Deepening democracy within Ireland's social partnership

Ireland's social partnership process, now under attack from a number of quarters, has repeatedly been charged with being 'undemocratic' in that it undermines the sovereign position of elected political representatives, with key policy formulation and decision-making taking place in fora outside the institutions of representative democracy. These critiques echo those against new forms of networked governance more globally. A key question therefore is how (and if) democracy may be deepened within social partnership or its potential successor(s). This article addresses this question by employing a post-liberal democratic framework to examine social partnership in practice, and by drawing lessons from another partnership process, Malawi's PRSP. Drawing from Malawi's experience, it is argued that democracy can be deepened within social partnership when governance deliberations and negotiations are conducted under conditions of vibrant public debate and genuine perspective-based representation, and when the communicative and discursive norms are widened to allow for such representation

Scenario analysis report with policy recommendations: An assessment of sustainability, resilience, efficiency and fairness and effective chain relationships in VALUMICS case studies : Deliverable 8.4

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, to view a copy of the license, see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The final version of this report is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6534011The functioning of food value chains entails a complex organisation from farm to fork which is characterised by various governance forms and externalities which have shaped the overall food system. VALUMICS food value chain case studies: wheat to bread, dairy cows to milk, beef cattle to steak, farmed salmon to fillets and tomato to processed tomato were selected to enable explorative and empirical analysis to better understand the functioning of the food system and, to identify the main challenges that need to be addressed to improve sustainability, integrity, resilience, and fairness of European food chains. The VALUMICS system analysis was executed through four operational phases starting with Groundwork & analysis including mapping specific attributes and impacts of food value chains and their externalities. This was followed by Case study baseline analysis, which provided input to the third phase on Modelling and exploration of future scenarios and finally Policy and synthesis of the overall work. This report is an overall synthesis of the VALUMICS results as follows: • Key findings from the VALUMICS project on the functioning of European food value chains and their impacts on more sustainable, resilient, fairer, and transparent food system are summarised through a compilation of 25 Research Findings and Policy Briefs. • By highlighting the major contributions from the research activities throughout the four phases of the VALUMICS project, this report delivers an assessment of various factors influencing sustainability, resilience, efficiency and fairness and effective chain relationships of different food value chains, and their determinants. • The synthesis of the outcome allows the identification of opportunities and challenges characterising the functioning of food supply chains, and thus, the prospects and potentials for strengthening the EU food sector

Tampering with Tradition:The Unrealized Authority of Democratic Agency

Scholars of politics are comfortable theorizing about the parliamentary process and individual political parties, but they are often guilty of ignoring the role of individual citizens except through opinion polls and voting statistics. Even at the local level, the main focus of political theorists has traditionally been on formal systems of government; usually lauding representative democracy as the standard for Western government, while the importance of participatory action at a local level has been vastly underestimated. Correcting this imbalance, the renowned political scholars who contribute to this volume outline both the theory and practice of so-called "extra-formal democracy," wherein societal governance is more accurately described as a "network activity" and citizens, politicians, public administrators and other professionals act together on issues or problems that are defined as public. This new and complex form of democracy--explored here in three unique settings: the United States, the Netherlands, and Denmark--is increasingly regarded as an achievable vision for a multi-faceted theory of government.