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Transitional Justice is a long-term process which seeks to address severe human rights abuses of the past through measures such as trials, commissions of inquiry, memorials, apologies, reforms of the legal or security sector, school textbook reforms, and reconciliation projects. These measures are usually applied by governments, but can also be initiated by civil society groups, such as victim groups, or the international community, for example the European Union or the UNHCR. Transitional justice measures are seen as catalysts for coming to terms with the past and establishing new, stable, and often democratic societies. As such, the measures are linked to the performance and efficacy of democratic institutions in the context of their accountability and responsiveness, transparency, and level of citizen participation. Thus, transitional justice is a process that aims to reconcile divided and conflict-torn societies by re-establishing (democratic) institutions. These measures can be catalysts to leverage institutional performance. Adapted from the source document.

This article uses the moralized markets and markets as politics literatures in economic sociology to explore the emerging industry of private consultants who produce 'democratic' dialogues for organizational clients from all sectors. In multi-method field research, we (a) trace moralized processes by which market activity and political process are distinguished in an era of financial crisis, and (b) argue that the ability to produce authentic civic-ness is valuable specifically because distinctions between business, government and civil society have become less meaningful in contemporary neoliberal governance. Engagement consultants construct social and economic profits as interdependent and mutually reinforcing, while claiming protection from both business as usual and ordinary politics-a 'positive' outcome useful for budget-slashing and benefit-cutting at a moment when authorities face a loss of public faith. Such findings contribute to a better understanding of the historical resiliency of neoliberalism and reveal the meaning-centered dynamics of politicization in moralized markets. Adapted from the source document.

The Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) signed in October 2008 between the Caribbean and the European Union has been the subject of much controversy. There has been a marked split within the Caribbean between the officials and politicians who negotiated -- and thus championed -- the EPA and the wider academic and civil society community that subjected it to heavy criticism. The paper examines these debates in detail and situates them within the broader intellectual and practical panorama of Caribbean development alternatives. Specifically, it discusses how the terrain upon which development has been both theorised and practised in the region has narrowed significantly since the 1980s, with the EPA being the latest manifestation of this evolving trend. The paper consequently goes beyond an analysis of the short-term politics of the EPA to elucidate the deeper, structural explanations for the divisions over the EPA between the policy and academic communities and the wider implications of the Agreement for contemporary Caribbean development. Adapted from the source document.

Transitional Justice is a long-term process which seeks to address severe human rights abuses of the past through measures such as trials, commissions of inquiry, memorials, apologies, reforms of the legal or security sector, school textbook reforms, and reconciliation projects. These measures are usually applied by governments, but can also be initiated by civil society groups, such as victim groups, or the international community, for example the European Union or the UNHCR. Transitional justice measures are seen as catalysts for coming to terms with the past and establishing new, stable, and often democratic societies. As such, the measures are linked to the performance and efficacy of democratic institutions in the context of their accountability and responsiveness, transparency, and level of citizen participation. Thus, transitional justice is a process that aims to reconcile divided and conflict-torn societies by re-establishing (democratic) institutions. These measures can be catalysts to leverage institutional performance. Adapted from the source document.

Most studies of regionalism in Southeast Asia pay little attention to environmental concerns as part of the region's empirical dynamic. In contrast, this article examines the ways in which governments have come to "govern" environmental issues at a regional scale under the auspices of ASEAN, against the backdrop of debates about the political topography of Southeast Asian regionalism. The framework adopted here brings together analyses of the public space of formal regional governance arrangements, the inter-subjective space of regional identity building, and the private space of regional social practices. Underpinning this is the question of whether moves to supposedly "flatter" forms of regional governance have been accompanied by for more democratic or participatory forms of regionalism. I conclude that regional environmental structures under ASEAN are more akin to "invited spaces" and have generally failed to offer effective channels of communication for, or democratic representation of, a wider range of stakeholders, including civil society groups and local communities. Adapted from the source document.

In the view of the European Commission and many EU scholars, European democracy should be deliberative and the democratisation process as such fostered via civil society involvement. But until now, no one has developed a plausible EU-specific theory of associative democratisation. This gap might be filled by looking at democratisation theories for national settings. This article discusses the scope of applicability for the EU environment of three of the most prominent normative conceptions of (deliberative) democracy (Christiano, Cohen/Rogers and Habermas), which in particular deal with associational involvement in national political systems. Their underlying empirical assumptions about the nature of associations, the political framework and so on are taken up and contrasted with the persistent empirical conditions in the EU. For different reasons, none of these models of associational involvement works properly at EU level and, thus, only a restricted vision of democratic associational involvement in EU decision making is viable. Notwithstanding, the EU political system is still far away from institutionalising even this modest vision. Adapted from the source document.

