Democratic Policy Research Articles

Se o Rio é lusitano, por que a Ilha das Flores não o é?

Laços históricos e culturais tornaram os portugueses o principal grupo de imigrantes que se fixaram no Brasil, especialmente no Rio de Janeiro. Os estudos que já se dedicaram ao tema ressaltam variados aspectos: os estímulos à emigração, as estratégias de fixação e de reconstrução de identidades no novo país, as solidariedades e sociabilidades proporcionadas, as relações mantidas entre os dois lados do Atlântico etc. Um aspecto pouco analisado diz respeito aos processos de recepção desse grupo no Rio de Janeiro, em especial, sua presença na Hospedaria da Ilha das Flores, dispositivo criado em 1883, e que ocupou papel central nas ações de recepção de imigrantes das políticas imperial e republicana. Nesse sentido objetivamos analisar esses processos relacionando-o à Hospedaria da Ilha das Flores, na primeira década de funcionamento desta instituição, 1883-1892.

Democracy versus Security as Standards of Political Legitimacy: The Case of National Policy on Irregular Migrant Arrivals

Democratic citizens confront a range of problems framed as “security” issues, in policy areas such as counterterrorism and migration control, which place substantial political pressure on democratic norms. We develop a normative theoretical framework for assessing whether and how policies that curtail democratic governance standards in the name of security can be justified as politically legitimate. To do so, we articulate a novel normative account of legitimacy, which integrates insights from both democratic and realist traditions of thought to illuminate the complementary contributions of democratic and security standards to political legitimacy. We further elaborate a framework for applying this theoretical account to political practice in the form of a policy-focused “security test” for legitimacy in democratic states. Finally, we explore how this test may be deployed to help resolve policy dilemmas in democratic practice, by examining its application to a case study of national policy on irregular boat arrivals in Australia and Canada. Through this analysis, we contribute to the development of both richer theoretical understandings of the complex modern value of political legitimacy, and clearer action-guiding principles for balancing competing demands of legitimacy within securitized democratic policy regimes.

Independent Regulatory Agency: Delegation of Powers

The existence of independent regulatory agencies - independent bodies which operate at arm´s length from the government and which are not directly accountable to the voters or their elected representatives - is still the object of intense debate. Independent regulatory agencies emerge in democratic policies across the world. It is difficult to find de lege ferenda rationale for their existence in a democracy where public policy is supposed to be made by electorally accountable people and where public institutions are not usually endowed with a high degree of independence. Thanks to economic theories and principles this article reveals a justification of their existence and gives arguments for their creation. The instrumental rationality problem, the problem of time inconsistency and the credible commitment problem constitute a heavy burden for government in some areas. A delegation of regulatory powers in these areas from the government to an independent body represents a solution to all these problems. The knowledge gained from economic theories can be beneficial for comprehension of the functioning of independent authorities and for setting their institutional legal framework.

New European Banking Governance and Crisis of Democracy: Bank Restructuring and Privatization in Slovenia

ABSTRACT The paper makes three contributions to the understanding of the post-crisis European banking governance. First, it offers a more comprehensive approach to banking governance, beyond the Banking Union, through its concept of ‘New European Banking Governance’ (NEBG) that incorporates EU state aid rules and fiscal regulations. Second, it considers the impact of NEBG on democratic institutions and processes in EU member states, an under-researched topic in the literature on European banking governance. Finally, through its in-depth case study of Slovenia it considers the NEBG in relation to peripheral Eurozone states. It argues that the post-crisis banking governance framework of the EU not only severely constrained the Slovenian state in its policy choices but rearranged its policy-making institutions in a way that restricted and continues to restrict democratic banking policy formation.

The Policies of the First Green-Red Government in the German Federal State of Baden-Württemberg, 2011–2016

In recent years, green parties have gained, at least in some Western democracies, access to government at different levels. In 2011, a coalition between the Green Party under Winfried Kretschmann and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) came to power in Baden-Wurttemberg (BW) following 58 years of predominantly Christian Democratic (CDU) government in the state. The present paper analyzes whether this change of government has led to a corresponding “green–red” policy change. Applying a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to 12 different policy sectors, we find evidence of remarkable changes in policy in some key areas related to Green politics, and evidence also of both Social Democratic reforms and path dependence in many other sectors. The results of our fsQCA show that the responsibility of Social Democratic politicians for the ministries in the respective policy sectors in financially relevant policy sectors was enough reason for the implementation of far-reaching reforms. Social Democratic ministries in financially relevant policy sectors with a rather low degree of political leeway brought in Social Democratic policy solutions. Moreover, a sufficient reason for some Green policy manifestations was the combination of Green Party ministries in more regulatory policy sectors with a rather high degree of political leeway.

Racial Education in Brazilian Children´S Literature Teaching

This paper discusses racial relations in teaching of children´s and young literature in Brazil. Based on the laws 10.639/2003 and 11.645/2008, which require that Brazilian schools teach the history and culture of Afro-Brazilians and Native Nations, we seek to problematize the applied research project From Reader To Reader, considering the effectiveness of the cited laws and the receiving of the African and Afro-Brazilian literary books brought together in Kit Afro: an affirmative policy of democratization of the access to literary production for diversity implemented by the Municipal Teaching Network of Belo Horizonte. Our discussions are guided by studies about race relations in Brazil (GOMES, 2012), teaching of literature (OLIVEIRA, 2015) and transcultural and decolonial pedagogy (HOPENHAY, 2009; WALSH, 2017).

