Adviesraden als stap naar institutionalisering en medebeslissing

Res Publica ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-77
Author(s):  
Wilfried Dewachter

Several tendencies in the process of political decision-making in Belgium tend to put under strain the official model of representative democracy. One of these evolutions is the set up of many advisory councils, and especially the dynamism of some of these advisory councils to move up to participation in the decision-making itself.The process starts at the functional basis of the advisory councils: an information function, an advice function, a function to make proposals, an investigation function and a selection function. It is possible to get to the care of the decision for reason of a liability to advice, the quality as regards content of the advice, the composition of the councils and the appeal to the public opinion.  The dysfunctions are the obstacles that need to be advoided: the alibi function, a basis for non-decision, the delay and concealing of the decision-making itself, a certain obliqueness in the composition and the undermining of the representative function of parliament.

2006 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frédéric Marty ◽  
Sylvie Trosa ◽  
Arnaud Voisin

France’s decision to move to Accrual Based Accounting, triggered by the application of the Organic Law to the Finance Laws, has a tangible impact on political decision-making mechanisms. By adopting accounting and financial information standards derived from the private sector, it has the effect of reinforcing the economic rationality of public decisions. It makes it possible, in particular, to draw comparisons between public and private costs, comparisons that are necessary to set up any possible contract-based links with private suppliers. The move towards Accrual Based Accounting sets out to improve the information provided to the public operators. It also tends to limit the possibilities of arbitrations that are unfavourable to long-term investments and the maintenance of public assets. It gives parliaments, control bodies and citizens an appreciation of the policies being carried out, thus reinforcing the demands for the transparency of public accounts and the accountability of their managers. However, there is no getting away from the fact that it is a complex and costly reform, whose implementation requires a favourable political context and an appropriate implementation strategy.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrin Giere

The influence on public opinion of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter regarding the process of political decision-making is constantly evolving. However, the discussion whether these networks are holders of the fundamental right of media freedom is still in its "infancy stage". This piece takes up this topic, which is practically relevant, but still lacks adequate scientific research. Against this background, the paper addresses the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) which came into effect in Germany on 1 October 2017. With this law, the federal legislature has imposed proactive inspection obligations on certain providers of social networks. Operators are now legally required to check contents to ensure it does not violate German penal law.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
John Gastil ◽  
Katherine R. Knobloch

Citizens are often asked to make decisions about ballot measures, but they rarely have access to reliable information with which to make those decisions. This chapter tells the story of Seattle’s failed monorail project to explain the problems voters face when figuring out how to cast their vote. It introduces a new governing institution that could help solve that dilemma, the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR). The CIR gathers together a small group of citizens to deliberate about a ballot measure and then pass along their findings for voters to use when making their own decisions. The CIR continues the tradition of experimental democracy, which seeks to improve the ways that citizens govern themselves. The CIR, and deliberative institutions like it, attempt to empower the public by introducing reliable information into political decision making.


2019 ◽  
pp. 147737081988290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia Hansen Löfstrand

This article examines how and why marketization of policing may occur in a historically state-centred policing context in the absence of governmental policy promoting privatization and marketization. In Sweden, a community-level marketization is increasingly becoming the new norm. It is a result of a political mobilization by the private security industry, characterized by an association of private security with the public interest in safety, an absence of national political decision-making, and pragmatic local initiatives to increase public safety, but it results in the dispersion of political decision-making that fails to ensure democratic governance of policing and security provision.


Author(s):  
Zoe Oxley

Political communicators have long used framing as a tactic to try to influence the opinions and political decisions of others. Frames capture an essence of a political issue or controversy, typically the essence that best furthers a communicator’s political goals. Framing has also received much attention by scholars; indeed, the framing literature is vast. In the domain of political decision making, one useful distinction is between two types of frames: emphasis frames and equivalence frames. Emphasis frames present an issue by highlighting certain relevant features of the issue while ignoring others. Equivalence frames present an issue or choice in different yet logically equivalent ways. Characterizing the issue of social welfare as a drain on the government budget versus a helping hand for poor people is emphasis framing. Describing the labor force as 95% employed versus 5% unemployed is equivalency framing. These frames differ not only by their content but also by the effects on opinions and judgements that result from frame exposure as well as the psychological processes that account for the effects. For neither emphasis nor equivalence frames, however, are framing effects inevitable. Features of the environment, such as the presence of competing frames, or individual characteristics, such as political predispositions, condition whether exposure to a specific frame will influence the decisions and opinions of the public.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sveinung Arnesen ◽  
Troy S Broderstad ◽  
Mikael P Johannesson ◽  
Jonas Linde

