Demands For Reform Research Articles

Approaching change through pragmatic routines: a case study of a municipal response to a teacher certification reform in the Swedish School-age Educare

ABSTRACT During the last decade, the Swedish School-age Educare has been the object of multiple government-enforced reform initiatives in order to clarify its purpose and increase educational quality and equivalence. In 2019, a teacher certification reform was imposed on the educational programme, concretizing responsibilities between categories of staff and regulating hiring procedures in order to raise the level of formally qualified personnel. At the same time, Sweden was (and still is) battling a severe teacher shortage, with teachers certified towards the School-age Educare being one of the scarcer categories to acquire. Through a single-case study, this article explores a local municipal response to this policy dilemma by focusing on the ways in which the reform demands are translated and made sense of in terms of organizational routines. The findings show that actors make sense of demands based on prior knowledge and beliefs connected to identity and qualitative endeavours of the educational programme, which in turn shape ‘scripts’ to routine performance. However, when these scripts collide with performative constraints connected to organizational capacities, pragmatic routines are designed in order to partly sustain apprehensions from the initial reform translation, which in turn shapes further routinized action.

KETERLIBATAN DEWAN PERWAKILAN RAKYAT DALAM PENGISIAN JABATAN HAKIM AGUNG DAN HAKIM KONSTITUSI DITINJAU DARI PERSPEKTIF KETATANEGARAAN INDONESIA

The involvement of the DPR in filling positions The Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court have the potential to create a number of new problems in the context of the Indonesian state administration. One example is the increase in the authority of the DPR and is very decisive in the selection and determination process of Supreme Court Justices and Constitutional Justices, where this often leads to excesses, namely the occurrence of politicization, collusion and nepotism. In this research, two problems are formulated as follows: first, how is the power position of the DPR involved in filling the Supreme Court and Constitutional Justices in the Indonesian constitutional system?; Second, has this involvement been in line with the principles and principles of power sharing and checks and balances? The methodology used in this research is a normative research method using secondary data sourced from legal materials, while the approach is carried out using a conceptual approach, a case approach and legislation. From the results of this study, several conclusions can be drawn, among others, first, with the involvement of the DPR in filling the positions of supreme justices and constitutional judges as part of the demands for reform that gave birth to transitional democracy after the fall of the New Order regime. Second, the involvement of the DPR institution is a deviation from the principle of power sharing, and does not reflect the principle of checks and balances, because the legislature plays a very important role in determining state agency officials, starting from the selection process to determining officials, while the role of the President is only to inaugurate and ratify officials who has been approved by the DPR.

Thailand in 2021

In 2021, COVID-19 spread like wildfire throughout Thailand, with the government being routinely accused of mismanagement and facing two censures in parliament as a result. The military-aligned government also faced continuing protests against its rule. As the year progressed, the protests became more violent and spread to the peripheral regions of the country. Combined with the economic impact of the pandemic on the tourist sector, cracks are beginning to appear in the multi-party coalition. Support from the armed forces may also be waning, and there have been rumors of another coup. Nevertheless, imports and exports increased throughout 2021, and the opening of the country to 63 low-risk countries in November promises to ease the pressure on the government. The Thai parliament also approved a measure to reform the electoral system back to the one used in the 1997 constitution, under which the main opposition party, Pheu Thai, performed so well. Another election seems imminent, but it remains to be seen whether the electorate responds more to the intimidation, increasing support for the government’s largest party, the military-aligned Palang Pracharat—or to the student demands for constitutional reform, increasing support for opposition parties.

Imagined landscapes for contested politics of land reform, peasant struggles and women in rural Turkey

In Turkey, land reform was subject to fierce debates among different political groups throughout the 1960s. Land occupations and small peasant demonstrations were seen as new forms of struggle to voice demands for land reform. This article explores the gender and class specific effects of global post-war American expansion policies on agrarian change and peasant struggle in the form of land occupations in rural Turkey. Focusing on the Aegean villages of Golluce and Atalan in the late 1960s, it argues that different political organizations imagined villages as laboratories to test their visions of land reform and the occupiers as a homogeneous class regardless of gender-specific claims. In doing so, it highlights the characteristics of rural class struggles and the politics of land reform with reference to social class and gender in Turkey in this period.

