Political elites in deliberative democracy: beliefs and behaviors of Chinese officials

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 643-662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaiping Zhang ◽  
Tianguang Meng
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The Public ◽  
The People ◽  
The Status ◽  
Political Traditions ◽  
Major Trend ◽  
Deliberative Governance

AbstractPolitical leaders and elites play an enormous role in shaping a country's political development. Participatory and deliberative governance represents a major trend of political development around the world; while many studies focus on the ordinary people involved in public deliberation, little is known about the roles elites play in facilitating or impeding the progress of this deliberation. Utilizing a new survey on Chinese officials, we offer the first empirical study that reveals Chinese officials’ perceptions and practices of deliberative democracy. We find that cultural and political traditions alongside personal and social factors have deeply shaped elites’ understandings of democracy, especially the new socialist deliberative democracy. Chinese officials understand democracy largely according to the Confucian tradition of minben and the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) political heritage of mass line, both of which emphasize that officials should listen to the people and make benevolent policies for them. While many embrace the significance of deliberative institutions for improving democratic governance, others emphasize the pragmatic value of consolidating the status quo, or believe it is merely a political show. Democratic oriented officials in the Chinese sense – those who view themselves as servants of the people who should respond to their needs, value public input, are willing to converse with the people in an equal manner, and are less concerned about risks in social stability – are more likely to engage the public in daily decision-making through various channels. Our study suggests that different practices of authoritarian deliberation may lead toward distinct prospects for democracy.

The Library Big Data Research

2018 ◽  
pp. 892-905
Author(s):  
Shaochun Xu ◽  
Wencai Du ◽  
Chunning Wang ◽  
Dapeng Liu
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Research Work ◽  
The Public ◽  
Research Institutes ◽  
Library Research ◽  
The People ◽  
Intellectual Assets ◽  
The Status ◽  
Visualization Tools ◽  
Stored Information

Libraries are widely used by government, universities, research institutes, and the public since they are storing and managing intellectual assets. The library information directly stored in libraries and about the people interaction with libraries can be transformed into accessible data which then will be used by researchers to help library better serve users. Librarians need to understand how to transform, analyze, and present data in order to facilitate such knowledge creation. For example, the challenges they face include how to make big datasets more useful, visible and accessible. Fortunately, with new and powerful analytics of big data, such as information visualization tools, researchers/users can look at data in new ways and mine it for information they intend to have. Moreover, interaction of users and stored information has been taken into librarian's consideration to improve library service quality. In this work, the authors discuss the characteristics of datasets in library and argue against a popular confusion that data involved in library research is not big enough, conduct a review for the research work on library big data and then summarize the applications and research directions in this field. The status of big data research in library in China is discussed. The challenges associated with it are also discussed and explored.

scholarly journals What Do ‘We’ Know That ‘They’ Don’t? Sociologists’ versus Non-Sociologists’ Knowledge

2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 671-696 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Mesny
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
Public Sociology ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Public ◽  
The People ◽  
Embedded Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Critical Policy ◽  
The Relationship

This paper attempts to clarify or to reposition some of the controversies generated by Burawoy’s defense of public sociology and by his vision of the mutually stimulating relationship between the different forms of sociology. Before arguing if, why, and how, sociology should or could be more ‘public’, it might be useful to reflect upon what it is we think we, as sociologists, know that ‘lay people’ do not. This paper thus explores the public sociology debate’s epistemological core, namely the issue of the relationship between sociologists’ and non-sociologists’ knowledge of the social world. Four positions regarding the status of sociologists’ knowledge versus lay people’s knowledge are explored: superiority (sociologists’ knowledge of the social world is more accurate, objective and reflexive than lay people’s knowledge, thanks to science’s methods and norms), homology (when they are made explicit, lay theories about the social world often parallel social scientists’ theories), complementarity (lay people’s and social scientists’ knowledge complement one another. The former’s local, embedded knowledge is essential to the latter’s general, disembedded knowledge), and circularity (sociologists’ knowledge continuously infuses commonsensical knowledge, and scientific knowledge about the social world is itself rooted in common sense knowledge. Each form of knowledge feeds the other). For each of these positions, implications are drawn regarding the terms, possibilities and conditions of a dialogue between sociologists and their publics, especially if we are to take the circularity thesis seriously. Conclusions point to the accountability we face towards the people we study, and to the idea that sociology is always performative, a point that has, to some extent, been obscured by Burawoy’s distinctions between professional, critical, policy and public sociologies.

