Suchergebnisse

A research report, this paper analyses the formation on citizen competences among university students, from a sample of 252 students in Bogotá D.C., Colombia. This is made through the design of a Likert questionnaire to analyse 4 categories: participatory democracy, social responsibility, the concept of person and human rights awareness. A lack of clarity in the concepts of State, Social State of Law, democracy, and person, among others was evidenced. Similarly, it was determined the importance of establishing clear criteria on a humanist, citizen and political university formation, as well as to create spaces in the classroom to ponder upon the categories studied in the personal and social levels. ; El presente artículo producto de la investigación analiza la formación en competencias ciudadanas en estudiantes universitarios, utilizando una muestra de 252 estudiantes en Bogotá D.C, Colombia, mediante el diseño de un cuestionario tipo Likert para el análisis de cuatro categorías: democracia participativa, responsabilidad social, concepto de persona y reconocimiento de los derechos humanos. Se evidenció falta de claridad en los conceptos de Estado, Estado Social de Derecho, democracia y persona, derechos humanos, entre otros. Así mismo, se determinó la importancia de establecer criterios claros de formación universitaria humanista, ciudadana y política en pregrado y posgrado y a la vez de crear espacios en el aula para la reflexión personal y social en torno a las categorías estudiadas.

Social networking lies at the heart of a number of fascinating political questions and social concerns, including citizen competence, social movements, and voter mobilization. In The Social Basis of the Rational Citizen, Sean Richey provides an empirical analysis of the most important hypothesized effect of social network influence on politics: social cognition.

Civic Education and Competences for Engaging Citizens in Democracies Murray Print University of Sydney and Dirk Lange Leibniz University of Hannover What competences do young citizens need to be considered as active and engaged in the context of a modern Europe? In 2011 an invited research symposium of leading civic and political educators, social scientists and educational administrators from Europe met in Hannover, Germany to consider this key concern facing Europe today. In examining the above question the symposium addressed two significant issues: 1. Identify key competencies required for active citizenship of young people in Europe of the future. 2. Translate those competencies to school-based activities in the form of curricular and pedagogical strategies. The group addressed these questions through discussion in the symposium and through previously prepared papers. Subsequently the group participated in a modified Delphi Technique to identify the key competences and the final competences are presented in this book. The chapters of this book represent the contribution of the participants before, during and after the symposium with opportunities for review and reflection. Murray Print and Dirk Lange are professors from the University of Sydney and Leibniz University of Hannover respectively and are national leaders in civics and citizenship education in their respective countries. They have brought together a group of leading European civic and citizenship educators from different academic fields to explore the key issue and to identify the competences for young people to become active and engaged European citizens

Given the host of tragic events that children experience, it is often compelling for well-intended adults to respond in a protective and charitable fashion. The child rights approach asks for more. Building on their collective experiences in the developmental and social sciences, the authors present in roughly chronological fashion a synopsis of the theoretical explorations and scientific evaluation that completes a framework to advance the status of children as citizens. The recognition of the agency and capability of a child and the dynamic and enduring source of socialization from and social integration within the community are fundamental to this project. The participatory rights enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child serve as an impetus and inspiration to this project, the Young Citizens Program. What began with small-scale deliberative groups in Chicago matured into a cluster randomized controlled trial in northern Tanzania. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright The American Academy of Political and Social Science.]

Research shows that most citizens are shockingly uninformed about public affairs, liberal-conservative ideologies, and the issues of the day. This has led most scholars to condemn typical American voters as politically brainless and to conclude that policy voting lies beyond their reach. 'On Voter Competence' breaks sharply from this view. According to Paul Goren, people vote based on abstract policy principles, a practice that has escaped scholars because they have searched for evidence of policy voting in the wrong places

The purpose of forest policy is to enhance the sustainable production of benefits of forests to serve the needs of all citizens. Theory of system justification claims that low status groups are the most likely to support, defend and justify existing social systems. This study explores how various aspects of forest related competencies affect satisfaction with the political system and the desire to influence decision making. The effect of competence on system satisfaction and the desire to influence outcomes, is evaluated using survey data on Finnish citizens' attitudes on forest policy. The results were in line with system justification theory: Competence decreases system satisfaction and increases the desire to influence outcomes. The dissatisfaction with the system becomes possible only if people have adequate knowledge. Forestry competent people tend to be satisfied with the system, while people with conservation knowledge tend to be dissatisfied. The challenges to the inclusion of citizens' views in political processes are addressed. ; Peer reviewed

This thesis examines the feasibility of lay citizen participation in the process of constitutional reform in Australia. While there have been increasing calls in recent decades for members of the general public to be more deeply involved in debates about constitutional change, there has been little scholarly inquiry into whether this is achievable. This thesis fills this gap by providing a detailed assessment of how individuals get involved in constitutional debate, and whether it is feasible for public involvement to become a more central component of Australia's c'onstitutional reform process. The thesis' theoretical framework is provided by participatory and deliberative democratic theories. Together, these theories provide a rich conception of citizen involvement that emphasises the ideals of broad participation, sound judgment and inclusiveness. The thesis' empirical analysis is structured around discussion of five challenges to participation that emerge from this theoretical literature: citizen willingness, equal participation, citizen competence in developing sound judgment, citizen competence in engaging in quality deliberation, and legitimacy. The thesis approaches these issues through a detailed examination of lay citizen participation in Australian constitutional debates during the period 1991–1999. It adopts a mixed methods approach, combining analysis of three main data sources: the 1999 Australian Constitutional Referendum Study, primary documentary material on the debates of the 1990s, and focus group interviews on perceptions and attitudes towards constitutional reform. The thesis' central argument is that greater lay citizen participation in the process of constitutional reform is achievable provided that, in the design of that process, careful attention is paid to a complex set of factors that foster and inhibit it. These factors are identified and discussed throughout the thesis and include the provision of participatory activities that are responsive to diverse personal motivations, the ...