Dynamic inference of healthcare expenditure on economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: a dynamic heterogenous panel data analysis

PurposeThis article investigates the dynamic implication of healthcare expenditure on economic growth in the selected ten Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 2000–2018.Design/methodology/approachThe study methodology included dynamic heterogenous panel, using mean group and pooled mean group estimators. The investigation of the healthcare expenditure and economic growth nexus was achieved while controlling the effects of investment, savings, labor force and life expectancy via interaction terms.FindingsThe results from linear healthcare expenditure have a significant positive impact on economic growth, while the nonlinear estimates through the interaction terms between healthcare expenditure and investment have a negative statistically significant impact on growth. The marginal effect of healthcare expenditure evaluated at the minimum and maximum level of investment is positive, suggesting the impact of health expenditure on growth does not vary with the level of investments. This result responds to the primary objective of the article.Research limitations/implicationsIn policy terms, the impact of investment on healthcare is essential to addressing future health crises. The impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) can never be separated from the shortages or low prioritization of health against other sectors of the economy. The article also provides an insight to policymakers on the demand for policy reform that will boost and make the health sector attractive to both domestic and foreign direct investment.Originality/valueGiven the vulnerability of SSA to the health crisis, there are limited studies to examine this phenomenon and first to address the needed investment priorities to the health sector infrastructure in SSA.

The Design Strategy of High-Density Primary Schools in Shenzhen

The construction of high-density primary schools in Shenzhen is facing new challenges. Therefore, it is essential to look for ways to meet the demand for degrees, realize education and teaching reform, eliminate the shackles of design code, and adapt to the local climate. From the perspective of design methodology, this article discusses the design strategy of Shenzhen’s high-density primary school campus from four aspects: compact layout, multiple functions, open space, and personalized design, aiming to provide ideas for the construction of primary school campuses.

WAS THERE A REFORM: TO THE QUESTION OF THE LEGAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION OF 2020

The question of whether a major change in the text of the Russian Constitution in 2020 can be considered as a constitutional reform is not that simple. Usually, reforms are preceded by thorough preparation. Successful reforms require adequate organizational, legal, doctrinal and human resources support. Objectively, the need for a systematic adjustment of the text of the Constitution was growing in Russian society. The societal demand for constitutional reform has been developing since the moment the Constitution was adopted. This is due to many flaws and gaps that were found later during its implementation. At the same time, the process of transformation of the Constitution started unexpectedly for society, passed quickly, did not have proper support and led to contradictory results. The purpose of this research is to analyze organizational and legal, doctrinal as well as formal and legal aspects of the innovation based on scientific methods. Moreover, deviations from the due legal procedure for amending stated by the Constitution itself and other laws are identified. The methods used for the constitutionalization of legislation, violation of the structural and content-related integrity of the text, technical and legal errors, the legal significance of the plebiscite on the approval of amendments to the Constitution of Russia are critically assessed. In this regard, the question of the state of constitutionalism in Russia and possible measures to strengthen it remains relevant.

