Volume 6, Issue 1

This article questions the notion that the proliferation of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) should be regarded as the vanguard of a new global civil society. It begins by suggesting that the definition of global civil society is confused, at best, and offers competing and largely incompatible understandings of it alongside a retrospective on the political thought of Hannah Arendt, David Chandler, and Ernest Gellner, and the English School of International Relations. This illustrates the ways by which the undemocratic structure of NGOs lead to internal conflicts that often cause them to splinter, with losers leaving to form their own organization. The result is that NGOs are actually contributing a diverse set of mores, rather than a new set of global norms. This growth then can be better understood as atomization, and as much of a hindrance as a help to the formation of a more civil world. It takes the growing criticism of the democratic deficit in Global NGOs a step further from a question of legitimacy to a problem of functionality.

This article argues that the best counterattack against globally oriented transnational organized crime (TOC) is by a global response. The contribution of participating states and the creation of a collective identity against TOC are both necessary. This creation would be more effective through transnational social movements. Therefore, activating the global justice movement (GJM) against TOC would be a significant achievement. This has not yet taken place for both structural and ideological reasons which are on the surface quite rational. If GJM activists create a more unified movement, however, and adhere more strictly to non-violence as have other social movements like the Libera anti-Mafia association of Italy and Flare Network of Europe, there is potential for convergence.

Since the end of the 20th century loud calls for reinstating the rule of the people in liberal democracies have been heard, particularly in but not limited to alter-globalization circles devoted to creating another world. This trend has been strengthened in the passage to the 21st century and this article traces the influences behind it, as well as the motivations and ways in which representative democracy is rejected by activists in favor of a new system that fulfills what is perceived as the original promise of democracy to bring power to all the people. The article concludes with a discussion on the consequences of a re-energized notion and practice of “rule by the demos” to liberal democracy.

What is the state of common interests across the Atlantic? Lord Palmerston's dictum that states have permanent interests masks the fact that interest perception is subjective and variable. It is defined differently across the Atlantic as well as within Europe, where we find a mix of distinct national interests set in the context of the European Union. The debt crisis in Europe has resurfaced the question where lie the common interests of the EU countries. NATO and the EU are vehicles that help shape common interests. The issue now is how to fit into a global setting the issue of defining common interests in the transatlantic relationship. This comes back to leadership.

Bruce Mazlish reviews the current state of thinking about war crimes, state sovereignty and humanity.

Tribal dynamics have been strikingly prominent in the success or failure of militant Islamists, from Central Asia to North Africa. However, to date little systematic research has been undertaken on tribal culture and its interactions with militant Islamist groups. Part of the challenge is the absence of a quantitative measure of tribal culture that can gauge the degree of tribalism. A measure of this sort would assist in the exploration of relationships between tribalism and militant Islam, religiously motivated violence, or the export of that violence. In this article, we put forward such a measure, the Tribalism Index. This Tribalism Index is a predictor of religiously motivated violence, and is effective in parsing the varying relationships of Islam, Islamist militancy and tribal patriarchy to that violence. It is also helpful in predicting religiously motivated violence in diaspora communities in Western nations, and has proved effective in doing so in the United Kingdom. Regression models that include both Muslim population percentage and level of tribalism demonstrate that, in the absence of a clear tribal culture, adherence to Islam does not make for susceptibility to extremism. Furthermore, these models show that it is within tribal environments that Islamist movements are best nurtured. The Tribalism Index proves of greater utility than the Failed States Index for eliciting the dynamics of violence in tribal societies, while illuminating the inaccuracy of seeing militancy as a function of Islam as such.

The relationship between oil and democracy has been most widely tested in the context of high-income states of the Middle East to explain the lack of political liberalism in those countries. Some recent studies have compared oil-exporting countries in Latin America and Africa to explore the "oil impedes democracy" hypothesis. This account applies the insights of these comparative studies beyond the Global South to explore questions such as: To what extent do the causal mechanisms of oil versus democracy apply in Canada? Is there any evidence of the phenomenon of "resource curse" in the Canadian province of Alberta, which is offered as an explanation for the lack of economic and political liberalism in the Global South?