"This book offers a look at the latest research within digital literacy and competence, setting the bar for the digital citizen of today and tomorrow"--Provided by publisher

Two moral abilities are particularly important for living together in a democracy: firstly the ability of all citizens to judge and to act in accordance with their own moral principles; secondly, the ability to solve conflicts by means of fear-free discussions instead of the use of violence and the exercise of power. As research shows, both basic abilities, which are often summed up under the overall concept of moral competence, are essential for a democratic way of life and the functioning of democratic institutions. They are important for many things, e.g., for helping people in distress (not just readiness to help), for making quick decisions, learning effectively, for tolerating ambiguity, and for rejecting violence as a means of social change. Research also shows that the school promotes moral competence less effec¬tively and less sustainably than is needed and seems possible today. In this editorial, I attempt to give a broad overview on the research on moral competence and its application in education and educational policy-making in the past thirty years, in which I have been personally involved. It is not a comprehensive handbook article, which remains to be written.

Regulation (EU) No.211/16th February 2011 on the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI), as one of the major innovations of the Treaty of Lisbon, represents the first supranational instrument of direct democracy that took effect on April 1, 2012, creating the direct legal link between the European Union citizens and the European institutions.Within the present paper we will try to analyse briefly certain citizens' initiatives that have been already published on the official website of the European Commission where the online collection of a million signatures is still running, bearing in mind the important role of the citizens as "co-authors" of the law within the European decision-making process, without forgetting to make a short overview of the European Citizens' Initiative instrument.Even though it is too early to give an opinion whether this new instrument will become or not a useful tool for citizens and their democratic participation into the European political life, from our point of view this participation will increase the responsibility of the citizens to be more active by submitting proposals that concern their current life in all the subject matters which are under the Commission's legislative competence. The citizens' efforts will be doubled by the EU institutions and the civil society organizations that can play a significant role in providing the infrastructure and assistance to the ECI organizers to ensure that the EU citizens are afforded to use their new right in the best conditions and without no obstacles in a more inclusive and democratic Europe. DOI:10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n9p414

This paper considers the place of children within liberal-democratic society and its related political morality. The genesis of the paper is two considerations which are in tension with one another. First, that there must be some point at which children are divided from adults, with children denied the rights which go along with full membership of the liberal community. The justification for the difference in the statue between these two groups must be rooted in some notion of capacities, since these are the only relevant differences between adults and children. Second, that linking an individual's capacities to her status undermines the central liberal commitment of political equality. This dilemma explains what I term the threshold view, which holds that children become adult citizens upon reaching an age of competence and that above this level differences in abilities cease to matter to an individual's status. While this view has attractions, this paper argues that this view must eventually be rejected because of its inability to deal with the actual process of human development. In its place, the paper proposes a modification to this view which sees the threshold constrained by moral demands and applied indirectly to age groups rather than individuals. These constraints preserve the commitment to equality in a way consistent with a plausible view of children's place in society.

While various descriptive and prescriptive citizen participation models suggest ways to improve citizen participation, none has been subjected to large‐scale empirical tests. This article develops and tests an organizational theory model that explores the conditions under which citizen involvement as a general strategy can improve administrative decision making. The new model focuses on organizational variables that are more directly subject to managerial influence, such as political support, leadership, red tape, and hierarchical authority, as well as variables related to participant competence and representativeness. Hypotheses are tested with data collected from a national survey of local government managers. The results suggest that public management matters for citizen participation. The conclusion calls for integrating quantitative designs with normative and qualitative citizen participation research.

Preliminary Material /James Arvanitakis and Ingrid Matthews -- 21st Century Citizen Networks in Complex States: Shall We Dance or Play Tug-of-War? /Eugene G. Kowch -- Nomos Beyond the Earth /Josh Entsminger -- Israeli Narratives to the Diaspora and the Construction of an Unequal Diasporic Citizenship /Shahar Burla -- Arendtian Deliberation on the Decline of Political Public Space: The Case of Postwar Japanese Citizenship /Yaya Mori -- Multiple Nationality and the (Ab)Use of Citizenship: Identity Opportunity and Risk /Anna Tsalapatanis -- Migrating Rights /Laurie Berg -- Asian Democracy and the Problem of Membership: Rules of Exception and 'Legitimate' Discrimination against Migrants in South Korea /Sohoon Lee -- Expanding the Citizen in Multicultural Policymaking /Rimi Khan -- Universalising Citizenship as Identity? Identity Liberalism and the Paradox of Universalism /Francis Luong -- Expanding Citizenship: Expanding Our Understanding /Mitra Gusheh and Anna Powell -- Teaching and Learning Citizenship: From the Margins to the Centre /Ingrid Matthews -- 'The Kids Are Alright, It's Just Youth in Trouble': Re-Thinking Civic Competence through a Presence Model of Youth Citizenship Identity /Jennifer Upchurch -- Environment and Citizenship: Rethinking What It Means to Be a Citizen in the 21st Century /Benito Cao -- Environmental Citizenship: A Case Study of the Global Young Greens /Alex Surace and Amy Tyler -- Practicing an Individual Ethics of Sustainability /Chris Riedy -- Engagement and Citizenship: Universities in the Contemporary World /James Arvanitakis and Bob Hodge -- An Open Source Project for Politics: Visions of Democracy and Citizenship in American Pirate Parties /Martin Fredriksson -- A 21st Century Citizen in a Brave New Republic /Spike Boydell -- The 21st Century Citizen and Beyond /Ingrid Matthews and James Arvanitakis.