Reflections on the Concept and Measurement of Global Civil Society

This paper argues that the current academic debate about global civil society has reached a point where some assessment or reflection could be useful for informing the course of future research in the field. Behind this call for an assessment is the very nature of the debate and emerging gaps and weaknesses that together produce a potential slow-down in generating new knowledge and understanding of global civil society. There are several shortcomings to the current research approach: the failure to take account of other civil society traditions; the failure to address the relationship between global civil society, conflict, and violence; and, most critically, the neglect of the notion of civility, both conceptually and empirically. The balance of the paper then explores the implications of this new assessment of global civil society research.     

Perceptions of geography students in the USA and Egypt on global issues

The study aimed to compare the perceptions of Egyptian and US students on global issues. The authors developed a survey of global issues and administered it to sample of 321 Geography students in the USA and Egypt. The survey tapped five issues: global citizenship, cultural diversity, global conflicts, nuclear arms race, and global warming. The results showed that there were significant differences in Egyptian and US students’ perception of each of the global issues.     

An agenda for research on work and class in the postsocialist world

This article reviews the scholarly treatment of work and class in postsocialist states. It traces how class discourses under socialism led to a lack of meaningful working class studies in the postsocialist academy. It offers as an agenda for future research three points of departure: (a) greater confrontation of the one‐sided discourse on class in these societies and the academy itself (class blindness of research). (b) The value in studying postsocialist societies both comparatively to global North and South, and as an intermediate positioning for worker exploitation and responses in global capitalism. (c) To achieve the first 2 agenda items, a more grounded methodological approach proceeding from the lived experience of class and work is proposed. Current research on social networks, memory studies and personhood, the informal economy, deindustrialization, and the “domestication” of neoliberalism show that empirically grounded work on postsocialist working classes can make important contributions to wider social science debates. Studying the “losers” of postcommunist transition can tell us much about populist politics, the rise of the global working class outside the global North and the nature of global capitalist exploitation more generally. In addition, this agenda serves as an important point of departure from the dominant middle class focus of research in postsocialism.     

Looking Back and Moving Forward: The Research Agenda on the Global Governance of Mixed Migration

There is no international regime to comprehensively govern transnational migration in all of its facets. But scholars and policymakers acknowledge and study the existence of the global governance of migration. Though most have focused on disaggregating the global governance of migration into its separate regimes (refugees, labour, travel, etc.), I argue here that much of this architecture addresses the phenomenon of mixed migration. I define the global governance of mixed migration as involving a range of legal regimes impinging on actors simultaneously; shared understandings about the nature of mixed migration, including motivations and drivers; and the existence of different bilateral, regional and global arrangements for addressing the phenomenon. I critically review the interdisciplinary research agenda on the global governance of mixed migration, covering its emergence over the last twenty years, its broad empirical and conceptual dimensions, the major debates and promising directions for future research.     

Global Civil Society and the Question of Global Citizenship

For many recent commentators, the association of citizenship with the nation-state is under siege, as transnational and even global forms of citizenship begin to emerge. The nascent phenomenon of global citizenship in particular is characterized by three components: the global discourse on human rights; a global account of citizenly responsibilities; and finally “global civil society.” This last component is supposed to give a new global citizenship its “political” character, and for many represents the most likely vehicle for the emergence of a global, democratic citizen politics. This paper critically examines this view, asking whether a global form of citizenship is indeed emerging, and if so whether “global civil society” is well-equipped to stand in as its political dimension. The paper examines two opposed narratives on the potential of global civil society to form a political arm of global citizenship, before returning by way of conclusion to the vexed notion of global citizenship itself.This paper draws from the final chapter of Rethinking Equality: the Challenge of Equal Citizenship, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2006.     

International Travel Security and the Global Compacts on Refugees and Migration

This article examines the security dimension of the Global Compact on Refugees and the Global Compact for Migration and explains how the global compacts expand international cooperation on travel security. Although the Global Compact on Refugees contains relatively few security‐related provisions, many of the Global Compact for Migration's commitments are largely devoted to increasing security by strengthening border controls, improving travel documents, collecting data, using new technologies, like biometrics, and sharing data. By agreeing to increase cooperation on international travel security aimed at reducing irregular migration, migrant origin states have won commitments from migrant destination states to improve conditions for their nationals working abroad. Given that both global compacts are non‐binding and states may take actions to realize some of the compacts’ commitments but not others, the actual consequences of the compacts may vary greatly and lead to unanticipated outcomes.     

