Policy Representation in Europe:The 2018 Peter Mair Lecture

A key challenge of democratic societies is to ensure a continuous flow of information between the people and elites in order to secure representation of citizen preferences. While there may be occasions where deviations from citizen preferences are desirable, political systems with a sustained and systematic mismatch between citizen opinion and policy would typically not be considered democratic. Political parties have traditionally acted as key channels of representation helping to transmit citizen preferences to policy-makers. Yet their ability to secure democratic representation has been called into question. The lecture explores the state of democratic representation in Europe by presenting evidence from the GovLis Research Programme ‘When does Government Listen to the Public’ on the link between public opinion and policy on a large number of policy issues. Beyond parties, it explores a series of alternative channels of citizen representation by considering the ability of political institutions and engagement in civil society associations to strengthen the link between public opinion and policy.publishedVersio

Special issue of Organic Agriculture — Organic 3.0

It is an honor to be able to present this special issue of Organic Agriculture: Organic 3.0 for the Organic World Congress in India 2017. In this issue, we have collected a number of papers relevant for the theme Organic 3.0. This special issue of Organic Agriculture about Organic 3.0 is published in connection to the science track “Innovative research for Organic 3.0” at the Organic World Congress in Delhi, India, November 2017. In the foreword to the proceedings (Rahmann et al. 2017), the challenges listed correspond well to those described and discussed in these five papers. The fact that the paper by Rahmann et al. (2016) that has been online in Organic Agriculture since December 2016, already after 6 months has been downloaded more than 3,000 times shows the great interest in this subject. Together, these papers give a valuable basis for the further discussion of Organic 3.0 and the future development for the organic sector and beyond. Organic agriculture—whether 2.0 or 3.0—can be one option to solve future problems, and the ideas behind organic agriculture should be integrated as much as possible in many types of agriculture: agroecological, small-holder, conventional, conservation tillage, etc. But organic agriculture should also learn from conventional and other types of agriculture and if necessary take a critical view on, e.g., minimum requirements that result in negative effects on public goods. Governments, NGO’s, farmers, researchers, and other stakeholders should all contribute to developing organic as well as other forms of agriculture. It is our hope that this special issue will be one step in bringing organic and truly sustainable agriculture forward

The EU Conciliation Committee: one or several principals?

Since the introduction of the co-decision legislative procedure, the EU has had the possibility to resort to a Conciliation Committee made up of representatives from the European Parliament and the Council to reconcile differences between the two bodies. This article assesses whether the members of this committee have an incentive to take advantage of their ability to present take-it-or-leave-it offers to their parent bodies by examining whether they are representative of their full body and/or whether they represent other interests inside or outside their legislative body. It concludes that the EU Conciliation Committee is generally representative of its parent bodies and that the option to go to conciliation is not a risky tool for them to reach agreement

How has Covid-19 changed lobbying activity across Europe?

Covid-19 has been accompanied by a high level of lobbying activity as businesses and interest groups seek to influence the policies employed by governments to manage the economic fallout of the outbreak. Drawing on new research, Anne Rasmussen explains how lobbying has changed during the pandemic. She writes that while the relative access of different group types to Covid-19 meetings looks similar to other topics, the format of lobbying activities, notably the greater use of digital lobbying, could affect potential biases in the representation of different types of interest group

Middle Eastern Music and Dance since the Nightclub Era

https://scholarworks.wm.edu/asbookchapters/1095/thumbnail.jp

Setting the Scene

Women, the Recited Qur\u27an, and Islamic Music in Contemporary Indonesia takes readers to the heart of religious musical praxis in Indonesia, home to the largest Muslim population in the world. Anne K. Rasmussen explores a rich public soundscape, where women recite the divine texts of the Qur\u27an, and where an extraordinary diversity of Arab-influenced Islamic musical styles and genres, also performed by women, flourishes. Based on unique and revealing ethnographic research beginning at the end of Suharto\u27s “New Order” and continuing into the era of “Reformation,” the book considers the powerful role of music in the expression of religious nationalism. In particular, it focuses on musical style, women\u27s roles, and the ideological and aesthetic issues raised by the Indonesian style of recitation.https://scholarworks.wm.edu/asbookchapters/1114/thumbnail.jp

Theory and Practice at the \u27Arabic Org\u27: Digital Technology in Contemporary Arab Music Performance

The synthesizer is ubiquitous on the Arab–American musical scene. Heard at every party, and on every recording, the synthesizer sings the lingua franca of international popular music. While the facade and the body of the synthesizer consist of neutral, slick, black plastic and metal technology, the soul of the instrument, when played by Arab–American musicians, is capable of a completely indigenous, if synthetic, musical idiom. In this article I draw on my experience of six performers of the Arabic ‘org’, commonly known today as ‘keyboards’, to present a sketch of a modern musical tradition

Women out Loud: Hearing Knowledge and the Creation of Soundscape in Islamic Indonesia

The study of listening—aurality—and its relation to writing is the subject of this eclectic edited volume. Theorizing Sound Writing explores the relationship between sound, theory, language, and inscription. This volume contains an impressive lineup of scholars from anthropology, ethnomusicology, musicology, performance, and sound studies. The contributors write about sound in their ongoing work, while also making an intervention into the ethics of academic knowledge, one in which listening is the first step not only in translating sound into words but also in compassionate scholarship.https://scholarworks.wm.edu/asbookchapters/1112/thumbnail.jp