119 research outputs found
Rating the debates: The 2010 UK party leaders? debates and political communication in the deliberative system
Leader debates have become a pre-eminent means of campaign communication in numerous countries and were introduced in the UK relatively recently. However, the quality of such communication is, to put it mildly, open to question. This article uses the Discourse Quality Index (DQI) to assess the deliberative quality of the 2010 UK party leaders? debates. When scrutinized in isolation, and viewed through the full prism of the DQI categories, the quality of discourse evidenced in the debates is a relatively poor reflection of mainstream idealizations of democratic deliberation. However, when the analysis is rehoused within the wider project of constructing a deliberative system in the UK, and is given a comparative institutional dimension, the epistemic value of the debates is revealed. The relatively high level of justification employed by the party leaders suggests that the debates are a valuable means for the mass communication of reasoned defenses of manifesto pledges to the public sphere, and that they are likely to have a significant educative effect. Moreover, we argue that sequencing such debates with representative deliberative fora will force elites to improve the deliberative quality of their communication and enhance the reflective capacity of the viewing public
The scope of climate assemblies: lessons from the Climate Assembly UK
In recent times we have seen a spate of climate assemblies across Europe as the climate emergency gains increasing prominence in the political agenda and as the citizensâ assembly approach to public engagement gains popularity. However, there has been little empirical research on how the scope of citizensâ assemblies affects the internal logic of the assembly process and its impacts on external policy actors. This is a significant oversight given the power of agenda setting. It is also of particular importance for climate assemblies given the exceptional scale and complexity of climate change, as well as the need for co-ordination across all policy areas and types of governance to address it. In this paper, we start to address this gap through an in-depth case analysis of the Climate Assembly UK. We adopt a mixed methods approach, combining surveys of the assembly members and witnesses, interviews with the assembly members, organisers, MPs, parliamentary staff, and government civil servants, and non-participant observation of the process. We find that attempts to adapt the assemblyâs scope to the scale of the climate change issue compromised assembly member learning, the co-ordination of the resulting recommendations, assembly member endorsement of the recommendations, and the extent of their impact on parliament and government. We argue that more democratization in setting the agenda could help combat these issues
Democratic cultural policy : democratic forms and policy consequences
The forms that are adopted to give practical meaning to democracy are assessed to identify what their implications are for the production of public policies in general and cultural policies in particular. A comparison of direct, representative, democratic elitist and deliberative versions of democracy identifies clear differences between them in terms of policy form and democratic practice. Further elaboration of these differences and their consequences are identified as areas for further research
Health inequalities, fundamental causes and power:Towards the practice of good theory
Reducing health inequalities remains a challenge for policy makers across the world. Beginning from Lewinâs famous dictum that âthere is nothing as practical as a good theoryâ, this paper begins from an appreciative discussion of âfundamental cause theoryâ, emphasizing the elegance of its theoretical encapsulation of the challenge, the relevance of its critical focus for action, and its potential to support the practical mobilisation of knowledge in generating change. Moreover, it is argued that recent developments in the theory, provide an opportunity for further theoretical development focused more clearly on the concept of power (Dickie et al. 2015). A critical focus on power as the essential element in maintaining, increasing or reducing social and economic inequalities â including health inequalities â can both enhance the coherence of the theory, and also enhance the capacity to challenge the roots of health inequalities at different levels and scales. This paper provides an initial contribution by proposing a framework to help to identify the most important sources, forms and positions of power, as well as the social spaces in which they operate. Subsequent work could usefully test, elaborate and adapt this framework, or indeed ultimately replace it with something better, to help focus actions to reduce inequalities
Participatory-deliberative processes and public policy agendas:Lessons for policy and practice
open access journalParticipatory and deliberative processes have proliferated over
recent decades in public administration. These seek to increase
the effectiveness and democratic quality of policy making by
involving citizens in policy. However, these have mainly operated
at local levels of governance, and democratic theorists and practitioners
have developed an ambition to scale these up in order to
democratize higher tiers of government. This paper draws policy
