Intersecting religion and ethnicity: Drawing boundaries in talk-in-interaction

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-258
Author(s):  
MARIA KLESSMANN
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Local Participation ◽  
Self Perceptions ◽  
European Cities ◽  
Religion And Ethnicity ◽  
Linguistic Material ◽  
The Eu

People of Romani background are usually labelled as members of an “ethnic minority” and identified along dominantly ethnicized notions and markers. Discursively, this neglects individuals’ different self-perceptions and multiple belongings. This contribution looks at interactional data and material from workshops conducted in Germany as part of the EU-wide initiative RoMed (Mediation for Roma). The initiative aimed to strengthen opportunities for local participation by people of Romani background in various European cities and communities between 2011-2017. A conversation analytical approach (e.g. at practices of categorization) is used to examine excerpts from group discussions ahead of a meeting with public officials. From an intersectional perspective I look at how boundaries are drawn, blurred, or destabilized between issues of religiosity and ethnicity. The article discusses boundary-drawing as a symbolic ordering process, highlighting the hegemonic discourses which are reproduced and challenged in the investigated linguistic material. The boundaries drawn and negotiated show the delicate balance between the staging of ethnic and religious affiliations and concerns and their political mobilization.

scholarly journals Diffusing Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning in the EU

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (20) ◽  
pp. 8436
Author(s):  
Stefan Werland
Keyword(s):  
European Commission ◽  
Policy Diffusion ◽  
Policy Transfer ◽  
Urban Mobility ◽  
European Cities ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Policy Field ◽  
Mobility Behaviour ◽  
Sustainable Urban Mobility ◽  
The Eu

This paper explores how the European Commission promotes the concept of Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning (SUMP) among European cities. Despite the strong uptake of the SUMP concept, mobility-related problems persist in European municipalities. Linking theoretical approaches to understand the diffusion of policies with empirical findings from working with cities in the SUMP context, this article explores channels of policy diffusion and investigates shortcomings related to the respective approaches. Studies on the diffusion, the transfer and the convergence of policies identify formal hierarchy, coercion, competition, learning and networking, and the diffusion of international norms as channels for policy transfer. The findings which are presented in this paper are twofold: First, the paper finds evidence that the Commission takes different roles and uses all mechanisms in parallel, albeit with different intensity. It concludes that the approaches to explain policy diffusion are not competing or mutually exclusive but are applied by the same actor to address different aspects of a policy field, or to reach out to different actors. Second, the article provides first evidence of factors that limit the mechanisms’ abilities to directly influence urban mobility systems and mobility behaviour.

scholarly journals Conservation Agriculture Promotion and Uptake in Mufulira, Zambia-A Political Agronomy Approach

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridget Bwalya Umar
Keyword(s):  
Conservation Agriculture ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Smallholder Farming ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Tillage Systems ◽  
The Public ◽  
Key Informant ◽  
Farming Households

This study utilized 120 semi-structured interviews with smallholder farming households and two focus group discussions; as well as several key informant interviews with experts to explore the promotion and uptake of conservation agriculture (CA) in Mufulira, Zambia. Results reveal that ridges and flat culture continued to be the preferred tillage systems (97 per cent and 55 per cent respectively) despite the farmers having been trained in the use of a minimum tillage technique. None of the interviewed farmers perceived CA as a solution to any of their agricultural related problems. The NGO promoting CA in the district had framed it as suited for and claimed to target labour constrained HIV/AIDS affected households. Conversely, farmers complained that CA was challenging for them due to its high labour demands (23 per cent); poor harvests (18 per cent) and was unsuited to the rainfall patterns of the area (10 per cent). Local agricultural experts contested the promotion of basins in Mufulira. The framing of CA as a solution to labour constraints did not seem to hold in the study area. This effectively limited the contestation spaces available to the public officials with dissenting views on the suitability of basin CA in the district.

scholarly journals A tale in stone and bronze: old/new strategies for political mobilization in the Republic of Macedonia

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 356-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irena Stefoska ◽  
Darko Stojanov
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Central Area ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Republic Of Macedonia ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Global Financial Crisis ◽  
New Strategies ◽  
The Eu

The redesign of Skopje's main square and the wider central area in the last six years has been a top priority of the Macedonian government. The project, called Skopje 2014, provoked intense domestic debate and controversy as well as international reaction and concern. Although officials say that project's aim is to unify ethnic Macedonians, it has produced several lines of political, intra-ethnic/interethnic as well as intra-cultural/intercultural divisions in the fragile Macedonian society. The aim of the paper is to offer reflections about its mobilizing potential among ethnic Macedonians in a set of social, economic, and political contexts. In that sense, four areas of mobilization are suggested: (1) around new identity markers; (2) around the name dispute and against threats (real or imagined) to the ethnic and national identity; (3) against the internal Other, that is, the ethnic Albanian community, as well as critics of these identity politics; and (4) in reaction to the global financial crisis and problems within the EU.

scholarly journals New EU Initiatives against Terrorism

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-23
Author(s):  
Olga Potemkina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Action Plan ◽  
Data Encryption ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Cities ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
Access To Data ◽  
The Eu

