Suchergebnisse

The International Criminal Court can be seen as a cosmopolitan response to the problems of global democracy. This article demonstrates how opponents of the Court use a concern for international order to disguise a policy motivated by a narrow conception of the national interest. US opposition reveals the extent to which it fears being held accountable for the way America uses the great power veto on the UN Security Council. America's opposition to the Court has also succeeded in bringing to the surface the extent to which American foreign policy is driven by communitarian conceptions of democracy & international society. Despite promising to hold power accountable for egregious human rights violations, the Court is considered a threat to American sovereignty & dismissed as undemocratic. The article argues that this communitarian understanding of democracy promotion will be increasingly problematic as the processes of globalization undermine the capacity of states to guarantee human rights. [Copyright 2003 Sage Publications Ltd.]

A review article on books by (1) John B. Judis, The Paradox of American Democracy: Elites, Special Interests and the Betrayal of Public Trust (New York: Pantheon Books, 2000); (2) Michael Zweig, The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret (London, Ithaca, NY: Cornell U Press, 2000); & (3) Ruy Teixeira & Joel Rogers, America's Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still Matters (New York: Basic Books, 2000). As America inaugurates its 43rd president, it enters a period of reflection. The danger is that all emphasis on voting procedure will silence a longstanding & ultimately more significant criticism of US democracy & its policy of democracy promotion. The separation of economics from politics & the promotion of so-called "market democracy" does a disservice to the wider democratic project & is potentially self-defeating. This article reviews three books to argue that the declining international reputation of the US can be traced to its own democratic shortcomings. It explores the possibility of a popular working-class movement to address these failings & examines the implication this may have on the liberal international order. Adapted from the source document.

"Global security, climate and health challenges have called into question our capacity to cope with change. Criticizing mainstream norm, practice and realist theory, Jason Ralph offers a 'Pragmatic Constructivist' theory of learning, which is then used to assess international society's problem-solving capacities"--