Documents political aspect 316 results

"The Chaos Machine is the story of how the world was driven mad by social media. The election of populists like Trump and Bolsonaro; strife and genocide in countries like Myanmar; the rampant spread of COVID-19 conspiracy theories as deadly as the pandemic itself; all of these are products of a breakdown in our social and political lives, a breakdown driven by the apps, companies and algorithms that compete constantly for our attention.
Max Fisher is a leading New York Times technology reporter whose work has covered the way that social media sites - driven increasingly by artificial intelligence rather than human ingenuity - push users towards more and more extreme positions, deepening the divisions in society in pursuit of greater engagement and profit. With extraordinary access to the most powerful players in Silicon Valley, and with testimonies from around the world of the havoc being wreaked by our online selves, The Chaos Machine shows us how we got to this uniquely perilous moment - and how we might get out of it."

"Social media connected the world—and gave rise to fake news and increasing polarization. It is paramount, MIT professor Sinan Aral says, that we recognize the outsize effect social media has on us—on our politics, our economy, and even our personal health—in order to steer today's social technology toward its great promise while avoiding the ways it can pull us apart.
Drawing on decades of his own research and business experience, Aral goes under the hood of the most powerful social networks to tackle the critical question of just how much social media actually shapes our choices, for better or worse. He shows how the tech behind social media offers the same set of behavior influencing levers to everyone who hopes to change the way we think and act—from Russian hackers to brand marketers—which is why its consequences affect everything from elections to business, dating to health. Along the way, he covers a wide array of topics, including how network effects fuel Twitter's and Facebook's massive growth, the neuroscience of how social media affects our brains, the real consequences of fake news, the power of social ratings, and the impact of social media on our kids.
In mapping out strategies for being more thoughtful consumers of social media, The Hype Machine offers the definitive guide to understanding and harnessing for good the technology that has redefined our world overnight."

"Over the past decades, under the cover of "innovation," technology companies have successfully resisted regulation and have even begun to seize power from governments themselves. Facial recognition firms track citizens for police surveillance. Cryptocurrency has wiped out the personal savings of millions and threatens the stability of the global financial system. Spyware companies sell digital intelligence tools to anyone who can afford them. This new reality--where unregulated technology has become a forceful instrument for autocrats around the world--is terrible news for democracies and citizens.
In The Tech Coup, Marietje Schaake offers a behind-the-scenes account of how technology companies crept into nearly every corner of our lives and our governments. She takes us beyond the headlines to high-stakes meetings with human rights defenders, business leaders, computer scientists, and politicians to show how technologies--from social media to artificial intelligence--have gone from being heralded as utopian to undermining the pillars of our democracies. To reverse this existential power imbalance, Schaake outlines game-changing solutions to empower elected officials and citizens alike. Democratic leaders can--and must--resist the influence of corporate lobbying and reinvent themselves as dynamic, flexible guardians of our digital world.
Drawing on her experiences in the halls of the European Parliament and among Silicon Valley insiders, Schaake offers a frightening look at our modern tech-obsessed world--and a clear-eyed view of how democracies can build a better future before it is too late."

"Taking Back Control? examines the ongoing tug of war between the forces of globalism and those of democracy, between centralisation and decentralisation, and between the unifica­tion and the differentiation of states and state systems. On this territory are fought the defining geopolitical struggles of our era, which will determine the advance of global capitalism and shape the prospects for its social and democratic regulation.
The neoliberal revolution of the 1990s gave rise to a politics of scale aimed at the centralisation and unification of states and state systems. This was the "New World Order" proclaimed by the United States in the wake of the Soviet collapse. But it proved to be ungovernable by democratic means. Instead, it was ruled through a combina­tion of technocracy and mercatocracy, failing spectacularly to provide for political stability, social legitimacy, and international peace. Marked by a series of economic and institutional crises, hyperglobalisation called forward various kinds of political countermovements that rebelled against and ultimately stopped the upward trans­fer of state authority in its tracks.
Exploring the possibility for states and the societies they govern to take back control over their collective fate, Wolfgang Streeck formulates a renewed theory of the state in political economy. Drawing on the work of Karl Polanyi and John Maynard Keynes, he discusses the potential outlines of a state system that allows for democratic governance within and peaceful cooperation between sovereign nation­states."

"Southern European welfare states have historically been characterised by the absence of national safety nets. However, these countries have witnessed a succession of policy reforms over the past three decades. In 2020, the Spanish Parliament unanimously approved the ‘Ingreso Mínimo Vital' to finally cease being the only European country without a minimum income scheme at the national level. This article investigates the political and institutional mechanisms that enabled this policy reform, which was particularly unexpected due to the fragmentation of the party system along both ideological and territorial dimensions. To solve this puzzle, I employ the ‘explaining-outcome' process tracing method and rely on qualitative data from official documents, party manifestos and parliamentary interventions spanning from 2015 to 2020. In addition, I build on ten expert interviews with relevant actors directly involved in the reform, conducted between 2022 and 2024. Findings illustrate that inclusive path departure was possible through two political stages. First, left-wing party competition and strong socio-political demand (2014–2020) allowed for the introduction of the scheme into the political agenda. Second, territorial politics and the external shock of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic ultimately contributed to mitigating expected political cleavages during the parliamentary process."


This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.

