Environmentally focused cooperation projects as a stimulus for the development of old industrialised regions. Case studies in eastern German regions in which small and medium-sized towns predominate

Large parts of eastern Germany are displaying symptoms typical of old industrialised regions. Regions finding it particularly hard to adapt are those in which small and medium-sized towns predominate and which therefore only have limited administrative and financial assets as a rule. Alongside more traditional forms of regional development such as, for instance, the setting-up of industrial estates by local authorities and the enhancement of transport infrastructure, a number of interesting and more novel approaches have been adopted here. The development strategies examined in the present article have three distinguishing features. Firstly, they are explicitly environmentally focused. Secondly, they are co-operative in nature and can involve a multitude of actors. Thirdly, the relevant projects call for mutual exertion over a limited period of time in order to fulfil a strategic objective that is distinctly out of the ordinary, hence justifying the "major project" tag. To determine whether such projects can actually provide a stimulus for the development of the regions under review as well as what sort of factors their success may depend on, three specimen cases are being investigated that differ from one another in terms of both project type and regional characteristics. The first case study concerns what became the Saxony-Anhalt correspondence region for the EXPO 2000 event in Hanover, which ran under the slogan "Mankind - Nature - Technology". This project in a region defined by the medium-sized towns of Dessau, Bitterfeld, Wolfen and Wittenberg has strong organisational affinities with the Emscher Park International Building Exhibition (IBA), which was held in the Ruhr Area conurbation and is still having a big impact on the debate concerning strategies of regional development. The second example involves a predominantly small-town region in the eastern Ore Mountains in which the Model-Urban-Ecology Planning Game was played. The aim of the planning game was to identify the level of urban ecology that can be put to effect with any success from an intermunicipal perspective. The third case study is the Green Ring around Leipzig. The key emphasis here is on co-operation to the good of landscape development between the region around Leipzig, an area in which small towns still predominate, and the city itself. Viewed in their entirety, all three environmentally focused co-operation projects are having a considerable impact on regional development. In different ways, it has proved possible not only to improve the situation regarding the environment and the environmental awareness of the actors involved but also to mobilise and educate them in matters of regional co-operation to a degree that exceeds the scope of the actual project. One factor with a crucial bearing on the outcome is the crystallisation of a certain "state of emergency" in a region by dint of the special nature of the undertaking, the limited term of the project, financial backing from outside parties and greater awareness from further afield. Keywords: Co-operation of actors, environmental policy, project oriented planning, regional development

Trust, Accountability, and Autonomy in Knowledge Graph-based AI for Self-determination

Knowledge Graphs (KGs) have emerged as fundamental platforms for powering intelligent decision-making and a wide range of Artificial Intelligence (AI) services across major corporations such as Google, Walmart, and AirBnb. KGs complement Machine Learning (ML) algorithms by providing data context and semantics, thereby enabling further inference and question-answering capabilities. The integration of KGs with neuronal learning (e.g., Large Language Models (LLMs)) is currently a topic of active research, commonly named neuro-symbolic AI. Despite the numerous benefits that can be accomplished with KG-based AI, its growing ubiquity within online services may result in the loss of self-determination for citizens as a fundamental societal issue. The more we rely on these technologies, which are often centralised, the less citizens will be able to determine their own destinies. To counter this threat, AI regulation, such as the European Union (EU) AI Act, is being proposed in certain regions. The regulation sets what technologists need to do, leading to questions concerning: How can the output of AI systems be trusted? What is needed to ensure that the data fuelling and the inner workings of these artefacts are transparent? How can AI be made accountable for its decision-making? This paper conceptualises the foundational topics and research pillars to support KG-based AI for self-determination. Drawing upon this conceptual framework, challenges and opportunities for citizen self-determination are illustrated and analysed in a real-world scenario. As a result, we propose a research agenda aimed at accomplishing the recommended objectives

The welfare state and new challenge from the back door

1980s in Germany, Britain, France and Italy suggests a convergent and consistent process of homogenisation driven chiefly by institutional mimetic isomorphism. This new 'organisational settlement' is increasingly shaped by the structural autonomisation of individual service delivery units. This paper argues that, when organisational autonomy becomes normatively sanctioned, that this increases the likelihood of its adoption, even in the face of different institutional conditions and welfare regimes. Hence, the paper is foremost concerned with explaining similarities and decreasing variance across countries and across sectors, and with accounting for the main driver of this homogenisation process. Why would different organisational fields across countries and welfare regimes adopt similar structures, in light of inconclusive evidence of economic efficiency gains? The convergence of the organisational settlement of the welfare delivery state is not only driven by economic globalisation or efficiency linked to performance, but primarily by the political demand to find new sources of legitimation in an age of increasing displacement of political authority to managers. The paper is structured in three main parts. First, it revisits the theory of organisational isomorphism by its application to the new patterns of change of welfare delivery. Secondly, it discusses the reform trajectories of autonomisation in schooling and hospital care in Britain, in comparative terms with France and Italy. Thirdly, it concentrates on Germany and it establishes empirically how this case does no longer fit the characterisation of 'immobilisme', especially in the health care sector. Lastly, the wider implications of organisational homogenisation for the TRUDI constellation are discussed. --

Memories of inauthenticity: Stiegler and the lost spirit of capitalism

No description supplie

Framing Welfare Reform in Affluent Societies: Rendering Retrenchment more Palatable?

social policy; welfare state; Maastricht Social Protocol

The politics of what works in service delivery:\ud An evidence-based review

This paper examines the evidence on the forms of politics likely to promote inclusive social provisioning and enable, as opposed to constrain, improvements in service outcomes. It focuses on eight relatively successful cases of delivery in a range of country contexts and sectors (roads, agriculture, health, education) where independent evaluations demonstrate improved outcomes. The paper traces the main characteristics of the political environment for these cases, from the national political context, to the politics of sector policymaking, to the micro politics of implementation. The findings indicate that it is possible to identify connections between good performance and better outcomes at the point of delivery and the main forms of politics operating at local, sector and national levels.\ud \ud A number of common factors underpinning successful delivery emerge strongly but need to be tested through further research. In particular, the paper highlights the relationship between inclusive delivery and periods of crisis and transition;the nature of the political settlement;the types of calculations of political returns being made by political actors at all levels, and; the extent to which the state derives or seeks to enhance its legitimacy through the provision of a particular service

Machine diagnosis based on artificial immune systems

Nowadays, many of the manufactory and industrial system has a diagnosis system on top of it, responsible for ensuring the lifetime of the system itself. It achieves this by performing both diagnosis and error recovery procedures in real production time, on each of the individual parts of the system. There are many paradigms currently being used for diagnosis. However, they still fail to answer all the requirements imposed by the enterprises making it necessary for a different approach to take place. This happens mostly on the error recovery paradigms since the great diversity that is nowadays present in the industrial environment makes it highly unlikely for every single error to be fixed under a real time, no production stop, perspective. This work proposes a still relatively unknown paradigm to manufactory. The Artificial Immune Systems (AIS), which relies on bio-inspired algorithms, comes as a valid alternative to the ones currently being used. The proposed work is a multi-agent architecture that establishes the Artificial Immune Systems, based on bio-inspired algorithms. The main goal of this architecture is to solve for a resolution to the error currently detected by the system. The proposed architecture was tested using two different simulation environment, each meant to prove different points of views, using different tests. These tests will determine if, as the research suggests, this paradigm is a promising alternative for the industrial environment. It will also define what should be done to improve the current architecture and if it should be applied in a decentralised system