scholarly journals Positive steps turning into a process

Temida ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-10
Author(s):  
Goran Bozicevic
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Regional Cooperation ◽  
Peace Building ◽  
Target Groups ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Individual Work ◽  
Peace Initiatives

The conclusion of the research conducted in Croatia for QPSW in 2003 is there is no systematic, accountable and structural confrontation with the past in Croatia, but there is growing concern within the civil society about the problems incurred by the lack of such a confrontation. Two different approaches can be discerned: individual work with particular persons or target groups and advocacy that could influence the alteration of the public opinion and decision-making. Both levels are necessary and they should unfold simultaneously. The systematization and regional cooperation of documentation centers, cooperation between victim organizations and peace initiatives, the inclusion of former warriors into peace building processes the cooperation of artists and activists - represent some of the new and promising steps on the civilian scene in Croatia. The constant strengthening of the independent media and the judiciary, coupled with constant efforts on both levels - the personal and the public - raises hopes that the confrontation with the past in Croatia is a process and not a trend.

scholarly journals Influence of Public Opinion on the Optimization of Communicative Interaction in the Public Administration Sphere

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-108
Author(s):  
Olena Rachynska
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Effective Interaction ◽  
Public Information ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Communicative Interaction ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
The Public

The article deals with the influence of public opinion on the process of state and administrative decision-making as one of the most pressing problems and a condition for effective interaction of participants of the political and administrative process. Theoretical analysis of the research field on the issues of knowledge and practice of influence of public opinion on the optimization of communicative interaction in the public administration sphere is presented.The essence of this phenomenon is analyzed and the main characteristics of public opinion is noted: it is determined primarily by the events that affect it; accordingly, the demand for action is the reaction of public opinion to events; influencing people is primarily due to influencing their interests; level of trust in management determines the amount of authority given to it; education and information contribute to common sense and moderate human behavior.It is determined that public opinion is a phenomenon more voluminous and complexly structured than the mere sum of points of view expressed by a certain set of individuals. Accordingly, its characteristic features and important practical aspects are directionality and intensity; stability, information saturation and social support. It is established that the functioning of public opinion depends essentially on the type of society that can stimulate and develop functions or deform and restrain them. The essence of public opinion and its main functions is analyzed.Ways to improve the effectiveness of the communicative component in the public administration system is identified. The main ones are optimization of the system of continuous communication between the centers of government decision making and civil society institutions; ensuring an effective public information policy; strengthening the practice of public reporting by public authorities; improving the effectiveness of civil society structures. The process of forming public opinion through the implementation of mechanisms of communicative interaction in the public administration sphere is considered; it is established that public opinion has its structural and operational features.The specifics of communication interaction in the public administration sphere is analyzed. The peculiarity of communicative interaction is to define it as a system of consistent methodological, methodic and organizational-technical procedures within the separate constituent mechanisms, connected by a single purpose: obtaining reliable data on the phenomenon under study or process for their further use in order to increase the effectiveness of the communicative dialogue between the authorities and civil society institutions.

Conclusion: SDO Decision-making and the Public Interest

2020 ◽  
pp. 210-237
Author(s):  
Alison Harcourt ◽  
George Christou ◽  
Seamus Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
International Level ◽  
Multiple Streams ◽  
Policy Entrepreneurship ◽  
Historical Representation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Decision Making Processes

The conclusion situates the book’s findings in academic debates on democracy and the Internet, global self-regulation, and civil society, and international decision-making processes in unstructured environments. It assesses whether current standards-developing organization (SDO) decision-making is able to bridge historical representation gaps and deficiencies. A nuanced pattern is emerging with increasing inclusion of a wider number of actors within SDO fora. The first part of the chapter returns to the Multiple Streams (MS) framework applied to the case studies on a comparative basis. It identifies key processes under which SDO rules of interaction are established at the international level and explains which interests have come to the fore within decision-making highlighting the occurrence of policy entrepreneurship, forum shopping, and coupling. The final part explores additional frameworks for SDO regulation where spaces for public interest consideration might occur in the future. These are opportunities for inserting public interest considerations into international and national Acts, certification programmes, and the move towards open source solutions for Internet management. The book concludes that, although the literature is expansive on the interaction of corporate sector actors within SDOs, the study of other actors, such as digital rights groups, civil society, academics, policy entrepreneurs and the technical community as a whole, has been underdressed in the literature on international self-regulatory fora to date. In this respect, the book raises important questions of representation of the public interest at the international level by having addressed the actions of actors within SDO fora who promote public interest goals.

