Get Over It

The coming years will tell whether the US intervention in Iraq brought the first modern constitutional democracy to the Arab world or instigated protracted civil war and disintegration .     

The Rise of the Rest Warms the Planet

tokyo —America's post‐World War II commitment to universal rules of openness has spread economic gains far and wide, enabling new prosperity on a global scale. It is this American‐forged stable world order that has led to what Fareed Zakaria refers to as “the third great powershift” in the last 500 years: the “rise of the rest,” which follows on the rise of the West and the rise of the United States as the dominant Western power. It is indeed a remarkable legacy of American hegemony that China, India and others are rising, or arising anew, without the pillage, plunder and war associated with the emergent great power experiences of the past.     

Three million Trotskyists? Explaining extreme left voting in France in the 2002 presidential election

In the first round of the 2002 French presidential election, three million voters (10.4 per cent of the national vote) supported Trotskyist candidates. This unprecedented electoral result has received little academic attention. This study aimed to identify the strongest socio‐demographic and attitudinal predictors of support for the new extreme left in 2002. A multivariate framework was applied in a series of models, using data from the 2002 French Electoral Panel. The study also aimed to understand the rise of the Trotskyists in the context of broader social and political developments. The analysis was grounded in series of hypotheses constituting a model of class voting in postindustrial France. Overall, the analysis tended to confirm the predictions of the model, with younger voters at the lower end of the service sector being the most likely to support the three Trotskyist parties. With regard to attitudes, opposition to economic liberalism proved the strongest single predictor of Trotskyist voting, followed by liberal attitudes on cultural issues, political distrust and political disengagement. However, in terms of economic attitudes, Trotskyist voters still came out as surprisingly close to mainstream left voters. In conclusion, it is argued that models of class voting should reconsider the political role of social class in a postindustrial context, and pay particular attention to the trajectories of different classes over time in terms of changing employment conditions and life chances in order to understand how class is likely to shape party preferences.     

Post‐Olympic Powershift: The Return of the Middle Kingdom in a Post‐American World

In the minds of its leaders and intellectuals, China is more than just another successful emerging economy and a rising regional power. For them, what is going on today might be considered a renaissance that will bring a neo‐Confucian sensibility to a post‐American world. In this section NPQ editor Nathan Gardels reports on his recent visit to Shanghai. Wang Hui, China's leading new left intellectual and author of The Rise of Modem Chinese Thought, offers his, views on subjects ranging from modernity to Tibet.     

What a Time to Be a Bunny

<正>It is the dead of the night and the city is sleeping. A stray car cruises the street until its lonesome passenger responds in a zombie-like manner to a traffic light that turns red, stopping an invisible flow of traffic.     

The Future Is Upon Us

T he race is on between environmental destruction on a global scale and sustainable solutions . T he finish line, in J ared D iamond's alarmed estimation, is only 50 years away . F or B ruce M au, sustainable solutions, already at hand, will win out . D iamond, too, hopes our civilization will learn from those in history who rose to their challenges and prospered, not suffer the fate of others who dithered and collapsed .