The literature about global democracy deals with two different types of democratization: Type 1 is about spreading democracy across sovereign states as the basis for good governance. It focuses on the quality of the state/society-nexus: the balance between coercion, reward and identity. Type 2 is about democratizing world politics as such. In its most concrete expressions it focuses on the relationship between international society (a community of states) and world society (a community of people). The contemporary structure of multilevel governance provides the rationale behind this: national democracies are ineffective in controlling essential centres of power. This implies a need to scale up democracy to global proportions. However, in Type 1 considerations the term democracy often is an empty shell. This blinds observers for checks and balances and types of pluralism in non-democratic states. It also blinds them for misuse of democratic claims in democratic states. Aspiring global democracy in terms of Type 2 ignores that the presence of a central authority is a precondition inherent to the concept of democracy. Democratic theory cannot escape and is consequently caught up in its preconditions of a people (demos) and a government (cratos).

The central contribution of the discipline of International Relations to the debate on globalization is its engagement with the process of global governance. This article seeks to map the substance of this engagement through a systematic comparison of three main theoretical approaches to global governance: James Rosenau’s account of the sui generis and complex nature of global governance, Political Realism’s reductive reading of global governance as fragile international cooperation, and the so-called English School’s ‘middle-way’ analysis of global governance as (a historically evolved form of) ordered international interaction.

After the collapse of communism, the Central and Eastern European countries decided to implement a market economy embedded in a democratic order. A constituent element of the transition was a fully-fledged integration with the global economy. One of the consequences of this integration is that the countries are now severely hit by the financial crisis. Until recently, however, it all looked flourishing and economic growth figures indicated a steady catch up with average welfare levels in the European Union (EU). On the website of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development an essay competition was launched for those who were born in 1989. In an introductory statement, a Russian joke is quoted: ‘Everything the Communists told us about communism was a complete and utter lie. Unfortunately, everything the Communists told us about capitalism turned out to be true’.1 This article addresses the impact of the financial crisis in Central and Eastern Europe and in essence starts from this quote. It seeks to explain the extent to which the financial crisis in the Central and Eastern Europe question reveals the downside of a capitalist system embedded in a global economic order.

This essay explores how the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 has affected the stability of what Stephen Gill has termed the ‘new constitutionalism of disciplinary neo-liberalism’,1 more precisely, in the realm of international tax policy. Rather than providing an in-depth and complete empirical study of the matter, this essay will highlight certain interesting developments and touch upon a series of possibly relevant questions that could form the basis for a future research agenda. In the first section, we will examine the remarkable strength and resilience of the new constitutionalism as the institutional component of neo-liberal hegemony. Then we will proceed to an exploration of the impact of the crisis on this hegemony, also paying attention to deepening geopolitical multipolarity as an additional variable. The final, more empirical section will investigate the case of international taxation in this context, and demonstrate that new constitutionalism remains a crucial supporting pillar of neo-liberal globalisation.

The world within which the EU and China have to deal with each other is changing. The unipolar moment is definitely fading and slowly giving way to an international system characterized by multilayered and culturally diversified polarity. This development has far-reaching consequences for the EU–China relationship; the more so since the EU and China have distinctive identities and define their value preferences differently. China is no longer the developing country it once was and is becoming more assertive by the day. Beijing is at the head of the world’s most successful economy and will weigh more and more heavily on global governance.1 Three decades of impressive economic growth have boosted the self-confidence of the Chinese leaders significantly. In Beijing, the notion that China should start taking on an attitude befitting a great power is gaining ground. China is taking up ever more space within various multilateral organizations and is setting up diplomatic activities throughout the globe. Moreover, Beijing has become more active in setting up its own multilateral channels to further its national interests and own norms. China no longer considers itself an outsider that should crawl back into its shell and steer clear of a global political system dominated by the West. All this puts into question the EU’s conditional policy towards China, which is based on the assumption that China can be socialized and persuaded to incorporate Europe’s post-modern values. The way ahead seems to be for Europe to opt for a more pragmatic approach, which takes stock of the changes in the underlying power and identity relations between the EU and China. The analysis of this paper will be developed at three levels. First, it examines the changes in the structure of international politics. To what kind of structure are we evolving and where do China and the EU fit in? Second, it takes a closer look at the respective identities of China and the EU and explicates the major differences between them. Finally, this study appraises the implications of the emerging multilayered and culturally diversified polarity for the further development of the EU–China relationship.

Massive government-financed rescue operations for banking and insurance industries in the United States and in Europe, seeking to contain the financial crisis that culminated in 2008, amounted to ‘the biggest, broadest and fastest government response in history.’1 This ‘great stabilisation,’ as The Economist called it, resulting in ‘quasi’ or ‘shadow nationalization,’2 cast doubt on the notion, fashionable at the height of the neoliberal wave, that the state was essentially on its way out, as many of its tasks and responsibilities were oozing steadily and irreversibly toward the market. The state and, by the same token, the political seemed back – with a vengeance, triggering solemn announcements of ‘the return of the state’ and ‘the end of the ideology of public powerlessness.’3 Observers concurred. ‘Free-market capitalism, globalization, and deregulation’ had been ‘rising across the globe for 30 years,’ yet that era now had ended: ‘Global economic and financial integration are reversing. The role of the state, together with financial and trade protectionism, is ascending.’4 Triggering a perceived ‘paradigm shift towards a more European, a more social state,’ even in the United States and in China, the crisis was seen to herald a move ‘back towards a mixed economy.’5 The question, meanwhile, remained: had the state indeed withdrawn as much during the neoliberal era as is often assumed?

During the 60 years that I have been writing – and speculating – on public law (my first book on medieval criminal law came out in 1954), I have been repeatedly struck by a particular phenomenon to which I would now like to draw attention: that sound ideas and useful innovations eventually – when relentlessly taken to their extreme consequences and pushed along the abstract lines of their inner logic – lead to absurd or even nefarious results, defeating the original intention.

Morality must be resurrected in our societies. It must be a morality whose nature and sources are understood and are in keeping with current reality. Hitherto, morality has been seen as closely related to religion. That religious belief is helpful to many is indisputable, but religious narratives, treated literally, are unacceptable to modern minds, and the supposed nature of God, as discussed by sophisticated theologians, is inaccessible to everyman. Morality, based on an understanding of human nature as shaped by culture, offers hope for the future.

Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies1 has been received by rave reviews. These reviews appear to have failed to note that Caplan’s book celebrates the market and denigrates democracy at the very time when markets worldwide have failed and democracies have ridden to the rescue. It thus appears to have been undermined fatally by events that occurred as it was published (and which Caplan artfully omits to mention in the more recent paperback edition). Caplan’s book in fact stands in the long tradition of anti-democratic writings that argue that an elite must rule. An elite of free-market economists. An elite no longer in good odour, since the financial crisis (and the climate crisis) occurred and became starkly evident to all. This Critical Notice also points out that numerous of Caplan’s key claims, such as that individual voters have zero effect on election results, are empirically false.

This article reviews the changes in historical writing about slavery and the slave trade over the last 50 years.