The path to global sustainable development is participatory democratic global governance – the only truly effective path to confronting pandemics, military conflict, climate change, biodiversity loss, and potential overall ecological collapse. So says James Bacchus in his new book, Democracy for a Sustainable World: The Path from the Pnyx. Bacchus argues that global democracy and global sustainable development can only be achieved jointly. Beginning with a visit to the birthplace of democracy in ancient Athens, a hillside called the Pnyx, Bacchus explores how the Athenians practiced democratic participation millennia ago. He draws on the successes and shortfalls of Athenian democracy to offer specific proposals for meeting today’s challenges by constructing participatory democratic global governance for full human flourishing in a sustainable world.

Since the Chinese government carried out full-scale privatization of the urban housing market nearly three decades ago, private home ownership in cities has soared and tens of millions of home-owning Chinese have joined home ownership associations. In his new book, The Authoritarian Commons: Neighborhood Democratization in Urban China (Cambridge University Press, 2025), Shitong Qiao argues that homeowner associations (HOAs) have fundamentally changed how Chinese urban neighborhoods and cities are governed. Drawing on six years of fieldwork, he finds that local governments have come to rely on homeowners to help govern their own neighborhoods, and homeowners have become accustomed to the democratic ritual of electing HOA leaders. Does the rise of HOAs have any wider significance for China’s political future?

China’s legal service sector is growing rapidly, including not only commercial law offices but publicly funded legal aid and innovative free legal advice platforms. At the same time, the regime has largely suppressed the country’s human rights lawyers. What is going on? Hualing Fu, dean of the law faculty at the University of Hong Kong and visiting professor at NYU School of Law, will share his research into an emerging new sector that he calls “public legal services,” which the party-state is developing in order to ensure that social disputes are resolved speedily in line with regime interests. In the process, Chinese lawyers may be transitioning backward from legal professionals to state legal workers.

The National Security Law, which was imposed on Hong Kong in 2020, takes precedence over local law and has profoundly affected civil liberties and the right to fair trial. Does international law no longer matter in Hong Kong? Carole Petersen, professor of law at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, finds that in cases not affecting Beijing’s core interests, local judges still rely on international and comparative sources and still rule against the local Hong Kong government. This has been particularly evident in strategic litigation to advance the rights of the LGBT community. Petersen concludes that if the local government is serious about trying to rebuild Hong Kong’s international reputation, then it should accept and fully implement these rulings.