Suchergebnisse

At the very moment that humanity is facing a broadening ecological crisis, and that both policy makers and civil society are calling for a transition towards more sustainable societies, modern science seems incapable of providing operational solutions for managing this transition. In this context, both Noble prize laureates and high-level science officials have stressed the need of an in depth transformation of the modes of organization of scientific research for governing the transition to sustainable societies. However, existing analyses of on-going initiatives show that most of the barriers to a major, consolidated effort in sustainability science will not be removed without far-reaching institutional change. To address this challenge, this paper proposes an incremental institutional change approach, based on a gradual institutionalization process of existing initiatives. The analysis in this paper shows that strategic research for sustainability and reform of research funding mechanisms will only be effective if they are supported at the same time by reforms of career and training paths at higher education institutions. To promote this vision, the paper proposes a set of capacity building measures that can be undertaken at the level of research funding, higher education institutions and networking.

After years of political crises and negotiations, the deep-rooted conflict between Dutch- and French-speaking parties recently led to the 2011 agreement concerning a further reform of the Belgian state. This reform mainly furthers decentralises the – already federal – state structure, including the allocation of additional competences and fiscal powers to sub-national entities (Regions and Communities). But this new state reform also brings about a radical reform of the upper house: the Belgian Senate. Since 1995, the Senate was composed of three different types of members: Senators directly elected by two linguistically separated electorate (the Dutch-speaking and the French-speaking electorates), Senators indirectly elected by the Community parliaments and Senators coopted by the two other types. The French- and German-speaking linguistic minorities had a fixed amount of seats in this assembly. The reform of the state radically changed the legislative competences of the Senate and its composition as its members will now be designated by Regional and Community parliaments (plus 10 coopted senators). Broadly speaking, the appointment of the majority of the Senators moved from a system of direct and language-based election to a system of indirect and mixed regional and language-based designation. This change is not without consequence for the representation of linguistic minorities. In May 2014, regional, community and federal elections will be organised in Belgium, testing for the first time this new system of designation of Senators by regional and community parliaments. This paper intends to present the 2013 reform of the Senate in Belgium and its consequence for the representation of linguistic minorities. The situations before and after the reform of the Senate will be compared, not only in terms of the way Senators are appointed but in terms of its consequence on the linguistic aspects of the regional and community elections campaign and of the profile of the appointed Senators.

Ever since the 1990's, deliberative theory has been heralded as the most promising new theory on political legitimacy. Democratic deliberation, conceived as the rational exchange of arguments, is claimed to improve the quality of democratic decision making because it instigates a more considered judgment; it allows citizens to hear other perspectives to a problem and to question their own opinions. However, deliberation's beneficial effects do not come about easily. If deliberative mini-publics want to contribute to the legitimacy of political decision making, they have to reflect the principles of legitimacy in their own functioning. It is therefore crucial to assess the internal legitimacy of deliberative mini-publics before making claims about their contribution to the legitimacy of the political system as a whole. In this paper, we set out to assess the input, throughput and output legitimacy of four deliberative events, namely the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly, the Irish "We, The Citizens"-project, the Belgian G1000, and the Dutch Burgerforum. Based on a most-similar comparison of these cases, we argue that their internal legitimacy differs a great deal, and that this is due to factors relating to their process design, such as funding, recruitment and moderation.

[Resumo] Facer arquitectura é significar, é un acto político; ten unha dimensión social. O entendemento social da produción arquitectónica significa abordar o estudo dos grupos sociais en relación á disciplina. Nun contexto de desigualdade, identificar os sesgos culturais resulta clave á hora de promover valores contemplados nos dereitos humanos como a igualdade de xénero. Nesta procura, a chegada das TIC supoñen un punto de inflexión: a democratización das tecnoloxías da información e o nacemento de novos espazos globais de comunicación veñen representando unha oportunidade inédita para a difusión e o encontro de arquitectas, investigadoras e activistas na posta en cuestión do discurso oficial da arquitectura.[Abstract] To make architecture supposes giving meaning, it is a political action; it has a social dimension. The social understanding of architectonic production means tackling the study of social groups in relation to discipline. In an inequality context, identifying cultural bias becomes key just to promote human rights like gender equality. In this pursue, the emergence of ICT means an inflexion point: the democratization of information technologies and the appearance of new global communication spaces that represent an unprecedented opportunity for diffusion and meeting of women architects, investigators and activists joined questioning the official architectural discourse

A STXUE de 26-7-2018 (Asunto M. B) declara o carácter discriminatorio dunha normativa nacional (británica) que esixe ás persoas transexuais casadas a anulación do seu matrimonio para acceder ao recoñecemento xurídico pleno do seu cambio de xénero, en tanto condicionante do acceso á pensión de xubilación á idade establecida polo ordenamento nacional para as persoas do sexo adquirido. Este axuizamento leva a cabo en relación á Directiva 79/7/CEE, do 19 de decembro de 1978 relativa á aplicación progresiva do principio de igualdade de trato entre homes e mulleres en materia de seguridade social. ; Este traballo analiza este pronunciamento xudicial situándoo no conxunto da (escasa) xurisprudencia comunitaria que abordou as consecuencias do cambio de sexo desde a normativa comunitaria de carácter socio-laboral. Apúntase tamén a ( fragmentaria e dispersa) regulación xurídica española relativa ao cambio de sexo-xénero e as consecuencias en materia de seguridade social. O traballo pon de manifesto que non son poucos -e leste é un deles- os casos nos que a pesar da diferenciación sexo-xénero ambos os termos utilízanse no mesmo sentido. O traballo avoga por un Dereito "de-xenerado" e "de-xenerador" no sentido sinalado pola autora no epílogo final. ; The ECJ ruling of 26th July 2018 (MB) declares the discriminatory nature of a national (British) regulation that requires married transgender people to annul their marriage in order to have full legal recognition of their gender change, as a conditioning factor of access to retirement pension at the age established by the national law for persons of acquired sex. This prosecution is carried out in relation to Directive 79/7/EEC of 19th December 1978 on the progressive application of the principle of equal treatment of men and women in social security. This paper analyzes this judicial pronouncement placing it in the whole of the (scarce) EU jurisprudence that has addressed the consequences of sex change in the EU regulations of a socio-labour nature. It also points to the (fragmented and dispersed) Spanish legal regulation regarding the sex-gender change and the consequences in terms of social security. The paper shows that there are not a few - and this is one of them - cases in which, despite the sex-gender differentiation, both terms are used in the same sense. The paper advocates a Law "de-generated" and "degenerator" in the sense indicated by the author in the final epilogue.

