Protests Sponsored by the State

A new approach to ruling has emerged in recent decades that is shaking up the relationship between the state and society. Governments in diverse areas of the world have been mobilising citizens to execute and give legitimacy to their policy aims, in the guise of a...

City Squeeze

In 1956 a giant iron and steel factory opened in Wuhan that was so important Mao Zedong visited it twice. Tellingly, the plant was situated in the centre of the city – an example of socialist city planning that places factories and giant squares at the centre of civic...

Airborne Solution

Governments need an incentive to take the hard decisions necessary to address climate change, but many, particularly in the developing world, tend to put off taking decisive action because the costs of climate mitigation may exceed the payoffs and take decades to be...

Power Plays

For all the publicity and enthusiasm generated around renewable energies such as solar, wind and biomass, their actual adoption has not been so remarkable. Although their usage in electricity generation has increased from 0.6 per cent of the global total in 1973 to...

The Sovereign State Feels the Heat

Dr Daniel Matthews of the Faculty of Law is an admirer of English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who defined sovereignty as it is commonly understood: escaping nature under the security and protection of the state through a social contract. Hobbes was writing 400 years...