scholarly journals Can independent regulatory agencies mend Europe’s democracy? The case of the European Medicines Agency’s public hearing on Valproate

2021 ◽  
pp. 136914812110543
Author(s):  
Matthew Wood
Keyword(s):  
Drug Distribution ◽  
Public Consultation ◽  
Regulatory Agencies ◽  
European Medicines Agency ◽  
Public Hearing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Hearings ◽  
Critical Case Study ◽  
New Evidence

In 2017, the European Medicines Agency staged the first effort at democratic innovation within transnational European Union institutions directly influencing the transnational regulation of medicines. Alongside its public consultation on epilepsy drug Valproate, European Medicines Agency included a public hearing involving representatives of patients and testimony from those directly affected by the medicines. Using this critical case study, the article argues from a deliberative democratic perspective that although the hearing in many ways exhibited the traditional shortcomings of elite-driven deliberation, it also demonstrated unexpected and surprising deliberative qualities. Based on new quantitative analysis of the hearing using the Discourse Quality Index, and qualitative observation of over 4 hours of footage, the article argues European Medicines Agency’s hearing facilitated equitable access and influence of patients and members of the public who had previously been excluded from decision making on drug distribution. These findings provide important new evidence of the deliberative democratic value of public hearings.

Congressional Committee Members as Independent Agency Overseers: A Case Study

1960 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 911-920 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seymour Scher
Keyword(s):  
Labor Relations ◽  
Regulatory Agencies ◽  
Congressional Committee ◽  
The Public ◽  
National Labor Relations Board ◽  
Congressional Committees ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Public Hearings ◽  
Regulatory Commission

This paper is concerned with the behavior of members of a Congressional committee in their role as overseers of an independent regulatory commission. Congressional committees seem periodically to become aware of the presence of the regulatory agencies and after a more or less spectacular examination of one or another of them, allow them to slip back to an undisturbed and unnoticed routine. Their status as “independent” agencies leaves to Congress the formal responsibility both for checking on the fulfillment of their legislative mandates and for preserving them from domination by their clientele and the President. Too little notice has been taken, however, of the nature of the control of these regulatory agencies emanating from Congress.This study results from an examination of the House Education and Labor Committee as it reviewed the performance of the National Labor Relations Board in 1953. My sources are the public hearings of the Committee in the 83d Congress and interviews with Committee members over a two-year period thereafter.

scholarly journals Re-defining gender as a heinous crime: A case study from the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies

2020 ◽  
pp. 095792652097721
Author(s):  
Janaina Negreiros Persson
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Gender Ideology ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Public Hearing ◽  
Rhetorical Invention ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core

In this article, we explore how the discourses around gender are evolving at the core of Brazilian politics. Our focus lies on the discourses at the public hearing on the bill 3.492/19, which aimed at including “gender ideology” on the list of heinous crimes. We aim to identify the deputies’ linguistic representation of social actors as pertaining to in- and outgroups. In addition, the article analyzes through Critical Discourse Analysis how the terminology gender is represented in this particular hearing. The analysis shows how some of the conservative parliamentarians give a clearly negative meaning to the term gender, by labeling it “gender ideology” and additionally connecting it with heinous crimes. We propose that the re-signification of “gender ideology,” from rhetorical invention to heinous crime, is not only an attempt to undermine scientific gender studies but also a way for conservative deputies to gain more political power.

scholarly journals Public Consultation: Collaboration of Government and Citizens in The Local Requirements-Based Policy Processing

2018 ◽  
Vol 73 ◽  
pp. 09014
Author(s):  
Sunu Astuti Retno ◽  
Maros Asra'i
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Public Consultation ◽  
Public Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Recess Period ◽  
Governance Processes ◽  
Opening Up

