Download or read book Experts Activists and Democratic Politics written by T. K. Ahn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses opinion leadership in democratic politics as a process whereby individuals send and receive information through their informally based networks of political communication. The analyses are based on a series of small group experiments, conducted by the authors, which build on accumulated evidence from more than seventy years of survey data regarding political communication among interdependent actors. The various experimental designs provide an opportunity to assess the nature of the communication process, both in terms of increasing citizen expertise as well as in terms of communicating political biases.

Download or read book The Contentious Politics of Expertise written by Riccardo Emilio Chesta and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-30 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on mixed-methods research and ethnographic fieldwork at various sites in Italy, this book examines the relationship between expertise and activism in grassroots environmentalism. Presenting interviews with citizens, activists and experts, it considers activism surrounding infrastructure in urban areas, in connection with water management, transport, tour- ism and waste disposal. Through comparisons between different political environments, the author analyses the ways in which citizens, political activists and technical experts participate in using expertise, shedding light on the effects of this on the structure and composition of social movements, as well as the implications for the mechanisms of participation and the formation of alliances. Bridging the sociology of expertise and contentious politics, this study of the relationship between contentious expertise and democratic accountability shows how conflict transforms, rather than inhibits, expertise production into a ‘contentious politics by other means’. As such, it will appeal to social scientists with interests in social movements, environmental sociology, science and technology studies, and the sociology of knowledge.

Download or read book Citizens Experts and the Environment written by Frank Fischer and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2000-12-19 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVClaims that the problematic communication gap between experts and ordinary citizens is best remedied by a renewal of local citizen participation in deliberative structures./div

Download or read book Politics and Expertise written by Zeynep Pamuk and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-11-26 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new model for the relationship between science and democracy that spans policymaking, the funding and conduct of research, and our approach to new technologies Our ability to act on some of the most pressing issues of our time, from pandemics and climate change to artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons, depends on knowledge provided by scientists and other experts. Meanwhile, contemporary political life is increasingly characterized by problematic responses to expertise, with denials of science on the one hand and complaints about the ignorance of the citizenry on the other. Politics and Expertise offers a new model for the relationship between science and democracy, rooted in the ways in which scientific knowledge and the political context of its use are imperfect. Zeynep Pamuk starts from the fact that science is uncertain, incomplete, and contested, and shows how scientists’ judgments about what is significant and useful shape the agenda and framing of political decisions. The challenge, Pamuk argues, is to ensure that democracies can expose and contest the assumptions and omissions of scientists, instead of choosing between wholesale acceptance or rejection of expertise. To this end, she argues for institutions that support scientific dissent, proposes an adversarial “science court” to facilitate the public scrutiny of science, reimagines structures for funding scientific research, and provocatively suggests restricting research into dangerous new technologies. Through rigorous philosophical analysis and fascinating examples, Politics and Expertise moves the conversation beyond the dichotomy between technocracy and populism and develops a better answer for how to govern and use science democratically.

Download or read book After the Revolution written by Jessica Greenberg and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-07 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens to student activism once mass protests have disappeared from view, and youth no longer embody the political frustrations and hopes of a nation? After the Revolution chronicles the lives of student activists as they confront the possibilities and disappointments of democracy in the shadow of the recent revolution in Serbia. Greenberg's narrative highlights the stories of young student activists as they seek to define their role and articulate a new form of legitimate political activity, post-socialism. When student activists in Serbia helped topple dictator Slobodan Milosevic on October 5, 2000, they unexpectedly found that the post-revolutionary period brought even greater problems. How do you actually live and practice democracy in the wake of war and the shadow of a recent revolution? How do young Serbians attempt to translate the energy and excitement generated by wide scale mobilization into the slow work of building democratic institutions? Greenberg navigates through the ranks of student organizations as they transition their activism from the streets back into the halls of the university. In exploring the everyday practices of student activists—their triumphs and frustrations—After the Revolution argues that disappointment is not a failure of democracy but a fundamental feature of how people live and practice it. This fascinating book develops a critical vocabulary for the social life of disappointment with the aim of helping citizens, scholars, and policymakers worldwide escape the trap of framing new democracies as doomed to failure.

