Public Participation GIS for sustainable urban mobility planning: methods, applications and challenges

Sustainable mobility planning is a new approach to planning, and as such it requires new methods of public participation, data collection and data aggregation. In the article we present an overview of Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) methods with potential use in sustainable urban mobility planning. We present the methods using examples from two recent case studies conducted in Polish cities of Poznań and Łodź. Sustainable urban mobility planning is a cyclical process, and each stage has different data and participatory requirements. Consequently, we situate the PPGIS methods in appropriate stages of planning, based on potential benefits they may bring into the planning process. We discuss key issues related to participant recruitment and provide guidelines for planners interested in implementing methods presented in the paper. The article outlines future research directions stressing the need for systematic case study evaluation

Crowd-sourced legislation and politics: the legitimacy of constitutional deliberation in Romania

Constitutional reform is a tedious process that requires long periods of time, a relatively broad consensus among political actors, and, often, popular approval. In spite of these, Romania has changed its constitution once (2003) and witnessed several unsuccessful revisions. The most recent attempt, in 2013, introduced a deliberative dimension in the form of a constitutional forum. This article investigates the legitimacy of this deliberative practice using a tri-dimensional approach: input, throughput, and output legitimacy. Our qualitative study relying on direct observation and secondary data analysis concludes that, although input and throughput legitimacy were achieved to a great extent, the output legitimacy was low

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

A co-original approach towards law-making in the internet age

There is an increasing interest in incorporating significant citizen participation into the law-making process by developing the use of the internet in the public sphere. However, no well-accepted e-participation model has prevailed. This article points out that, to be successful, we need critical reflection of legal theory and we also need further institutional construction based on the theoretical reflection. Contemporary dominant legal theories demonstrate too strong an internal legal point of view to empower the informal, social normative development on the internet. Regardless of whether we see the law as a body of rules or principles, the social aspect is always part of people’s background and attracts little attention. In this article, it is advocated that the procedural legal paradigm advanced by Jürgen Habermas represents an important breakthrough in this regard. Further, Habermas’s co-originality thesis reveals a neglected internal relationship between public autonomy and private autonomy. I believe the co-originality theory provides the essential basis on which a connecting infrastructure between the legal and the social could be developed. In terms of the development of the internet to include the public sphere, co-originality can also help us direct the emphasis on the formation of public opinion away from the national legislative level towards the local level; that is, the network of governance.1 This article is divided into two sections. The focus of Part One is to reconstruct the co-originality thesis (section 2, 3). This paper uses the application of discourse in the adjudication theory of Habermas as an example. It argues that Habermas would be more coherent, in terms of his insistence on real communication in his discourse theory, if he allowed his judges to initiate improved interaction with the society. This change is essential if the internal connection between public autonomy and private autonomy in the sense of court adjudication is to be truly enabled. In order to demonstrate such improved co-original relationships, the empowering character of the state-made law is instrumental in initiating the mobilization of legal intermediaries, both individual and institutional. A mutually enhanced relationship is thus formed; between the formal, official organization and its governance counterpart aided by its associated ‘local’ public sphere. Referring to Susan Sturm, the Harris v Forklift Systems Inc. (1930) decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the field of sexual harassment is used as an example. Using only one institutional example to illustrate how the co-originality thesis can be improved is not sufficient to rebuild the thesis but this is as much as can be achieved in this article. In Part Two, the paper examines, still at the institutional level, how Sturm develops an overlooked sense of impartiality, especially in the derivation of social norms; i.e. multi-partiality instead of neutral detachment (section 4). These two ideas should be combined as the criterion for impartiality to evaluate the legitimacy of the joint decision-making processes of both the formal official organization and ‘local’ public sphere. Sturm’s emphasis on the deployment of intermediaries, both institutional and individual, can also enlighten the discourse theory. Intermediaries are essential for connecting the disassociated social networks, especially when a breakdown of communication occurs due to a lack of data, information, knowledge, or disparity of value orientation, all of which can affect social networks. If intermediaries are used, further communication will not be blocked as a result of the lack of critical data, information, knowledge or misunderstandings due to disparity of value orientation or other causes. The institutional impact of the newly constructed co-originality thesis is also discussed in Part Two. Landwehr’s work on institutional design and assessment for deliberative interaction is first discussed. This article concludes with an indication of how the ‘local’ public sphere, through e-rulemaking or online dispute resolution, for example, can be constructed in light of the discussion of this article

Deliberation and global civil society : agency, arena, affect

The article provides a critical analysis of the role and function of global civil society within deliberative approaches to global governance. It critiques a common view that global civil society can/should act as an agent for democratising global governance and seeks to explore the importance of global civil society as an arena of deliberation. This more reconstructive aim is supplemented by an empirically focused discussion of the affective dimensions of global civil society, in general, and the increasingly important use of film, in particular. Ultimately, this then yields an image of the deliberative politics of global civil society that is more reflective of the differences, ambiguities and contests that pervade its discourses about global governance. This is presented as a quality that debates about deliberative global governance might learn from as well as speak to

Performance, Politics and Media: How the 2010 British General Election leadership debates generated ‘talk’ amongst the electorate.

During the British General Election 2010 a major innovation was introduced in part to improve engagement: a series of three live televised leadership debates took place where the leader of each of the three main parties, Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative, answered questions posed by members of the public and subsequently debated issues pertinent to the questions. In this study we consider these potentially ground breaking debates as the kind of event that was likely to generate discussion. We investigate various aspects of the ‘talk’ that emerged as a result of watching the debates. As an exploratory study concerned with situated accounts of the participants experiences we take an interpretive perspective. In this paper we outline the meta-narratives (of talk) associated with the viewing of the leadership debates that were identified, concluding our analysis by suggesting that putting a live debate on television and promoting and positioning it as a major innovation is likely to mean that is how the audience will make sense of it – as a media event