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This paper examines and argues against the neoliberal assumption that local community participation in market-based nature conservation projects is democratic and leads to community empowerment through economic development. It does so by analyzing the formation of Local Forest Management Committees, instigated by one of the largest US-based environmentalist NGOs - the Nature Conservancy - and its partnering local environmental NGOs for conserving the tropical forests of Cockpit Country, Jamaica. The paper dissects, specifically, the notion of "stakeholder partnership," frequently invoked in neoliberal conservation projects in the global south. Such flattening neoliberal terminologies imply a democratic platform, where different groups can express their political agendas and negotiate their differences with equal power. The language of "stakeholder partnership" flattens, this paper argues, the hierarchical set of power relations both inherited and exacerbated by free market-based conservation projects.

Organizational membership seems to be linked to a more participatory & informed political culture, to foster electoral participation, & to promote positive feelings toward democracy. More recently, the social capital & associative democracy debates have introduced new arguments about the positive effects of associational involvement. However, little attention has been paid to the problems of measuring associational involvement & to their consequences for our theories. This article discusses the various problems of validity & reliability of our measurements of associational membership. It is shown that different questionnaire formats produce substantially different results. The article also addresses the issue of measurement errors & emphasizes the problems they introduce when doing crossnational comparisons. 2 Tables, 14 Figures, 1 Appendix. [Copyright 2002 Sage Publications, Inc.]

El presente trabajo analiza el mundo militante por medio del estudio de la carrera militante retomando la perspectiva de carrera de Howard Becker. El objetivo es dar cuenta de cómo se construye y desarrolla ese mundo a través de las experiencias de militantes de distintos espacios de participación política. Se propone indagar en las lógicas compartidas por los militantes de la provincia de Jujuy, Argentina, a partir de comprender la manera en que interactúan más allá de su espacio o ámbito de pertenencia, retomando una perspectiva microestructural. Se pretende entender la militancia contemporánea superando las limitaciones de los estudios macroestructurales, principalmente aceptando que en la actualidad existe una diversidad en las formas y espacios de militancia, que rompe con las fronteras de la militancia más estructural y tradicional de partidos y sindicatos. Para alcanzar estos objetivos, se realizó un análisis longitudinal de trayectorias de nueve militantes de diversos espacios de participación política de Argentina, considerando los aspectos subjetivos y objetivos a partir del relato de los propios militantes por medio del uso de la técnica del relato de vida. Este trabajo permite dar cuenta del aporte analítico del "mundo militante" para exponer las continuidades y rupturas, así como las generalidades y particularidades de la militancia contemporánea en Argentina.//The present work analyses the militant world through the study of the militant career by taking up Howard Becker's career perspective. The objective is to give an account of how this world is constructed and developed through the experiences of militants from different spaces of political participation. In this way, it proposes to investigate the shared logics of the militants of the province of Jujuy, Argentina, from understanding the way in which they interact beyond their space or sphere of belonging, taking up again a microstructural perspective. The aim is to understand contemporary militancy by overcoming the limitations of macro-structural studies, mainly by accepting that there is currently a diversity of forms and spaces of militancy, which breaks with the borders of the more structural and traditional militancy of parties and unions. To achieve these objectives, a longitudinal analysis of the trajectories of five militants from different spaces of political participation in Argentina was carried out, considering the subjective and objective aspects based on the narrative of the militants themselves through the use of the life story technique. This work allows us to give an account of the analytical contribution of the "militant world" to expose the continuities and ruptures, as well as the generalities and particularities of contemporary militancy in Argentina.

This study examines the social composition of the communist party in the Soviet Union and four East European countries during the post-war period. Two alternative explanations for joining the communist party are examined: the classical political participation model from Western political science and the party policy model. In Western countries, the people who join political parties tend to be male, older, married, highly educated and in higher status occupations. According to the party policies model, recruitment should reflect the party's policies, ideologies and intentions to promote particular social groups such as, workers, peasants, young people, women and those with proletarian backgrounds. The data analyzed are from nationally representative surveys from the Social Stratification in Eastern Europe after 1989 study. Stronger support was found for the political participation model. Generally, parental party membership, being male, married, highly educated and working in an administrative position influenced joining, whereas social background, a manual occupation, and political time period had little or no influence. Between-country differences in the process of joining were minor. There was little evidence that recruitment reflected the parties' ideologies or policies.

Under President al-Sisi, Egypt has revealed itself to be less tolerant of dissent and more successful at cloaking itself in nationalist sentiment than under either the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces or Husni Mubarak. The massacre at Rabʿa al-ʿAdawiyya, the arrests, detention, and torture of youth and prominent activists, the proliferation of criminal and treason charges against journalists, nongovernmental organizations, and Muslim Brotherhood figures, the banning of various organizations, and the passage of restrictive laws on basic civil rights—these practices make clear that the regime has no commitment to democratization understood either as substantive participation or the safeguarding of basic civil liberties.

