Doing Democracy: How a Network of Grassroots Organizations Is Strengthening Community, Building Capacity, and Shaping a New Kind of Civic Education

This Kettering Foundation report examines a burgeoning network of organizations that is inventing new forms of community renewal and citizenship education. Their names vary -- some call themselves public policy institutes, others centers for civic life -- yet they share a common methodology, one aimed at tackling tough public issues, strengthening communities, and nurturing people's capacities to participate and make common cause.Today, there are more than 50 of these centers operating in almost every state in the union, most of them affiliated with institutions of higher learning. Except for a handful that are freestanding, the centers combine the best of what colleges and universities provide -- civics courses, leadership development, service-learning programs, community-based research -- with the kinds of hands-on, collaborative problem solving traditionally done by nongovernmental organizations. Because they operate at the intersection of the campus and the community, their impact extends to both: they nurture and sustain public life while at the same time enriching higher education

e-Governance: Supporting pragmatic direct deliberative action through online communities of interest

Authors often report on the limited success of e-Government initiatives in developing nations. Top down, national strategies are developed to target improved government services, but maintain hierarchical, citizen-state conceptions of governance through representative democracy. An alternative conception, direct deliberative democracy, frames the potential role of the internet in governance differently. Web based platforms might support locally animated deliberations, which target pragmatic outcomes, while the resulting social networks afford collective learning through connections across traditional boundaries. This paper presents an investigation of direct deliberative governance as it occurs in online 'communities of interest', and is based on research with such a community in southern Africa. We investigate contributions to the online governance process and develop an action typology distinguishing between degrees of 'agency freedom'. Network analytic techniques are then used to understand how acts of varying degree are expressed in terms of the structure of a social network. The aim, more broadly, is to understand how the environment shapes acts of direct deliberative governance, and, in turn, how the acts shape the evolution and effectiveness of the community. The preliminary results suggest design considerations for online governance communities, and highlight their role to not only provide deliberative space, but to mediate social network connections

Futures Studies in the Interactive Society

This book consists of papers which were prepared within the framework of the research project (No. T 048539) entitled Futures Studies in the Interactive Society (project leader: Éva Hideg) and funded by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA) between 2005 and 2009. Some discuss the theoretical and methodological questions of futures studies and foresight; others present new approaches to or procedures of certain questions which are very important and topical from the perspective of forecast and foresight practice. Each study was conducted in pursuit of improvement in futures fields

The Faces of Contemporary Islam: Fresh Perspectives on Theory, Practice, and Foreign Policy

Summarizes discussions from a November 2008 conference on ways to promote understanding between the Muslim world and the West. Examines perceptions about the compatibility of Islam and democracy, Muslim women, Western attitudes, and the role of the media

Youth Internet Radio Network: Can we Innovate Democracy?

The Youth Internet Radio Network (YIRN) explores the connection between media technologies and citizenship, building on work by Hartley and Tacchi on 'radiocracy' (radio, democracy & development)4. YIRN combines: 1. Content creation: Establishing a network of young content providers across urban, regional, remote and Indigenous locations; 2. Ethnographic Action Research: Researching how young people interact as both producers and consumers of new media content and technology; 3. Technology Innovation: Identifying how different ‘communicative ecologies’ within the network influence and learn from each other; and, 4. Enterprise development: Understanding how culture and creativity combined with new technologies can be a seedbed for innovation and enterprise. Groups of young people across Queensland will be trained in how to produce content for a dedicated website - audio (music and speech), text (stories, reports, journals) and visuals (photographs, artworks). In addition, the network will allow groups of young people to interact with each other and with others (including Government) on topics and issues chosen by them - through forums, messaging services, message boards, blogs and emails. This research project investigates important questions about new media and participation. If the new economy is a network economy, if the new raw materials are information and knowledge, and if the new workforce needs content creation skills, how will these young people set about using and developing the YIRN network? How do creativity, access, networks and connectivity work together - what are the results of ensuring access and training at this level to a diverse and dispersed set of groups of young people? How does this network work as a communication space: how will the young people interact with each other? And how will they communicate with Government and other agencies? When they are participating in an interactive network are they simultaneously being citizens? Would enterprises built around creative content be civic institutions? This paper presents some of the challenges that face this research project as it seeks to discover how youth civic participation might be addressed through innovative Internet use by embracing practices that are often considered resistant and the domain of a 'subversive youth' (Hartley 1992, 21-42)

Transnational Partisanship and Networked Constituent Power in the EU. LEQS Paper No. 138/2018 October 2018

The constitutional politics of the European Union have been intensely debated in recent times. A key concern, voiced both within the academy and at street level, is how citizens could be endowed with the ability to shape, revise and legitimise evolving constitutional settlements. This paper begins by discussing recent accounts of ‘constituent power’ in the EU that seek to offer guidance in this respect. It argues that these accounts are normatively insightful but ultimately stop short of providing a viable model of constitutional agency. The remainder of the paper then aims to examine what such a model could look like, looking for inspiration to the muchneglected political practice of transnational partisanship. Specifically, the paper examines the transnationally coordinated constitution-making efforts of Christian Democratic partisans in the founding period of the EU, suggesting that there is much to learn from these efforts as far as EU constitutional politics is concerned

The ‘Competence’ discourse in education and the struggle or social agency and critical citizenship

This paper argues for an education for critical citizenship closely connected with a revitalisation of the democratic public sphere and which prepares citizens to contribute to the emergence of a ‘substantive democracy’ (Giroux, 2001). An education for citizenship, in this context, is a democratic education, one in which students learn about democracy not simply by talking about it but by engaging in a democratic learning experience governed by non hierarchical social relations of education. This is in keeping with John Dewey’s over-arching concept of education for democracy.The competences involved, for want of a better word, are those that can enable a person to function as a social agent contributing to and thriving within a genuinely democratic environment.peer-reviewe

Democracy and Digital Authoritarianism: An Assessment of the EU’s External Engagement in the Promotion and Protection of Internet Freedom. College of Europe EU Diplomacy Paper 01/2020

The past decade has seen a gradual global increase in digital authoritarianism. Internet shutdowns, online censorship, mass surveillance and violations of privacy rights have all become more frequent in parts of the world where citizens are not guaranteed sufficient digital rights. The task of defending, promoting and protecting internet freedom is becoming increasingly relevant for the European Union (EU) − for internal digital and cybersecurity policies as well as for the EU’s external promotion of democracy and human rights. Whilst much has been written about the various internal policies which establish and protect internet freedom within the European Union and its member states, the EU’s external engagement in this field remains critically under-researched. To what extent does the EU engage externally in the promotion and protection of internet freedom? This paper answers this question by covering a wide variety of policy fields including human rights and democracy promotion, digital policy, enlargement and neighbourhood policy, development cooperation and trade policy. Whereas the EU faces a limited opportunity to shape global norms with regard to internet freedom or to change the course of digitally authoritarian states, it has demonstrated several strengths which deserve not to be overlooked. These include, for example, the externalisation of internal data protection and policies and the provision of direct support and protection for civil society. Despite facing significant obstacles, the promotion and protection of internet freedom has become an important area of the EU’s external action which is only set to become more relevant in the coming years