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Looking at Egypt before, during and after the Arab Spring, this paper examines the intersection of Christian Copts, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian army, moderate Muslims and secular groups. In turn, it examines the Obama administration's policies toward Egypt. It discloses the surprising finding that the only consistent aspect of the administration's policy toward Egypt has been outreach to and engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood. At no time before or after the Brotherhood's ascent to prominence in Egyptian politics and society did the administration make support of the Brotherhood conditional. At no time did it use US leverage--given the massive amount of financial and military aid Egypt was depending on, and given the new Egyptian government's desire for prestige in the world community-to pressure the Morsi government to respect human rights, religious liberty and the impartial rule of law. Arguing that American foreign policy at its best is rooted in democratic ideals, this paper asks whether the United States, while respecting that Egyptians must choose their leaders and their political system, could have done more to encourage a positive strategic, moral and political outcome. Keywords American foreign policy * Human rights * Rule of law * Civil society * Barack Obama * Hillary Clinton * Arab Spring * Muslim Brotherhood * Christian Copts * Egypt * Mohamed Morsi * Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, American foreign policy at its best combines moral and practical concerns. It emphasizes the security of the free world (necessary in a world where global threats lie just beneath the [...]

This paper traces the ways in which the language of reconciliation promotes and detracts from responsibility. What it means to be responsible and to take responsibility is explored through a reading of J. M. Coetzee's novel, Disgrace. Coetzee provokes a nuanced examination of the nature of reconciliation and responsibility in post-apartheid South Africa, particularly how deep a moral transformation is needed and of whom it should be expected. The tensions between pro forma acknowledgement and deep moral transformation are examined with respect to the competing narratives of reconciliation and responsibility that took place during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and afterwards in South African civil society. The paper concludes with a warning about the delicate balance between responsibility and vilification, reconciliation and denial.

In 1999, the Canadian province of Ontario joined a number of other jurisdictions in requiring its high school students to complete volunteer service before graduating. The primary objective of this program, and others like it around the world, was to address declining civic engagement within society. Using a quasi-experimental design, we explore the impact of mandatory volunteering on its stated aims. Our findings suggest that volunteering in high school has positive impacts on the political dimensions of a student's subsequent civic engagement, measured here as political involvement, political activism, political interest, and political efficacy. However, those impacts are largely conditional on two features of the volunteering experience: sustained commitment to one placement and a positive experience as evaluated by the student. High school community service seems to be unrelated to social dimensions of civic engagement, measured here as involvement in a variety of social, cultural, and religious organizations. Keywords: Participation, Citizenship, Civic Engagement, Compulsory Community Service, Civil Society, Education, Volunteering, Canada. En 1999, laprovincia canadiense de Ontario se sumo a otros distritos en requerir a sus alumnos de education media completar un servicio voluntario antes de graduarse. El objetivo principal de este programa y otros similares alrededor del mundo fue para hacer frente a una caida en la participation civica en la sociedad. Usamos un diseno cuasi-experimental para explorar el impacto del servicio social obligatorio de acuerdo a sus objetivos declarados. Nuestros hallazgos sugieren que el trabajo comunitario durante la educacion media tiene un impacto positivo en el compromiso civico posterior del estudiante, medido como la participation politica, activismo politico, interes politico y eficacia politica, pero que esos impactos estan condicionados por dos caracteristicas en la experiencia del servicio social: mantener un compromiso sostenido a una labor y el tener una experiencia positiva de acuerdo con el estudiante. El servicio social durante la educacion media parece no estar relacionado a dimensiones sociales de compromiso civico, medido en este estudio como la participacion en una variedad de organizaciones sociales, culturales y religiosas., Civic engagement is a multidimensional concept reflecting people's psychological and associational attachment to their communities. As such, it incorporates attitudinal and behavioral aspects of good citizenship such as a sense [...]

Introduction The need to build a green economy is obvious. Much of the world produces, buys, sells, and uses goods and services in ways that enhance injustice and undermine the [...]

In the Soviet Union after the Second World War, matters of personal concern, such as those pertaining to housing and consumer goods, received official sanction (however indirect)for public discussion. A reward for prior austerity measures and an attempt to attain some semblance of normalcy, popular preoccupation with the private was imbued with a sense of citizenship that emerged over the course of the war. A close reading of Vecherniaia Moskva (Evening Moscow), a popular local newspaper distinguished from other Soviet publications by a less officious style, provides a means for discerning these phenomena within the context of Moscow during the postwar Stalin period (1945-53). Through letters from readers and editorial responses, this newspaper acted as a public forum for deliberation between state and society on the local level, and as such constituted, in microcosm, a surrogate civil society in the absence of actual political democracy. Although constrained by elite directives in publishing and processing complaints submitted by readers, the editors of Vecherniaia Moskva provided a medium for Muscovites to voice grievances and seek their resolution. The appropriation of official rhetoric into letters from readers suggests that ordinary citizens, like editors employed by the state, had a positive interest in the system, and that together with the government and Communist Party elite, they shared the opinion that proximate powers were responsible for shortcomings in the provision of housing and consumer goods and services. In highlighting such matters as bureaucratic indifference and negligence, and in conveying demands for "cultured" conduct, Vecherniaia Moskva also reveals that civility was as crucial a requirement of urban life as decent living conditions. The content of this newspaper, a unique source also for the glimpse it provides into daily life (byt) in postwar Russia, implies that experience was as powerful as the restrictive boundaries of officialdom in setting the perimeters for public discourse in the Soviet Union., "Well, we live very well," replied migrant worker Tashauza Shamrad Chaldyrov when asked by a Vecherniaia Moskva (Evening Moscow) correspondent about everyday life in Moscow. Her assessment appeared in an […]