The article examines the EU’s response to a series of terrorist attacks in European cities in the autumn of 2020, after which the topic of terrorism once again came to the fore on the EU political agenda. The author analyses the new Counter-Terrorism Action Plan and the Regulation on the removal of terrorist content from the Internet adopted after a protracted inter-institutional dialogue between the EU Council and the European Parliament. The article also looks at the problem of expanding the mandate of the Europol agency in the field of big data analysis, while the author emphasises that member states still doubt the need to grant the agency access to data encryption. The author comes to the conclusion that the European Union quite adequately fulfills the tasks outlined in the documents to respond to terrorist attacks, but has not been very successful in preventing them. It is noted that in the plans of international anti-terrorist cooperation, the European Union, as before, does not include Russia, which can not but reduce the effect of global and regional confrontation with new security challenges.

scholarly journals Measuring Outcomes of Digital Transformation in Public Administration: Literature Review and Possible Steps Forward

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-86
Author(s):  
Elena Dobrolyubova
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Digital Transformation ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Digital Government ◽  
Governance Indicators ◽  
Social And Economic Development ◽  
Actual Use ◽  
Measuring Outcomes ◽  
The Eu ◽  
Government Development

Abstract Digital transformation is the modern mainstream of social and economic development promising significant digital dividends to citizens and businesses worldwide. The theory highlights the importance of digitalization for optimizing the public value of government services for citizens; however, despite the high enthusiasm about the prospects of digital transformation in public administration, there is little literature on measuring actual benefits this process might provide to all stakeholders concerned. While some recent research suggests high correlation between governance indicators and e-government development, the causality between the two is not confirmed statistically for most public administration indicators. International indices used to measure government digitalization (such as the UN E-Government Development Index) often concentrate only on e-services and are based on measuring the availability rather than the actual use or quality of such modes of service delivery; they concentrate more on measuring G2C and, to some extent, G2B interactions and often omit the effects of digitalization for the G2G and G2E dimensions. The EU Digital economy and society index (DESI) is one of the most advanced cases for measuring the progress of digitalization in the EU, but even in this case the costs of digitalization and potential risks of digital government are not fully accounted for. The paper provides an extensive review of theoretical and practical approaches to measuring government digitalization, identifies key limitations and proposes some steps for enhancing the existing practices. The paper argues that government digital transformation should not be performed for its own sake but should be a means for raising effectiveness and efficiency of public administration. Therefore, both benefits and risks of digital transformation of performing all core government functions for various stakeholders (citizens, businesses, government itself, and public officials) should be accounted for.

scholarly journals Challenging the Nation-State from within: The Emergence of Transmunicipal Solidarity in the Course of the EU Refugee Controversy

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christiane Heimann ◽  
Sandra Müller ◽  
Hannes Schammann ◽  
Janina Stürner
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Document Analysis ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Member States ◽  
European Cities ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Municipal Networks ◽  
Political Solidarity ◽  
The Eu

In the context of the so-called refugee crisis, political disputes about solidarity become a central issue with member states applying competing concepts. At the same time, European cities use transnational networks to implement a new form of solidarity among municipalities via city diplomacy (Acuto, Morissette, & Tsouros, 2017). Analyzing the deadlock between member states and the emerging activities of cities, we scrutinize the limits of existing approaches to political solidarity (e.g., Agustín & Jørgensen, 2019; Knodt, Tews, & Piefer, 2014; Sangiovanni, 2013) to explain this phenomenon. Based on expert interviews and document analysis from a study on transnational municipal networks, we identify an emerging concept of solidarity that challenges the nation states as core providers of solidarity from within: transmunicipal solidarity focuses on joint action of local governments to scale out and scale up.

scholarly journals The EU and Japan in the Process of Building Creative/Progressive Cultural Relations

2021 ◽  
pp. 133-152
Author(s):  
Bożena Gierat-Bieroń ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Approach ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
Member States ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
Political Sciences ◽  
Cultural Project ◽  
Mutual Relations ◽  
The Eu

The EU is promoting cultural relations with Asian countries. While building interpersonal and institutional connections, the EU pays special attention to Japan. The image of the EU and its mutual relations with Japan are generally recognised as predominantly good and trustworthy. This paper will examine the process of building creative/progressive cultural relations between the EU and Japan based on two hypotheses; fi rst: despite the fact that the EU tried to develop cultural relations within Japan, the embassies of the EU Member States are far more active in cultural programs than the EU Delegation; and secondly: the reception of the EU as a historic and cultural project is rather fragmented (as opposed to being holistic) in Japan. The aim of this research is to analyse, compare, and evaluate both the effort and achievements made by the EU and Japan in the process of building creative cultural relations. The research will demonstrate an analytical approach in the political sciences discipline.

scholarly journals Prioritizing professionals? How the democratic and professionalized nature of interest groups shapes their degree of access to EU officials

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-501
Author(s):  
Adrià Albareda
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Organizational Capacity ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Organizational Attributes ◽  
Governance Systems ◽  
Increasing Trend ◽  
Member Involvement ◽  
Eu Commission ◽  
The Eu

AbstractInterest groups are key intermediary actors between civil society and public officials. The EU has long emphasized the importance of interacting with representative groups that involve their members. Additionally, there is an increasing trend toward the professionalization of groups that invest in organizational capacities to efficiently provide policy expertise. Both member involvement and organizational capacity are crucial features for groups to function as transmission belts that aggregate and transfer the preferences of their members to policymakers, thus reinforcing the legitimacy and efficiency of governance systems. Yet, not all groups have these organizational attributes. This paper quantitatively examines the effects of interest groups’ investment in member involvement and organizational capacity on the level of access to EU Commission officials. The results indicate that member involvement does not pay off in terms of higher levels of access. In contrast, groups with high organizational capacities have more meetings with public officials of the Commission.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document