lessons from research on a âmulti-levelâ process that held a similar
ambition. The Sustainable Communities Act sought to integrate
the results of various locally organized citizen deliberations within
the policy development processes of central UK government. In
doing so, it aimed to democratize central government problem
definition and agenda-setting processes. The paper distinguishes
between achievements and failures explained by process design,
and more fundamental obstacles to do with broader contextual
factors. As such, it identifies lessons for the amelioration of design
features, while recognizing constraints that are often beyond the
agency of local practitioners. The findings offer practical insights
for policy workers and democratic reformers seeking to institutionalize
participatory and deliberative innovations
Deliberative and epistemic approaches to democracy
Deliberative and epistemic approaches to democracy are two important dimensions of contemporary democratic theory. This chapter studies these dimensions in the emerging ecosystem of civic and political participation tools, and appraises their collective value in a new distinct concept: linked democracy. Linked democracy is the distributed, technology-supported collective decision-making process, where data, information and knowledge are connected and shared by citizens online. Innovation and learning are two key elements of Athenian democracies which can be facilitated by the new digital technologies, and a cross-disciplinary research involving computational scientists and democratic theorists can lead to new theoretical insights of democracy
A importĂąncia da participação cidadĂŁ nas polĂticas de saĂșde: o caso da reestruturação dos serviços de saĂșde materno-infantil em Portugal
As questĂ”es em torno da participação cidadĂŁ tornaram-se indiscutivelmente centrais na anĂĄlise dos processos pĂșblicos de decisĂŁo das sociedades ditas democrĂĄticas. Uma das maiores dificuldades tem, no entanto, residido na ampla definição das modalidades participativas a considerar neste domĂnio. Neste trabalho assume-se que as açÔes de protesto sĂŁo uma modalidade legĂtima de participar nos processos pĂșblicos de decisĂŁo. Analisa-se, para tal, o processo de encerramento de blocos de parto em Portugal, uma das medidas da recente reestruturação dos serviços de saĂșde materno-infantil, executada entre Maio de 2006 e Dezembro de 2007, e as consequentes açÔes de protesto encetadas pelas populaçÔes das localidades afetadas pela medida. Avalia-se a forma como a implementação nĂŁo informada e participada de uma medida focada em critĂ©rios como segurança e qualidade da prestação de cuidados de saĂșde pode, mesmo assim, desencadear movimentos de contestação, sobretudo enquanto estratĂ©gia dos cidadĂŁos para participar na (re)formulação de uma polĂtica pĂșblica.In the so-called democratic societies citizens' participation has become a central issue to the analysis of decision making processes. However, in this scope the major difficulty is related to a broad definition of what can be considered as participatory modalities. In this paper protest actions are assumed as legitimate forms of participation in public decision making processes. Accordingly, this work describes and analyses the maternity wards closure in Portugal, one of the measures of the recent restructuring of the maternal and child health services that was implemented between May 2006 and December 2007, and the consequent protest actions developed by the local populations affected by the measure. It is also evaluated how a non-informed and communicated measure based on criteria such as security and quality of the provided health care can trigger protest movements, particularly as a strategy of citizens to participate in a public policy (re)formulation
Between Governance-Driven Democratisation and Democracy-Driven Governance: explaining changes in Participatory Governance in the Case of Barcelona
Scholars of participatory democracy have long noted dynamic interactions and transformations within and between political spaces that can foster (de)democratisation. At the heart of this dynamism lie (a) the processes through which topâdown âclosedâ spaces can create opportunities for rupture and democratic challenges and (b) viceâversa, the mechanisms through which bottomâup, open spaces can be coâopted through institutionalisation. This paper seeks to unpick dynamic interactions between different spaces of participation by looking specifically at two forms of participatory governance, or participatory forms of political decision making used to improve the quality of democracy. First, Mark Warren's concept of âgovernanceâdriven democratizationâ describes topâdown and technocratic participatory governance aiming to produce better policies in response to bureaucratic rationales. Second, we introduce a new concept, democracyâdriven governance, to refer to efforts by social movements to invent new, and reclaim and transform existing, spaces of participatory governance and shape them to respond to citizensâ demands. The paper defines these concepts and argues that they coâexist and interact in dynamic fashion; it draws on an analysis of case study literature on participatory governance in Barcelona to illuminate this relationship. Finally, the paper relates the theoretical framework to the case study by making propositions as to the structural and agential drivers of shifts in participatory governance
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