Democracy, Power and Territories

From different perspectives, focusing on different sectors of society and by using an interdisciplinary approach, this volume addresses one of the main topics of our times: how democratic politics and policies are changing through the New Millennium. Established ways of life, think-ing, acting, are undermined by a fast-moving process of globalized trans-formations forcing us to face new problems and, as it usually happens during historical phases of transition, the new coagulation of social, polit-ical and economic forms that will overcome the old ones, seems yet un-clear. The economic crisis biting the average family as well as the small and medium enterprise has also brought with it a crisis of the political and institutional authority in many Countries. Creating a climate of uncer-tainty and distrust that appears to represent a threat for the democratic fi-ber of these nations. But if traditional nation- state politics seem to lose power and decision-making capacity, at a local level, policies based on municipal or communitarian grounds experiment counterreaction forms of resilience. Not that these forms counterbalance the globalized political, economic and social trend but as social scientists we have learnt the im-portance of analyzing both levels since Zygmunt Bauman and Joshua Meyrowitz, amongst others, introduced the term “glocality” in the social sciences back at the turn of the Millennium.