The future of polarisation in Europe: relative cosmopolitanism and democracy

Abstract One of the central features of our societies is an increasing polarisation between communitarian and cosmopolitan positions. The theoretically sound and differentiated concepts are increasingly being escalated and misused in political practice by authoritarian populists and polarising pushers who try to pull the undecided to their side and tear society apart. Two essential agreements of the post-war period are increasingly being called into question: The European consensus, which considers European unification as an essential achievement and goal of political actors, and the democratic consensus, which states that representative democracy is the undisputed best form of government. In this article, after an introductory definition of polarisation, two future scenarios are developed. In the scenario “Polarised Europe”, polarisation is extrapolated into the future and discussed with its serious consequences for the democratic and European consensus. The second scenario “Democratised Europe” shows how the concept of a relative cosmopolitanism can mitigate polarisation and what steps could possibly be taken to constructively turn it into a more democratic direction.

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The future of democracy: the end of democracy as we know it

Kybernetes ◽

10.1108/k-08-2018-0452 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 48 (10) ◽

pp. 2237-2265

Author(s):

Miguel Goede

Keyword(s):

Artificial Intelligence ◽

Representative Democracy ◽

Content Type ◽

Universal Form ◽

Form Of Government ◽

The World ◽

The Future ◽

Global Government ◽

The Ideal

Purpose The purpose of this article is to explore the future of democracy, given the transition the countries of the world are experiencing. Methodology The paper draws on literature concerning democracy, ICT and artificial intelligence. A framework for understanding the working of democracy is developed. This framework or model is tested in 20 countries, and conclusions are presented. Findings Globally, there is a shift taking place away from representative democracy toward less democratic forms of government. Originality Most studies are implicitly dogmatic in assuming that representative democracy is a superior form of government. The influences of corporations, media and the elite are moving representative democracy away from the ideal of democracy. Conclusions The future of democracy is uncertain. It is not likely that representative democracy will become the universal form of government. Global government is possible, but it is not likely to be a representative democracy.

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Managing Water for the Future: The Case of England and Wales

Managing Water Resources, Past and Present ◽

10.1093/oso/9780199267644.003.0011 ◽

2004 ◽

Author(s):

Ian Byatt

Keyword(s):

Social Interest ◽

England And Wales ◽

For Profit ◽

Public Corporations ◽

Length Relationship ◽

The Social ◽

The Future ◽

Post War ◽

One Year ◽

Definition Of

To understand how things have worked is the best preparation for looking ahead. So I will not gaze into a crystal ball but explain what is happening in England and Wales. I will, however, set out and discuss some scenarios for the future. In 1989 the water industry emerged from the nationalization era which it had entered only fifteen years earlier. It was a late entrant into the world of public corporations that had emerged between the wars, and particularly after 1945—a world that was a product of Fabian thinking and wartime experience. The Fabians provided the intellectual base for ‘gas and water socialism’ in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Two world wars encouraged people to believe that the state could manage our basic industries efficiently, and the inter-war depression drew attention to deficiencies in the working of the market economy. ‘Gas and water socialism’ started in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, in the municipalities, with gas, water, electricity, and tramways. In the inter-war years there was a movement towards regional, then national operations, culminating in the post-war Nationalization Acts. Consolidation in water followed slowly. The amalgamation of municipal undertakings into ten Regional Water Authorities did not take place until 1973. It brought a host of water and wastewater undertakings onto a river basin basis. A further step was taken in 1983 with the substitution of smaller, more executive boards for the much larger bodies that had included local authority representatives. The model for nationalization in the UK developed from the experience of Herbert Morrison, a key figure in the post-war Labour Government. It involved an arm’s-length relationship with government. By the 19705, the flaws in this model were evident. The boards of the nationalized industries were required to act in the social interest, subject to breaking even financially. The definition of the social interest was the responsibility of the boards, without any clear mechanisms for ministers to influence their decisions. It was never clear what ‘breaking-even’, ‘taking one year with the next’, meant in practice. Moreover, having delegated social functions to such a public not-for-profit body, ministers found it difficult to stay clear.