While a great deal of attention is devoted to the Pacific region as the new chessboard of international politics, Pakistan remains a key actor in terms of both threat and potential. Two observations back this argument: first, Pakistan's fundamental roles as a state are challenged by its ongoing conflict with India and internal insurgencies. Second, due to a power-status gap, Pakistan experiences difficulties in holding specific self-conceived roles. In addition to hampering its socio-economic potential, these developments prevent Pakistan's quest for normalization in the system. As a consequence, we argue that engaging with Islamabad should be a priority for Washington so as to prevent the country from further aligning with Beijing, thus reinforcing China's regional leadership and status as peer-competitor to the United States. Indeed, as the potential for deviance in the international system arises from its normative dimension, the US, as the global leader, counts among its roles that of norm-setter and primary socializer for most states. Our research proposes to look at an old puzzle with new theoretical insights. By addressing the question of Washington's engagement towards non-conforming states, we aim to document a set of socialization processes as intervening variables linking American global role as leader and primary socializer to Pakistan's process of social integration (normalization/deviance). Drawing from sociology and social psychology, the paper seeks to explore the ability of the leader to act as a primary source of role location and status recognition towards non-conforming states so as to integrate them (back) into the US-led system.

Because of its very conception, the G1000 in Belgium cannot be categorized as a form of constitutional deliberative democracy per se. Its grassroots origin never indeed entailed to change the constitution. Yet this chapter contends that there are some constitutional deliberative democracy features in the G1000, which paradoxically were not thought of by its citizen organizers who sought in the first phases of the G1000 to avoid any political and institutional ties. In fact, their focus was much more on a high input and throughput legitimacy, rather than a high output legitimacy. Their goal was to demonstrate that ordinary citizens, randomly selected, had a say about major social and political issues and that they were wiling and able to deliberate about them, should a design conducive to deliberation be put in place. While the G1000 scored highly on the input dimensions – the quality of representation was good and the agenda could not have been more open – and fairly highly on throughput legitimacy – with a clear script and trained moderators, but with processes of aggregation insufficiently transparent –, the outputs were in the short term very limited, which was a major source of criticism as media had fostered a climate of great expectations about the outputs. The absence of formal links to the main political actors meant that the organizers could not guarantee any formal implementation of the results. So the design characteristics that increase input legitimacy also undermine output legitimacy. But on the longer term the political uptake and the social uptake of the G1000 are increasing as, on the one hand, most of the political parties are now advocating some forms of participatory and deliberative democracy and, on the other hand, several experiences inspired by the G1000 have sparked around in Belgium and in neighboring countries. This twofold output consequence of the G1000 seems to indicate that this experience has fostered some sort of constitutional deliberative democracy broadly defined.

What are the outputs and effects of deliberative mini-publics? This is probably one of the most critical questions for any deliberative endeavor. In the realm of large-scale deliberative experiments, the G1000 in Belgium holds a special place: it happened in the wake of the longest government formation ever, it sought to gather 1000 randomly selected citizens in Brussels to discuss key social and political issues, and, above all, it was a fully citizen-led initiative. Its organizers explicitly sought to avoid any political and institutional ties and their focus was much more on guaranteeing a high representativeness and a qualitative process, rather than generating strong political outcomes. While the G1000 did well in terms of representativeness and open agenda setting, the political uptake was very limited in the short term. In the longer term, however, it seems that the effects of the G1000 were larger than initially expected. A rich set of empirical data is used to analyze the interaction between the G1000 with the entire political system by looking at the relation with the media, public opinion, political parties and MPs, and other experiments in deliberative democracy. Such endeavor sheds light on the "so what" question which is key to the development of real-world deliberative democracy.

What are the outputs and effects of deliberative mini-publics? This is probably one of the most critical questions for any deliberative endeavor. In the realm of large-scale deliberative experiments, the G1000 in Belgium holds a special place: it happened in the wake of the longest government formation ever, it sought to gather 1000 randomly selected citizens in Brussels to discuss key social and political issues, and, above all, it was a fully citizen-led initiative. Its organizers explicitly sought to avoid any political and institutional ties and their focus was much more on guaranteeing a high representativeness and a qualitative process, rather than generating strong political outcomes. While the G1000 did well in terms of representativeness and open agenda setting, the political uptake was very limited in the short term. In the longer term, however, it seems that the effects of the G1000 were larger than initially expected. A rich set of empirical data is used to analyze the interaction between the G1000 with the entire political system by looking at the relation with the media, public opinion, political parties and MPs, and other experiments in deliberative democracy. Such endeavor sheds light on the "so what" question which is key to the development of real-world deliberative democracy.