An analysis of the framings of water scarcity in the Jordanian national water strategy

This viewpoint analyzes the Jordanian water strategy to investigate how water scarcity is framed, and what solutions are suggested. It also analyzes how the framings and discourses have changed in the two versions of the strategy, why, and their implications. The Jordanian national water strategy has been overlooked by the literature of hydropolitics.  The analysis here also contributes by showing the interplay between discourses of scarcity and policy solutions

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

Participation in Transition(s):Reconceiving Public Engagements in Energy Transitions as Co-Produced, Emergent and Diverse

This paper brings the transitions literature into conversation with constructivist Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspectives on participation for the first time. In doing so we put forward a conception of public and civil society engagement in sustainability transitions as co-produced, relational, and emergent. Through paying close attention to the ways in which the subjects, objects, and procedural formats of public engagement are constructed through the performance of participatory collectives, our approach offers a framework to open up to and symmetrically compare diverse and interconnected forms of participation that make up wider socio-technical systems. We apply this framework in a comparative analysis of four diverse cases of civil society involvement in UK low carbon energy transitions. This highlights similarities and differences in how these distinct participatory collectives are orchestrated, mediated, and subject to exclusions, as well as their effects in producing particular visions of the issue at stake and implicit models of participation and ‘the public’. In conclusion we reflect on the value of this approach for opening up the politics of societal engagement in transitions, building systemic perspectives of interconnected ‘ecologies of participation’, and better accounting for the emergence, inherent uncertainties, and indeterminacies of all forms of participation in transitions

Space of opposition: activism and deliberation in post-apartheid environmental politics

Drawing on recent political theory that examines the relationship between inclusive deliberation and oppositional activism in processes of democratisation, we develop a case study of environmental justice mobilisation in post-apartheid South Africa. We focus on the emergence of a network of social movement organisations embedded in particular localities in the city of Durban, connected into national and transnational campaigns, and centred on grievances around industrial air pollution. We analyse how the geographies of uneven industrial and urban development in Durban combine with sedimented place-based histories of activism to make particular locations spaces of democratic contention, in which the scope and operation of formal democratic procedures are challenged and transformed. We examine the range of strategic engagements adopted by social movement organisations in pursuing their objectives, looking in particular at the dynamic interaction between inclusion in deliberative forums and more adversarial, activist strategies of legal challenge and dramaturgical protest. We identify the key organisational features of groups involved in this environmental justice network, which both enable and constrain particular patterns of democratic engagement with the state and capital. We also identify a disjuncture between the interpretative frames of different actors involved in participatory policy making. These factors help to explain the difficulties faced by social movement organisations in opening up the space for legitimate nonparliamentary opposition in a political culture shaped by norms of conciliation and consensus

Smart Cities: Towards a New Citizenship Regime? A Discourse Analysis of the British Smart City Standard

Growing practice interest in smart cities has led to calls for a less technology-oriented and more citizen-centric approach. In response, this articles investigates the citizenship mode promulgated by the smart city standard of the British Standards Institution. The analysis uses the concept of citizenship regime and a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods to discern key discursive frames defining the smart city and the particular citizenship dimensions brought into play. The results confirm an explicit citizenship rationale guiding the smart city (standard), although this displays some substantive shortcomings and contradictions. The article concludes with recommendations for both further theory and practice development

The Effects of Media and their Logic on Legitimacy Sources within Local Governance Networks: A Three-Case Comparative Study

__Abstract__ Although theoretical and empirical work on the democratic legitimacy of governance networks is growing, little attention has been paid to the impact of mediatisation on democracies. Media have their own logic of news-making led by the media’s rules, aims, production routines and constraints, which affect political decision-making processes. In this article, we specifically study how media and their logic affect three democratic legitimacy sources of political decision-making within governance networks: voice, due deliberation and accountability. We conducted a comparative case study of three local governance networks using a mixed method design, combining extensive qualitative case studies, interviews and a quantitative content analysis of media reports. In all three cases, media logic increased voice possibilities for citizen groups. Furthermore, it broadened the deliberation process, although this did not improve the quality of this process per se, because the media focus on drama and negativity. Finally, media logic often pushed political authorities into a reactive communication style as they had to fight against negative images in the media. Proactive communication about projects, such as public relation (PR) strategies and branding, is difficult in such a media landscape