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Challenges of Fear Conditioning Research in the Age of RDoC

Zeitschrift für Psychologie ◽

10.1027/2151-2604/a000303 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 225 (3) ◽

pp. 189-199 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Tina B. Lonsdorf ◽

Jan Richter

Keyword(s):

Fear Conditioning ◽

Clinical Diagnosis ◽

Research Domain Criteria ◽

Major Focus ◽

The Future ◽

Definition Of ◽

Methodological Considerations ◽

Research Domain

Abstract. As the criticism of the definition of the phenotype (i.e., clinical diagnosis) represents the major focus of the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) initiative, it is somewhat surprising that discussions have not yet focused more on specific conceptual and procedural considerations of the suggested RDoC constructs, sub-constructs, and associated paradigms. We argue that we need more precise thinking as well as a conceptual and methodological discussion of RDoC domains and constructs, their interrelationships as well as their experimental operationalization and nomenclature. The present work is intended to start such a debate using fear conditioning as an example. Thereby, we aim to provide thought-provoking impulses on the role of fear conditioning in the age of RDoC as well as conceptual and methodological considerations and suggestions to guide RDoC-based fear conditioning research in the future.

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The future of the Russian intervention in the Syrian crisis

Tikrit Journal For Political Science ◽

10.25130/poltic.v0i21.233 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 57

Author(s):

Alaa Taleb Khalaf

Keyword(s):

Future Scenarios ◽

Syrian Crisis ◽

The Third ◽

The Future

The present research aims at arriving the motives of the Russian intervention in the Syrian crisis, in the first section, As well as the positions of regional and international countries in favor of this intervention and opposition to it, in the second section, And the out looking of the future of this intervention and keeping an open crisis in Syria by posing future scenarios and the likelihood of one of them, and the jungle in the third section.

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Epilogue

10.1093/oso/9780190697907.003.0010 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Willeke Sandler

Keyword(s):

The Future ◽

Specific Association ◽

Nature Preservation ◽

Post War

This short epilogue takes the story of the leading colonialists into the post-1945 period and assesses the historiographical narrative of post-war colonial amnesia. This amnesia did not begin in 1945, however, but in the 1930s and 1940s through the work of colonialists. In their efforts to situate overseas colonialism within the needs of the present and of value for the future, colonialists had created an overly positive narrative that emphasized an inherent German aptitude for administering Africa. After the war, these ideals could find expression through development or nature preservation, even though (or perhaps because) they no longer bore a specific association with Germany’s past of formal colonialism.

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Neuroethics

10.1093/oso/9780198786832.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Keyword(s):

Brain Function ◽

Ethical Issues ◽

Wearable Technologies ◽

Definition Of Death ◽

Populations At Risk ◽

The Future ◽

Aging Adults ◽

Definition Of ◽

The Brain ◽

New Criteria

We have new answers to how the brain works and tools which can now monitor and manipulate brain function. Rapid advances in neuroscience raise critical questions with which society must grapple. What new balances must be struck between diagnosis and prediction, and invasive and noninvasive interventions? Are new criteria needed for the clinical definition of death in cases where individuals are eligible for organ donation? How will new mobile and wearable technologies affect the future of growing children and aging adults? To what extent is society responsible for protecting populations at risk from environmental neurotoxins? As data from emerging technologies converge and are made available on public databases, what frameworks and policies will maximize benefits while ensuring privacy of health information? And how can people and communities with different values and perspectives be maximally engaged in these important questions? Neuroethics: Anticipating the Future is written by scholars from diverse disciplines—neurology and neuroscience, ethics and law, public health, sociology, and philosophy. With its forward-looking insights and considerations for the future, the book examines the most pressing current ethical issues.