Building democracy from below: a case from rural Tanzania

2008 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine A. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
The Public ◽  
Rural Village ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Rural Tanzania ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right

ABSTRACTFocusing on events in a rural village in Tanzania during 2001–02, this paper examines the changing nature of state/society relations in Tanzania. Drawing on experience from previous years of fieldwork in the early 1990s, it becomes apparent that villagers are beginning to change the way they engage with the state. These new approaches are framed in part by the discourse of democracy, with which Tanzanians have become familiar since the economic and political liberalisation policies of the 1990s. These events reveal a new sense of the right to participate in decision-making on how to use key development resources. They also illustrate how local elites can threaten to capture benefits for their own gain. As Tanzanians begin to demand more rights to participate in the public sphere, their achievements enlarge our understanding of what might constitute civil society.

Democratising the global order: from communicative freedom to communicative power

2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 431-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES BOHMAN
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
The Other ◽  
Global Order ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One ◽  
Communicative Power

AbstractWhile there is much discussion of the need for democracy in transnational institutions, there is less discussion of the conditions for their democratisation. To address this deficit, a general account of democratisation is necessary. I propose that democratisation is dependent on the joint realisation of two conditions: communicative freedom and communicative power. Democratisation thus requires, first, publics and associations in which communicative freedom is realised on the one hand; and, second, institutions that link such freedom to the exercise of communicative power to decision making on the other. In order for these conditions to be met, civil society must be expanded into the public sphere. The transformation of communicative freedom into communicative power can be promoted only by institutions that recognise the decisional status of publics, which in turn depend on civil society to generate the deliberative benefits of the plurality of perspectives. Communicative power is not merely spontaneously generated through publics, but also through publics expressly formed through democratic institutional design.

DEMOCRACY AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN RUSSIA

2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (02) ◽  
pp. 161-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICOLE KOVALEV ◽  
JOHANN KÖPPEL ◽  
ALEXANDER DROZDOV ◽  
ECKHARDT DITTRICH
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Democratic Deficit ◽  
Approval Process ◽  
The Public ◽  
Environmental Decision Making ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
The Russian Federation

Since 1988, the Russian Federation has required that laws, plans, programs and all kind of projects undergo an environmental assessment. A mandatory component of the EIA in Russia is public participation. In this paper different case studies are used to find out to what extent public could influence environmental decision making processes from the early eighties until 2002. The cases selected include several where the public was passive or where it had limited activities, but also some where the participation was strong and projects were improved or stopped. As far as these case studies highlighted, the civil society in Russia can be described as an organized and sometimes strong factor in the approval process. The behaviour displayed by decision-makers, however, revealed at times a remarkable democratic deficit.

scholarly journals Public Participation As An Instrument Of Performance Of Eu-Funded Cross-Border Projects

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 111
Author(s):  
Matej Pozarnik ◽  
Vesna Sotlar
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Public Participation ◽  
Comprehensive Model ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Project Financing ◽  
Target Groups ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Border Areas

The objective of the European territorial cooperation programme INTERREG has been financing joint projects of cross-border areas ever since 1990. Since many projects, financed in the past, did not provide longterm effects, the European Union decided to introduce the “result-driven approach” to these programmes. The realization of results will be consequently monitored during the project financing and after completion of selected projects. If one wishes to ensure sustainability also after the end of financing, the public and target groups must be actively involved in preparation and implementation of projects from the very beginning. The purpose of this paper is to present possibilities of public participation in different phases of the project. A comprehensive model of public participation was developed on the basis of research, involving the public into the sustainable life-cycle of a cross-border project.

scholarly journals Democracia e deliberação: a escolha popular das políticas públicas locais - o caso do orçamento participativo de Porto Alegre (OPPOA) / Democracy and deliberation: the popular choice of local public policies - the case of the participative budget of...

