A Return to the Cultural Revolution in China?

China's remarkable progress has shown that modernity does not only belong to the West. At the same time, China's modernization has been largely fueled by direct investment of foreign firms which also dominate key technologies and critical positions in the global supply chain. In this section we get the real facts on the interpenetration of China and the global economy. A leading Chinese entrepreneur and thinker puts modernization with Chinese characteristics in historical perspective. One of China's leading dissidents assesses the arrest of Ai Weiwei.     

Local Government at the Nexus?

The modernisation of local government in the UK, pursued by Labour governments since 1997, has covered many, often conflicting elements. Councils have been encouraged to be both strategic ‘place shapers’ and also involved in the nurturing of democratic engagement. This latter theme of ‘democratic renewal’ has in itself contained paradoxical elements, but has been a consistent focus of attention. This debate around democratic renewal has also taken place in the context of a broader ‘rethinking’ of local governments’ role, in an era of partnerships, governance and new models of service delivery. Normatively and practically new justifications for local government have been sought. One such normative foundation has drawn on a range of theoretical perspectives to reimagine the place of local government in the democratic polity, seeing local authorities and local councilors as facilitators or nurturers of democratic health. In particular, broad theoretical developments in communicative and deliberative democracy, and also, more recently, on work based in ‘second generation’ governance theory, have been drawn upon to place local government at the nexus of state and civil society. This paper will examine the possibilities for such a role, from a normative standpoint, to argue that local government can have only limited success in this role, particularly in the context of New Labour's restructuring of the local state.