The Konotop Campaign of 1672 to “Elect a Hetman”

This article analyses the reasons for Hetman D. Ignatowich (Mnogogreshniy)’s dismissal and arrest on the night of 13 March 1672 and the election of I. Samoylowich as the new hetman. The author provides a detailed description of all the reports regarding Ignatowich’s communications with Hetman Doroshenko and his plans to launch a mutiny against the tsar and become subject of the Turkish sultan, which made Ignatowich start mobilising troops and transport his property to a safe place in advance. Additionally, the author describes the effort taken by the Russian government to keep the hetman under their rule and lack of plans to dismiss him. After the information about Ignatowich’s treason and arrest by representatives of the Cossack starshina (officership) reached Moscow, the latter supported the plotters and tried the former hetman in a court of law, sentencing him to exile in Siberia. Even though there were fears of Cossack uprisings to support Ignatowich, the appointment of a new hetman was bloodless and was not followed by any serious uprisings, which testifies to the lack of support towards him personally or the policy he carried out. On 17 June 1672, the 30‑yearold Samoylowich was elected hetman at the Konotop Rada. He did not enjoy any support of the starshina or Cossacks in general and was dependent on the support of the tsarist authorities and Cossack elites. The conditions of the Konotop articles signed at the Rada were identical to the Glukhov articles from 1669 and provided the hetmanate with broad autonomy and a very limited tsarist military and administrative participation. The only addition was that the authorities were requested to arbitrate any possible disputes between the hetman and the Cossack starshina. In order to demonstrate the military support for the tsar’s candidate, the authorities sent Prince Romodanovsky’s army to the place where the Rada was to be held and deployed additional troops along the hetmanate’s borders.

Resilient Health System and Hospital Disaster Planning

Disaster planning is integral component of hospital operations and management, and hospital resiliency is critical to society and health systems following a disaster. Additionally, hospitals, like all public institutions have significant risk of security incidents including terrorism, isolated and mass violence, social unrest, theft and vandalism, natural and human made disasters. Security and disaster planning are cumbersome, expensive and easy to deprioritize. When a hospital disaster is defined as anything that exceeds the limits of the facility to function at baseline, disasters and security incidents are intertwined: disasters create security problems and vice-versa. Hospital resiliency to disasters and security incidents stems from a systems-based approach, departmental and administrative participation, financial investment and flexibility. Significant best practices and lessons learned exist regarding disaster and security planning and ignorance or lack of adoption is tantamount to dereliction of duty on the part of responsible entities. This chapter consists of a review of the concepts of hospital disaster and security planning, response and recovery, as well as hospital specific disaster and security threats (risk) and their associated mitigations strategies. Risks will be presented follow a hazard vulnerability analysis (HVA), a common framework in emergency management, disaster planning and disaster medicine. As such, each element of risk is defined in terms of likelihood and impact of an event. Concepts of disaster medicine that are also addressed, as are administrative concerns, these elements are designed to be applicable to non-experts with an emphasis on cross disciplinary understanding. Additionally, elements are presented using incident and hospital incident command terminology and those not familiar should learn these concepts though free online training on the incident command system provided by several sources including The United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), prior to reading.

Participatory Democracy in Local Government

In 2015, the local government of the city of Madrid (Spain) introduced an electronic participation system. This initiative stemmed mainly from the social movements that had occupied the squares of many Spanish cities since 2011. As a result of the local elections in 2015, many of those same activists gained institutional power, took citizens’ participation very seriously, and decided to use the possibilities offered by the internet for political and administrative participation. In this article, we seek to assess the impacts of the Madrid city government with the e-democracy experiment – based mainly on establishing an online platform to facilitate citizen participation in political and administrative decision processes. Drawing on qualitative and documental data, our research indicates that whereas the overall aim of the project was to give citizens a say in local policy and decision making, our case study shows that participation was very low since most of the population does not feel concerned by these processes. Indeed, one of our findings showed that citizens’ involvement offline surpassed in some cases their online participation. To identify who is politically active online and offline is a great challenge, to which the promoters of the project did not pay much attention. Although e-participation was meagre in relation to the electoral turnout, the case study also shows that many proposals from the public were incorporated into the local policies, indicating that from a qualitative point of view, e-participation influences decision-making processes. Perhaps local governments should use a more strategic and integrated approach towards the use of electronic technologies to foster and motivate citizens’ involvement in local politics and administration. This more integrated approach should be less dependent on ideological incentives, more institutionalized, and must incorporate citizens’ perceptions and inputs before the introduction of new technologies.

Participation in Public Administration Revisited

Participation has been a relevant issue in public administration research and theory for several decades, especially in old democracies. However, recent processes of globalization, Europeanization and digitalisation, coupled with diminishing citizens’ trust in public institutions, have again made the concept of public participation topical. The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical reflection on the concept and substance of participation in public administration and on research efforts. In order to do so, administrative participation is first defined and distinguished from other types of participation in modern democracies (political and civil participation). Participation in public administration encompasses the processes through which the public is directly involved in regulative and implementation functions of administrative organizations, as well as in the oversight of their functioning. The three main categories of participation in public administration are elaborated – regulative, implementing and oversight participation – together with some apparent forms (instruments) within each category. The main principles upon which administrative participation is based are also explained – transparency, openness, responsiveness and trust. The final part of the paper contains an overview of the existing research and evaluation of participation in public administration. The twofold value of participation – intrinsic and instrumental – is explained, its potential benefits and shortcomings are listed, and a distinction between the process and outcome dimension of participation is elaborated. Although the literature has become rather extensive and refined, one can conclude that unambiguous findings on the practical effects of participation are still deficient, especially with regard to its dependence on different contextual – especially organizational – variables. Therefore, some conceptual and methodological observations for further research are formulated.