Download or read book Democratic Transitions written by Sergio Bitar and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirteen former presidents and prime ministers discuss how they helped their countries end authoritarian rule and achieve democracy. National leaders who played key roles in transitions to democratic governance reveal how these were accomplished in Brazil, Chile, Ghana, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, Poland, South Africa, and Spain. Commissioned by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), these interviews shed fascinating light on how repressive regimes were ended and democracy took hold. In probing conversations with Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Patricio Aylwin, Ricardo Lagos, John Kufuor, Jerry Rawlings, B. J. Habibie, Ernesto Zedillo, Fidel V. Ramos, Aleksander Kwasniewski, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, F. W. de Klerk, Thabo Mbeki, and Felipe González, editors Sergio Bitar and Abraham F. Lowenthal focused on each leader’s principal challenges and goals as well as their strategies to end authoritarian rule and construct democratic governance. Context-setting introductions by country experts highlight each nation’s unique experience as well as recurrent challenges all transitions faced. A chapter by Georgina Waylen analyzes the role of women leaders, often underestimated. A foreword by Tunisia’s former president, Mohamed Moncef Marzouki, underlines the book’s relevance in North Africa, West Asia, and beyond. The editors’ conclusion distills lessons about how democratic transitions have been and can be carried out in a changing world, emphasizing the importance of political leadership. This unique book should be valuable for political leaders, civil society activists, journalists, scholars, and all who want to support democratic transitions.

Download or read book Critical Elitism written by Alfred Moore and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-22 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book re-imagines expert authority for an age of critical citizens, and shows how expertise can contribute in a deliberative system.

Download or read book From Dissent to Democracy written by Jonathan C. Pinckney and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-10 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peaceful protest is a strong driver for democratization across the globe. Yet, it doesn't always lead to democratic transition, as seen in the Arab Spring revolutions in Egypt or Yemen. Why do some nonviolent transitions end in democracy while others do not? In From Dissent to Democracy, Jonathan Pinckney systematically examines transitions initiated by nonviolent resistance campaigns and argues that two key factors explain whether or not democracy will follow such efforts. First, a movement must sustain high levels of social mobilization. Second, it must direct that mobilization away from revolutionary "maximalist" goals and tactics and towards support for new institutions. Pinckney tests his theory by presenting a global statistical analysis of all political transitions from 1945-2011 and three case studies from Nepal, Zambia, and Brazil. Original and empirically rigorous, this book provides new insights into the intersection of democratization and nonviolent resistance and gives actionable recommendations for how to encourage democratic transitions.

Download or read book Practicing Democracy written by E. Luhtakallio and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-05-29 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the mundane, local, every day practices that constitutes democracy. Focusing on France and Finland, the book defines politicization as the key process in understanding democracy in different cultural contexts and shows a nuanced picture of two opposite models of European politics.

Download or read book Engaging Contradictions written by Charles R. Hale and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2008-05-07 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars in many fields increasingly find themselves caught between the academy, with its demands for rigor and objectivity, and direct engagement in social activism. Some advocate on behalf of the communities they study; others incorporate the knowledge and leadership of their informants directly into the process of knowledge production. What ethical, political, and practical tensions arise in the course of such work? In this wide-ranging and multidisciplinary volume, leading scholar-activists map the terrain on which political engagement and academic rigor meet. Contributors: Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Edmund T. Gordon, Davydd Greenwood, Joy James, Peter Nien-chu Kiang, George Lipsitz, Samuel Martínez, Jennifer Bickham Mendez, Dani Nabudere, Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Jemima Pierre, Laura Pulido, Shannon Speed, Shirley Suet-ling Tang, João Vargas

Download or read book Alter Globalization written by Geoffrey Pleyers and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contrary to the common view that globalization undermines social agency, ‘alter-globalization activists', that is, those who contest globalization in its neo-liberal form, have developed new ways to become actors in the global age. They propose alternatives to Washington Consensus policies, implement horizontal and participatory organization models and promote a nascent global public space. Rather than being anti-globalization, these activists have built a truly global movement that has gathered citizens, committed intellectuals, indigenous, farmers, dalits and NGOs against neoliberal policies in street demonstrations and Social Forums all over the world, from Bangalore to Seattle and from Porto Alegre to Nairobi. This book analyses this worldwide movement on the bases of extensive field research conducted since 1999. Alter-Globalization provides a comprehensive account of these critical global forces and their attempts to answer one of the major challenges of our time: How can citizens and civil society contribute to the building of a fairer, sustainable and more democratic co-existence of human beings in a global world?