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 463-485 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Tannus Gurgel do Amaral ◽  
Francisco Toniolo de Carvalho
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Porto Alegre ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Legal Structure ◽  
Civil Society Participation ◽  
Budget Policy ◽  
The City

O presente artigo visa analisar o Orçamento Participativo de Porto Alegre (OPPOA) como política orçamentária de auxílio na tomada de decisão dos gastos públicos através da participação popular. Embasa-se no marco teórico de promoção desta participação nas democracias ao longo dos anos e na formação do conceito de “democracia participativa”, onde a sociedade civil assume maior relevância no momento de tomada de decisões. Apresenta a formação histórica do OPPOA e a evolução das instâncias participativas em Porto Alegre. Revisa sua estrutura jurídica-legal e seu processo de tomada de decisão, considerando o envolvimento da sociedade civil. Analisa-o como instrumento de incentivo à atuação dos cidadãos na administração conjunta da cidade, através da elaboração do orçamento municipal e da escolha, em assembleias populares, das obras públicas prioritárias para sua região e para o município. Ao fim, analisa a participação popular nas suas instâncias nos anos de 2011 a 2015, comparando dados fornecidos pela prefeitura de Porto Alegre, o volume da participação popular e os valores dispendidos pelo programa. Por se tratar de pesquisa descritiva e quantitativa, a metodologia utilizada enfatizou a coleta de dados, a revisão bibliográfica e a análise documental, em especial leis municipais e normas relacionadas com o OPPOA.  Palavras-Chave: Orçamento Público; Orçamento Participativo; Participação Popular; Políticas Públicas; Porto AlegreAbstract This article aims at analyzing Porto Alegre’s participatory budget (OPPOA) as a budget policy that helps the decision-making process of the public expenditure through popular participation. It’s based in the theoretical framework of promoting participation in democracies over the years and creating a "participatory democracy" concept, in which the civil society takes on a greater relevance in the decision-making moments. It presents the historical formation of the OPPOA and the evolution of participative instances in Porto Alegre. It reviews its legal structure and its decision-making process, considering the value of civil society participation. It analyzes the OPPOA as a tool for encouraging popular participation in the joint administration of the city, through the elaboration of the municipal budget and the choice, in popular meetings, of the priority public constructions for their region and their municipality. Finally, analyze the popular participation in the OPPOA’s instances between the years of 2011 until 2015, comparing data supplied by Porto Alegre’s administration, the volume of popular participation in the program and the values spent. Since this research is descriptive and quantitative, the methodology emphasized data collection, literature review and document analysis, in particular Porto Alegre’s municipality laws and standards regarding the OPPOA.  Keywords: Public Budget; Participatory Budgeting; Popular Participation. Public Policy; Porto Alegre

Putting Inequality in Its Place: Rural Consciousness and the Power of Perspective

2012 ◽  
Vol 106 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATHERINE CRAMER WALSH
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Group Consciousness ◽  
Rural Residents ◽  
Public Opinion Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Limited Government

Why do people vote against their interests? Previous explanations miss something fundamental because they do not consider the work of group consciousness. Based on participant observation of conversations from May 2007 to May 2011 among 37 regularly occurring groups in 27 communities sampled across Wisconsin, this study shows that in some places, people have a class- and place-based identity that is intertwined with a perception of deprivation. The rural consciousness revealed here shows people attributing rural deprivation to the decision making of (urban) political elites, who disregard and disrespect rural residents and rural lifestyles. Thus these rural residents favor limited government, even though such a stance might seem contradictory to their economic self-interests. The results encourage us to consider the role of group consciousness-based perspectives rather than pitting interests against values as explanations for preferences. Also, the study suggests that public opinion research more seriously include listening to the public.

scholarly journals Governing by Polling Public Opinion: A Potentially Dangerous Idea for Our Healthcare System

2021 ◽  
pp. 016327872110182
Author(s):  
Paul Cristian Gugiu
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Policy Decision ◽  
Policy Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Actor

Kaplan and Baron-Epel advanced the notion that findings from public surveys should inform health policy decision making with respect to funding allocation. This approach to governing can draw large support from the populace, legislators, and the academic community alike. Yet, it has the potential to undermine evidence-based health policy decision making. In this paper, I delineate six drawbacks and several related corollaries drawn from historical events that have occurred during the recent coronavirus pandemic. These examples illustrate the dire downstream consequences (e.g., disregard for the needs of minority groups; diminution of critical services not broadly supported by the public; promotion of fringe group or foreign actor agendas; advancement of poorly informed opinions; shift from a forward-thinking, proactive perspective to a retroactive one; and reliance on potentially biased estimates) that may follow if public surveys become embedded in healthcare policy decision making. Without solutions to the drawbacks delineated in this paper, health policy driven by public opinion is likely to cause more harm than good.

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