State of Civil Society 2013: Creating an Enabling Environment

Welcome to the second edition of the State of Civil Society report produced by CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation. This report is not ours alone. The 2013 State of Civil Society report draws from nearly 50 contributions made by people active in civil society all over the world -- from our members, friends, partners, supporters and others in the CIVICUS alliance. They contributed 31 new pieces of analysis and thinking on the state of civil society. Our analysis also benefits from 16 responses to a questionnaire from national civil society platforms that are members of either our Affinity Group of National Associations (AGNA), or the International Forum of National NGO Platforms (IFP). Together, their contributions, published at http://socs.civicus.org, form the full report. Our summary report is a synthesis of this impressive array of perspectives. We believe that together their contributions offer a body of critical, cutting edge thinking about the changing state of contemporary civil society. We thank them for their efforts and continuing support. It is also important to acknowledge in this report the work of coalitions such as the Open Forum for CSO Development Effectiveness and BetterAid, and the subsequent CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness, in bringing together many CSOs working in the development sphere in recent years to advance the debate on civil society's contributions to development effectiveness, including on the issue of the enabling conditions for civil society that are a necessary part of increasing CSO effectiveness. This report is also intended as a contribution to those wider efforts, in which we at CIVICUS are happy to be active partners

Could multiple voids explain the Cosmic Microwave Background Cold Spot anomaly?

Understanding the observed Cold Spot (CS) (temperature of ~ -150 mu K at its centre) on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is an outstanding problem. Explanations vary from assuming it is just a > 3 sigma primordial Gaussian fluctuation to the imprint of a supervoid via the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe and Rees-Sciama (ISW+RS) effects. Since single spherical supervoids cannot account for the full profile, the ISW+RS of multiple line-of-sight voids is studied here to mimic the structure of the cosmic web. Two structure configurations are considered. The first, through simulations of 20 voids, produces a central mean temperature of ~-50 mu K. In this model the central CS temperature lies at ~ 2 sigma but fails to explain the CS hot ring. An alternative multi-void model (using more pronounced compensated voids) produces much smaller temperature profiles, but contains a prominent hot ring. Arrangements containing closely placed voids at low redshift are found to be particularly well suited to produce CS-like profiles. We then measure the significance of the CS if CS-like profiles (which are fitted to the ISW+RS of multi-void scenarios) are removed. The CS tension with the LCDM model can be reduced dramatically for an array of temperature profiles smaller than the CS itself.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, as appears in MNRAS Letter

The cosmic microwave background Cold Spot anomaly: the impact of sky masking and the expected contribution from the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect

We re-analyse the cosmic microwave background (CMB) Cold Spot (CS) anomaly with particular focus on understanding the bias a mask (contaminated by Galactic and point sources) may introduce. We measure the coldest spot, found by applying the Spherical Mexican Hat Wavelet transform on 100 000 cut-sky (masked) and full-sky CMB simulated maps. The CS itself is barely affected by the mask; we estimate a 94 per cent probability that the CS is the full-sky temperature minimum. However, approximately 48 per cent (masked fraction of the mask) of full-sky minima are obscured by the mask. Since the observed minima are slightly hotter than the full-sky ensemble of minima, a cut-sky analysis would have found the CS to be significant at approximately 2.2 sigma with a wavelet angular scale of R = 5 degrees. None the less, comparisons to full-sky minima show the CS significance to be only approximately 1.9 sigma and less than 2 sigma for all R. The CS on the last scattering surface may be hotter due to the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect in the line of sight. However, our simulations show that this on average only approximately 10 per cent (about 10 micro K but consistent with zero) of the CS temperature profile. This is consistent with Lambda and cold dark matter reconstructions of this effect based on observed line-of-sight voids.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, changes made to match version published in MNRA

The impact of regulatory focus and word of mouth valence on search and experience attribute evaluation

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the direct and interactive effects of regulatory focus (promotion versus prevention), attribute type (search versus experience) and word of mouth valence (positive versus negative) on consumption decision for a service and a product. Design/methodology/approach Three empirical studies (two laboratories and a field experiment) using “university” and “mobile phone” as the research setting were used to test the key hypotheses. Findings Promotion (prevention)-focused subjects preferred experience (search) attributes over their counterparts while making consumption decision. This preference was further reinforced for both promotion and prevention-focused people under positive word of mouth. Under negative word of mouth, in comparison to their counterparts, promotion-focused people still retained their preference for experience attributes, whereas prevention-focused subjects reversed their preference and maintained status quo. Research limitations/implications Future research may validate and extend authors’ findings by looking into the underlying process or studying additional word of mouth variables that may moderate the current findings. Practical implications The findings will help managers devise a range of marketing strategies in the areas of advertising and product positioning, especially for products/services that are showcased in terms of experience and search attributes. Originality/value The current research is novel as no prior research has proposed and tested the two-way interaction between regulatory focus and search/experience attributes, or its further moderation by word of mouth valence. </jats:sec