"It is one of the most pressing and controversial questions of our time -- vehemently debated, steeped in ideology, profoundly divisive. Who should be allowed to immigrate and who not? What are the arguments for and against limiting the numbers? We are supposedly a nation of immigrants, and yet our policies reflect deep anxieties and the quirks of short-term self-interest, with effective legislation snagging on thousand-mile-long security fences and the question of how long and arduous the path to citizenship should be.

In Exodus, Paul Collier, the world-renowned economist and bestselling author of The Bottom Billion, clearly and concisely lays out the effects of encouraging or restricting migration. Drawing on original research and case studies, he explores this volatile issue from three perspectives: that of the migrants themselves, that of the people they leave behind, and that of the host societies where they relocate.

Immigration is a simple economic equation, but its effects are complex. Exodus confirms how crucial it will be that public policy face and address all of its ramifications. Sharply written and brilliantly clarifying, Exodus offers a provocative analysis of an issue that affects us all"

"Lorsque nous avons publié l'article de Gabriel Salerno, fin 2018, qui présentait les diverses interprétations de l'effondrement identifiables dans la littérature sur le sujet, nous étions loin d'imaginer qu'un an plus tard, une rupture majeure — la Covid-19 — allait bouleverser les sociétés à l'échelle planétaire. Bien entendu, la crise sanitaire n'a pas « effondré » le monde dans lequel nous vivons, mais elle a montré la grande vulnérabilité des sociétés et signifié à l'homme qu'il n'était pas à l'abri de grands ébranlements. Nous avons donc invité Gabriel Salerno à revenir sur le concept d'effondrement et ce qui a pu le faire évoluer depuis 2018.
Après avoir rappelé que les représentations de l'effondrement se déclinent à diverses échelles d'espace et de temps, Gabriel Salerno précise les questionnements philosophiques qui les accompagnent. À commencer par la façon d'appréhender le progrès scientifique et technique qui, jusqu'ici, a accompagné le développement des sociétés, en particulier en Occident, mais qui n'est plus unanimement considéré comme un vecteur positif dans le processus civilisateur. Cette remise en question de la place du progrès, jusqu'ici moteur de l'Histoire, brouille la vision de l'avenir de l'humanité et interroge sur le sens de l'Histoire. Les trois grandes interprétations de l'effondrement oscillent entre une vision cyclique, une vision progressiste et une vision décliniste de l'Histoire ; mais on constate, selon l'auteur, une tendance à un raffermissement des positions, voire une radicalisation, entre ceux qui acceptent de considérer l'effondrement et ceux qui refusent. Outre les clivages relatifs aux questions environnementales et sociales, l'auteur pointe une crise de la cognition, qui s'observe notamment au travers de la diffusion des théories du complot. Pour éviter que les thèses conspirationnistes n'entravent la cohésion et l'analyse objective des changements à l'œuvre dans notre civilisation, il est important de remédier à la perte de sens en cours et de remobiliser les sociétés en redonnant un sens à l'Histoire — proposer un nouvel élan pour conjurer les risques d'effondrement… S.D."

"This report investigates the political dimensions of social cohesion in Europe, offering a 20-year perspective derived from 10 rounds of the European Social Survey. It scrutinises trends and regional variations in political participation, examining correlations with levels of institutional distrust and discontent. In addition, the report explores political engagement amid the COVID-19 pandemic, utilising insights from the Living, working and COVID-19 e-survey. Unemployment emerges as the primary driver of political disengagement, a pivotal finding of the analysis.

Furthermore, the report uncovers significant disparities in political engagement across European regions. Regions with well-educated populations tend to exhibit higher levels of political activity, and economic prosperity and migration rates have only a modest influence on political activity.

The report also highlights the variation in institutional distrust across regions. Nordic countries display markedly lower levels of distrust in their institutions than continental countries, whereas in eastern European and Mediterranean countries levels are markedly higher."

"Le thème du manque de vision est devenu récurrent dans les commentaires de la vie politique française. C'est pourquoi, à quelques semaines des élections présidentielles (dont on pourrait souhaiter qu'elles soient une occasion de proposer de réelles visions d'avenir à moyen-long terme aux citoyens français), Futuribles a décidé de creuser cette question en publiant une série d'articles sur le déficit de vision politique, les raisons de ce déficit et les moyens d'y remédier. Jean Haëntjens nous livre ici son analyse, en s'appuyant sur les enseignements à tirer des politiques locales.



Après avoir souligné les défis civilisationnels, nombreux, auxquels les sociétés, en particulier européennes et occidentales, sont confrontées, et auxquels leurs dirigeants sont appelés à répondre, il montre comment, à l'échelon local, des villes et des territoires ont pris le contrepied du paradigme dominant du développement à tout prix, et proposé de nouveaux modèles civilisationnels. Agissant concrètement, en concertation et coproduction des politiques avec des acteurs de tous horizons, ces territoires ont développé des initiatives en matière culturelle, écologique, de mobilité, etc., qui offrent de nouvelles visions d'avenir à leurs habitants, assises sur d'autres valeurs. Ces nouveaux modèles politiques, que l'on retrouve dans de nombreux pays européens, constituent un premier socle qui pourrait inspirer l'Union européenne dans sa recherche d'un modèle civilisationnel en phase avec les exigences actuelles (réchauffement, transition, respect des droits et libertés humaines…) si tant est que les dirigeants politiques de ses États membres soient en mesure de les apprivoiser collectivement…"