In: Schaap, L., Geurtz, J.C.H.C., Graaf, L.J. de, & Karsten, N. (2010). Innovations in sub-national government in Europe (Innovaciones en los gobiernos subnacionales europeos). Politica y Sociedad, 47 (3), pp. 145-163.
The controversy over the 'Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict' (September 15, 2009), more commonly known as the Goldstone Report, seems to have died down. But its larger significance has yet to be appreciated. For the most part, the controversy has swirled around the reliability of the Goldstone Report's factual findings and the validity of its legal findings concerning Operation Cast Lead, which Israel launched on December 27, 2008, and concluded on January 18, 2009. But another and more far-reaching issue, which should be of great significance to those who take seriously the claims of international law to govern the conduct of war, has scarcely been noticed. And that pertains to the disregarding of fundamental norms and principles of international law by the United Nations Human Rights Council (hrc), which authorized the Goldstone Mission; by the Mission members, who produced the Goldstone Report; and by the hrc and the United Nations General Assembly (of which the hrc is a subsidiary organ), which endorsed the report's recommendations. Their conduct combines an exaltation of, and disrespect for, international law. It is driven by an ambition to shift authority over critical judgments about the conduct of war from states to international institutions. Among the most serious political consequences of this shift is the impairment of the ability of liberal democracies to deal lawfully and effectively with the complex and multifarious threats presented by transnational terrorists. Adapted from the source document.
Existing research results concerning governments' failure to run effective policies mainly concern, and emanate from, Western democracies. Therefore, it is not surprising that problems of the so-called transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are little discussed and understood. The article's aim is to narrow this gap in knowledge by analyzing policy failures from one of the region's countries, Hungary. The article proposes three, possibly novel, types of policy failure. The first one originates from an unusually strong imbalance between policymakers' personal interests and the formal policy goals, reflecting the lack of even a minimum level of the (party) political elites' ability to counteract centrifugal forces driven by individual interests. The second type of failure coined "regulatory impotence" is related to a dysfunctionally strong protection of lawbreakers' right to fair procedure vis-a-vis the state. [Abstract shortened by ProQuest]. Adapted from the source document.
Modern constitutional movement reveals an increasing interest and participation of the international community in the constitution-making process of new-born states. The Palestinian experience does not diverge from this overall development, which considers the constitution as the best adapted legal instrument to eternalize the political compromise of the two-state solution, and to consecrate the transformation of the Palestinian national identity towards state-for-all-its-citizens (only). The problem here is that one may end up injecting contradicting priorities and interests in the constitution, to the point it is reduced to a symbolic document with political objectives rather than a comprehensive constitutional project which enables the construction of a state governed by law. This study shall critically follow up and analyze the Palestinian constitution-making process on the light of the classical theory of constituent power, in order to redress the Palestinian constitution-making within the overall development of international law and relations in order to have a more comprehensive vision of the Palestinian constitution, its role and its importance.
In: Bracking , S 2010 , ' Democratisation through power-sharing: is 'riding the tiger' a necessary evil or unfortunate distraction? ' The Constitution , vol 10 , no. 1 , pp. 1-14 .
The Kenya and Zimbabwe 'power-sharing' agreements were brokered as elite pacts with the involvement of the African Union and the South African Development Community (SADC) respectively, following the failure of the electoral mechanism to provide a peaceful transition between democratically elected administrations in either country. This paper will explore whether these experiences signal the exhaustion of the 'third wave' of democratisation in each country, within the context of their respective autocratic governance legacies and the global governance framework, or whether they are interim transitional opportunities for localised politics to (re)assert itself as the struggle is taken into the state and to the state class itself. Will the 'Mount Kenya Mafia' or the ZANU-PF 'old guard' eventually stand aside for a democratic discourse and practice to emerge, or will the limitations of liberalism in an African context continue to throw up less orthodox, and more violent, means to change social, class and property relations. And where is civil society positioned in this form of external extraversion to an African-based 'king-maker'?
