounded conceptual model and offer multiple testable propositions. Our findings show that democratic capitalism, and not capitalism in its pure form, was instrumental in countries adopting national antitrust laws. We attribute this finding to the greater "transactional congruity" that exists between democratic capitalism and antitrust laws. We conclude by discussing the implications of this finding for future antitrust adoption.

Puntland is the first of Somalia's federal units to attempt transition from clan-based representation to directly-elected government, but poor preparations and last-minute cancellation of local elections in July underline the challenges of reconciling competing clan interests with a democratic constitution. Cancellation pragmatically averted violence, but societal tensions remain unaddressed. The presidential vote by a clan-selected parliament in January 2014 will thus be fraught. Weak political and judicial institutions will struggle to mediate, risking involvement by partisan arms of the state. Direct elections are no panacea for reducing the conflict risks, but hard-won incremental progress on the constitution and local democratisation must not be abandoned. The cancelled ballot's lessons should be instructive for promised elections in the rest of Somalia. Better technical preparations matter, but Puntland's experience shows that donors and other international actors also need to be heedful of local political realities, including support of elites, robustness of institutions and viability of electoral districts.