This conjoint study investigates the type of mandate a referendum confers in the political decision-making process. While a majority of citizens in general believe that the government should follow the results of a referendum on European Union membership, its perceived legitimacy in the eyes of the public heavily depends upon the level of turnout, the size of the majority, and the outcome of the specific referendum in question. Thus, whether a referendum legitimizes a political decision in the eyes of the public is conditional upon these three dimensions.


Geografie ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 120 (4) ◽  
pp. 564-584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Přemysl Mácha ◽  
Tomáš Drobík ◽  
Monika Šumberová ◽  
Jan Ženka ◽  
Eva Tenzin ◽  
...  

This article analyses geographical and geopolitical ideas of the Czech public. Geographical ideas have become one of the basic conceptual instruments of contemporary human geography for the research into the influence of “spatial discourse” on political decision-making processes. The analysis is based on public opinion surveys and original research. It is its objective to identify basic geopolitical ideas of the Czech public in the context of Czech membership in NATO, to find the links between the perception of various types of geopolitical threats and to try to explain them on the basis of socio-demographic and geographic characteristics of the respondents. A particular emphasis is placed on NATO as a key reference point and a mediator of geographical and geopolitical ideas. Statistically significant differences in the perception and localization of threats and the role of NATO were found in relation to gender, age, residence, education and political orientation.


Author(s):  
Shirin Ahlbäck Öberg ◽  
Helena Wockelberg

Recurring themes relating to the central constitutional principles of the public sector and the courts can be summarized asadministrative dualism(administrative agencies are organized in separate units outside the ministries) andinstitutional autonomy. The scope of the dual Swedish administrative model, as well as how much institutional autonomy government agencies and the courts are granted by the Constitution, have been strongly debated. These debates exemplify what we refer to as “the Swedish Constitution as a story of unresolved issues.” Paradoxically, substantial constitutional reforms in this area rarely come about due to regular constitutional reform-making in Sweden. Instead, they are often the result of formally less demanding political decision-making.


2021 ◽  
pp. 019251212199825
Author(s):  
Miho Nakatani

This study aims to identify the types of city council decision-making processes that influence public perceptions of procedural fairness and the acceptability of decisions. Using an online experimental scenario survey conducted in Japan, this study found that, given the opportunity to participate in the decision-making process and when the decision is reached through a compromise among council members, people tend to feel that the process is fair and accept the decision even when it is unfavourable to them. This result is important for the governance of many advanced countries with low economic growth rates but great public demands. Additionally, this study highlights the process preferences of the public, which has received little attention compared with research on policy preferences.


2019 ◽  
pp. 147-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabienne Peter

The aim of this chapter is to provide an epistemological argument for why public reasons matter for political legitimacy. A key feature of the public reason conception of legitimacy is that political decisions must be justified to the citizens. They must be justified in terms of reasons that are either shared qua reasons or that, while not shared qua reasons, support the same political decision. Call the relevant reasons public reasons. Critics of the public reason conception, by contrast, argue that political legitimacy requires justification simpliciter—political decisions must be justified in terms of the reasons that apply. Call the relevant reasons objective reasons. The debate between defenders and critics of a public reason conception of political legitimacy thus focuses on whether objective reasons or public reasons are the right basis for the justification of political decisions. I will grant to critics of a public reason conception that there are objective reasons and allow that such reasons can affect the legitimacy of political decisions. But I will show, focusing on the epistemic circumstances of political decision-making, that it does not follow that the justification of those decisions is necessarily in terms of those reasons.


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