Research on the Policy Effect of Property Tax Reform: Take the Pilot Reforms in Chongqing and Shanghai as Examples

It has been ten years since the implementation of property tax reform in Shanghai and Chongqing. With the continuous promotion of tax reform, the central government clearly put forward the decision to accelerate the pilot real estate tax reform in 2021. Every piece of news about the pilot and promotion of property tax reform attracts close attention from people in related fields and becomes a hot topic on the Internet and media. Reform policies are carefully formulated and improved, and the relationship between reform policies, market demand, and people’s livelihood is properly handled so that the real estate market will develop in a healthy and stable manner and have a significant impact on the economy and society. This article mainly starts with the history of property tax development, reform priorities, and comparison with property tax policies of other countries. It takes Chongqing and Shanghai as the research objects, selects several typical factors, and uses multiple linear regression models for analysis. This article studies the impact of China’s property tax pilot on the real estate industry and its effects from both theoretical and empirical aspects and discusses the policy effects of the property tax policy pilot. The levy of real estate tax has a certain effect in a short period of time, but it is not ideal in the long run. Studying the economic effects of Shanghai‐Chongqing property tax is conducive to perfecting China’s property tax reform and promoting the healthy development of real estate market and economic and social development.

A Review of Data-Driven Short-Term Voltage Stability Assessment of Power Systems: Concept, Principle, and Challenges

With the rapid growth of power market reform and power demand, the power transmission capacity of a power grid is approaching its limit and the secure and stable operation of power systems becomes increasingly important. In particular, in modern power grids, the proportion of dynamic loads with fast recovery characteristics such as air conditioners, refrigerators, and industrial motors is increasing. As well as there is an increasing proportion of different forms of renewable energy in power systems. Therefore, the short-term voltage stability (STVS) of power systems cannot be ignored. This article comprehensively sorts out the STVS problems of power systems from the perspective of data-driven methods and discusses existing challenges.

Winds of Change: Comparing the Early Phases of Constitutional Redrafting in Chile and Venezuela

This article compares the early phases of the constitutional redrafting processes in Venezuela (1999) and currently in Chile (2021), seeking to identify key factors that help explain the radical constitutional-redrafting path that was followed in Venezuela, versus the more moderate, consensual and rule-bounded transformation underway in Chile. We pay particular attention to the presence of Hugo Chávez as leader of a populist project in Venezuela—an important factor absent in today’s Chile—whilst also taking into account a host of other important considerations that situate these countries’ diverse experiences in their respective socio-political contexts. These factors include the existence of unaddressed historical and social grievances leading to the reform; frustrated efforts at overhauling state institutions or the constitutional text; disparate institutional frameworks to channel reform demands, and different decisions made by the ruling political elites, among other considerations. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive and nuanced comparison that not only helps to understand each case better, but also to think critically about the complex reasons that lead to constitutional redrafting in troubled democracies, with a view to inform our debates on this topic beyond Chile and Venezuela.

Waldorfpädagogik als Inklusive Pädagogik?

On the background of the approval of theUN-Convention for the Rights of People with Disabilities in 2006 (see Vereinte Nationen 2009) and the ratification in Germany we reached a new stadium of development for the participation and the independent living of people with disabilities. For the whole life of people with disabilities their right of participation and independent living is here proclaimed for the first time in detail. Especially the article 24 with the objective of an inclusive education system at all levels faces the German educational policy with a principal demand of educational reform. On this background inclusive education in the German speaking area has seized again and again diverse suggestions from the so called “Reformpädagogik”. How far this as well may be the case for the German “Waldorf Education” will be observed in the following. There will be a main focus on the “Waldorf Schools”.

From Rebellion to Reform: Representations of Regional and Civic Improvement in the Aberdeen Journal, 1747–85

The role of the Aberdeen Journal in facilitating the commercial modernization of Aberdeen and the northeast of Scotland in the four decades after the Battle of Culloden is an understudied aspect of the city's and region's social, economic and cultural history. This article examines the way improvement initiatives from key regional and civic stakeholders like the Board of Trustees for Fisheries, Manufactures and Improvements in Scotland, the Aberdeenshire Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture and Manufactures, the Commissioners of Supply, Aberdeen Town Council, and Marischal College were represented in the newspaper. In particular it highlights how James Chalmers 2 and James Chalmers 3—the Aberdeen Journal's proprietors during its first forty years—developed Scotland's first newspaper north of Edinburgh as an informational hub to integrate the city and region into key currents of Scottish and British capitalist modernization in the second half of the eighteenth century, from linen manufacturing and processing, to land reform and agricultural improvement. The social and economic transformation facilitated by the newspaper led to demands for political reform by those new commercial stakeholders, like John Ewen and Patrick Barron, who had profited from this regional modernization, and the article argues that the Aberdeen burgh reform movement of the early 1780s that utilized the Aberdeen Journal as a principal periodical platform was an essential consequence of this trajectory of regional and civic improvement, and a key test for translating it into a tangible expansion of democratic rights.