Complejizar el análisis y la problematización de la realidad y las relaciones sociales considerando los aportes de la perspectiva de género, es un desafío aún en proceso. Desafío que tiene en el horizonte la construcción de relaciones democráticas entre mujeres y varones al interior de distintos ámbitos, entre ellos, el de la educación superior. Desde mediados de los '80, los estudios de género han comenzado a cobrar importancia en los espacios académicos, incorporándose a las currículas como materias o cursos específicos que buscaban profundizar desde una mirada histórica en el devenir de la misma. Si bien desde entonces, existe un creciente número de investigaciones que abordan la temática en forma particular, en su mayoría tesis de grado y postgrado, aún persiste la necesidad de instalar la perspectiva de género de modo transversal en la totalidad de asignaturas curriculares, considerándola como matriz de pensamiento que habilita una mirada más integradora de la realidad. Desde este punto de vista, consideramos que deconstruir el androcentrismo en la producción del conocimiento, se torna una tarea urgente: la urgencia de integrar distintas voces y perspectivas, de horizontalizar relaciones y concepciones asimétricas, de visibilizar los sesgos sexistas que atraviesan los contenidos de las currículas, las trayectorias estudiantiles, las carreras docentes y las intervenciones profesionales, la urgencia de articular saberes, esfuerzos, interrogantes, recorridos, certezas e incertidumbres. ; Complexify the analysis and the problematic of reality and social relations by considering the contributions of the gender perspective is a challenge still in process. Challenge on the horizon is the construction of democratic relations between men and women within various fields, including higher education. From the mid-80s, gender studies have begun to gain importance in academic spaces, joining the curricula as specific subjects or courses seeking further from a historical perspective on the evolution of it. Although since ...
Critically Engaged Learning: Connecting to Young Lives by John Smyth, Lawrence Angus and Peter McInerney, Barry Down provides revitalization and recharged zeal for educators struggling to reach disengaged youth. Teachers show a remarkable capacity to build productive relationships with students (Smyth et al., 2008). This book celebrates the stories of successful teachers and communities who engage young people in 'real world' learning. Though the debate on early school leavers and the enhancement of school arrangements for young learners has been in place for some time (Smythe & McInerney, 2007), this study moves beyond the school context "to examine the institutional and community processes of capacity building that lead to improved learning for students" (p. x). By critically interrogating many of the basic assumptions on which issues of student retention and student engagement are based, this book turns the tide of student disengagement towards 'a people's scholarship' (Featherstone, 1989).
Together with the idea of God and Immortality, Freedom was one of the three fundamental topics of classical metaphysics and it still remains a philosophical and theological issue of maximum diversity. There are various approaches regarding freedom that defend the precedence of sociology over philosophy in the sense that it exists at the social level, not at the ideatic one; these approaches insist upon a sociology of freedom that questions its culturalizing approaches, being secluded from the so-called history of ideas and denying the absolute freedom and the Kantian transcendence of individual freedom. Freedom is contextual: it is more an action than a state, an action conditioned by evolutional factual elements (from manumission – the act of freeing slaves – to the only exertion of freedom provided by the free market). ; peer-reviewed
This book compares reform trends in Australia and Canada's local government systems over the past two decades, with attention to the impact of globalization on local governments, their bureaucracies, and local democratic accountability. Local governments in Australia and Canada show striking resemblances in relation to history, development, and contemporary issues. This reflects that in both countries, local governments remain an instrument of the states and provinces.The exploration of the connections between globalization and local government is timely given the importance of international influences on the economic, social and environmental challenges facing governments. For the local governments discussed in the book, and for many others, economic and fiscal constraints have reduced the sector's ability to meet community expectations while also responding to growing competitiveness across jurisdictions. These pressures have highlighted the benefits of encouraging regional and local differentiation, and giving prominence to 'place' in policy and management designs and practices.
While the existing literature tends to present support for market economy as a uni-dimensional phenomenon, my approach is to think of the two models not as the opposite ends of the support for market economy continuum but as two distinct dimensions. For some people and in some contexts these two dimensions may be strongly related, while in other cases the two dimensions may be independent of each other, suggesting the existence of distinct support-generating mechanisms. The results will show that this bi-dimensional operationalization of support for market economy better describes the reality. In addition to this change of perspective, I also assume (and test the assumption) that the mechanisms of support for the two models of market economy in former communist countries are different from those existing in older democracies. Although I analyse a larger sample of countries, the results will be interpreted primarily from the perspective of the former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Their recent transition from a planned economy to a market economy and the costs associated with this transition make these countries of particular interest. This will allow identification and description of the factors that have different effects on support for a market economy in the two groups of countries, an approach that is largely missing from the previous literature on this topic. ; This research has been partly supported by grant ID56/2007 from the Romanian National University Research Council.
