Deliberative Democracy in the EU. Countering Populism with Participation and Debate. CEPS Paperback

Elections are the preferred way to freely transfer power from one term to the next and from one political party or coalition to another. They are an essential element of democracy. But if the process of power transfer is corrupted, democracy risks collapse. Reliance on voters, civil society organisations and neutral observers to fully exercise their freedoms as laid down in international human rights conventions is an integral part of holding democratic elections. Without free, fair and regular elections, liberal democracy is inconceivable. Elections are no guarantee that democracy will take root and hold, however. If the history of political participation in Europe over the past 800 years is anything to go by, successful attempts at gaining voice have been patchy, while leaders’ attempts to silence these voices and consolidate their own power have been almost constant (Blockmans, 2020). Recent developments in certain EU member states have again shown us that democratically elected leaders will try and use majoritarian rule to curb freedoms, overstep the constitutional limits of their powers, protect the interests of their cronies and recycle themselves through seemingly free and fair elections. In their recent book How Democracies Die, two Harvard professors of politics write: “Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves” (Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018)

Managing contactability in telephone surveys

The Australian market research industry relies on telephone interviewing as one of its major data collection methods. Through Its LIST initiative, the industry has committed to best practice In research methods in order to address various concerns, especially the decline in response rates for telephone interviews. Response rates are determined by the co-operation of eligible respondents and their degree of contactabllity. The reported study is concerned with the way the industry attempts to manage contactabiIity. A study of fieldwork managers responSible for over 75% of all phone interviews in Australia revealed a limited use of contact enhancing strategies such as longer fieldwork periods and more callbacks. Commercial imperatives for timely surveys and a lack of end-user concern for response rate issues, along with cost issues, were believed to be responsible.<br /

Other forms of evidence – and how to use them?

This module covers inclusive approaches to policy-making and other forms of evidence and the ways to use them. While quantitative sources of data are useful in producing some forms of evidence, qualitative sources play an important role, including helping to produce policies that work in practice.Inclusive and “ joined up” approaches to policy-making can play an important role in helping policymakers devise more appropriate policies and achieve more effective policy outcomes

Measuring relative opinion from location-based social media: A case study of the 2016 U.S. presidential election

Social media has become an emerging alternative to opinion polls for public opinion collection, while it is still posing many challenges as a passive data source, such as structurelessness, quantifiability, and representativeness. Social media data with geotags provide new opportunities to unveil the geographic locations of users expressing their opinions. This paper aims to answer two questions: 1) whether quantifiable measurement of public opinion can be obtained from social media and 2) whether it can produce better or complementary measures compared to opinion polls. This research proposes a novel approach to measure the relative opinion of Twitter users towards public issues in order to accommodate more complex opinion structures and take advantage of the geography pertaining to the public issues. To ensure that this new measure is technically feasible, a modeling framework is developed including building a training dataset by adopting a state-of-the-art approach and devising a new deep learning method called Opinion-Oriented Word Embedding. With a case study of the tweets selected for the 2016 U.S. presidential election, we demonstrate the predictive superiority of our relative opinion approach and we show how it can aid visual analytics and support opinion predictions. Although the relative opinion measure is proved to be more robust compared to polling, our study also suggests that the former can advantageously complement the later in opinion prediction

Building Networks of Practice

{Excerpt} Extensive media coverage of applications such as FaceBook, MySpace, and LinkedIn suggests that networks are a new phenomenon. They are not: the first network was born the day people decided to create organizational structures to serve common interests—that is, at the dawn of mankind. However, the last 10–20 years have witnessed rapid intensification and evolution of networking activities, driven of course by information and communication technologies as well as globalization. These make it possible for individuals to exchange data, information, and knowledge; work collaboratively; and share their views much more quickly and widely than ever before. Thus, less and less of an organization’s knowledge resides within its formal boundaries or communities of practice. Knowledge cannot be separated from the networks that create, use, and transform it. In parallel, networks now play significant roles in how individuals, groups, organizations, and related systems operate. They will be even more important tomorrow. Since we can no longer assume that closely knit groups are the building blocks of human activity—or treat these as discrete units of analysis—we need to recognize and interface with less-bounded organizations, from non-local communities to links among websites. We should make certain that knowledge harvested in the external environment is integrated with what exists within, especially in dynamic fields where innovation stems from inter-organizational knowledge sharing and learning. Therefore, the structure and composition of nodes and ties, and how these affect norms and determine usefulness, must become key concerns. This makes the study of networks of practice a prime interest for both researchers and practitioners

