Skip to main content
Hello Visitor!     Log In
Share |

Volume 3 Issue 5

The Future of Democracy Challenged in the Digital Age

James Surwilo
 Get Full Text in PDF The SIMPOL Solution: A New way to think about solving the world’s Biggest Problems, 2018, Amherst: Prometheus Reviewed by James Surwillo* In The Simpol Solution, John Bunzl and Nick Duffell take a multi-disciplinary approach to what systems theorist Horst Rittel forty-five years ago called a “wicked problem”. Wicked problems are insoluble, contradictable, multi-... Read more
John Bunzl
 Get Full Text in PDF Abstract When considering governments’ failure to act on global problems such as climate change, the comment often heard is “all that is required is the political will”; the implication being that governments are somehow negligent, irresponsible and do not care sufficiently about such issues. The article explains that it is not that governments do not want to solve... Read more
Goran Bandov, Nikolina Herceg Kolman
 Get Full Text in PDF Abstract Europeanization is a highly complex phenomenon researched through various approaches, methodological frames and concepts. One of the leading discussions in literature is whether Europeanization happens as a top-down or a bottom-up phenomenon. At the same time, other approaches emerge and Europeanization is increasingly being researched as a multi-directional... Read more
Robert Van Harten
 Get Full Text in PDF Abstract Quantum physics with quantum entanglement as its crown, has shaken up science as we knew it. ‘Is another powerful change in the offing?,’ we can ask. The consequences of implementing the universal truth that ‘the force is (always) anterior to the instrument’ into our general scientific approach, will be phenomenal and earthshaking. As it reverses... Read more
Ivo Šlaus
 Get Full Text in PDF Abstract In our interdependent and fast changing world, every individual’s future depends on the wellbeing of all humanity. Transformative out-of-the-box thinking is urgently required, especially in South-East Europe, which occupies a unique position in the world. Historically, it has been the crossroads of cultures and civilizations. Its strategic geographic location... Read more
Dimitrios Kyriakou
 Get Full Text in PDF Abstract To measure the debt crisis in Europe in general, and in Greece in particular, there are different levels of analysis, rarely examined together: at the global, EU and the national levels. The global level involves the origins of the crisis in the infra-regulated practices of financial entities worldwide, whereas the EU level reflects architectural weaknesses... Read more
João Caraça
 Get Full Text in PDF Abstract The emergence of science-based industries after the Second World War, characterized by high technological intensity, created deep impacts on the economy, society, and on the scientific establishment itself. Science became a critical factor of competitiveness and economic growth and technology-driven research began to attract a majority of science-devoted... Read more
Winston P. Nagan, Brittany DiCaprio
 Get Full Text in PDF Abstract The anthropological literature has given us a key to understanding life in a very elementary community. Life revolves around human beings energized to satisfy human needs. Anthropologists also identify the structures that emerge from society which are specialized in whatever degree of efficacy to facilitate securing those needs. When we map needs onto... Read more
Carlos Blanco
 Get Full Text in PDF Abstract This paper addresses the problem of how to identify a small and parsimonious set of principles or “postulates” that may help us understand the great theoretical foundations of the social sciences. From a philosophical point of view, it presents ten premises that are perhaps essential for any attempt at elaborating a social theory. When one tries to elaborate... Read more
Ashok Natarajan
 Get Full Text in PDF Abstract As society evolves in consciousness, the character of its leadership evolves as well. The physical stage of human development is characterized by the rule of physical strength and directed by military leaders with the capacity to mobilize and exercise physical force through violence. In the vital-social stage, leadership shifts to the authority of custom and... Read more
Thomas Reuter
 Get Full Text in PDF Abstract The ideological war between globalism and resurgent nationalism in recent years is seen as an invitation to take sides by many intellectuals. Demonising or dismissing followers of the new right-wing nationalism is easy, but the outcome of the Brexit referendum and the last presidential election in the USA should have taught us that ignoring the genuine... Read more
Dora Damjanović
 Get Full Text in PDF Abstract Almost thirty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, it has become all too easy to say that the Wall “fell,” but what does that actually mean? The Wall did not vanish on its own. Rather it was the people, in a figurative sense, who unhinged it before the hammers and chisels could tear it down. It was the people who insisted on resisting the German... Read more
Janani Ramanathan, Garry Jacobs
 Get Full Text in PDF Abstract Great achievements of the past hold invaluable lessons for the future. Often we deify the leader and celebrate the outcome, but overlook the underlying principles they reflect. The American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s is a testimony to the combined power of an idea, the catalytic role of dedicated individuals and the power of token actions in... Read more
Frank Dixon
 Get Full Text in PDF Abstract System change is the most important sustainability issue. Flawed economic and political systems compel all companies to degrade the environment and society. For nearly all of US history, these systems enabled vested interests to strongly influence government and unfairly concentrate public wealth, in large part by deceiving, dividing and disempowering... Read more
Hazel Henderson
 Get Full Text in PDF Abstract Recent evidence is marshalled concerning the impact on democracies of the global explosion of electronic platforms and digital companies, based initially on the US government- supported and now worldwide Internet. These companies, driving Wall Street stock prices, are still largely unregulated and unchecked by conventional anti-trust regulations, especially... Read more
The articles in this issue of Cadmus address some of the most pressing opportunities and challenges posed to humanity in the 21st century. Inspired by historical insights, they examine the process of social evolution and the successful and unsuccessful responses that have been the source of earlier crises and the impetus for the great advances of the 20th century. The human mind has a forward... Read more