scholarly journals Only for Citizens? Local Political Engagement in Sweden and Inclusiveness of Terms

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7839
Author(s):  
Bozena Guziana

In both policy and research, civic engagement and citizen participation are concepts commonly used as important dimensions of social sustainability. However, as migration is a global phenomenon of huge magnitude and complexity, citizen participation is incomplete without considering the political and ethical concerns about immigrants being citizens or non-citizens, or ‘the others’. Although research on citizen participation has been a frequent topic in local government studies in Sweden, the inclusiveness and exclusiveness of terms used in the context of local political engagement, which are addressed in this article, has not received attention. This article examines the Swedish case by analyzing information provided by the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and by websites of all 290 municipalities as well terms used in selected research publications on local participation. Additionally, this article studies the effectiveness of municipal websites in providing information to their residents about how they can participate in local democracy. The results show that the term citizen is commonly and incorrectly used both by local authorities and the Association. The article concludes that the term citizen is a social construction of exclusiveness and the use of the term citizen should be avoided in political and civic engagement except for the limited topics that require formal citizenship.

2021 ◽  
pp. 76-96
Author(s):  
Andrew Harding ◽  
Rawin Leelapatana

In this article we examine radical proposals for political, administrative and fiscal decentralisation in Thailand which were developed for Chiang Mai as a potential model for Thailand as a whole. They lay emphasis on local self-government and citizen participation. We argue that these proposals offer a way forward for a Thai decentralisation process that has yet to proceed to the extent envisaged when it was commenced in the 1990s as part of democratisation, embraced most notably in the 1997 Constitution. Moreover, this process, we argue, offers a way out of the extreme confrontation between the yellow and red factions that has troubled Thailand since 2005. As Thailand returns to civilian rule after five years of military government, and local and provincial government comes once more to the fore, we argue that the Chiang Mai Metropolitan Administration Bill of 2013 offer more local democracy as well as imaginative ways of recruiting the enthusiasm of local stakeholders in a system designed to link provincial and local authorities, and the citizenry, in a virtuous circle of democracy and development.


Author(s):  
Egon Montecinos ◽  
Patricio Contreras

This article describes and characterizes the current state of citizen participation at the municipal level in Chile, taking as reference the law 20.500. The objective is to identify the main factors that are influencing the dynamic disparate of implementation of the law, based on a study conducted in fifty-two municipalities. It is argued that there are municipalities that meet minimum participation standards, but in the great majority it has not been gravitating. Some reasons that would be influencing this dynamic, they are the low incentives of the law to incorporate citizen participation in municipal management, the excessive dependence on the political will of mayors to initiate it, the municipal financial precariousness to sustain it. The main conclusion is that the contributions of the law to municipal participatory democracy have been low, persisting a representative local democracy of low intensity and associated with exclusively procedural aspects.


Author(s):  
Ben Berger

Handwringing about political apathy is as old as democracy itself. As early as 425 BC, the playwright Aristophanes ridiculed his fellow Athenians for gossiping in the market instead of voting. In more recent decades, calls for greater civic engagement as a democratic cure-all have met with widespread agreement. But how realistic, or helpful, is it to expect citizens to devote more attention and energy to politics? This book provides a surprising new perspective on the problem of civic engagement, challenging idealists who aspire to revolutionize democracies and their citizens, but also taking issue with cynics who think that citizens cannot, and need not, do better. “Civic engagement” has become an unwieldy and confusing catchall, the book argues. We should talk instead of political, social, and moral engagement, figuring out which kinds of engagement make democracy work better, and how we might promote them. Focusing on political engagement and taking Alexis de Tocqueville and Hannah Arendt as guides, the book identifies ways to achieve the political engagement we want and need without resorting to coercive measures such as compulsory national service or mandatory voting. By providing a realistic account of the value of political engagement and practical strategies for improving it, while avoiding proposals we can never hope to achieve, the book makes a persuasive case for a public philosophy that much of the public can actually endorse.


2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 571-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-France Le Blanc

Abstract.In Toronto and Montreal, territorial reorganizations modified the arrangements governing regional cooperation, the channels for citizen participation, and the composition of the civic community, all important factors that define the margins local authorities have to control and shape economic and social development. In both cases, these changes brought about a realignment of local civic forces and modified political arrangements at the metropolitan level, leading each city to break from its former path of development.Résumé.Les réorganisations territoriales de Toronto et Montréal ont modifié les paramètres guidant la coopération régionale, les modes de participation des citoyens et la composition de la communauté civique, soit autant de facteurs déterminant les marges de manœuvre des autorités locales pour encadrer le développement économique et social. Dans les deux cas, ces changements ont modifié les institutions politiques métropolitaines et ont amené les deux villes à s'engager dans de nouvelles avenues.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Tiina Kontinen ◽  
Katariina Holma

<p class="Leipteksti1">Characterized by globalization, increasing pluralism, and new complexities of citizenship, the contemporary world sets challenges to the ways in which we conceptualize the processes of searching for shared solutions to ever-complicated societal problems. Whilst the political rhetoric emphasizes citizen participation, engagement, and “voice”, there are increasing feelings of frustration, incompetence, and disinterest regarding political engagement. In order to conceptually grasp the problematic of searching for shared solutions and the related challenges to education, we draw on John Dewey’s idea of the method of democracy and complement this with some critical perspectives inspired by Antonio Gramsci. Further, we reflect on the implications for contemporary adult education by discussing the notion of competence in the theoretical framework developed.</p>


Author(s):  
María Jesús García García

This paper deals with the influence of having council appointed mayors on local governments. Five elements of local government systems are considered: the electoral system and its influence on the political composition of the local government; the local government structure and the distribution of functions and powers between mayor and council; the role of political parties; scrutiny of the executive and accountability; and citizen participation. This analysis highlights the effect that a council appointed mayor system has in terms of accountability and legitimacy, transparency and efficiency.