Public consultation is an appropriate means for engaging the public in policy-making and opening up opportunities for every citizen to have their option in following various governance processes. The collaboration of government and citizens as a form of public consultation is a process of strengthening the capacity to build sustainable cooperation among various interest groups. The benefits of collaboration are reducing conflicts of interest and improving the quality of policies. Deliberative democracy is a democratic concept which is based on a mechanism of discussion and prioritizing dialogic ways as a foundation of public consultation. Deliberative democracy allows citizens to discuss public issues and provide lessons to government to act democratically and get legitimation to important issues. DPRD as a legislative body that has the obligation to accommodate the aspirations of the community as the embodiment of public consultation implemented in the recess time. The qualitative research method used in the Bungo district case study showed that the recess period had not been fully utilized. DPRD had not been able to respond to the needs of the community so it was found that the development done in Bungo Regency is not as needed.

scholarly journals Theory and practice of public hearings in urban planning

2019 ◽  
Vol 135 ◽  
pp. 03012
Author(s):  
Zinaida Ivanova
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Public Hearing ◽  
Urban Residents ◽  
Expert Interviews ◽  
The Public ◽  
Implementation Processes ◽  
Public Hearings ◽  
The Russian Federation

The author raises the issue of improving the public hearing procedure. The author analyses the established practice of public hearings in Russia, criticizes the new Urban Planning Code adopted in the Russian Federation, and expresses her concerns about the violation of its provisions regulating public hearings and discussions. These concerns are the outcome of an extensive in-depth research into the practice of public hearings, the analysis of their minutes and resolutions; the process of monitoring the course of public hearings, and sociological surveys launched among different categories of respondents in Moscow. The author analyzes the findings of the polls launched among Muscovites, as well as the expert interviews given by the deputies of the Moscow State Duma and members of urban initiative groups. The author’s conclusion is that the conversion of public hearings into an efficient public and political institute requires the reconsideration of their organization and implementation processes, let alone the assignment of a legal status to resolutions of public hearings. The author proposes a two-step public hearing model that will make it possible to expose projects to thorough expert evaluations by independent specialists and to launch extensive discussions among urban residents.

Universities as Promoters of Intergenerational Learning: A Case Study on Public Consultation

2020 ◽  
Vol 133 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-118
Author(s):  
Malgorzata Dzimińska
Keyword(s):  
Experiential Learning ◽  
Public Consultation ◽  
Knowledge Development ◽  
Teaching Methodology ◽  
Ageing Population ◽  
Intergenerational Learning ◽  
The Public ◽  
The University ◽  
Global Population

Universities are challenged by the growing proportion of older people in the global population. This is forcing academic institutions to reconsider how they should respond to an ageing population with regard to their teaching methodology, research, and community engagement. Intergenerational learning is one of the strategies applied by universities to promote knowledge development by involving younger and older generations in the process so that they can purposefully learn together and learn from each other. Public consultation is an engagement promoting solutions that can offer an opportunity for experiential learning taking place among representatives of the various generational. The article analyzes a case study of public consultation as organized by the University of Łódź as part of the European CONCISE project. The presented case study is an example of how the application of the public consultation method might promote intergenerational learning.

Sustainability and Textual Extensions of Institutional Discourse: Testing the Great Lakes Compact

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theresa Castor
Keyword(s):  
Water Management ◽  
North America ◽  
Great Lakes ◽  
Analytic Approach ◽  
Public Hearing ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Institutional Discourse ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Hearings

This article examines the interplay of discourse, texts, and sustainability in the public hearing process for a Wisconsin city’s application to divert water from the Great Lakes of North America. The application is controversial and has been labeled as a ‘precedent’ setting action with respect to the Great Lakes Compact and water management. This article examines how texts are used to support positions on the diversion application and on sustainability. This analysis takes a discourse analytic approach to analyze local public hearings. The central question that is addressed is how do texts matter in sustainability efforts? The analysis indicates that texts are significant in supporting positions, but are associated with stances in different ways such that the same text may be used to support divergent positions. Meeting participants converged in agreeing on the importance of specific texts and of sustainability, but differed in how they related actions to texts.

scholarly journals Resistance to Nuclear Waste Disposal: Credentialed Experts, Public Opposition and their Shared Lines of Critique

