editor's note: all articles

We published 750 articles this year. Here are fifty of the best!

openDemocracy asked its editor to choose his three favourite texts from 2004.

George Papandreou outlines his approach to a new way of doing politics

Why is an argument between two optimists worth time and attention in a dark world? openDemocracy editor Anthony Barnett defends the publication of Tom Nairn’s long and challenging response to Timothy Garton Ash

The lesson of Tom Nairn’s post–imperial critique of Timothy Garton Ash’s “Free World” is that nation–states and their peoples, not Anglospheric empires, will shape the 21st century. But this process needs a politics. Where is it?

Bush’s re–election has opened a new historical period. Tough, clear thought on a global scale is needed to understand and democratically shape it, says Anthony Barnett.

John Kerry’s supporters must now avoid finger-pointing and self-flagellation, says Anthony Barnett in New York – and instead build a new, international politics of globalisation to replace Bush’s politics of fear.

The most important campaign of all, for democratic legitimacy and moral respect, has found the United States president wanting.

The American election debate has ignored Israel and Palestine. All the more reason for openDemocracy to pose the issue in a responsible, serious way, says Anthony Barnett.

Anthony Barnett remembers Gerhard Schröder’s speechwriter and a formative influence on openDemocracy for whom “nothing was foreign except the second rate", followed by the eulogy Anthony gave at the memorial meeting in front of the Chancellor and Foreign Minister Joskar Fischer.

The choices the United States made after 11 September 2001 raise fundamental questions of political judgment. Anthony Barnett outlines how openDemocracy seeks to answer them.

The United Nations is seeking to reinvent itself. The Iraq disaster should make sure the world listens, says Anthony Barnett.

Several openDemocracy readers felt that our presentation of the Iraqi roundtable was biased. The editor responds.

We publish, you pay. The deal? Quality. The price? Modest. The reward? Your money funds Iraqis too. The catch? You have to read articles like this from the editor.

As the United States abandons a key Iraqi ally, is its intention to focus on a new military target: Iran?

The abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison poses the most severe question for the United States: can it consider non-Americans as moral equals?

The recent experience of Spain, India and Turkey highlight a profound trend in international affairs: the globalisation of democracy.

One year on from Saddam’s fall, Iraq’s people need more help, interest and attention from the international community.

openDemocracy’s aim in publishing three new columnists covering America’s election is not neutrality but a well-argued partiality that will engage and include people from around the world.

The attack in Madrid should not be looked at as only European, or even only political, but in the context of a human chain of being and responsibility.