Supporting Water Governance and Climate Change Adaptation Through Systemic Praxis

Understanding and working with multiple perspectives on issues of change is an essential part of managing “common pool” water resources. In uncertain and complex situations arising from changes in human settlements and climate, both lives and livelihoods can be at stake. One individual’s or group’s choices can adversely affect others and traditional processes of participation and legislation are often inadequate. Discourse on environmental law recognises that noncompliance with legislation is associated with weak national governance structures. A systemic approach to managing change is required to appreciate interconnections among issues at various levels and to mediate different stakeholdings. Yet there are no blueprints for effecting systemic transformations of complex situations. This paper explores how the implementation of climate change adaptation can be supported when grounded in situations, such as water governance. It draws on the authors’ experiences of systemic praxis in the water sector

Voice or chatter? Making ICTs work for transformative engagement

What are the conditions in democratic governance that make information and communication technology (ICT)-mediated citizen engagement transformative? While substantial scholarship exists on the role of the Internet and digital technologies in triggering moments of political disruption and cascading upheavals, academic interest in the sort of deep change that transforms institutional cultures of democratic governance, occurring in ‘slow time’, has been relatively muted. This study attempts to fill this gap. It is inspired by the idea of participation in everyday democracy and seeks to explore how ICT-mediated citizen engagement can promote democratic governance and amplify citizen voice. The study involved empirical explorations of citizen engagement initiatives in eight sites – two in Asia (India and Philippines), one in Africa (South Africa), three in South America (Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay) and two in Europe (Netherlands and Spain).DFIDUSAIDSidaOmidyar Networ

The Roots of the Discipline of Public Administration: A Narrative Analysis of Progressive Era Chicago

In The Administrative State, Dwight Waldo challenges the discipline of Public Administration to remember the purpose of or meaning behind the discipline. In response to Waldo’s question “efficiency for what?”, this dissertation interprets the motivating values of the calls for reform to the process of governance at the turn of the twentieth century in Chicago. The research uses a narrative analysis of archived and published texts of Progressive reformers from the City of Chicago. Philip Selznick’s concept of the process of institutionalization, or to infuse with value, merged with Anthony Giddens’s concept of contextuality guides the interpretation of the actions of the reformers. The concept of institution as a process that infuses a social structure with values at a specific time in a specific place allows for an interpretation of the motivating values of reformers within a physical environment or community. The motivating values of reformers reflect the meaning of the calls for reforms in Chicago

Increasing women's representation in France and India

Cet article présente la question de la représentation politique des femmes en France et en Inde. Tout d’abord, il vise à mettre en évidence comment la représentation des femmes était inscrite à l’agenda politique de chaque pays. Ensuite, il propose un examen critique des arguments utilisés pour justifier la demande d’une meilleure représentation ainsi que de ceux pour s’y opposer. Enfin, il considère les conclusions que l’on peut tirer de ces deux cas. Dépassant les cadres comparatifs traditionnels utilisés par les féministes occidentales et en contestant l’insistance française sur l'idée d'une France unique, cet article identifie les particularismes et les points communs de chaque cas, pour tenter d’atteindre à ce que Shirin Rai appelle “un dépassement enraciné des frontières culturelles, historiques et politiques.” (Rai, 2000: 15)

‘Pre-plan mapping’, networks, capital resources and community strategies in England

In this working paper we discuss current attempts to engage communities in planning policy formulation in the UK. In particular we focus on the preparation of Community Strategies (CS) in England to inform local public policy and the wider proposals recently published by the UK government to move towards enhanced community engagement in planning (DTLR, 2001). We discuss how such strategies could be operationalised with a conceptual framework developed following ideas derived from ANT (cf. Murdoch, 1997, 1998; Selman, 2000; Parker & Wragg, 1999; Callon, 1986, 1998) and the ‘capitals’ literature (Lin, 2002; Fine, 2001; Selman, 2000; Putnam, 1993). We see this as an expression of neo-pragmatic planning theory, (Hoch, 1996; Stein & Harper, 2000) to develop a form of ‘pre-plan mapping’

Barriers and Desired Affordances of Social Media Based e-Participation

The high rate of adoption of Social Media technologies and platforms make them naturally appealing for engaging citizens. Interestingly, despite the proliferation of e-Participation platforms, overall efforts towards mainstreaming Social Media-based and citizen-led political deliberations are still limited. Consequently, there is a paucity of research on effectiveness of Social Media technologies as e-Participation platforms; barriers to their use for e-Participation and their potentials to reshape deliberations on traditional e-Participation platforms. This paper investigates the perceived barriers to e-Participation and affordances of Social Media from the perspectives of senior decision maker and political actors. Grounded in the analytical framework for the duality e-Participation, we designed an instrument and interviewed 10 politicians and decision makers at different levels of government across three countries in Europe. Our results provide insights into barriers and perceived affordances of Social Media for e-Participation as well as the necessary conditions for increased adoption of Social Media for citizen-led participation

The long and winding road ...

The long and winding road is a metaphor for a journey, often used to describe life journeys and the challenges encountered. The metaphor was used for the title of my keynote to refer both to the journey towards the current position of virtual exchange in education policy \u2013 but also the long road ahead. This paper aims to explore the emergence of virtual exchange in educational policy and how it has been adopted by non-profit organisations, educational institutions, and policy makers to address geo- and socio-political tensions. Though still a relatively new field, in recent years there have been some important developments in terms of policy statements and public investments in virtual exchange. The paper starts by looking at the current state-of-the-art in terms of virtual exchange in education policy and initiatives in Europe. Then, using an approach based on \u2018episode studies\u2019 from the policy literature, the paper explores the main virtual exchange schemes and initiatives that have drawn the attention of European policy makers. The paper closes by looking at some of the lessons we have learnt from research on the practice of virtual exchange, and how this can inform us as we face the long road ahead of us. The focus of this paper is on the European context not because I assume it to be the most important or influential, but rather because it is the one I know best, since it is the context in which I have been workin

Employability: a contested concept in higher education

Employability is a concept that has attracted greater interest in the past two decades as Higher Education (HE) looks to ensure that its output is valued by a range of stakeholders, not least Central Government. The graduate labour market has changed remarkably during the past two decades with global employment becoming an option for some and a threat for others. In addition, the nature of work has changed with a range of technological and employment practices altering the way we work. It is this dynamic and uncertain context that has led many within the Higher Education sector to reevaluate its purpose and value. A number of universities have drawn‐up typologies of behaviours and attributes that characterise their graduates. This paper aims to look beyond the apparent ascendancy of employability and ask why is employability a contested concept within HE? This paper draws from post‐structuralism, Positional Conflict Theory as well as liberal‐humanist thought. The paper is structured at three levels of decision‐making: the macro‐ that of public policy, the meso‐ that of the Higher Education sector, and the micro‐ that of the student