Enhancing the Effectiveness of Social Dialogue Articulation in Europe (EESDA) Project No. VS/2017/0434 Stakeholders’ views on and experiences with the articulation of social dialogue and its effectiveness

This report studies the articulation and effectiveness of social dialogue at the European and national levels. It provides an overview of the existing social dialogue structures describing the main actors involved. The overall approach of the study is actor-centred in the sense that the interactions and perception of actors are in the core of this research. The analysis also takes into account the multilevel governance structure in Europe by considering the interaction and vertical/horizontal articulation of social dialogue between the EU and national levels. The study also benefits from original data collection comprised of several layers including both the EU and national levels and through at least two methods. First, semi-structured interviews were conducted with European social partners as well as with national social stakeholders in a selection of six Member States. Second, an EU-wide online survey collected responses from national social partners in 27 Member States. The remainder of the analysis is complemented with desk research

Youth Lead the Change: Participatory Budgeting

This evaluation report examines the Youth Lead the Change process in its third year, drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from a variety of sources. The Boston University evaluation team reports their findings and summarizes the conclusions with recommendations to further develop this innovative effort to engage youth in city government.The year 2015-2016 marks the third year of Youth Lead the Change: Participatory Budgeting Boston, a program that enables young people from across the city to suggest ideas for capital projects that will bring long-term physical improvements to city-owned property. This evaluation report examines the Youth Lead the Change process in its third year, drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from a variety of sources. The Boston University evaluation team reports their findings and summarizes the conclusions with recommendations to further develop this innovative effort to engage youth in city government.Boston University Initiative on Citie

Youth Lead the Change: Participatory Budgeting

This evaluation report examines the Youth Lead the Change process in its third year, drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from a variety of sources. The Boston University evaluation team reports their findings and summarizes the conclusions with recommendations to further develop this innovative effort to engage youth in city government.The year 2015-2016 marks the third year of Youth Lead the Change: Participatory Budgeting Boston, a program that enables young people from across the city to suggest ideas for capital projects that will bring long-term physical improvements to city-owned property. This evaluation report examines the Youth Lead the Change process in its third year, drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from a variety of sources. The Boston University evaluation team reports their findings and summarizes the conclusions with recommendations to further develop this innovative effort to engage youth in city government.Boston University Initiative on Citie

Governance, Democracy and Poverty Reduction: Lessons drawn from household surveys in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America

Public statistics face quite a challenge when it comes to measuring new dimensions of development (institutions, governance, and social and political participation). To take up this challenge, modules on Governance, Democracy and Multiple Dimensions of Poverty have been appended to household surveys by National Statistics Institutes in twelve African and Latin-American developing countries. This paper presents the issues addressed and the methodological lessons learnt along with a selection of findings to illustrate this innovative approach and demonstrate its analytic potential. We investigate, for instance, the population’s support for democratic principles, the respect for civil and political rights and the trust in the political class; the “need for the State”, particularly of the poorest; the extent of petty corruption; the reliability of expert surveys on governance; the perception of decentralisation policies at local level; the level and vitality of social and political participation, etc. The conclusive appraisal made opens up prospects for the national statistical information systems in the developing countries. The measurement and tracking of this new set of objective and subjective public policy monitoring indicators would benefit from being made systematic.Africa, Latin America, Democracy, Monitoring Mechanism, Household Surveys,