In: Brodersen , S 2010 , The making of citizen science : network alliances between Science Shops and CSOs engaging in science and air pollution . PhD thesis , no. 14.2010 , DTU Management , Kgs. Lyngby .
This dissertation is the result of a PhD project entitled The Making of Citizen Science – Network Alliances between Science Shops and CSOs Engaging in Science and Air Pollution. The PhD project was carried out at Department of Management Engineering, Section for Innovation and Sustainability, at the Technical University of Denmark. The project's aim is to understand how Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), through alliance building and network constructions with Science Shops and similar community-based research units, engage with scientists in order to impact air pollution problems. The PhD project's agenda is inspired by the institutionalization of more democratic and participatory approaches to knowledge making, which is reflected in several EU-funded research projects, including one of the sponsors of this project, the EU-funded ACCENT Network of Excellence. The ACCENT Network wished to meet the EU requirement of communication with the general public by investigating how Science Shops interact with CSOs. The analytical approach of this PhD project is inspired by Science and Technology Studies (STS) in general, more specifically by Irwin & Michael's (2003) concept of Ethno-Epistemic Assemblages, and by the Actor-Network Theory and Callon's (1986a) sociology of translations. A version of these approaches is used to study nine cases of network alliances between Science Shops and similar organizations and CSOs. The application of Callon's sociology of translation to the case studies contributes to understanding why and how the actors sought to stabilize controversies, as well as the mechanisms contributing to the networks' success in affecting the problems experienced by the CSOs. It is concluded that network alliances between CSOs, Science Shops and scientists can cause two types of effects: effects on the CSOs' original problems, and/or other forms of effects. It is interesting to note that these other forms of effects can result in both cases that affected the CSOs' original problems as well as cases that failed to do so. It can be concluded that CSOs can influence such actors as industry and local authorities and their practices through alliances with Science Shops and scientists. It is further concluded that the Science Shops' role can have decisive impact on whether networks succeed in influencing the problems experienced by the CSOs. When the Science Shops apply an impact-seeking approach, the networks are more likely to succeed in affecting the CSOs' original problems than when the Science Shops apply the mediation approach. It is also concluded that scientific documentation in itself is not sufficient to solve a problem but can be used to open discussions related to the problem. What is important is that the scientists in the Science Shop, or at a university department co-operating with a Science Shop, are willing to assume other roles than just being producers of knowledge without any obligation to bring the produced knowledge into a context, and without being willing to discuss the premises for the produced knowledge. The case studies indicate that in order to understand the effects of networks like these, we need to broaden ANT's analytical term 'stabilization'. It should be understood as something that strengthens rather than merely something that is taken-for-granted or black-boxed. It is also argued that the project's Callon-inspired analysis of network alliances can be seen as an elaboration of one of the concepts in Sociological studies of Science-Public relations, namely Irwin & Michael's (2003) concept of Ethno-Epistemic Assemblages (EEAs). The project elaborates the EEA concept through a more detailed empirical understanding of 1) how knowledge is comprised of a mixture of both 'lay and expert' knowledge; 2) how this blurring of knowledge may take place; and 3) how CSOs and scientists, through this mixture of knowledge, try to cause effects like political influence and/or new research interests. Finally, it is concluded that despite the gloomy prospects for the 'old' Science Shops, there may be openings in relation to establishing new Science Shops in other countries. Such possibilities can be seen in both the recently finished EU-financed TRAMS project (Training and Mentoring of Science Shops) and in the coming EU-financed project PERARES (Public Engagement with Research and Research Engagement with Society).
Im jungen demokratischen Polen finden in der letzten Zeit heftige Diskussionen über die demokratischen Bildung und deren Methoden: gleichzeitig wird die Kondition polnischen Schulsystems ins Visier genommen. Vor allem wirft man der polnischen Schule, about it dass sie ihre Absolventen ohne grundlegende kognitive und praktische Kompetenzen frei lässt: besonders knapp sind da selbständiges Denken und Problemlösenfähigkeit.