Special Autonomy of Yogyakarta in the Context of Local Autonomy Law

Local government is the authority of the autonomous regions to organize and manage the interests of local people according to their own initiative based on community aspirations in accordance with the laws and regulations. In response to the demands of government reform quite quickly, it has undertaken a sufficiently fundamental breakthrough of the various laws in the political field from the centralist-autoritarian to the autonomous-democratic. After successfully compiling the three laws on the political field that became the basis of the election in 1999 the government immediately followed him with a new law in the field of special politics on power relations between the central and local, namely Law no. 22 of 1999 on Regional Government and Law No. 25 of 1999 on Financial Relations between Central and Regional. The formation of regions is basically intended to improve public services in order to accelerate the realization of community welfare as well as political education at the local level. Considerations and other conditions that enable the area to organize and realize the purpose of the establishment of the region and the granting of regional autonomy. The Government may designate special areas in the autonomous regions to carry out specific government functions that are specific to national and / or national-scale interests "special" for the interests and benefit of Indonesia. One of these special autonomous regions is the Special Region of Yogyakarta that has been recognized special autonomous region in Law No.13 of 2012 on the privilege of Yogyakarta.

The Quest for Self-Determination and the State in Ethiopia: The Oromo Popular Uprising of 2014–2017 in Historical Perspective

Abstract This article seeks to place the Oromo popular uprising of 2014–2017 into a deeper historical context. It traces the origins of the uprising through various landmarks in the Oromo national struggle for self-determination and turning points in the history of Ethiopia's state-making projects. In understanding the relationship between attempts at state construction and the determined opposition it encountered, the article emphasizes the dramatic changes that unfolded between the close of the nineteenth century and the political transition that was triggered in 2018. Although recognizing Ethiopia's long-ranging political intricacies, this article argues that the Oromo popular uprising of 2014-17 demonstrates the peak of decades of struggles for inclusion, recognition, self-rule, and equality that have mainly resulted from the Ethiopian state's cyclical violence and rejection of demands for reform.

Territorial Conflict, Domestic Crisis, and the Covid-19 Pandemic in the South Caucasus. Explaining Variegated EU Responses.

Territorial Conflict, Domestic Crisis, and the Covid-19 Pandemic in the South Caucasus. Explaining Variegated EU Responses.

Afrofuturism Revelation and Revolution; Voices of the Digital Generation

The art movement known as Afrofuturism uses various forms of artistic expression to create speculative fictions linking African-Americans’ ancestral past with envisioned, utopian futures. In the process, Afrofuturists shift the narratives that influence African-Americans’ lives from narratives of oppression to narratives that re-imagine a world in which African diasporic culture is at the center of social life. In previous analyses of the significance of Afrofuturism, however, the voices of actual artists are glaringly absent. Current public uprisings and demands for social reforms provide new opportunities for elevating Afrofuturism’s traditional emancipatory themes across digital platforms with a global reach. Using a critical race theoretical lens, this multimodal anthropological study focuses on the voices of contemporary Afrofuturists at the intersection of Afrofuturism, social injustice, and digital technology.