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Introduction

10.1093/oso/9780198814337.003.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Jenny Andersson

Keyword(s):

Cold War ◽

Critical Systems Thinking ◽

Critical Systems ◽

Political Ideologies ◽

The Future ◽

History Of ◽

Post War ◽

The 1960S ◽

The Cold War ◽

Future Visions

The book proposes that the Cold War period saw a key debate about the future as singular or plural. Forms of Cold War science depicted the future as a closed sphere defined by delimited probabilities, but were challenged by alternative notions of the future as a potentially open realm with limits set only by human creativity. The Cold War was a struggle for temporality between the two different future visions of the two blocs, each armed with its set of predictive technologies, but these were rivaled, from the 1960s on, by future visions emerging from decolonization and the emergence of a set of alternative world futures. Futures research has reflected and enacted this debate. In so doing, it offers a window to the post-war history of the social sciences and of contemporary political ideologies of liberalism and neoliberalism, Marxism and revisionist Marxism, critical-systems thinking, ecologism, and postcolonialism.

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Future Changes in Tropical Cyclone and Easterly Wave Characteristics over Tropical North America

Oceans ◽

10.3390/oceans2020024 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2 (2) ◽

pp. 429-447

Author(s):

Christian Dominguez ◽

James M. Done ◽

Cindy L. Bruyère

Keyword(s):

North America ◽

North Atlantic Ocean ◽

Mitigation Strategies ◽

Track Density ◽

Caribbean Region ◽

Tropical Cyclogenesis ◽

Future Scenarios ◽

Southern Mexico ◽

The North ◽

The Future

Tropical Cyclones (TCs) and Easterly Waves (EWs) are the most important phenomena in Tropical North America. Thus, examining their future changes is crucial for adaptation and mitigation strategies. The Community Earth System Model drove a three-member regional model multi-physics ensemble under the Representative Concentration Pathways 8.5 emission scenario for creating four future scenarios (2020–2030, 2030–2040, 2050–2060, 2080–2090). These future climate runs were analyzed to determine changes in EW and TC features: rainfall, track density, contribution to seasonal rainfall, and tropical cyclogenesis. Our study reveals that a mean increase of at least 40% in the mean annual TC precipitation is projected over northern Mexico and southwestern USA. Slight positive changes in EW track density are projected southwards 10° N over the North Atlantic Ocean for the 2050–2060 and 2080–2090 periods. Over the Eastern Pacific Ocean, a mean increment in the EW activity is projected westwards across the future decades. Furthermore, a mean reduction by up to 60% of EW rainfall, mainly over the Caribbean region, Gulf of Mexico, and central-southern Mexico, is projected for the future decades. Tropical cyclogenesis over both basins slightly changes in future scenarios (not significant). We concluded that these variations could have significant impacts on regional precipitation.

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OMNES QVI SVNT EIVS ORDINIS A POMPEIO EVOCANTVR: THE PROCONSUL POMPEIUS’ SENATORIAL MEETING IN 49 b.c.

The Classical Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0009838821000057 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-10

Author(s):

Roman M. Frolov

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

Domestic Politics ◽

Good Reason ◽

The Political ◽

Political Actors ◽

Republican Rome ◽

The Future ◽

Scholarly Attention

In his Bellum Ciuile, Caesar reports the events of 1 January 49 with these words (1.3.1): misso ad uesperum senatu omnes qui sunt eius ordinis a Pompeio euocantur. laudat <promptos> Pompeius atque in posterum confirmat, segniores castigat atque incitat. When the Senate had been dismissed towards dusk, all who belonged to that order were summoned by Pompeius. He praised the determined and encouraged them for the future while criticizing and stirring up those who were less eager to act. This meeting has not attracted much scholarly attention and admittedly for a good reason: other circumstances of the outbreak of the Civil War are, perhaps, more significant for understanding the events as well as the intentions and decisions of the political actors. The importance of this gathering lies, however, not so much in what its role might have been in the developments of the year 49 but rather in the context of the phenomenon of the promagistrates’ interference in the domestic politics of Late Republican Rome.

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