未来30年互联网发展提升上海城市能级与智慧城市研究

上海应以推进智慧城市建设、提升城市能级、建设世界级全球城市为目标导向,打造 “智能发达、创新活跃、生态宜居、和谐包容”的智慧城市:实施“网络空间强国战略”,持续提升形成全球网络与信息枢纽;深化“四个中心”建设,提升上海全球资源战略配置能力;布局“大数据、人工智能”产业,提升上海科技创新全球影响力与领导力;加速“互联网+”的融合与重构,激发上海产业与市场活力;加强智慧城市建设,提升城市规划、治理、服务能级;凝练城市文化,抢占“中国文化”输出战略高地;推动区域联动发展,打造世界级城市群全球门户.     

Democracy and global governance: the case for a bottom-up and context-sensitive approach

This concluding chapter outlines a theoretical framework for understanding the relation between global governance, democracy and the findings of the papers in this volume. It identifies the two principles of affectedness and representation in the literature on democratic global governance, and relates them to the three democratic building blocks of equality, inclusive participation and accountability. These five theoretical components are then combined to relate the findings of the previous chapters to three heuristic models of governance: the domination model, the market model and the global democracy model. We show that the particular global governance arrangements discussed in previous chapters to some extent contain elements of all these models: undemocratic domination, mildly democratic market mechanisms and fully democratic global-democratic processes. Through this theoretical framework, the reader gains insight into how to assess and strategize the democratization project for global governance.     

Why some greens are more powerful than others: on destabilisation,power shifts and the democratic potential of NGOs

This article studies how the collective empowerment of NGOs that is embodied in the destabilisation of world politics is distributed among individual organisations in the NGO community. The article focuses on non-governmental power in three global environmental conventions. It seeks to explain power differences between individual organisations in terms of possession of resources such as income, expertise, prominence and independence. In contrast to previous NGO research, this article applies an extensive and statistical approach. The main finding is that there is a global green elite of well-equipped NGOs that is allotted most power. This result is discussed in the light of recent debates on the democratic potential of an expanded role for NGOs in global politics.     

An update on China in the political economy of information and communications

In prior research I have attempted to bring out the salience of two converging political‐economic trends. One originates in the communications and information sector, which throughout prior decades has evolved into the lead zone of business investment and profit‐making. The second stems from China, whose reinsertion into global capitalism has generated a powerful economic surge: in 2007, International Monetary Fund projects, for the first time, China will contribute more to global economic growth than any other nation. How, I asked, are these two vectors of change related? What connections exist between capitalism's most dynamic industry and its most expansionary growth zone? The present article constitutes a progress report on these issues, which continue to be fundamental.     

Study Abroad,Global Citizenship,and the Study of Nongovernmental Organizations

Nonprofit education and management programs often recognize the efficacy of including experiential learning opportunities such as study abroad in their curricula. In addition, higher education institutions increasingly prioritize global citizenship as a learning outcome. However, challenges abound for educators who want to evaluate study abroad courses that expect students to acquire or deepen their levels of global citizenship. This study seeks to evaluate the impact of a short-course study abroad program on students’ global citizenship orientation. Our qualitative findings suggest that students indeed grapple with the notion of global citizenship in various ways while immersed in such a course. They can also express conflicting views, further confounding scholarly understanding of how to best measure global citizenship. We discuss implications for students expressing more of an observational role than an inclination to act on global issues.     

中东国家经济转型中的风险研究

从国际经济秩序和环境以及中东伊斯兰国家所具备的能力和条件来看,全球化对中东伊斯兰国家更多的是挑战。面对来自国际金融机构的压力和全球金融风暴的威胁,伊斯兰金融究竟该做何抉择尚难确定。国际经济新秩序不可能彻底消除歧视性的贸易政策,实现完全意义上的公正,其中的不利因素无疑会对中东国家构成威胁。此外,全球性经济组织、制度和规则也会给这些国家带来更多的压力。     

世博园区与周边区域商务商业开发思路研究

未来5～10年,是上海加快实现＂四个中心＂战略目标并建成全球城市的关键时期。上海应充分利用举办世博会的历史性机遇,致力于打造与全球城市地位和能级相适应的国际一流商务商业区。目前,在上海的东西两翼正在崛起浦东陆家嘴金融贸易区和虹桥商务区两大商务商业集聚高地。从中长期看,世博园区与周边区域是上海未来打造国际商务商业区的重要载体,也是具备国际经济要素资源配置能力、成为中国经济乃至亚太地区经济资源配置和管理中枢的战略空间。世博园区与周边地区开发的空间范围：以世博园区（世博国际商务商业区）为核心区域,以浦东三林、后滩、卢湾滨江、黄浦南外滩等世博园区周边地区为辅。明确世博国际商务商业区发展的功能定位、产业内涵：以商务、商业为重点内容的服务业,其中商业是商务发展的重要基础,商务为商业发展提供重要支撑,两者融合发展体现出城市高能级的综合服务功能。     