The Library Big Data Research

Web Services ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 2308-2321
Author(s):  
Shaochun Xu ◽  
Wencai Du ◽  
Chunning Wang ◽  
Dapeng Liu
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Research Work ◽  
The Public ◽  
Research Institutes ◽  
Library Research ◽  
The People ◽  
Intellectual Assets ◽  
The Status ◽  
Visualization Tools ◽  
Stored Information

Libraries are widely used by government, universities, research institutes, and the public since they are storing and managing intellectual assets. The library information directly stored in libraries and about the people interaction with libraries can be transformed into accessible data which then will be used by researchers to help library better serve users. Librarians need to understand how to transform, analyze, and present data in order to facilitate such knowledge creation. For example, the challenges they face include how to make big datasets more useful, visible and accessible. Fortunately, with new and powerful analytics of big data, such as information visualization tools, researchers/users can look at data in new ways and mine it for information they intend to have. Moreover, interaction of users and stored information has been taken into librarian's consideration to improve library service quality. In this work, the authors discuss the characteristics of datasets in library and argue against a popular confusion that data involved in library research is not big enough, conduct a review for the research work on library big data and then summarize the applications and research directions in this field. The status of big data research in library in China is discussed. The challenges associated with it are also discussed and explored.

Use of Public Programming Strategies in Promoting Access to Documentary Heritage at Zimbabwe National Archives

2019 ◽  
pp. 125-143
Author(s):  
Forget Chaterera ◽  
Antonio Rodrigues
Keyword(s):  
Grounded Theory ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
Grounded Theory Research ◽  
The People ◽  
National Archives ◽  
Public Programming ◽  
Theory Research

Archival institutions have a potential to transform the socioeconomic and political development of a people. It is therefore critical for them to be visible and accessible. To this effect, public programming emerges as a critical archival function performed by archivists to enhance the visibility and utilisation of archives. Through a grounded theory research approach, this study established that the National Archives of Zimbabwe (NAZ) performs a plethora of public programming activities to improve the visibility of the institution in the public domain. The potential of public programming activities to improve the utilisation of the archives at NAZ was found wanting as the institution lacked a planned schedule of outreach activities. This explains why visits to the research room were dwindling, hence the need for archivists to be proactive in reaching out to the people. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate public programming as the cornerstone to achieving better recognition and subsequent use of documentary heritage.

The Mandwa Project: An Experiment in Community Participation

1988 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noshir H. Antia
Keyword(s):  
Political Factors ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Adequate Knowledge ◽  
Self Help ◽  
The People ◽  
Vested Interests ◽  
Health And Illness ◽  
The Status

The project at Mandwa was designed to study the problems of health in rural India and the delivery of health care by the existing public and private health systems. The results demonstrate the important role of socioeconomic and political factors not only in vital areas such as nutrition, water supply, sanitation, and housing, but also in the delivery of health services. The private sector showed a predominantly curative and monetary orientation, while the public sector demonstrated a lack of accountability to the people it was designed to serve. Under these conditions, an attempt was made to test the possibility of training local women in self-help with a minimal supportive service. The results reveal that adequate knowledge and technology exist for most of the prevalent problems of health and illness in developing countries, and that semiliterate villagers have the capacity to use these effectively if they are provided in a simple manner. This experiment also demonstrates the opposition from local vested interests to any change of the status quo, even in the relatively noncontroversial field of health.

scholarly journals The Role Of Public Relations In Advancing The Status Of University Work

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 108-133
Author(s):  
Saher Qadory
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The Public ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Government Institutions ◽  
The People ◽  
The Status ◽  
Patterns Of Behavior ◽  
And Control

The human nature does not live in isolation from people, but circumstances require life to communicate with others and cooperate with them, while communicating with others and cooperate with them, either to leave the person a good impact for the rest of the people, or to leave a bad impact, if left a good impact helped him to Spend his work quickly and with less effort and vice versa. Thus, adapting individuals and groups to social reality is important and an indispensable necessity for the common good. This is the case for any organization. It does not live in isolation from the public and the surrounding society. It needs it and needs it. There must be good relations between them, and each knows the importance of the role played by society. Without the good connections between the organizations and the surrounding public or the surrounding society, they can not guarantee peace and stability, and the larger the distance between them and their audience and society, the more urgent it becomes to know the views of thousands or millions of individuals and groups. And then explain them to them in order to gain their trust and respect and support and this is what the Department of Public Relations does. Public relations, scientific insight is a social phenomenon based on its activities to interactive processes, in order to find the psychological effects related to the motives and human needs of the human personality and its components, and the trends of individuals and their different tendencies and methods of measuring these trends and ways of influencing them, so they are based mainly on the recruitment of elements These elements are scientific research, planning, coordination, communication, and evaluation, to achieve certain effects in the patterns of behavior of a particular audience, with the aim of achieving predetermined goals. Which is sometimes known as the engineering of behavior, which means a method or method the American scientist Skinner in 1955 to launch this label with the intention of similar with the technical methods used by engineers, the purpose is to subject these methods and use in the management of human behavior and control or control behavior.   Public relations are an important aspect of the work of institutions at the present time and are more specific in government institutions because of the enormous burdens and responsibilities of the community, as well as the need for good relations between the organization and the public by informing them of the facts, information, objectives, policies, programs and plans of the organization. And to convince the public of the importance of the efforts of government institutions to serve the citizens

scholarly journals PARTISIPASI KELOMPOK MASYARAKAT DALAM PENGELOLAAN KAWASAN HUTAN LINDUNG, KASUS DI HUTAN LINDUNG GUNUNG NONA KOTA AMBON PROPINSI MALUKU

