Abstract
This introductory part of the book addresses the post-Second World War developments in democracy whose instrumental background emerged in 1945 with the United Nations Charter in 2020—the year of the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations—two United Nations declarations are particularly symbolic: the 1948 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda. Within this frame, in the Prologue we first look into dynamics of democratic developments across the world and find that available data and the accounts of these developments are at best mixed, if not ambiguous or disconcerting.
Against this background, we then introduce the contributions to this book. Its essence may rectify the ambiguities and help to chart the way to make in the United Nations academic terms the human rights, crime prevention and criminal justice a springboard for meeting the challenges prompted by a powerful populistic counter-democratic trend. However strong it may be, of universal significance is not it, but the global aging of humankind, climate change, environmental degradation and migration. It is this broader framework, confounded by the coronavirus pandemic, in which the texts in this book should be read, contemplated and inspire the readership for joint action to attain the goals of the 2030 Agenda.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
“A democracy is a political system with institutions that allows citizens to express their political preferences, has constraints on the power of the executive, and a guarantee of civil liberties” (Roser 2014).
- 2.
- 3.
Although with its own cracks. This is because governmental reactions to pandemic in the European Union suggest that there are authoritarian and authoritative methods of countering it. This may be exemplified by the Swedish and Hungarian responses to pandemic—both constitutionally warranted. While in Hungary, its Prime Minister received for an unlimited time the prerogative to counter pandemic by decrees, in Sweden, detached expert guidance rather than governmental reaction yields the eventual response.
- 4.
All United Nations parliamentary documentation, retrieved May 15, 2020 from the United Nations website http://www.un.org.
References
All United Nations parliamentary documentation, retrieved May 15, 2020 from the United Nations website http://www.un.org.
A/RES/2017 (A) III The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10 December 1948.
A/RES/70/1 Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, 25 September 2015.
A/RES/73/195 Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, 19 December 2018.
Brunkert, L., Kruse, S., & Welzel, C. (2019). A tale of culture-bound regime evolution: the centennial democratic trend and its recent reversal. Democratization, 26(3), 422–443
CAB 195/1, War Cabinet Minutes, W.M.(42) 47th Meeting – W.M.(42) 155th Meeting: 67-68. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/cab_195_1_transcript.pdf
CEPR/Centre for Economic Policy Research. (2020). COVID-19 and trade policy: Why turning inward won’t work. London: CEPR Press.
de Tocqueville, A. (1917). Democracy in America (H. Reeve, Trans.). The Library of the world’s best literature. An anthology in thirty volumes. Toronto-Glasgow: Warner Library Company/Brook and Company.
E/2020. Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. Report of the Secretary-General. Economic and Social Council. United Nations: New York. https://bit.ly/3bN8007
Freedom House. (2020). Nations in transit 2020. Washington, D. C.: Dropping the Democratic Façade.
Ginsburg, T. (2008). The global spread of constitutional review. In K. Whittington, R. D. Kelemen, & G. A. Caldeira (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of law and politics (pp. 81–95). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Godson, R. (2000). Guide to developing a culture of lawfulness. Trends in Organized Crime, 5(3), 91–102.
Gonzalez, A. (2020). A memo to trade ministers on how trade policy can help fight COVID-19. Washington, D.C.: Peterson Institute for International Economics. https://bit.ly/2KQCumU
Griesshaber, N. (2013). Forms of civic engagement and corruption: Disentangling the roles of voluntary associations, elite challenging mass movements and the type of trust within social networks. https://bit.ly/3doF5Ro
Gruère, G. (2019). Never let a good water crisis go to waste. https://bit.ly/3exv0SN
Lustig, D., & Weiler, J. H. H. (2018). Judicial review in the contemporary world - Retrospective and prospective. ICON, 16(2), 315–372.
Montesquieu, Ch. (2001). The spirit of laws (T. Nugent & Kitchener, Trans.). ON: Batoche Books.
Morsink, J. (1999). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. origins, drafting of intent. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Morsink, J. (2009). Inherent human rights: Philosophical roots of the Universal Declaration. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Morsink, J. (2017). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the challenge of religion. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
Műller, J.-W. (2017). What is populism? London: Penguin.
Műller, J.-W. (2019). Populism and the people. London Review of Books, 41(10), 35–37.
OHCHR/Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. (2020). ‘Toxic lockdown culture’ of repressive coronavirus measures hits most vulnerable. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2KREs6z
Rahman, M. S., & Nahar, S. (2017). Variance and time series analysis of democracy index. Journal of Education, Society and Behavioural Science, 23(4), 1–12.
Redo, S. (2012). Blue criminology. The power of United Nations ideas to counter crime globally. Helsinki: European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, affiliated with the United Nations.
Redo, S., & Platzer, M. (2014). The United Nations role in crime control and prevention: from “what?” to “how?”. In P. Reichel & J. Albanese (Eds.), Handbook of transnational crime and justice (2nd ed., pp. 291–299). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Roosevelt, K. (2008). The myth of judicial Activism. Making sense of Supreme Court Decisions. New Heaven: Yale University Press.
Roser, M. (2014). OurWorldInData.org – a new web publication by INET Oxford shows how the world is changing. https://bit.ly/386i4zx
Roser, M. (2019). Democracy. https://bit.ly/2I1oUeX
Schabas, W. A. (2013). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The travaux préparatoires (Vol. I. https://bit.ly/2I1oUeX&II). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
The Sustainable Development Goals Report. (2019). New York: United Nations.
Toft, M. D., Philpott, D., & Shah, T. S. (2011). God’s century: Resurgent religion and global politics. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
UNODC. (2016). Compendium of United Nations standards and norms in crime prevention and criminal justice. Vienna: United Nations.
UNSG. (2017). António Guterres secretary-general’s remarks on the launch of the Fez plan of action, 14 July 2017. https://bit.ly/2VrGnW1
UNSG. (2020). António Guterres. We are all in this together: Human rights and COVID-19 rsponse and recovery, 23 April 2020. https://bit.ly/2Gn7nR2
World Values Survey/WVS. (2019). The SDG16 Data Initiative 2019 Global Report. https://bit.ly/2uINApO
WJP. (2019). World Justice Project Rule of Law Index. https://bit.ly/3bhvSKT
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kury, H., Redo, S. (2021). Prologue. In: Kury, H., Redo, S. (eds) Crime Prevention and Justice in 2030. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56227-4_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56227-4_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-56226-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-56227-4
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)