When digital mass participation meets citizen deliberation: Combining mini-publics and maxi-publics in climate policy-making

Notwithstanding the rationale and the demand for public participation in climate policies, aggregated perspectives of maxi-publics are often belittled as uninformed, self-interested and short-term focused. The upcoming vogue of climate assemblies, citizen parliaments and other forms of mini-publics is to give citizens a central role in climate policy-making and in some cases to break political impasse. Yet climate mini-publics face challenges in political environments too, such as co-option, favoring expert-opinions and losing touch with the broader public. To remedy such pitfalls, recent papers have argued to combine synchronous deliberations of small groups of citizens with online participation procedures for the larger public. In this article, we report the results of a three-step combination model, where first a mini-public in the region of Súdwest-Fryslân (NL) were given a ‘carte blanche’ to draft the content and the parameters of several related policy alternatives. Second, their proposals where fed into a digital participation tool, the Participatory Value Evaluation (PVE) to consult the wider public. A total of 1,376 (approx. 2% of the inhabitants) expressed their preferences and explained why they favour a dominant role for the municipality and the residents but are reticent about giving the market too big a role. Third, a citizen forum translated the outcomes of the maxi-public into policy recommendations, which were unanimously approved by the municipal council. In this paper, we report our findings of combining mini-and maxi-publics and how actors involved evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of the combination of these two participatory approaches.

State Failure, Violence, and Trade: Dangerous Trade Routes in Colombia

We investigate the effect of domestic armed violence brought about by political instability on the geography of distance frictions in freight mobility and the resulting differential access of regions to global markets. The Colombian transportation system has been found to be impeded by deficiencies in landside transport infrastructure and institutions, and by fragmented political environments. The micro-level analysis of U.S.-bounded export shipping records corroborates that export freight shipping from inland regions is re-routed to avoid exposures to domestic armed violence despite greatly extended landside and maritime shipping distances. We exploit the trajectories of freight shipping from Colombian regions and spatial patterns of violent armed conflicts to see how unstable geopolitical environments are detrimental to freight shipping mobility and market openness. The discrete choice model shows that the shipping flow is greatly curbed by the extended re-routing due to domestic armed violence and that inland regions have restricted access to the global market. The perception of risk and re-routing behavior is found heterogeneous across shipments and conditional to shipment characteristics, such as commodity type, freight value and shipper sizes. The results highlight that political stability must be accommodated for improved freight mobility and export-oriented economic development in the global South.

African Parliaments Volume 1: Evidence systems for governance and development

Parliaments play a pivotal role in governance, and yet little is known about how evidence is used for decision-making in these complex, political environments. Together with its practice companion volume, African Parliaments: Systems of evidence in practice, this volume explores the multiple roles legislatures play in governance, the varied mandates and allegiances of elected representatives, and what this means for evidence use. Given the tensions in Africa around the relationships between democracy and development, government and citizen agency, this volume considers the theories around parliamentary evidence use, and interrogates what they mean in the context of African governance.

Reducing health inequalities in developing countries

In the current international context of economic globalization, discussions have not only highlighted inequalities within individual countries, but also inequalities between countries. Inequalities between countries are related to the differences in economic and social development achieved by different countries, which are generated by the position that these countries have occupied during different phases of history within the global production system. The latter reflect historical aspects, and the international economic and political environments in relation to each country’s share of global resources and development opportunities. Policies for fighting poverty and inequality require local, national, and global approaches, but funding issues often hamper their feasibility.

