The book provides a compilation of idiosyncratic manifestations of information society in techno-economic, political and cultural spheres. The contributors focus on the increasing complexity within information societies. To manage this complexity, societies develop constantly evolving context-specific modes of meta-governance. The contributions allow a better understanding of well-known conceptualizations and definitions of information society and related concepts such as post-industrial society, post-modernity, as well as network society, and knowledge society.

This book addresses these questions in a comprehensive way. It delves into the inter-relations between the major factors of developmental performance and looks at their effects on sustained societal development. A vast amount of statistical data on social and economic factors in selected European countries is grouped into 31 easy-to-handle tables and analyzed along the following constructs: civilizational competence; social capital; cognitive mobilization; quality of governance; entrepreneurial spirit; social cohesion; and openness to the international environment. The analysis, based on theories and indicators of development, reveals that, in spite of the progress since the fall of Communism, countries in Central and Eastern Europe still fall short of having been transformed into propulsive, "vibrant" societies, with intellectually open-minded, socially and technologically innovative environments

While ethnic inequalities are a problem to be dealt with very seriously, ethnic differences are an inevitable fact. Managing inter-ethnic relations is an increasing challenge of our times: within a wide variety of social contexts ranging from interactions at the micro level to the globalised macro level. There are two central purposes of this book: to provide a new theoretical framework to analyse inter-ethnic relations and to empirically test this innovative approach in evaluation of management of inter-ethnic relations in Slovenia within the two key subsystems: education and the media.