Reglementierte Berufe: Einordnung der Länderempfehlungen der Europäischen Kommission zum Reformbedarf des Regulierungsrahmens in Deutschland

Abstract In its country-specific recommendations for Germany, the European Commission regularly calls for reform in the area of regulated professions. These reform demands focus in particular on the business-related services provided by lawyers, tax advisors, auditors, architects or civil engineers. In doing so, the Commission pursues the thesis that the protection of similar general interests in the case of the domestic regulatory approach with binding professional access rules and a mandatory chamber system is accompanied by a comparatively high regulatory intensity and unnecessarily restricts competition. The Commission bases this assumption on different direct and indirect regulatory and competition indicators. This paper provides an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of these indicators and concludes that these do not allow for a robust conclusion on below-average competition intensity in professional services in Germany.

Coming to Grips with Bologna: Change and Student Empowerment in Transforming Classes into an Effective Learning Environment

With the advent of the Bologna Process to develop higher education in the European Union, university teachers and students have gone through a process of change. This change required an adjustment to the demands of higher education reform governed by European convergence. However, the resulting transformations in pedagogical practice have ostensibly affected not only teacher-student attitudes and relationships but also the academic culture.
 
 Within the new educational paradigm, the shift to a student-centered pedagogy has meant the empowering of individual students providing them with the opportunity to direct their own learning. However, the issue now is how to address and exercise student empowerment in the real-life class. This study is an investigation into the role of teachers to strike a balance between the forces pushing them to adapt to the new pedagogical framework and the need to improve student self-reliance and ownership of learning. It concludes by reaffirming the advantages of applying an empowerment-based approach, already recognized by current research, that enhances teacher and students relations in an effective learning environment.

Cross-Cultural Feminist Technologies

As our contemporary problems of climate change, pandemics, tech reform, and worldwide wealth inequality demand global solidarities, cooperation, and collective and empathetic imagination, we need approaches that can carve critical pathways for an inclusive technological future. Much as technology is created to transcend borders and cultures, this essay proposes that cross-cultural feminism can do the same. This essay pioneers a framework that enables us to strive for global solidarities while decolonizing the feminist “common sense” that is institutionalized into how technologies are shaped. We advocate for an approach grounded in the materiality (embodiments), mobility (social movements), and modality (codes and modes of design). We believe this three-pronged lens can inform practice and help set the tenor for how to build cross-cultural feminist technologies for an inclusive future.

INTEGRATION IDEOLOGY IN THE PEOPLE IN CENTRAL EUROPE

To achieve the primary goal of the research, the author has considered it to be necessary to solve a number of the following tasks: to scientifically, logically, argumentatively, and coherently lay out specifics of the process of Slavic national ideology formation and reveal its main features. The national-patriotic mood was not limited merely by the demand for cultural reforms by the beginning of the revolution. It gradually transformed into the context of new political and socio-economic ideas. At the same time, in the meaning of the national paradigm of the Slavic National Movement, the idea of its moderation or passive opposition actualized drastically. In general, the national paradigm was a specific mixture of political ideas. Political freedom – democracy, social and personal guarantees – took a somewhat secondary place, the struggle for national justice with its moral and cultural principles became dominant. On the eve of the 1848 revolution, western Slavs were involved in modernizing their national ideology. Although this process was an all-European phenomenon and large ethnic units were undergoing self-determination, the spiritual renaissance of the western Slavs had specific regional and ethnic characteristics, thus attracting the political attention of the governments of great empires – the Austrian and the Russian. For Russia, the biggest Slavonic country, the idea of the general Slavonic ethnic unity and the Pan-Slavistic ideology had scientific character and served as a factor of geopolitical interest. Gradually, the idea of Panslavism received a variety of interpretations - from Russophilism to state or tsarophilic Pan-Slavism, and during the «Spring of Nations» and democratic Pan-Slavism. In an attempt to oppose the popularization of political Panslavism, Western national ideologues were forced to look for alternative ways to integrate the centripetal interests of the Austrian Slavs, which was reflected in another supranational conception of Austro-Slavicism.