The New Leviathan Blog

Civil society unleashes its activists into battle The Copenhagen Climate Conference, how many participants? The organizers of the event, the UN and Danish authorities alike, had no idea late Sunday afternoon, a few hours before the inauguration ceremony. Their respective information services were happy to repeat that the complex where the meeting is to be held from December 7 to 18, the Bella Center, can hold 15,000 people at most but that the ...Read More >>

The Economics Nobel prizes social capital The Nobel Prize in Economics has been awarded to the Americans Elinor Ostrom, the first woman awarded, and Oliver Williamson for their work on economic governance, the Nobel committee announced on Monday. Elinor Ostrom, from Indiana University (center), demonstrated how co-ownerships can be effectively managed by user associations, specifies the committee. Elinor Ostrom, born in 1933, is the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. Officially named the Bank of Swe...Read More >>

Hello week: basic gestures If you spontaneously say "hello" to a stranger on the street between May 5 and 9, all you risk is winning 25 or 25,000 euros. Members of “Message sans nom”, a group which campaigns for a more friendly and caring society, will indeed walk the streets in search of these spontaneous “hellos” during “Hello Week”. “Message without a Name” is based on the principle that small changes are enough to make socie...Read More >>

State rents and society of distrust The issue of regulated professions has recently surfaced in the political debate. But it was poorly posed, pointing out the existence of modest advantages instead of analyzing the formidable state hypertrophy which is the cause. The case of Parisian taxis, for example, attracted attention. There are fewer of them today than in 1925. There were 25,000 then, there are now only 15,000. However, since 1945 France's GDP has multiplied,...Read More >>

Ethnicity: right-thinking limitations on the right of expression French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was found guilty Wednesday by the Paris Court of Appeal of provoking discrimination, hatred or racial violence for comments made in April 2004 about Muslims in France. At first instance, he had escaped any conviction, the Paris criminal court having "cancelled the proceedings" against him. On Wednesday, the 11th chamber of the Court of Appeal sentenced the p...Read More >>

Microsociology of daily life On November 20, 2005, a couple of African origin approached a lady while she was at the Bancontact self-banking machine at the ING bank in La Hulpe, asking her to explain how the machines worked. The victim turns around to discuss and one of the two perpetrators manages to steal his bank card from the device. The victim then gives up her place t...Read More >>

Virtual socialization: does it create social capital? Canada wins the prize among countries "addicted" to the popular socialization site Facebook, with one citizen in four making "friends" there, a new way of bringing the population together in this vast country fond of new technologies. “Canadians have a greater affinity (than others) with Facebook,” said Greg Elmer, director of the research laboratory on the cultural impact of information technologies (infoscape lab) at...Read More >>

Christmas: the celebration of social bonds? We could imagine: people living in towns with high purchasing power are not the happiest. The well-being of the population is higher outside the centers, where social relations are still intact, reports a study by Deutsche Bank Research. The healthiest Germans apparently live in the Ulm region. Well-being analysis is very trendy in Germany. (…) To identify the problem, researchers from the main German bank identified six criteria: ...Read More >>

State, Community, and Filial Piety  Authorities in the Changyuan region in central China are considering granting social promotions to civil servants based on criteria favoring parental love, the Xinhua news agency announced on Saturday. Half a thousand family members, friends, colleagues and neighbors will be specially questioned by investigators who will be interested in the behavior of all ci...Read More >>

The growth of depression  The consumption of antidepressants increases every year in Belgium. In 1996, there were some 390,000 patients on antidepressants; there were around 860,000 at the end of 2006, according to a statistical study by the Belgian Pharmaceutical Association (APB). The study notes the success of new generation antidepressants. It is estimated that every month 1,700 additional patients use drugs from this group. The majority of patients on antid...Read More >>