Webeehive: the Knowledge Agency

Webeehive provides selected news, analysis and collective intelligence on global and European current events. Differently from traditional news agencies, Webeehive is a peer-reviewed knowledge agency!

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Featured Contents

This video catalogue represents a selection of the vast number of audiovisual products, news items and archives by the EU Commission - Audiovisual Productions
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Weekly Columns

Protecting Europe from its paradoxes
by Webeehive 
European citizens are almost homogenously turning to governments that are promising more “security” and more “protection” from today’s challenges and threats. European leaders’ discourse has downgraded the commitment to growth, cohesion and convergence. Similarly, self-interest policies overrun the pledge to inclusiveness, deregulation, competition and competitiveness. A re-mix of sovereign-style power and ethno-economic identity make the new euro-conservatism entangle both the idea of progress as well the one of liberty and liberism.
 
High oil prices and the return of “resource nationalism”
by Sergei Guriev   Anton Kolotilin   Konstantin Sonin
"The rising price of oil has been accompanied by nationalisations of oil assets, and the relationship is no mere coincidence. Recent research shows that higher oil prices trigger expropriations, particularly in countries with weak political institutions. We offer our humble contribution to what we see as 21st century-style nationalization, which means that foreign companies with capital and know-how are present in the country with their machinery, and they can earn profits, but never again can they be the owners of the gas and the petroleum" (Álvaro García Linera, Vice President, Bolivia)

Perspectives

Towards the French Presidency of the EU

Jean-Pierre Jouyet is French minister of state for European affairs. May 8, 2008, LSE

 

The West in a New World: what future for transatlantic relations?

The world has changed dramatically since the end of the Cold War, but the transatlantic relationship has yet to be reviewed. The time has come to rethink it, along with the concept of the West.

Pierre Hassner is an emeritus senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po. March 3, 2008, LSE  

Serbia faces uncertain political future

IHT 

Serbia faced an uncertain political future Monday as nationalists and their pro-Western rivals scrambled to forge alliances that would let them take power after bitterly divisive weekend elections.

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The Democratic Recession

by Thomas Friedman, NYT

There are two important recessions going on in the world today. One has gotten enormous attention. It’s the economic recession in America. But it will eventually pass, and the world will not be much worse for the wear. The other has gotten no attention. It’s called “the democratic recession,” and if it isn’t reversed, it will change the world for a long time.

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China's competing nationalisms
by David Shambaugh, International Herald Tribune
Which of the competing Chinese nationalisms will show up at the Olympics in August? An aggrieved, defensive nationalism, or a confident and proud nationalism?
Chinese society embodies both types, reflecting a deeper dualistic set of identities: one xenophobic type rooted in past indignities experienced by the Chinese people, the other more cosmopolitan version taking shape along with globalization and China's integration into the international community.
 
Democratising engagement
by Andrea Cornwall for Demos
Citizen engagement has become an essential part of modern government. Gone are the days when the best that citizens could expect was to be told what was good for them.
democ0.jpg Governments around the world are starting to realise that engaging their citizens more in shaping the decisions that affect their everyday lives improves both legitimacy and the quality of public services. In the UK, addressing the democratic deficit is high on the political agenda. But the current model of consultation does not bring in the diversity of voices and perspectives that would make citizen engagement genuinely democratic.
This pamphlet draws on the Institute for Development Studies research project Spaces for Change, examining international attempts to democratise citizen engagement. The case studies show that genuine, inclusive engagement requires investment to create an enabling environment and to support society’s least vocal and least powerful people to find and use their voices. As other countries lead the effort to involve the public in meaningful conversations about policy, the pamphlet argues that the UK has much to learn from their experience.
pdf Read full book (372Kb) 
  		 
A tale of two futures
by Paul Rogers for openDemocracy
Never make predictions, especially about the future, is a wise piece of advice. But prophecy can also be understood as "suggesting the possible." The possible large-scale consequences of current global trends have been explored in an earlier column in this series (see "A century on the edge, 1945-2045," 29 December 2007). The future imagined, hoped for or feared today may not be so distant, however. What might the world look like only a little more than a decade ahead, in 2020? Here are two scenarios.
 
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