Download or read book Reading Public Opinion written by Susan Herbst and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1998-10 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public opinion is one of the most elusive and complex concepts in democratic theory, and we do not fully understand its role in the political process. Reading Public Opinion offers one provocative approach for understanding how public opinion fits into the empirical world of politics. In fact, Susan Herbst finds that public opinion, surprisingly, has little to do with the mass public in many instances. Herbst draws on ideas from political science, sociology, and psychology to explore how three sets of political participants—legislative staffers, political activists, and journalists—actually evaluate and assess public opinion. She concludes that many political actors reject "the voice of the people" as uninformed and nebulous, relying instead on interest groups and the media for representations of public opinion. Her important and original book forces us to rethink our assumptions about the meaning and place of public opinion in the realm of contemporary democratic politics.

Download or read book Activists in Transition written by Thushara Dibley and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-15 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Activists in Transition examines the relationship between social movements and democratization in Indonesia. Collectively, progressive social movements have played a critical role over in ensuring that different groups of citizens can engage directly in—and benefit from—the political process in a way that was not possible under authoritarianism. However, their individual roles have been different, with some playing a decisive role in the destabilization of the regime and others serving as bell-weathers of the advancement, or otherwise, of Indonesia's democracy in the decades since. Equally important, democratization has affected social movements differently depending on the form taken by each movement during the New Order period. The book assesses the contribution that nine progressive social movements have made to the democratization of Indonesia since the late 1980s, and how, in turn, each of those movements has been influenced by democratization.

Download or read book Deliberative Systems written by John Parkinson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-05 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new statement of deliberative theory that shows how states, even transnational systems, can be deliberatively democratic.

Download or read book Civic Activism Unleashed written by Richard Youngs and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-03 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the signal events in global politics in the last decade has been the transformation of political and civic activism. Not only is the new activism qualitatively different in character from what it was in 2000; its intensity and frequency have dramatically increased. Activists are developing a new type of civic movement, applying innovative forms of direct action against governments and often operating without leaders or even any well-defined set of aims. In Civic Activism Unleashed, Carnegie scholar Richard Youngs examines the changing shape of contemporary civic activism. He shows how the emerging civic activism has important implications for the whole concept of civil society-and for the relationship between citizens, political institutions, and states. Youngs contends that the rise and spread of these new forms of direct-action civic activism, and the way the trend has driven the dramatic events in global politics in recent years, requires us to update our understanding of what civil society actually is and which types of organizations are in its vanguard. He further looks at the global impact of recent civic activism and offers a set of variables to help explain cases of success and failure. Youngs' larger aim is to explore in depth the new forms of civic activism that are emerging around the world and assess how they differ from more established practices of civil society activity. Theoretically ambitious and global in scope, Civic Activism Unleashed forces us to reconsider the nature of contemporary social and civic activism and how it is reshaping contentious politics in countries across the world.

Download or read book Planners in Politics written by Louis Albrechts and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2020-03-28 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this innovative book, ten executive politicians with backgrounds in planning from around the world dissect their own political careers. Reflecting on the often structural impact of their work in political decision-making, they also consider the translation of their experiences back into academic life or professional practice.

Download or read book Accidental Activists written by Celeste L. Arrington and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Government wrongdoing or negligence harms people worldwide, but not all victims are equally effective at obtaining redress. In Accidental Activists, Celeste L. Arrington examines the interactive dynamics of the politics of redress to understand why not. Relatively powerless groups like redress claimants depend on support from political elites, active groups in society, the media, experts, lawyers, and the interested public to capture democratic policymakers' attention and sway their decisions. Focusing on when and how such third-party support matters, Arrington finds that elite allies may raise awareness about the victims’ cause or sponsor special legislation, but their activities also tend to deter the mobilization of fellow claimants and public sympathy. By contrast, claimants who gain elite allies only after the difficult and potentially risky process of mobilizing societal support tend to achieve more redress, which can include official inquiries, apologies, compensation, and structural reforms.Arrington draws on her extensive fieldwork to illustrate these dynamics through comparisons of the parallel Japanese and South Korean movements of victims of harsh leprosy control policies, blood products tainted by hepatitis C, and North Korean abductions. Her book thereby highlights how citizens in Northeast Asia—a region grappling with how to address Japan’s past wrongs—are leveraging similar processes to hold their own governments accountable for more recent harms. Accidental Activists also reveals the growing power of litigation to promote policy change and greater accountability from decision makers.