Suchergebnisse

The development of large infrastructure to address the water challenges of cities around the world can be a financial and social burden for many cities because of the hidden costs these works entail and social conflicts they often trigger. When conflicts erupt, science is often expected to play a key role in informing policymakers and social actors to clarify controversies surrounding policy responses to water scarcity. However, managing conflicts is a sociopolitical process, and often quantitative models are used as an attempt to depoliticize such processes, conveying the idea that optimal solutions can be objectively identified despite the many perspectives and interests at play. This raises the question as to whether science depoliticizes water conflicts or whether instead conflicts politicize science–policy processes. We use the Zapotillo dam and water transfer project in Mexico to analyze the role of science–policy processes in water conflicts. The Zapotillo project aims at augmenting urban water supply to Guadalajara and León, two large cities in western Mexico, but a social and legal conflict has stalled the project until today. To analyze the conflict and how stakeholders make sense of it, we interviewed the most relevant actors and studied the negotiations between different interest groups through participant observation. To examine the role of science–policy processes in the conflict, we mobilized concepts of epistemic uncertainty and ambiguity and analyzed the design and use of water resources models produced by key actors aiming to resolve the conflict. While the use of models is a proven method to construct future scenarios and test different strategies, the parameterization of scenarios and their results are influenced by the knowledge and/or interests of actors behind the model. We found that in the Zapotillo case, scenarios reflected the interests and strategies of actors on one side of the conflict, resulting in increased distrust of the opposing actors. We conclude that the dilemma of achieving urban water security through investing in either large infrastructure (supply augmentation) or alternative strategies (demand-side management) cannot be resolved if some key interested parties have not been involved in the scientific processes framing the problem and solution space.

This article discusses the thought of Abdulkarim Soroush on the relation between the truth claim of religious understanding and the emergence of religious authoritarianism. Truth claim can raise the tyranny of religion when there is an attempt at the ideologization of a religious understanding to political and power sphere. Some questions to be answered here include: why does religious truth claim emerge, and how does Soroush deconstruct religious truth claim? Why does Soroush reject the paradigm of religious ideologization, and how does he promote the democratization of the relation between religion and politics? This article reveals that religious truth claim emerge due to the absence of consciousness to distinguish between religious understanding which is temporal and profan and the very religion which is eternal and sacred.? Attempts at ideologizing religion represent the lack of consciousness to distinguish between religion and politics, as this lack can degrade the divine value of religion to its worldly and human character. The ideologization of religion can result in tyranny in the name of religion, and accordingly give the monopoly of power to a certain religious understanding while rejecting others.

This article investigates the role of expertise and the expert community through local politics and decision-making in a World Heritage City. The expert public community and its inclusion in decision-making are important factors influencing the successful coordination of public interests. The authors demonstrate how developing forms of public governance change the local expert community and transform its structure and core principles, leading to more open and democratic expertise. Using the case study of local urban politics, the authors illustrate that the social authority of expert knowledge and its influence on decision-making is increasingly dependent on public opinion and the diversification of the structures of expert communities. The latter implies, in particular, the inclusion of citizens who do not have formal expert status but who have sufficient experience and authority to influence urban policy. Using the example of the World Heritage City, the authors consider cases where the harmonization of the interests of the participants of urban policies requires an unusual approach from the public administration, taking into account its obligation to follow formal procedures and regulations and its need to ensure greater involvement of citizens in the decision-making process. Our research showed that, in some situations, these recommendations were more authoritative and earned a higher degree of trust from the citizens than recommendations from people with formal expert status. This trend is in line with larger changes in public administration, which is becoming more adaptive, complex, polycentric, and oriented towards productive cooperation. Expert communities are becoming more fragmentary due to the active involvement of actors who, by their socio-professional status, are not formal experts but have significant experience and social influence, especially in the local community.

The post--1974 crisis period highlighted the importance of patterns of interest intermediation in defining industrial policy in the sector during a period of sustained decline. Attempts to examine the case material in the light of current debate and to point to implications for the study of relationships between organised interests and the state. (Abstract amended)

Analyzes links with recent inter-ethnic violence and separatism.