11 Money for maintenance: public oversight of school infrastructure spending in Peru

The Snowden leaks indicate the extent, nature, and means of contemporary mass digital surveillance of citizens by their intelligence agencies and the role of public oversight mechanisms in holding intelligence agencies to account. As such, they form a rich case study on the interactions of “veillance” (mutual watching) involving citizens, journalists, intelligence agencies and corporations. While Surveillance Studies, Intelligence Studies and Journalism Studies have little to say on surveillance of citizens’ data by intelligence agencies (and complicit surveillant corporations), they offer insights into the role of citizens and the press in holding power, and specifically the political-intelligence elite, to account. Attention to such public oversight mechanisms facilitates critical interrogation of issues of surveillant power, resistance and intelligence accountability. It directs attention to the <em>veillant panoptic assemblage</em> (an arrangement of profoundly unequal mutual watching, where citizens’ watching of self and others is, through corporate channels of data flow, fed back into state surveillance of citizens). Finally, it enables evaluation of post-Snowden steps taken towards achieving an <em>equiveillant panoptic assemblage</em> (where, alongside state and corporate surveillance of citizens, the intelligence-power elite, to ensure its accountability, faces robust scrutiny and action from wider civil society).

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Allies in Transparency? Parliamentary, Judicial and Administrative Interplays in the EU’s International Negotiations

Politics and Governance ◽

10.17645/pag.v5i3.1056 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 5 (3) ◽

pp. 75-86 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Vigjilenca Abazi ◽

Johan Adriaensen

Keyword(s):

General Public ◽

International Negotiations ◽

Joint Analysis ◽

The Subject ◽

Public Oversight ◽

Insight Into ◽

The Eu

International negotiations are an essential part of the European Union’s (EU) external affairs. A key aspect to negotiations is access to and sharing of information among the EU institutions involved as well as to the general public. Oversight of negotiations requires insight into the topics of negotiation, the positions taken and the strategies employed. Concurrently, however, some space for confidentiality is necessary for conducting the negotiations and defending EU interests without fully revealing the limit negotiating positions of the EU to the negotiating partner. Hence, attaining a balance between the necessities of oversight and confidentiality in negotiations is the subject of a dynamic debate between the EU institutions. This paper provides a joint analysis on EU oversight institutions’ position on transparency in international negotiations. We set out to answer whether parliamentary, judicial and administrative branches of oversight are allies in pursuing the objectives of transparency but also examine when their positions diverge.

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SANITARY GUARDIANS IN PRE-REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA

Ural Historical Journal ◽

10.30759/1728-9718-2021-1(70)-30-38 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 70 (1) ◽

pp. 30-38

Author(s):

Anna B. Agafonova ◽

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Social Participation ◽

Russian Empire ◽

Local Authorities ◽

City Community ◽

History Of ◽

The Russian Empire ◽

The City ◽

Public Oversight

The article describes the history of creation and activities of sanitary guardians in the cities of the Russian Empire. The study aims to identify organizational and social contradictions in guardianships’ activities, which hindered citizens from involvement in solving local sanitary problems. Boards of sanitary guardians were established by order of local authorities to involve the population in the fight against epidemics and conducting sanitary measures. The sanitary guardians’ activities consisted of timely notification of local authorities about the emergence of epidemics, participation in sanitary inspections of households, and conducting preventive conversations with homeowners about their compliance with public health and urban improvement regulations. The practice of citizens social participation in monitoring the urban area’s cleanliness was intended to level out the contradictions between homeowners and temporary doctors and sanitary executive commissions “alien” to the city community. Still, it often provoked conflicts between sanitary guardians and homeowners who defended the rights to inviolability of their property. In general, public oversight conducted by sanitary guardians has proven ineffective in the long term.

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PUBLIC OVERSIGHT OF UKRAINE’S EUROPEAN INTEGRATION COURSE

Teorija in praksa ◽

10.51936/tip.58.1.183-198 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 183-198

Author(s):

Anatoliy Krugashov ◽

Andriana Kostenko

Keyword(s):

Civil Society ◽

European Integration ◽

Institutional Development ◽

Government Agencies ◽

Association Agreement ◽

International Agencies ◽

Wide Range ◽

Key Issues ◽

Public Oversight ◽

The Eu

Abstract. The article deals with the wide range of mechanisms in support of civil society institutions–government interaction in the context of developing and implementing European integration reforms in Ukraine. The authors identified 6 strategic documents and 20 areas of reform related to the process of European integration, as well as the key issues concerning implementation of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU. The authors conclude that positive trends are visible in recent decades in the institutional development of Ukrainian civil society, which has become a driving force of the country’s European integration aspirations. In this setting, civil society institutions (CSIs) work with government agencies, engage in informal advocacy, conduct monitoring policies, perform and publish policy analysis and recommendations, and work with and lobby international agencies and other actors.

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