As the debates on how to govern the Internet continue, the actual outcomes of digital access have to be considered when discussing how to represent and govern such a global system. This point of view discusses the reasons for considering the Multistakeholder model currently being proposed as a step backwards as the issues that actual usage of the Internet by individuals and communities cannot be dealt with by it, and instead is just entrenching the interests of both powerful nation-states and corporate actors in a way that furthers non-democratic control of a global resource.

"This volume aims to generate a dialogue between scholarship on populism and social and political theory. It focuses on citizenship, class, gender, cleavages, sovereignty, accountability, participation, leadership, and parties. The volume explores how classical and current theorists developed these categories, how they were used by scholars of populism, and what populism tells us about their heuristic advantages and limitations. The authors of this book have studied populism in Europe, the US, and Latin America from distinct perspectives. The chapters thus focus on experiences in both the Global North and South. Contributors are: Cecilia Biancalana, Paula Diehl, Reinhard Heinisch, Klaudia Koxha, Alfio Mastropaolo, Oscar Mazzoleni, Enrique Peruzzotti, Kenneth M. Roberts, Luis Roniger, and Carlos de la Torre"--

"This volume aims to generate a dialogue between scholarship on populism and social and political theory. It focuses on citizenship, class, gender, cleavages, sovereignty, accountability, participation, leadership, and parties. The volume explores how classical and current theorists developed these categories, how they were used by scholars of populism, and what populism tells us about their heuristic advantages and limitations. The authors of this book have studied populism in Europe, the US, and Latin America from distinct perspectives. The chapters thus focus on experiences in both the Global North and South. Contributors are: Cecilia Biancalana, Paula Diehl, Reinhard Heinisch, Klaudia Koxha, Alfio Mastropaolo, Oscar Mazzoleni, Enrique Peruzzotti, Kenneth M. Roberts, Luis Roniger, and Carlos de la Torre"--

Decisions on environmental topics taken today are going to have long-term consequences that will affect future generations. Young people will have to live with the consequences of these decisions and undertake special responsibilities. Moreover, as tomorrow's decision-makers, they themselves should learn how to negotiate and debate issues before final decisions are made. Therefore, any participation they can have in environmental decision-making processes will prove essential in developing a sustainable future for the community. However, recent data indicate that the young distance themselves from community affairs, mainly because the procedures involved are 'wooden', politicians' discourse alienates the young and the whole experience is too formalized to them. Authorities are aware of this fact and try to establish communication channels to ensure transparency and use a language that speaks to new generations of citizens. This is where STEP project comes in. STEP (www.step4youth.eu) is a digital Platform (web/mobile) enabling youth Societal and Political e-Participation in decision-making procedures concerning environmental issues. STEP is enhanced with web/social media mining, gamification, machine translation, and visualisation features. Six pilots in real contexts are being organised for the deployment of the STEP solution in 4 European Countries: Italy, Spain, Greece, and Turkey. Pilots are implemented with the direct participation of one regional authority, four municipalities, and one association of municipalities, and include decision-making procedures on significant environmental questions.

On-line discussion, while promising in theory, often turns out to be disappointing in application. Low levels of student participation are a particularly vexing and common problem. I argue that to overcome these chronic problems, instructors must recognize the collective action problems inherent in on-line discussion and address them, primarily through the use of selective incentives. I test this contention using on-line experiments conducted on undergraduate political science students. The results of the experiments provide evidence of an underlying free-rider problem and support for the contention that selective incentives are an effective means of overcoming this problem. In another level of analysis, the experiment also shows that even basic student-to-student on-line discussion can be an effective teaching tool, rivaling the effectiveness of more costly traditional web sites.

This paper focuses on the impact of international migration on the transfer of political and social norms. Exploiting recent and unique data on Morocco, it explores whether households with return and current migrants bear different political preferences and behaviours than non-migrant families. Once controlling for the double selection into emigration and return migration, findings suggest that having a returnee in the household increases the demand for political and social change, driven by returnees mostly from Western European countries, who have been exposed to more democratic norms at destination. However, we find a negative impact of having a current migrant on the willingness to change of the left-behind household, driven by migrants to non-West countries, where the quality of political and social institutions are lower. Our results are robust to also controlling for destination selectivity. Finally, findings suggest that migration not only affect political attitudes but also actual behaviour: regions with higher returnee shares have had greater participation rates in the 2011 political elections.

Preliminary; Lokale Bürgerbeteiligung: Ein wichtiges Thema mit offenen Fragen; Wozu Demokratisierung der Demokratie? - Kriterien zur Bewertung partizipativer Arrangements; Institutionen und lokale Wahlen: Wo bleiben die Wähler?; Auswirkung von Quoren und Themenrestriktionen bei kommunalen Bürgerbegehren im Ländervergleich; Direktdemokratie und Konkurrenzdemokratie - eine "explosive" Mischung?; Präsenz und Erfolg Kommunaler Wählergemeinschaften im Bundesländervergleich; Schach dem Parlament -Lokalvereine machen Ratsentscheidung rückgängig