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In the past, we tended to see cities as dirty, unnatural, and isolating places; today, citizens and urban planners alike are starting to see their potential for generating widespread well-being at low financial and environmental cost. People want the streets to make room for pedestrians and bicyclists, and for civic engagement and for sharing. 

There is an all-enclosing commons-economy which has been successful for billions of years: The biosphere is neither efficient nor does it know property. Nature embodies the commons paradigm par excellence and can therefore provide us with a powerful methodology of the commons as a natural and social ecology.

Clearly possession is no more sufficient today than it was for the English villagers of the 17th and 18th centuries of enclosure. Only legal recognition of commons as the communal property of communities, author Liz Alden Wily finds, is sufficient to afford real protection.

The Lebanese author and leftist activist Fawwaz Traboulsi has followed the the Arab revolutions as a writer and analyst, writing down his insights 2012 in his book „Democracy is Revolution“. Mohammad al-Attar met him for the interview about Syria in Beirut.

Since 2010 the Fidesz-KDNP coalition adopted a new constitution with so far four rounds of constitutional amendments. This analysis issued by the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union and the Eötvös Károly Institute highlights the specific concerns in relation to the Fourth Amendment.

Tímea Szabó is co-president of the new green left party Dialogue for Hungary (PM). In the interview she talks about the new party's strategy after the split from the green party LMP in January. 

With the constitutional amendments adopted on the 11th of March, Viktor Orbán has once again caused a surprise. The reactions of the Western European public show that there is still an inadequate grasp of how political power is exercised by Orbán’s government. European democrats now finally need to formulate a common position against the power centralization in the country.

Quotas are a necessary prerequisite for full equal political and economic participation, a powerful tool to overcome the glass ceilings, experienced by so many skilled women over decades now.

The results of the elections to the 19th Knesset hold a potential for a significant change in the gender thinking of Israel’s legislative body. Out of 120 parliamentarians, 27 women will be serving in the Knesset - the largest number of women MKs since the establishment of the state. What are the necessary conditions for bringing this potential to fruition?

After the split of Hungarians green party LMP, two parties and strategies have been developed for a consistent eco-policy. The prospects regarding the upcoming elections are not extremely rosy for either side.