Soundings

There is currently much optimism about economic development in Africa, and the ability of globalisation and western policy to promote growth on the continent. This optimism is misplaced, however, and it is self serving of G8 and other donor interests;...

China began to reform its state socialist political economy after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. Deng Xiaoping's pragmatic programme of market reforms was formally legitimised at the Communist Party's landmark plenary session of 1978, to replace...

In June 2005, when we had just begun the collective discussions leading up to the Compass publication The Good Society, an email circulated amongst our group containing a link to a speech by Oliver Letwin, who was then the Conservative Shadow Secretary...

As Grahame Thompson argues in his article in this issue, neoliberalism is common sense now, in the way that social democracy was during the postwar era. Its assumptions are unnoticed and taken for granted. In this issue of Soundings contributors...

One of the more misleading bits of pseudo-wisdom that circulate in discussions about online social-networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace is that they reveal a conflicted populace: though survey after survey reveals high levels of concern...

The 'war on terrorism', the spread of nuclear weapons, and energy insecurity - three of the world's most pressing security preoccupations - intersect nowhere more consequentially than in Pakistan. This state, under military rule for much of its...

5 August It's Saturday night, a dozen of us are pretending to celebrate a birthday party, and I'm staring into a plate of lukewarm spaghetti. Any appetite has been obliterated by anxiety. The table has been booked under the pseudonym Abbey Hoffman,...

Over the last few years hardly a week has gone by without the public being told that Britain is held in the thrall of a binge-drinking epidemic. The allure of the topic for the media is obvious. Excessive drinking is a public health issue rivalled...