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Demonstrations in Poland against an abortion ban turned into massive protests as they became an outlet for widespread frustration over governmental corruption and a crumbling democracy. 

While climate change has not created jihadists in Mali, its effects on the livelihoods of already marginalized communities has created fertile grounds for recruitment.

Gordana Knezevic takes a closer look at recent mass protests in Belgrade and Skopje, showing that public dissent can be driven by very different forces.

The wave of recent protests in Romania against unjust political decisions, which culminated in February 2017, represent a major step forward in the evolution of Romanian democracy.

Although in the long-term the Eurozone needs full democratic control of the monetary union, including competence over labour and social policy, this will not happen soon enough. A feasible alternative is that rights bodies such as the ECSR provide...

Studying the effect of new Information and Communication Technologies in Central African social and political movements provides valuable insight into their potential regional impact.

Reading today’s newspapers in 10 years’ time we would probably reach the conclusion that the Netherlands is suffering collective short-sightedness.

Social enterprises are not easy businesses to run. The challenge of retaining financial stability while utilizing commercial practices to actively develop social impact brings unique leadership and management challenges.

The recent protest in the city of Hong Kong from the viewpoint of Valentina Mazzucato

The US may be witnessing the beginning of a return to stakeholder capitalism.

It is questionable whether the middle classes in Southern Africa can be perceived as drivers of economic and societal change.

The EADI General Conference started its first full day on 24 June with a plenary panel on the middle classes. It emerged that perspectives on the middle classes are very different in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe.

If you want to make money and make an impact, you have to decide which of the two comes first, as landing in the middle is not easy.

Policies to promote social entrepreneurship cannot cover up cuts in public expenditure. It should promote equality, greater civic participation in the economy, and the small and medium sized productive sectors. This means an incentive package incl...

Women seem to be more attracted to start or participate in social enterprises (SEs) than in ‘regular’ business practices. While gender inequality persists in traditional entrepreneurship, SEs appear to experience fewer discrepancies between men an...

What can be done from home against violent conflict worldwide? ‘Do it yourself’ activism through conflict-sensitive political consumption is on the rise.

On November 23, 2013, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) proudly announced on its website that the Warsaw Climate Change Conference 2013 had concluded successfully.

Organizing a social enterprise is more a question of generating social impact than income, which puts it at odds with the standard idea of doing business. Therefore, social entrepreneurship needs a business strategy that goes further than making a...

Social entrepreneurship is growing fast. However, its success depends on more than quantity alone. Isolated social enterprises cannot deliver impact beyond the microeconomic scale. They need to be part of a broader system and aware of the differen...

Welcome to The Broker Dossier on Social Entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship is increasingly popular as a way of doing business while achieving a social and economic impact. However, many questions still remain about what social entrepreneurs...

The concept of social entrepreneurship has been caught up in its own popularity and a variety of definitions have emerged. Amid the general confusion, four schools of thoughts can be distinguished, each of which emphasizes a different outcome (inc...

Editor in Chief Frans Bieckmann argues in this editorial article that social enterprises will only really succeed if they can operate in a global economic system that rewards them for being competitive on fair, social, and environmentally sustaina...

What was a relentless military dictatorship only a few years ago is now an applauded ‘democracy’. But not everybody is joining in with the clapping.

Linking public procurement to corporate compliance and engagement with international standards could spur social and inclusive progress globally.

Mandela was an ethical realist, who rejected confrontation both at home and internationally.

In Brazil, as elsewhere, the state has no qualms about using brutal force in defence of economic projects in the interest of capital

The protest movement in Brazil has been likened to an awakening giant, that is now suddenly out of control. 

Turkey needs to address human rights and inequality to be a role model for emerging powers.

Discussions on what should be the new global agenda after the expiry of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) started years ago. The post-2015 agenda has been central in several previous debates on The Broker. This is a short synopsis of other r...

International water law  - especially where it concerns fair distribution and sustainability – will be able to provide powerful support to the post-2015 development agenda.

The public-public partnerships that are currently being implemented throughout Latin America are an important, but often neglected, alternative to water sector privatization. 

In order to solve the water crisis, we need to change our definition and perspective of water from a commodity and a resource to a sacred feminine entity

Cooperation with private corporations is a serious threat to the human right to water.

The world of faith is a powerful and often neglected partner in the effort to overcome water challenges.

The gap in policy processes towards better food security and nutrition interventions is not related to a lack of knowledge, it is politics. Research institutions need to be more aware of empowering beneficiaries.

Inequality hinders sustainable economic growth, allows the rich a disproportionate share of  political power, and fosters violence and criminality. Unequal societies have lower life expectancies and suffer more from diseases than more equal s...

Of all protests in recent years, the Occupy movement used a vocabulary that referred most directly to inequality. One of their most visible slogans was ‘We are the 99%’, a reference to a report from the US Congressional Budget Office, showing that...

Contributors to The Broker’s blog ‘Future Calling’.

Our world is changing quickly and profoundly. Rich and poor – regardless of where they live – are faced with increasingly ‘thick’ problems and social change is more politicized and contested than ever before. And yet, most international developmen...

There can be no refuting Michael Edwards' claim that the world we live in is not only thick with problems, but that the problems that we are collectively trying to address are ‘thick...complex, politicized and unpredictable...complicated and...

The recent government paper on a new Dutch knowledge policy for international cooperation is relevant far beyond this country alone. We agree that the debate it has created is important and should be held in English, if only because a wide constit...

Petra Stienen reviews seven books that explore the nature of change in the Arab world in recent years. What role have the youth, journalists and new technologies played in this process, and what impact will they have on post-revolutionary societie...

Socio-environmental conflict is a powerful mechanism that has great potential to push for the paradigm shift that we urgently need, argues Diego Murguía.

Coming up next week in The Hague, The Netherlands: a conference on the changing face of citizen action.

According to Charles Seaford, Head of the Centre for Well-being, growth should not be the primary objective of economic policy.

The news is spreading: China’s new generation of migrant workers in the booming export industry are roaring their voice. The number and intensity of protests is on the rise in China’s urban industrial areas. Read for example Reuters’ special repor...

Social change

There is an urgent need to develop new ways of using local knowledge and ideas, and bring them to a higher, politically relevant level.

How can foreign policy today benefit from complexity sciences?

Increasingly, multi-stakeholder processes are being used in response to ‘tough’ problems such as responding to climate change, fighting poverty, and creation of sustainable business models.

The Millenium Development Goal (MDG) summit in New York this week promises to look at what can be done to meet the approaching deadline of 2015

NGOs have been joining forces to increase their effectiveness. They need to form alliances with social movements as well, however, to avoid working in isolation from broader social currents.

What role can civil society and (international) NGOs play in the rapidly changing global context? 

Communication for Sustainable Social Change is a new Centre-of-Excellence opening within the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Massachusetts. 

The Civic Driven Change (CDC) initiative recently organized a workshop on the practice of CDC, which aims to develop a new, citizen-driven approach to development and social change. This overview of the event also links to reports from each of the...

Development is mostly about transforming institutions – cultural values, legal frameworks, market mechanisms and political processes. If aid is failing, it is in part because agencies misunderstand institutions and how they change.

In China, illegal evictions disenfranchise farmers and threaten agricultural development. The government claims to have introduced the world’s strictest measures to protect farmland and improve farmers’ lives, but with minimal results. As rural la...