The problematic nature of Social Dialogue (SD) in Turkey is explored in this discussion of the various interdependent factors that shape the aggregate entity. Starting from the various historical, political, cultural, economic, social & international perspectives on SD, the author identifies eight issues salient to SD on labor to argue that both internal & external factors are creating an optimistic willingness to develop SD as a main tool to address new challenges. The relationship between institutional framework & fragmented labor are complicated by the diversity of trade unions, & the politics of union executives in a context of hostile industrial relations. A weak civil society dependent on the state for implementation of legislations, & the legacy of a state dependency limits integrative collective bargaining, & trade unions thus remain the obdurate defenders of the status quo. Although internal market development should have been based on the role of occupational organization, personal ethics, & responsibility, the current willingness by social partners to integrate Turkey into the EU, & promotion efforts by the SD portray an optimistic future. Tables, References. J. Harwell

ABSTRACT. This article argues that understanding national identity requires a reappraisal of friendship as a political sentiment. Although studies of nationalism underscored the transformation of face‐to‐face interactions into ties between 'distant others,' they failed to acknowledge how sentiments of friendship may be involved. First, following theorising in political philosophy, the Aristotelian paradigm of civic friendship is conceptually applicable to modern civil society based on characteristics such as volition, commitment and sentiment. Second, feminist scholarship has delineated how an implicit discourse of male fraternity underlies the historical realisations of the modern social contract and mediates the notions of both patriotism and nationalism. Finally, networks of male associations and transformations in collective affection from small settings to large‐scale societies contributed to the magnification of a politics of friendship. Consequently, rather than viewing fraternal friendship as a relic of traditional societies, it should be studied as a unique aspect of modern nationalism.

In this reprint from an article in NACLA Report on the Americas (2005), the author investigates the origins and purpose of the World Social Forum (WSF) as a uniter of opposition to the international financial institutions (IFI) that demand austerity programs for third world loans & drive down wages. Originally conceived as a counterweight to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the WSF has brought together direct action movement & the emergent worldwide civil society against international summit meetings. Critics of the social forum argue the WSF has not lived up to its promise to serve as a model of democratic practice for the organization and movements & the exercise of power, finding underlying differences in assumptions about how globalization is change the world. The anti-globalization movement has been successful in impeding the creation of a new world trade regime, stalling the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, and representing an unprecedented global action in the worldwide antiwar demonstrations 2003, creating important alliances at regional levels, & the activation of local protests. J. Harwell

Se busca solicitar la reflexión frente al papel de la universidad y su relación con la sociedad destacando la necesidad de implementar formas de entendimiento y procesos formativos que fortalezcan el sentido de lo público y promuevan la construcción de sociedad civil teniendo en cuenta que, el carácter de la universidad como institución social con funciones públicas el sentido eminentemente formativo de la educación que imparte y su naturaleza predominantemente simbólica, permiten identificarla como un espacio ideal de entendimiento, dialogo y comunicación permanente, donde se realizan los ideales de la educación moderna a través de un proceso social de desarrollo material y de formación de una cultura ciudadana; sin desconocer, que ese mismo carácter social de la universidad evidencia en su interior tensiones, conflictos, disensos y luchas de poder; que fundamentan el cuestionamiento de que es objeto en torno a su participación en la crisis de una democracia agónica. ABSTRACTThis text seeks to origenate a reflection about a role of the university and its relationship with society in order to bring out a need of introducing ways of comprehension and formative processes that encoureage a sense of public thing and promote the establishment of a civil society to keeping in mind the caracteristc of univestity as social institition with public functions, the eminently formative guidance of education offers and its predominantly symbolic characther, allow to identify it as a permanent ideal field of comprehesion, dialogue, and commuication, in which it is carried out ideals of modern education through a social process of amterial development and a forming of citizen culture, knowinig tht social characteritic of the university makes evident insides strains, conflicts, disagreements and power struggles, tht establish the controversy in which it is the object matter about its share within the crisis of a death democarcy.