2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 235
Author(s):  
Ernesto Ganuza Fernández ◽  
Francisco José Francés García

Questioning the social spiral deriving from participation has flared up the debate regarding the place it occupies in contemporary democracies. It does not seem possible to deny the evidence that many studies have pointed to regarding the political attitudes associated with institutionalised participation (associations). But we question in this study the fact that the whole participation phenomenon is equated with that type of participation. Our paper compares different ways of participation in a sample of European countries to, first, analyse the activities that can be linked to each form of participation and whether it can be held that they are different from the point of view of the individual. Second, we analyse the attitudes that lead individuals to choose one option over the other. We conclude that for individuals the different forms of participation are different forms of political engagement. Our study shows an evolution in non-institutional forms of participation over time that is difficult to ignore, from being expressions bordering illegality to taking them as normalised tools for citizens. We could now start to consider them from the point of view of the implications they have for democracy as a different way to exercise political influence.


Author(s):  
Phyllis Lassner

Espionage and Exile demonstrates that from the 1930s through the Cold War, British Writers Eric Ambler, Helen MacInnes, Ann Bridge, Pamela Frankau, John le Carré and filmmaker Leslie Howard combined propaganda and popular entertainment to call for resistance to political oppression. Instead of constituting context, the political engagement of these spy fictions bring the historical crises of Fascist and Communist domination to the forefront of twentieth century literary history. They deploy themes of deception and betrayal to warn audiences of the consequences of Nazi Germany's conquests and later, the fusion of Fascist and Communist oppression. Featuring protagonists who are stateless and threatened refugees, abandoned and betrayed secret agents, and politically engaged or entrapped amateurs, all in states of precarious exile, these fictions engage their historical subjects to complicate extant literary meanings of transnational, diaspora and performativity. Unsettling distinctions between villain and victim as well as exile and belonging dramatizes relationships between the ethics of espionage and responses to international crises. With politically charged suspense and narrative experiments, these writers also challenge distinctions between literary, middlebrow, and popular culture.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-153
Author(s):  
Adolphus G. Belk ◽  
Robert C. Smith ◽  
Sherri L. Wallace

In general, the founders of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists were “movement people.” Powerful agents of socialization such as the uprisings of the 1960s molded them into scholars with tremendous resolve to tackle systemic inequalities in the political science discipline. In forming NCOBPS as an independent organization, many sought to develop a Black perspective in political science to push the boundaries of knowledge and to use that scholarship to ameliorate the adverse conditions confronting Black people in the United States and around the globe. This paper utilizes historical documents, speeches, interviews, and other scholarly works to detail the lasting contributions of the founders and Black political scientists to the discipline, paying particular attention to their scholarship, teaching, mentoring, and civic engagement. It finds that while political science is much improved as a result of their efforts, there is still work to do if their goals are to be achieved.


Author(s):  
Anatolii Petrovich Mykolaiets

It is noted that from the standpoint of sociology, “management — a function of organized systems of various nature — (technical, biological, social), which ensures the preservation of their structure, maintaining a certain state or transfer to another state, in accordance with the objective laws of the existence of this system, which implemented by a program or deliberately set aside”. Management is carried out through the influence of one subsystem-controlling, on the other-controlled, on the processes taking place in it with the help of information signals or administrative actions. It is proved that self-government allows all members of society or a separate association to fully express their will and interests, overcome alienation, effectively combat bureaucracy, and promote public self-realization of the individual. At the same time, wide direct participation in the management of insufficiently competent participants who are not responsible for their decisions, contradicts the social division of labor, reduces the effectiveness of management, complicates the rationalization of production. This can lead to the dominance of short-term interests over promising interests. Therefore, it is always important for society to find the optimal measure of a combination of self-management and professional management. It is determined that social representation acts, on the one hand, as the most important intermediary between the state and the population, the protection of social interests in a politically heterogeneous environment. On the other hand, it ensures the operation of a mechanism for correcting the political system, which makes it possible to correct previously adopted decisions in a legitimate way, without resorting to violence. It is proved that the system of social representation influences the most important political relations, promotes social integration, that is, the inclusion of various social groups and public associations in the political system. It is proposed to use the term “self-government” in relation to several levels of people’s association: the whole community — public self-government or self-government of the people, to individual regions or communities — local, to production management — production self-government. Traditionally, self-government is seen as an alternative to public administration. Ideology and practice of selfgovernment originate from the primitive, communal-tribal democracy. It is established that, in practice, centralization has become a “natural form of government”. In its pure form, centralization does not recognize the autonomy of places and even local life. It is characteristic of authoritarian regimes, but it is also widely used by democratic regimes, where they believe that political freedoms should be fixed only at the national level. It is determined that since the state has achieved certain sizes, it is impossible to abandon the admission of the existence of local authorities. Thus, deconcentration appears as one of the forms of centralization and as a cure for the excesses of the latter. Deconcentration assumes the presence of local bodies, which depend on the government functionally and in the order of subordination of their officials. The dependency of officials means that the leadership of local authorities is appointed by the central government and may be displaced.


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