Impact of Covid-19 pandemic on the transnationalization of LGBT* activism in Japan and beyond

The global Covid-19 pandemic has strongly impacted social practices, relocating communications and social networks into the digital space. Contextualized in such impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the local LGBT* activism in Japan achieved a special momentum: both the acceleration of the socio-spatial relocation of LGBT* activism to the digital space and the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics 2020 by 1 year enabled activists to mobilize people domestically and globally. The pandemic was not the actual cause or driver of the local LGBT* activism, yet it has been an important catalyst for the transnationalization of the local movement in Japan, pushing evidently the spatial boundaries to achieve broader public outreach but in turn also receiving stronger support from the global community through transnational networks. This study explores novel dynamics of spatiality and temporality of social transformations through the Covid-19-induced increase in global digital connectedness as well as transnationalization of local actions.     

当前世界经济形势及对我国的影响

通过回顾前一阶段全球性金融危机发生的原因和结果,重点分析美国等发达国家的国内经济形势和走向,指出当前美国存在债务风险和财政政策的困境,欧洲则深陷主权债务危机,日本地震又给世界经济造成巨大冲击,由此得出有关当前世界经济形势的3点判断：一是全球经济恢复的势头减缓;二是发达国家的国债风险进一步提高;三是全球通胀形势急剧恶化。在此背景下,中国经济面临非常严重的挑战,如外汇储备缩水、热钱流入、输入型通胀压力增大、经济增长缓慢等,需要采取多种准确有效的应对措施,保持中国经济持续稳定增长。     

Global inequality recalculated and updated: the effect of new PPP estimates on global inequality and 2005 estimates

The results of new direct price level comparisons across 146 countries in 2005 have led to large revisions of PPP (purchasing power parity) exchanges rates, particularly for China and India. The recalculations of international and global inequalities, using the new PPPs, show that inequalities are substantially higher than previously thought. Inequality between global citizens is estimated at 70 Gini points rather than 65 as before. This high level of inequality is confirmed by the results obtained from the new set of 122 national household surveys from around year 2005.     

Critical Global Competence and the C3 in Social Studies Education

Research in global education has turned toward global citizenship education and the fostering of a more critical reading of the tenets of “soft” global education laid out over four decades ago in Hanvey's (1976) “An Attainable Global Perspective.” Interested in skill building and informed application of concepts forwarded within critical approaches to global education, this article brings the NCSS C3 inquiry arc together with standards for Global Competence Education within social studies education. Using food insecurity as an example, the conceptualization provided demonstrates how coupling the C3 with the Global Competence standards creates a framework that social studies educators can use to prepare students to participate as informed, responsible, and critically minded change agents within complex and unequal global systems.     

全球治理中的中东难民问题

难民问题是长期困扰中东地区的一大难题。中东难民问题的严峻现状已经引起国际社会的广泛关注。在难民问题逐步被纳入全球治理框架的趋势下,国际社会采取了多层次、多领域的合作,取得了较为明显的成效。然而一些障碍性因素的存在阻碍了全球治理的有效实施,使得这一问题难以从根本上得到解决。     

Democratic transitions and the semiperiphery of the world-economy

The dramatic global transition to democracy of the last decade reveals important systematic patterns. Using recent contributions to world-systems theory, this study examines the relationship between political regime changes and the position of nations in the world-economy over the last two decades, to argue that democratic transitions have been centered among semiperipheral nations. The study also found a strong relationship between the structure of the labor force and the global distribution of democratic institutions, but a weak relationship between the structure of the labor force and the timing of transitions in the semiperiphery. Overall, the findings suggest that world-systemic categories provide a useful vantage point to distinguish global trends from the specific characteristics of individual nations, thereby allowing for greater analytical precision in identifying the crucial causal relations shaping transitions from dictatorship to democracy.     

Religion and Migration around the Globe: Introducing the Global Religion and Migration Database

International migration is a global phenomenon involving nearly 215 million people, equivalent to 3% of the world’s population. Previous databases of global migration catalog international migration using a variety of variables (sex, education, age); however, religion is rarely addressed within these data sets. Representing nearly half a million data points, the Global Religion and Migration Database (GRMD) was constructed – the only global database estimating the global migrant population (stock) by origin, destination, and religious affiliation. This research note serves as an introduction to the GRMD, detailing the construction of the database and providing key findings from a global perspective.