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Kristóf Szombati analyzes the the difficulties and obstacles that Fidesz’s governance has created for itself and asks what this may spell for the future. According to Szombati, in order to assess the impact of forces that may push a governmental force down, it is necessary to formulate an idea of the forces that lifted it up and to ask for the expectations that Hungarian voters and international investors, money-lenders and politicians had vis-à-vis the new government.

Ever since Viktor Orbán came to power, Hungarian politics has resembled a football match where the captain of one team can change the rules at will, appoint the referees and even eject members of the opposing team from the game. Orbán writes laws that are crafted with surgical precision for individual persons or groups and uses intimidation and blackmail to push forward a change of elites and a redistribution of property.

In a recently published online article György Schöpflin, Hungarian political scientist and member of the European Parliament for Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, laments that foreign countries do not understand Hungary. For Schöpflin Hungary is a “small culture with its own very different language”, which is not heard by the rest of the world. Wolfgang Klotz, director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, analyzes the values of Hungary's conservatives.

The people of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) have held their 8th Peoples Forum (APF) /ASEAN Civil Society Conference (ACSC) in Cambodia from March 29-31, 2012 in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia where the ASEAN Summit took place beginning of April. 

Green technologies in themselves will not bring about the change we need. Growth at any price must no longer be the paramount goal. Agriculture is one of the sectors in which reform is most urgent – and, at the same time, most difficult.  

The semi-civilian government of Myanmar has begun to initiate first democratic reforms. But the careful change raises major challenges to the country, especially well-trained professionals are a scarce commodity. Zeya Thu talked in an interview with the Heinrich Boell Stiftung about the recent changes in his country.

The definition of "good life" depends mostly on political, economical and cultural circumstances, but due to the effects of climate change and global warming, it also depends on issues of nature and environment. Georg Koessler investigates the relationship between climate change and living conditions.

We should be bold and say that the current paradigm of sustainability is obsolete. The paradigm needs an additional pillar: culture.

Looking at the upcoming parliamentary election in Iran, the sociologist Dr. Hosein Ghazian analyses the challenges of this election in the light of recent political developments in Iran.

We need to understand that alongside the social, economic and ecological pillars, culture is the fourth dimension related to the emergence of cultures of sustainability. We need policies in support of - and in full recognition of-  the cultural potential of art, in particular in social transformation processes.