2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darrin Durant
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Waste ◽  
Waste Disposal ◽  
Nuclear Waste Disposal ◽  
Nuclear Industry ◽  
Public Consultation ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Case Study Analysis ◽  
Public Inquiry ◽  
Public Hearings

Abstract This article asks the question whether, in regard to controversial technical decision-making, lay public groups advance different kinds of resistance than credentialed experts. This question is explored via a case-study analysis of one of Canada's major public controversies of the past quarter century—nuclear waste disposal. Having arrived on the policy radar in 1977, nuclear waste remained an internal government/nuclear industry matter until terms of reference for a public inquiry were announced in 1989. Several access points for public input followed that announcement: scoping sessions in 1990, comments received during 1994-96 on an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) prepared by Atomic Energy Canada Limited (AECL), nation-wide public hearings in 1996-97, and ongoing public consultation since 2002. This article focuses on the comments on the EIS, and discusses several lines of shared resistance: the expert judgment of AECL was disputed, the lack of peer review was criticized, accusations of unreliability were made, and general deficiencies in the EIS were attributed to narrow terms of reference and poor institutional culture. This article recommends the use of a dramaturgical approach to technical texts, and reveals the assumptions framing the dualist notion that one can unambiguously separate technical and social criticisms of technical projects.

scholarly journals EVALUATION OF PUBLIC CONSULTATION IN AN ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT PROCEDURE. A CASE STUDY

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-43
Author(s):  
Grażyna Gawrońska ◽  
Krzysztof Gawroński ◽  
Karol Król ◽  
Katarzyna Jarosz
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Impact Assessment ◽  
Environmental Impact Assessment ◽  
Questionnaire Survey ◽  
Financial Economic ◽  
Public Consultation ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
Assessment Procedure ◽  
The Public

The objective of the paper is to evaluate a public consultation under a procedure for environmental impact assessment of an extension and alteration project of a palace in Kijany, municipality of Spiczyn, Lubelskie Voivodeship, eastern Poland. An evaluation questionnaire survey was developed to acquire reliable information about consultation meetings under the procedure that mainly involved residents of the municipality of Spiczyn and environmental organisations. The questionnaire survey was conducted in March and April 2019 and involved 45 respondents. Most of them evaluated positively the public consultation. What they found most important was the clear presentation of legal, financial, economic, and environmental aspects of the project. The respondents believed the equal treatment of participants of the meetings regardless of their position to be a great advantage.

scholarly journals As audiências públicas e o diálogo dos saberes: uma abordagem sobre a instalação de hidrelétricas e seus impactos ambientais / The public hearings and dialogue of knowlegdes: an approach on the plants installation and its environmental impacts

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolina Carneiro Lima ◽  
João Batista Moreira Pinto
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Public Hearing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Shared Management ◽  
Public Hearings

O presente artigo realiza uma análise sobre a instalação de hidrelétricas, seus impactos ambientais e a importância das audiências públicas. A abordagem gira em torno dos princípios da informação e da participação, envolvendo o diálogo dos saberes que deve permear uma gestão compartilhada. A instalação da Usina Hidrelétrica da Fumaça é usada como referencial de abordagem. A pesquisa tem como marco teórico a obra de Enrique Leff, “Aventuras da Epistemologia Ambiental” e como método, o analítico-dedutivo. O estudo é bibliográfico e busca responder ao problema que tem seu cerne na importância do diálogo dos saberes e na participação coletiva nas audiências públicas.AbstractThis paper realizes an analysis about the installation of hydropower, their environmental impacts and the importance of public hearings. The approach goes around the principles of information and participation, involving dialogue of knowledge that must permeate a shared management. The installation of Fumaça hydropower is used as referential approach. The research has as theoretical framework the work of Enrique Leff, “Aventuras da Epistemologia Ambiental” and as a method, the analytical-deductive. The study is bibliographic and looks for the answer to the problem that has its heart in the importance of dialogue of knowledge and collective participation in public hearings.Keywordshydropower; environmental impact; public hearing; dialogue of knowledge; principles of participation and information.

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