Global civil society as a phenomenon of the modern world

Author(s):  
Roman Shak
Author(s):  
Alejandro Milcíades Peña

The chapter discusses the relationship between social movements and peaceful change. First, it reviews the way this relationship has been elaborated in IR constructivist and critical analyses, as part of transnational activist networks, global civil society, and transnational social movements, while considering the blind sides left by the dominant treatment of these entities as positive moral actors. Second, the chapter reviews insights from the revolution and political violence literature, a literature usually sidelined in IR debates about civil society, in order to cast a wider relational perspective on how social movements participate in, and are affected by, interactive dynamic processes that may escalate into violent outcomes at both local and international levels.


Author(s):  
К. В. К. В. Захаренко

In our state there are a number of complex problems in the field of information security that require urgent and radical solution. That’s why theoretical, methodological and political research of the problem of information security in Ukraine, which is experiencing a crisis phase of its development, is becoming especially relevant today. In order to develop an effective system of national information security, a detailed study of the experience of the leading countries of the world, which carry out effective information protection of their states and citizens, is necessary. Today there are national information security systems that have really proven their effectiveness and structural and functional perfection. Indeed, the successful development of a democratic state and civil society is possible only if the information resources are properly used and the state policy is implemented, which would ensure a high level of national information security. In the modern world, the basic principles and tools for the formation of effective information protection of the national security space have been developed already. At the same time, Ukraine needs to apply adequately the foreign experience of the most successful countries in this regard, correctly transforming it taking into account national specificity and the unique role of Ukraine in modern geopolitics. As an important indicator of the protection of citizens, society and state, information security is an integral part of national security. Therefore, its determination mainly focuses on preventing harmful effects that may result in various information threats, as well as eliminating and overcoming those effects with the least possible harm to society and humans. In this aspect, the study of not only the philosophical and phenomenological and socio-psychological determinants of information security of citizens, but also political and legal resources and mechanisms of protection of the information space of the state in the conditions of the functioning of the global information society acquires a special significance. А content analysis of the notion «information security» as a form of national security aimed at ensuring human rights and freedoms in relation to free information access, creation and implementation of secure information technologies and protection of the property rights of all participants of information activities, includes consideration of possible diversions in this area, especially at the international level. Today there is a situation of incompleteness of formation and fragmentary filling of the information space content of the country and the legislative base in our society. The efficiency of the information weapon itself has increased too quickly due to the rapid information circulation and the spread of information networks. As a result, mass media forms the «mass» person of our time, in turn this fact displaces traditional direct contacts, by dissociating people and replacing them by computers and television. At the same time it gives rise to apathy, uncritical attitude and indifference, it complicates the adequate orientation, causing the social disorientation. Informative safety has the human measuring. Therefore an important role in opposition to destructive external and internal informative influences is played by education of citizens. Her proper level called to provide the state and civil society. An in fact uneducated population easily is under destructive influence of informative threats of the modern global world. Unfortunately, Ukraine, does not have sufficient resources and technologies for adequate opposition to the external threats. Taking into account it strategy of forming of the national system of informative safety of our state can be only the maximal leveling of destructive influences from the side of external informative threats. To the end it is necessary to carry out democratic reforms Ukraine, generate civil society, to provide functioning of the legal state and increase of political and civil culture of population. At the same time it is necessary to bear reformers in a mind, that global nature of informative society predetermines rapid transformation of external threats in internal, converting them into permanent calls which are opened out within the limits of national in a civilized manner-informative and socio-political space. Besides modern global informative systems, mass medias, network facilities do a limit between external and internal threats almost unnoticeable.


2017 ◽  
pp. 15-66
Author(s):  
Raphaël Fišera

Since the mid-1970s, the Western Saharan conflict has defied both resolution and understanding, as an entire people, split between refugee camps in the Algerian desert and the Moroccan occupied territory, has been waiting for the international community to effectively enforce its right to self-determination. Through a combination of legal and geopolitical perspectives on the issues related to the exploitation of the rich natural resources in the last African territory still to be decolonised, this research paper will argue that transnational corporations (TNCs) can directly affect the welfare and the self-determination of a people, while the means to enforce corporate accountability remain limited and poorly adapted to the current global realities. The recent media campaigns led by NGOs against TNCs active in this area demonstrate the key role of global civil society in the emergence of corporate accountability and in reminding individuals, corporations and governments of their ethical and legal obligations towards indigenous peoples such as the Saharawi’s. This paper will first consider the historical and socio-economic context of the conflict and the importance of natural resources in this dispute (chapter I) before addressing the legal dimension of the exploitation of these resources by the occupying power and third parties (II). I will then argue that the decision of Morocco to involve Western oil and gas TNCs in the Western Sahara represents a complicating factor to the conflict and has created a new, corporate playing field for the conflicting parties (III). The last chapter of this analysis will address the current political and legal mechanisms for ensuring the accountability of such TNCs and assess whether campaigns by global civil society actors provide an effective, alternative avenue for corporate accountability (IV).Published online: 11 December 2017


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