PERENNIAL ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 99
Author(s):  
Messalina L Salampessy ◽  
Bramasto Nugroho ◽  
Herry Purnomo
Keyword(s):  
Forest Area ◽  
Local People ◽  
Chi Square ◽  
The Public ◽  
Protection Forest ◽  
The People ◽  
Participation Level ◽  
The Status ◽  
Research Population ◽  
The Relationship

The management of a protection forest often faces a dilemma between the importance of conservation and the importance of the needs of the local people in the area. Managing the area will on’t be so effective and disturbed if there is only minimal participation and insufficient support in interaction from the local people. Various factors of heterogeneous people will influence the form of interaction that occurs between the people and the area. The aim of this study is to know and measure the participation of the local people in managing the protection forest and to analyse the characteristics (both individual and organizational) that influence the level of participation collectively in preserving the protected forest area. This research is designed as a survey research having the character of a descriptive co-relationship between the variable dependent i.e. Community participation and the variable of individual and organizational characters as a heterogeneous factor in protection forest area. This research population is the active community who manage the land (dusung) around the protection forest area in Gunung Nona (HLGN) in Ambon. Data analyses used tests the technical Chi square and its participation level test the co-efficient of the contingency. Results show that the characteristics (both individual and organizational) that have a close connection and influenced the level of participation in preserving the HLGN area are their knowledge about the protection forest, the scope of the authority of dusung land, the status of ownership of the dusung, the period of involvement in the organization and the relationship between the organizer and the public members in the organization. People’s participation in managing the HLGN is based on the perceived benefits and how they manage the dusung depends on their own character or morale. Key words: Participation, Heterogeneous, Dusung.

scholarly journals Refugees as scapegoat for terrorism

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 1968 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nimet Özbek
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Border Control ◽  
Security Threat ◽  
Host Countries ◽  
Demographic Differences ◽  
The Public ◽  
The People ◽  
Raising Awareness ◽  
The Status ◽  
Muslim Majority

In the last five years, there has been a growing concern about the fact that there might be some terrorist mix in the surge of refugees fleeing war-torn Muslim-majority countries. The concern resulted in people rethinking about refugees are granted asylums. Some Europeans call for their governments to quit bringing to their countries any more refugees at all. This however goes against what these countries agreed and signed in the 1951 Convention and the 1967 United Nations Protocol concerning the status of refugees. In this article, it will be examined if it is true that migrants bring terrorists with them, how this proposition itself came to be, and whether or not there are rock solid data to support it. As it will be discovered in the following paragraphs, there is no direct correlation between refugees and terrorist activities that take place in different places which happen to be hosting refugees. Instead, the idea security threat in refugee host countries and migrants they accommodate roots from attitude the people in those countries have towards migrants, demographic differences as well as real world issues. The solution to this misconception requires both refugees and receiving nations to collaborate; such as the refugees helping authorities to identify any terrorist recruiter who may be lurking among them and on the other hand the authorities should devise a seamless system of border control in order to know who enters their countries and who leaves. They can also engage in activities helping the public to distinguish between terrorists and migrants by raising awareness.

Thoughts on Iraqi Kurdistan: Present Realities, Future Hope

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darren Logan
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Northern Iraq ◽  
Iraqi Kurdistan ◽  
The People ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Stability ◽  
External Actors ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Source Materials

AbstractThe collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003 ushered Iraq into an era of unprecedented opportunity. The Kurds of Northern Iraq were given an opportunity to control their destiny in such a way not before encountered in their turbulent history. However, this moment has not been free of significant concern. Against the witness of history one can reasonably inquire as to whether or not the dominant Kurdish majority in Northern Iraq is able to seize this opportunity and make the most of it. Will they be able to break the historic cycle of internal dissension and unite to ensure the stability, prosperity, and security of their territory in Northern Iraq? Additionally, does Iraqi Kurdistan have the ability to adequately balance the often mutually exclusive demands it faces from powerful external actors? Clearly, the people of Iraqi Kurdistan must make their own choice in the matter. Nonetheless, outside forces must also help in the process by engaging with Kurdistan in Iraq in a positive and constructive manner. This will also go a long way toward securing and sustaining stability in this strategic area of the Near East. The article includes some thoughts about the current reality facing Iraqi Kurdistan, primarily as they relate to the KRG, together with some observations concerning the future hope for the region and its people. Some markers of Iraqi Kurdistan's progress are discussed not least of which is the status of its political development and freedom; economic health and growth; its fight against corruption; security within the KRG; its relations with Baghdad; and its external security situation, especially as it relates to Turkey, Syria, and Iran. These suggestions are based upon several recent trips by the author to Iraqi Kurdistan and from openly available source materials. However, these contemporary issues should be considered within their historical context. Therefore, the author gives also a summary review of some major historical events in the modern era leading up to the current situation in Northern Iraq.

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