scholarly journals Rethinking Samir Amin’s Legacy and the Case for a Political Organization of the Global Justice Movement

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 336-344
Author(s):  
Bonn Juego

Juego argues that the new Internationale’s “primary organizational function should be the global coordination of actions of progressive grassroots movements from country to country.” He calls for a ‘learning organization,’ where the new Internationale supports “a continuous dialogue between bottom-up and top-down approaches to decision-making.” He sees it as “[a]kin to a global coordinating council” meaning that it works to integrate and synthesize the “varying initiatives, campaigns, and mass actions at all geographical levels of membership” while remaining mindful of the “dialectics between reform and revolution.” The new Internationale must, moreover, be “grounded on a pragmatic understanding of realpolitik especially in struggles at national and local scales,” and institutionalize a commitment to dialogue, research, and discussion.

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric C.K. Cheng

Purpose This study aims to explore the principles and practices for managing records with the lens of functional analysis and knowledge management by using a case study that focuses on the experience of implementing records management at a public high school in Hong Kong. Design/methodology/approach A single case study is chosen as the research method for this paper. A series of qualitative interviews and documentary analysis were used to collect and triangulate the qualitative data. Findings The results show that the case school adopted a hybrid top-down and bottom-up approach to record management, facilitate decision-making and manage knowledge. The school adopted the taxonomy provided by the quality assurance framework as the functional classification in a digital archive in the records management system. Practical implications This study provides a set of taxonomy and a hybrid top-down and bottom-up approach to schools for ensuring that accurate information of all school activities is kept and can facilitate an effective and evidence-based, decision-making process. Social implications Identifying taxonomy and management practices for effective documentation in public schools can support planning, assist with organising the continuity of improvement plans and increase reporting and accountability to society. Originality/value This study offers a taxonomy and management approach to the literature of records management and the practices for promoting and improving records management in school.


2007 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Biswambhar Panda

NGOs deploy multiple approaches to achieve their objectives. These may broadly be classified as bottom up and top down. While a bottom-up approach emphasises local decision making, community participation and grassroots mobilisation/movements, the top-down approach focuses on lobbying and bargaining with the decision-making authorities such as government agencies, building up of pressures through various campaign mechanisms, advocacy activities, etc. This article draws insights from the literature and begins with a discussion on approaches undertaken by grassroots NGOs to meet their objectives. At the outset, the article ponders over a set of questions such as whether grassroots NGOs essentially follow a bottom-up approach. If so, why? Do they also intend to establish rapport with the state officials and thereby have say in the decision-making process? If so, how do they pursue it? This article, however, operationalises the bottom-up approach in terms of an array of indicators such as awareness building efforts of NGOs, people's participation in different phases of projects, and people's involvement in creating people's institutions. Similarly, it defines top-down approach on the basis of indicators such as NGOs’ participation in advocacy activity, obtaining support from government authority and obtaining favourable court verdicts. Despite the rhetoric, this article conclusively finds that no grassroots NGO practices either a bottom-up or top-down approach exclusively.


Author(s):  
M Fathianathan ◽  
J H Panchal

The product design process plays a central role in ensuring that new products are realized with improved quality, in a short lead-time and with costs kept to a minimum. It is identified that making decisions dynamically on how the design process should proceed is not trivial. A computational environment that aids dynamic decision making on the design process would be useful in ensuring successful design of new products. A key component of analysing and making decisions on the progression of the design process is a model that captures an ongoing design process. In this paper, an approach to modelling an ongoing design process is proposed based on the use of design nodes. The approach allows an ongoing design process to be modelled that facilitates dynamic decision making on how the design process should progress and accounts for the state of the design problem. The approach allows top-down and bottom-up design strategies to be modelled.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziyi Wang ◽  
Guibing He

One of the interesting research questions in multi-attribute decision-making is what affects the consideration of shared information (i.e., common features) between two alternatives. Previous studies have suggested two approaches (bottom-up and top-down) in finding what characteristics of common features affect their consideration. Two bottom-up factors (salience and interdependence) were found, but no top-down factors were discovered. In the current study, we followed the top-down approach and investigated how subjective importance (SI) of a common feature affects its consideration. In two studies, we consistently found that, on both the general and individual level, the level of consideration increased with the SI of the common feature. This result provided a new explanation for the effect of common feature consideration and its individual difference; it also provided insights in explaining the underlying process of multi-attribute decision making.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigitte Geißel ◽  
Anna Krämling ◽  
Lars Paulus

Despite the popularity of direct democracy in recent decades, research on the actual output effects of popular decision-making is rare. This is especially true with regard to equality, where there are at least three major research gaps: 1) a lack of cross-national analyses; 2) insufficient investigation of the differential effects of different direct democratic instruments on equality; and 3) a failure to distinguish between different aspects of equality, i.e., socioeconomic, legal and political equality. This article takes a first step to tackle these shortcomings by looking at all national referenda in European democracies between 1990 and 2015, differentiating between mandatory, bottom-up and top-down referenda. We find that a large majority of successful direct democratic bills—regardless of which instrument is employed—are not related to equality issues. Of the remaining ones, there are generally more successful pro-equality bills than contra-equality ones, but the differences are rather marginal. Mandatory referenda tend to produce pro-equality outputs, but no clear patterns emerge for bottom-up and top-down referenda. Our results offer interesting, preliminary insights to the current debate on direct democracy, pointing to the conclusion that popular decision-making via any type of direct democratic instrument is neither curse nor blessing with regard to equality. Instead, it is necessary to look at other factors such as context conditions or possible indirect effects in order to get a clearer picture of the impacts of direct democracy on equality.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-63
Author(s):  
Shulamith Gertel Groome

This paper aims to broaden our understanding of public policy characterized by issues of non-consensus. The idea of flexible, independent administrative decision-making for a conflict-oriented policy-type is addressed in terms of chronological constructions of policy process. Distributions of limited resources are a source of public contention likely to draw ambiguous high-level policy decisions that lack practical administrative directives. Conflicting institutional, professional and stakeholder influences, at various levels of policy processes, illuminate circumstances fostering implementations incongruent with politically motivated macro-declarations. Yet, this does not necessarily represent failed policy. A reevaluation of administrative systems, by critical deconstruction of the dominant top-down discourse, provides a frame of reference for valid divergent implementations. A conceptual progression from field-level interpretation and adaptation of macro policy, initiatory orphan implementations emerge as policy itself. This revised bottom-up modality of the policy process implies a working balance of combined outputs, providing equitable outcome to serve largescale public interest.


2018 ◽  
Vol 101 (8) ◽  
pp. 1368-1377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wynne Callon ◽  
Mary Catherine Beach ◽  
Anne R. Links ◽  
Carly Wasserman ◽  
Emily F. Boss

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