Corporate Watch is currently producing a new report entitled 'Managing Democracy, Managing Dissent'. This will be a collection of articles about the ways in which an ideology of 'democracy' is used to channel dissent into forms compatible and safe to capitalism, and how, when this is proved impossible, this ideology serves to legitimise state repression of unmanaged dissent. We are looking for submissions on this topic, written in an engaging, non-academic style, which do not presume in-depth knowledge of the issues or theoretical context from the reader.

While we can be fairly flexible and open to suggestions, we do have the following basic structure:

1) Co-option, influence, manipulation of dissent – the ways in which parameters of 'legitimate' opinion and activity are prescribed to insulate capitalism from more fundamental challenges. We hope this will include articles touching on the co-option of civil society groups and social movements, and the role of funding and philanthropy in this process; mass media, PR, and advertising; and the use of police informants to neuter the effectiveness of activists.

2)The use and legitimation of repression – when such co-option fails and more overt coercive powers are resorted to, in the name of protecting democracy. We plan for this to include articles on political policing from the targeting of the Animal Rights movement to today's 'Total Policing', and the repression of the August riots and student protests.

3)How this system of 'managed democracy' is exported via aid and development programmes. This will cover 'Democracy Promotion' programmes, particularly those from the UK and the US, and an investigation into the attempts to mould the the new political forms emerging out of the Arab and north African uprisings.

The project will be completed this the summer. We do not need the submissions to be long, in fact we would value a variety of lengths and type of article. At the same time, we hope that this project will allow contributors to go into some depth if they like.

We are also very happy to conduct interviews with people with information, but perhaps not the time to write it up in an article.

Please do not hesitate to email us at contact[at]corporatewatch.org if you have any information, questions or suggestions.