think tanks, ideas, politics

The expansion of Amnesty International's remit to include "full-spectrum" human rights may entail costs as well as benefits, says Stephen Hopgood.

(This article was first published on 7 June 2006)

A Beijing conference finds that the world of Chinese NGOs has lessons for the west

Amnesty International is seeking to broaden its humanitarian ambitions to meet new challenges. Maryann Bird reports from the launch of its 2006 report.

The way NGOs and other global civil society organisations operate must be reformed if they are to embody the progressive claims often made on their behalf, argues Leni Wild.

The partisanship of modern American politics is narrowing the agendas of think-tanks of left and right. James McGann asks what can be done to raise the quality of debate.

A lesson of recent failures on British government policy is that the quality of a democracy is measured in the way decisions are reached as much as in their outcomes, says William Davies.

The interdependence of the modern world is leading the human rights organisation Amnesty International towards a fresh conception of its work, explains its UK campaigns director, Stephen Bowen.

Could the next George W Bush or Tony Blair learn to make decisions that are accountable and transparent as well as quick? Jeremy Hardie on the missing element of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink”: democracy.

The battle over fox-hunting in England has led to a crisis of authority in the state itself. Anthony Barnett asks John Jackson, a key figure in the case and chairman of a leading law firm, Mishcon de Reya, to comment on the significance of the latest decision by a high-level panel of judges.

Shirin Ebadi, Iranian human rights activist and Nobel Peace laureate, recently toured North America, where openDemocracy interviewed her about her life, work and assessment of the prospects for her homeland.

Why are government and media in Britain so hostile to each other? Because each seeks to control the narratives that shape people’s lives, says Tom Bentley of the think-tank Demos. In the process, both are damaged – and so is democracy itself.

From Porto Alegre to anti-war movements, 2003 was a tumultuous year of political mobilisation. As the 2004 World Social Forum opens in Mumbai, will “global civil society” build an enduring space in support of a more humane form of globalisation?

Does international trade help poor people? The man who created the World Trade Organisation, has no doubt: the answer is yes. In a confident interview, Peter Sutherland champions economic integration, welcomes the entry of China, India, Russia and Brazil into the global economy, and claims that the failure of the latest WTO summit at Cancún needn’t be permanent – provided both north and south are committed to multilateralism.

Why did the Brussels summit on the European Constitution collapse? Perhaps because it deserved to. The EU must move from government by elites who seek to manage, to one grounded on citizens’ support.

Who did it? Who is responsible for the failure of European heads of states and governments to agree to a proposed new Constitution at their inter-governmental conference (IGC) in Brussels on 12-13 December?

There is a temptingly easy answer.

The former Irish president and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, now architect of the Ethical Globalisation Initiative, talks to openDemocracy about the 21st century human rights agenda – one that connects universal principles to the daily lives and needs of the world’s poorest people.

The election of Lula as president of Brazil, says his special adviser, is the signal for a national project that will have a profound impact beyond the country's borders. The aim is a confident place for Brazil in the world commensurate with its immense size, energy and global character. 

The historic election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) as president of Brazil in October 2002 was a crucial stage in the development of a political project informed by the accumulated experience and thinking - tested in local and regional administration as well as earlier electoral defeats on the national stage - of a generation of Brazilian intellectuals and activists. Tarso Genro, former mayor of Porto Alegre and now head of the special secretariat of the new Economic and Social Development Council, maps this trajectory via a series of reflections on the problems and possibilities of a way of governing that is at once democratic, socialist, and popular. 

While Geoff Mulgan makes a strong case that learning has become central to effective governance, Tom Bentley registers a missing dimension in his argument: democracy itself. Learning is not just openness to international experience among policy-makers, or a better chain of command. It is a process that entails deep accountability, transparency, network-based cultures of information at every level – one that recasts relationships between governments and people.

In advance of a global summit of centre-left leaders in London, Geoff Mulgan has mapped a vital cultural shift in the inner life of British governance – from ‘we know best’ to ‘we learn best’. The openness and practicality of his argument make it both welcome and deceptively radical, says Anthony Barnett; but does it, like Tony Blair's 'Third Way' itself, also carry some Old Britain paternalism into the new media age?

The principle guiding successful governance is changing. Until recently, policy ideas evolved (and too often failed) within a vacuum of national experience and cultural superiority. Today, the global commons – a shared space of experience, knowledge, and experiment – is transforming the way political systems think and operate. One of the architects of the New Labour reform programme in Britain, writing in a personal capacity, maps a key transition.