While we like to talk about the BBC as a public broadcaster, the public’s only real role is to pay for it. Where does the power lie in the Beeb – and how do we take it back into public hands?

Just about everyone in Russia - the Kremlin, the opposition and most Russians in the street – agrees that corruption is one of the country’s most serious problems. Newly re-elected President Putin has promised to fight it, but where should he start, and what models in other parts of the world should he be looking at? Mikhail Loginov considers some of the possible alternatives.

Policies which treat nature like a private, consumable good may actually exacerbate problems of environmental degradation. We urgently need a more sophisticated understanding of the problem at hand.

The Deputy Prime Minister has revealed a strategy aimed at improving the life chances of disadvantaged pupils at state schools. A good start, but what is needed is structural change to Britain, one of the lowest ranking countries for social mobility in Europe.

Where the line will be drawn between childrens' rights and parents’ rights will always be heavily contested. Issues from the veiling of young girls to the manufacture of padded bras for seven year olds, may best be dealt with by upholding the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

In the digital age, how does government deal with rumour in a crisis? After Fukushima, the anti-rumour strategies of the Japanese government led some to question which party, the masses or the government was more involved in the dissemination of rumours. Dominant political thinking considers rumours merely a threat to be contained. But if you allow emotions into the picture, you could reach a very different conclusion, one that requires a return to Rousseau’s general will.

Stability is a desirable outcome for all parties in the Mediterranean Dialogue. This does not mean returning to the failed policies of the past; our Atlantic Memo is rather a roadmap for maintaining a commitment to the burgeoning democratic institutions of the region.

Vladimir Putin’s swearing-in as President last week was accompanied by protest rallies that were brutally broken up by police, and their organisers imprisoned. But as the Occupy Abay sit-in and organised ‘strolls’ through the centre of Moscow have shown, protesters are gaining confidence and adopting new tactics. Journalist Tikhon Dzyadko, who was himself hurt in the recent clashes, reports.   

Ten ideas for lobbying David Cameron as co-chair of the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals High Level Panel

Big-but-piecemeal reform will only exacerbate weaknesses elsewhere in the Chinese system, since everything is connected... Fenby isn't just right about the biases and simplifications that are commonplace in airport-book ‘polemics’ about China - he is right for the right reasons. 

The link between ‘karamah’ and ‘al hurriyah”, the call for dignified existence and the rejection of oppression has given birth to a further crucial concept – that of the social responsibility of public authority.  This cannot be achieved by maintaining the economic polices of the old regimes. 

As formal education in Britain faces commodification, networks of informal participative learning are flourishing. openDemocracy is building ties with these through our relationship to the Raymond Williams Foundation, whose residential last week explored the theme of the Long Revolution.

Every ultra-rich person has the income of 100 poor people. But this is not Dickensian England or Depression-era America. It is the Italy of today. Halting the rise of the super-rich will be a crucial issue for the politics of the future.

NATO attempts to brush over the original intentions behind the Chicago Summit may prove successful, given an extremely able diplomatic bureaucracy and an environment with a short memory span. But despite 'smart defense', three crucial issues left off the agenda could spell the end of NATO relevance.

Community organisatons, children's clubs, even doctors and health services, frequently lament that it is hard to get the people who most need help through their doors. The answer, a small charity in North-east England has found, is to get out on to the streets

Europe's crisis is being felt at multiple levels, from the future of the eurozone and divisions between member-states to the rise of populist forces. But is the crisis likely to lead to the European Union's disintegration? The precedent of the Soviet collapse offers some lessons, says Ivan Krastev.

The 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia was portrayed as a beacon of hope for democracy and progress in the region. Far from developing society towards a free market, however, the current government has retrenched and its policies and programmes are redolent of a planned economy. This can only end badly, says Vakhtang Komakhidze

Can we imagine how real-time online direct democracy might improve the following: freedom of speech; the democratic process; the accountability of the government to the electorate; fairness and the rule of law?

In Tunisia the official Facebook page of the moderately Islamist Nahda party urged Franco-Tunisians to vote massively for Hollande to "dégage" Sarkozy.