BRICS MEANS BUSINE

In Africa they say it is a positive sign if it rains at the start of an important event. That certainly seemed to hold true in South Africa’s premier eastern port city, where the Fifth BRICS Summit began with thunderous skies and unrelenting showers. As the flags of the five member     

Just a Walk in the Park

One of the things that makes living in Beijing enjoyable is being able to walk through a public park on the way to work.The park in the northwestern part of the cityisasanctuaryforseniorcitizens,who pour down from the surrounding high-rise apartment blocks that characterize Beijing,to go through their time-honored morning rituals.At the park entrance are the"bird men."Most people who imagine life in China will no doubt have an image somewhere in their minds of elderly,vest-wearing men     

Thinking Big

Huge Hisense Appliance Industrial Park in South Africa entrenches the brand’s successful globalimage It’s 2:30 p.m. and the large red electronic counter board on the factory wall registers the day’s 439th flat-screen TV as it rolls off the assembly line. Above that figure glows the daily target of 700. The uniformed staff are bustling in the sanitized, climate-controlled environment-excitedly motivating each other to reach the target, eyes constantly flicking up to the counter.     

Experiences of a learning organization in the public sector

This article explores the experience of a municipal government agency as it confronts the challenges and opportunities of meeting seemingly unlimited demands with limited resources. The City of Scottsdale, Arizona, enjoys a national reputation for innovative approaches to public policy issues. This article examines Scottsdale's efforts to create a learning organization, through a Venture Team which represents a core strategy for continuous improvement and lifelong learning.     

Performing the demos: towards a processive theory of global democracy

Debates on global democracy have tended to focus on the possibility of a global democratic entity based on the feasibility of institutional structures that, however inadvertently, take state-based conceptualizations of democracy as their reference point. More recently, however, some theorists have argued for a more ‘performative’ approach that focuses on the demos rather than the kratos and the capacity of political actors to ‘perform’ a role as members of a global demos (List and Koenig-Archibugi 2010 List, C. and Koenig-Archibugi, M., 2010. Can there be a global demos? an Agency-Based approach. Philosophy and public affairs, 38 (1), 76–110.10.1111/papa.2010.38.issue-1[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). While advancing global democracy debates, this ‘performative’ approach leans towards an overly mechanical, static account of performativity that defines democratic behaviour in terms of the functional requirements of political systems. Based on the ‘realist turn’ in contemporary political theory, this article argues for an alternative account of performativity. When coupled with a theory of political complexity, this implies a more processive theory of global democracy that is focused more on what it means for a demos to ‘perform’ democratically than the development of specific institutional configurations. A processive theory of global democracy concentrates more on the emergence of multilevel democratic practices that supplement existing state-based democratic procedures rather than conceiving global democracy as a new, fixed institutional configuration to replace existing democratic structures. Understood in these terms, the debate on the possibility or impossibility of global democracy, which takes as its reference point existing state-based institutional structures, deflects attention from the more pertinent and substantive matter of whether particular initiatives and processes in specific contexts are more or less democratic in global terms.     

COVID-19 Stressors and Latinx Adolescents’ Mental Health Symptomology and School Performance: A Prospective Study

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - This study addressed the need for research examining impacts of the Coronavirus-19 (COVID) pandemic on Latinx adolescents’ adjustment. Survey data for a...     

Crossing the Great Divide: Dilemmas of U.K. Voluntary-Sector Leaders Who Move into Government

Evidence suggests the boundaries between the U.K. government and the voluntary sector are blurring because of an increasing emphasis on partnership between the two. One symptom of this changing relationship–or a contributing cause of it–is the practice of recruiting senior managers from the voluntary sector into government service. The intention is that these managers should play a significant role in formulating and implementing government strategy with regard to the voluntary sector and in other policy areas where voluntary‐sector organizations are seen as key players. This article addresses the issues that voluntary‐sector leaders face when they move into government–to what extent are they insiders, outsiders, or critical friends, and to whom? It concludes that the madness of the government machine is more than the sum of its parts: people, policy, and process.     

Wars in the Balkans: Personal recollections

An examination of South Africa's different foreign policy role conceptions under the administrations of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, highlighting the respective governments’ strategies in carving a niche for the country in global relations.     

British Neutrality versus Offshore Balancing in the American Civil War: The English School Strikes Back

The American Civil War is an important test case for offensive realism because it was the last occasion when offshore balancing by Britain could have prevented the United States from becoming a regional hegemon. Instead, Britain drew on the norm of nonintervention to justify a policy of neutrality. Offensive realists reject the idea that Britain was constrained by normative considerations but disagree about why Britain failed to operate as an offshore balancer. I acknowledge the importance of the offensive realists' regionalized approach to the international system, but use English School thinking to argue that the normative framework that Britain and the United States subscribed to must be taken into account to provide a coherent explanation of Britain's response to the Civil War. Detailed archival research demonstrates that despite concern about u.s. regional hegemony, Britain was unequivocally constrained by normative considerations. The case study suggests, therefore, that societal constraints were stronger than systemic ones.