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The paper "American democracy is distress: The failure of social education" presents several "symptoms of democracy's dysfunction in the United States". These include the extreme reliance on campaign contributions, giving the donors--economic elites and groups representing business, frequently operating at a transnational level--an excessive power in determining government policy in areas such as the environment, media or fiscal regulations, as profusely exemplified in the paper. At the same time, policies impose restrictions on citizens' rights in areas such as voting, healthcare or employment. In this sense, the power gap between citizens and economic elites in the form of a global capital is growing and, as it goes undisputed and unchallenged, menaces the core of democracy itself. This is a paper worth reading. Not only does it present an argument--and this is something to be praised and cherished--but it also sustains its argument on a sound and systematic analysis of documents and research. As such, this is not a trivial paper. The data, analysis and argument the author develops call for our attention and challenges us to reflect on whether and how the situation described for the US resonates with the situation of those currently living in Europe.

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Over the past few decades, a variety of groups have begun to argue that the US and European patent systems do not adequately represent the public interest in their decision making and that they need to undergo fundamental changes to their structure and orientation. These challengers have adopted similar strategies-in terms of the venues chosen and the arguments, evidence, and rhetoric used-in each context. However, they have experienced more success in Europe than in the United States. This paper begins to explain this difference by arguing that the US and European patent policy domains have different 'expertise barriers'-formal and informal rules that make it difficult for those without the knowledge that is recognized as relevant and legitimate in that domain to engage as equals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey redefined its geographical security environment over the last decade by deepening its engagement with neighboring regions, especially with the Middle East. The Arab spring, however, challenged not only the authoritarian regimes in the region but also Turkish foreign policy strategy. This strategy was based on cooperation with the existing regimes and did not prioritize the democracy promotion dimension of the issue. The upheavals in the Arab world, therefore, created a dilemma between ethics and self-interest in Turkish foreign policy. Amid the flux of geopolitical shifts in one of the world's most unstable regions, Turkish foreign policy-making elites are attempting to reformulate their strategies to overcome this inherent dilemma. The central argument of the present paper is that Turkey could make a bigger and more constructive impact in the region by trying to take a more detached stand and through controlled activism. Thus, Turkey could take action through the formation of coalitions and in close alignments with the United States and Europe rather than basing its policies on a self-attributed unilateral pro-activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Levels of rising political distrust in the USA and parts of Europe attracted political scientists’ attention in the 1990s, and urged them to look at possible consequences of this phenomenon for the functioning of democracies and social life. Approximately during the same period, from a sociological viewpoint, social capital theorists started studying the effects of declining social capital on political and economic life. In this article, we looked at the relationship between political distrust and social capital from an interdisciplinary perspective. We studied the relationship in six European countries from three regions (North-West, South and East), and the USA, and we were interested in the question of whether this relationship varies over the regions, or whether it is approximately the same everywhere. We used ISPP data from the 2004 wave, which included a range of social capital indicators and political distrust items. Social capital was subdivided into four dimensions, namely, networks (membership of organizations), interpersonal or social trust, social norms (citizenship norms), and linking social capital (political activities). First we studied the effect of political distrust on these four dimensions of social capital, while controlling for other variables such as political efficacy, political interest and a set of socio-structural background variables. One of our main findings was that the only significant effect of political distrust we found throughout all countries was a negative effect on one dimension of social capital, namely, interpersonal trust: the more people distrust politicians and people in government, the less they trust other people in general, even when controlled for all other variables. The reverse relationship led us to the same conclusion: the more people tend to trust people in general, the less they distrust politics, a result we found in all countries. This finding refutes the claim that there is no or either only a very weak relationship between political and social trust, as some have strongly argued before. Other important political attitudes connected to social capital were political interest and political efficacy, and for political distrust it was external efficacy. Significant socio-economic factors were religiousness and educational level for membership of voluntary organizations, educational level for interpersonal trust, religiousness for citizenship norms, and educational level and age for political activities. The reciprocal relationship was strongest in the USA and North-Western Europe, as were the explained variances of our (more extensive) regression models. In Southern and Eastern Europe other factors appear to be at work which influence both social capital and political distrust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the political community of Europe in reference to terrorism, freedom of speech, and European security. It states that the threat of terrorist networks in Europe has prompted the European governments to establish a new set of security measures, wherein the new counterterrorism legislation revised and extended the existing policies. It says that the potential pitfalls of human rights in the own counterterrorism policies of Europe raised concerns as it joined the media in criticizing the human rights violation of the U.S. government in Guantanamo, Cuba and Iraq. It adds that the freedom of speech, which is a foundational principle of liberal democratic governance in Europe was challenged by the extent on which the anti-terrorism policies was adopted.