Transformative Branding: A Dynamic Capability To Challenge The Dominant Social Paradigm

In response to calls by macromarketing scholars, this article introduces transformative branding to demonstrate how branding—a process traditionally conceptualised at the firm level to achieve marketing management outcomes—can contribute to both market and societal systems. We define transformative branding as a dynamic capability deployed by firms as a prosocial process to facilitate stakeholder co-created brand meanings that draw on hybrid market and social logics. We contend that transformative branding encompasses two market-shaping activities, which drive macro-level change according to hybrid logics: (1) leadership i.e., building a vision for transformation and (2) collaborative coupling i.e., implementing transformation with stakeholders. Shaping the market and society in this way creates opportunities for transforming economic, regulatory, socio-cultural, and political environments, whereby transformative branding works to challenge the dominant social paradigm from within the market system. We conclude with a cautionary note about the potential of branding as a force for good.

Formation, Legacy, and Change in the National Union of General and Municipal Workers, and the Transport and General Workers’ Union, 1889-1978

This article explores the paradox of the two large ‘general’ workers’ unions - the former Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) and the National Union of General and Municipal Workers (NUGMW) - which from their militant origins to within a comparatively few years were seen as undemocratic, moderate in industrial tactics and right-wing in labour politics - ‘pillars of conservatism’. In due time they moved from the fringes to centre stage, acquiring one in four of all trade-unionists, and dominating with their block votes the decisions of the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party conference. Even more dramatic was the apparent overnight conversion to left-wing views within the TGWU when Frank Cousins became general secretary in 1956. Then under his successor, Jack Jones, responding to the dynamic of shop-floor organization, the TGWU radically changed its ethos and government. The NUGMW, with David Basnett as general secretary from 1973, also moved away from its long-standing positions but its government remained unchanged. But in 1979 the economic and political environments within which the unions were operating completely changed.

Framing young South Korean working holidaymakers in Australia: A longitudinal analysis of South Korean newspapers from 2000 to 2018

Temporary migration is a growing global trend, but there is little research on its representation in the media of origin countries. This paper fills this gap by examining how temporary migration is framed by using a longitudinal analysis that focuses on the representation of South Korean participants in the Australian Working Holiday Program in South Korean newspapers from 2000 to 2018. This paper explores the role that South Korean newspapers have played in constructing pro-migration discourses and representing the program, its participants, and their experiences while considering the social and political environments. Key focus areas identified include a “culture of migration,” national interest, economic imperatives/employment, and “victimization.”

The Geography of Law: Understanding the Origin of State and Federal Redistricting Cases

Knowing where legal complaints arise can tell us something about them and reveal clues about their conditions of origin. In this paper, we examine the geographic origins of litigation challenging the boundaries of electoral districts—an increasingly salient and prominent source of political conflict. We construct an original dataset of all redistricting cases in state and federal courts nationwide, from 1960 to 2019. We show that redistricting litigation surfaces not just in states where there are regions undergoing rapid population change or that have a greater proportion of aggrieved racial minority groups but also in areas where there is close partisan competition. The filing of redistricting litigation is highly responsive to hypercompetitive political environments, suggesting that parties pursue judicial intervention vigorously when political power hangs in the balance and not simply due to demographic changes associated with decennial population measurement. These findings have important implications for understanding the temporal and spatial dynamics of redistricting politics and the consequences of intense partisan electoral competition in the United States.

Competitive Public Procurement during COVID-19: The Unique Political and Policy Experience of the United States

COVID-19 appeared during one of the most turbulent political environments in U.S. history. This research documents how political polarization during a presidential election year coincided with an incoherent national policy and procurement response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and empirically examines the competitive nature of pandemic-related public procurement contracts across the 50 states based on partisan control of state governments.

Toward a Liberated Learning Spirit

Despite the popularity of social justice frameworks, today’s polarized socio-political environments call for a justice-forward approach where educators blend equity and culturally-responsive pedagogies with experiential approaches to learning. The TALLS (Toward a Liberated Learning Spirit) model for developing critical consciousness infuses established equity practices with indigenous approaches to learning and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Six Steps for Nonviolent Social Change. By re-engaging curiosities, TALLS guides learners from academic detachment through an unlearning process toward embodied liberation. Readers will be invited to disrupt common misconceptions that reproduce postcolonial paradigms to foster learner development of critical consciousness.