Editorial RSD6

The sixth Relating Systems Thinking and Design Symposium (RSD6 2017) was held at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design in Norway in October 2017. The central theme of the symposium was “Environment, Economy, Democracy: Flourishing Together”, and called for contributions on democratic participation and policy innovation, sustainable business innovation, flourishing communities, and related systems-thinking-oriented approaches to architecture, settlements and the built environment. A wide range of contributions addressed themes, such as social impact in flourishing and change programs, health and population wellness, ecological design and bioregion development, human-scaled and regional economies, related sociotechnical and technological systems, etc. Yet, while the five earlier symposia did receive a number of papers that were focused on architecture and urban design, RSD6 was the first RSD symposium with a dedicated paper session on architecture and urban design. This special issue of Formakademisk collects together five of the papers that focus on architecture and urban design from a linked systems-thinking and design-thinking perspective. Each article pursues a distinct theme concerning the development of the profession, performance-oriented architecture and urban design, the role of exterior space in rethinking the architectural envelope, and questions of participation and community building. This breadth of themes in the selected articles indicates the increasingly deep impact of systems-thinking in the fields of architecture and urban design.

From the Warnock Report (1978) to an Education Framework Commission: A Novel Contemporary Approach to Educational Policy Making for Pupils With Special Educational Needs/Disabilities

This paper argues that the significance of the Warnock Report after 40 years goes beyond the impact of its deliberations and recommendations on UK policy and practice and its wider international influence. The Report’s significance also highlights the nature of provision for pupils with SEN and disabilities and the changing context of policy making in contemporary liberal democratic society. This paper shows the strong inter-connection between SEN and inclusion with other aspects of educational provision as the basis for proposing that future policy directions depend on general policy processes. It then argues that policy for pupils with SEN illustrates the democratic deficits in educational and policy-making processes in general. It uses this analysis to conclude that without grappling with these bigger policy issues we cannot expect some crucial questions in the field to be addressed more coherently and convincingly either conceptually or practically. Drawing on a post-democracy political analysis (Crouch, 2000). and contemporary ideas about deliberative democracy (Fishkin, 2018), with a recognition of the plural values that underlie policy tensions (Dahl, 1982). it proposes an Education Framework Commission (EFC). The Commission would set policy priorities as a settlement that has the potential to reconcile plural and sometimes contrary value positions. It would aim to design a ten-year consensual educational policy framework, within which political parties and governments will work; a framework that could be renewed after this period. An EFC would cover all key aspects of education including designs for including the diversity of learners. Finding common ground between different social and political value perspectives involves deliberative democratic principles and approaches that could influence representative democratic policy making. Though this proposal arises in an English context it has international relevance to the project of renewing ideas and values about the nature of schooling in a way that takes genuine account of SEN and disabilities.

The Policy Formulation of Educational Funding in Yogyakarta Province

The quality of education is depends on input factors. Funding is one of input factors which still an obstacle faced by disadvantaged groups. The local government in decentralization era has responsibility to carry out education and its funding as an implication of regional autonomy. This study aims to analyze the policy formulation of education funding in Yogyakarta Province by case study method. Primary data was collected by interviews and document collection. We found that the policy formulation of education funding consists of problem formulation, identification of alternatives, and budgeting. Stakeholders used brainstorming methods to formulate problems and identification alternative. They found some problems which can be distinguished into; minimum service standard, child abuse, and education management. Whereas, budgeting is determined by conformation mechanism between requirement of the problem solving and the themes of regional development plans. So that, the problems identificationandprogrampreparationcarriedoutdemocraticallybutthedetermination of budgeting were carried out by bureaucratic and top-down manner. Necessarily, formulatingproblem-basedpolicyismoreimportantthanprioritizingplanwithoutdated problem. Then, democratic policy which organized as bottom level stakeholders participationtakeanimportantrolebecausetheycloserandbetterknowaboutsociety problem.

Everybody Hurts Sometimes: How Personal and Collective Insecurities Shape Policy Preferences

Understanding when individuals support government action is central to government responsiveness and democratic policy making. While previous research on political behavior has explored the influen...

Local regional workforce returns on investment of a locally governed and delivered general practice vocational training program

This study evaluated a program arising from the Commonwealth policy of regionalised training for general practice with regard to the outcomes for the region investing in the training program. A complete operational audit was performed of the outcomes of a training provider of the Commonwealth program, evaluating workforce contribution and retention in the region during and after training, stratified for the effects of locally contextualising, advanced skill training and origin of trainee. The local regional workforce contribution during training peaked at 130 full-time equivalents in 2015. Cumulatively, 53% of alumni remained in the region, but over 40% moved to practice in metropolitan south-east Queensland and other Australian capital cities. Local contextualising of training, completing additional advanced skills training and being an Australian graduate were associated with increased retention in the region. A regional training program is a significant local asset introducing potential general practitioners (GPs) to the region. However, this regional area has become a 'rural' training ground for GPs into metropolitan practice rather than local investment translating as comprehensively as possible into long-term local workforce. The Commonwealth program should focus on local workforce outcomes as an evaluation metric rather than the proportion of trainees in rural training.

Foreign aid preferences and perceptions in donor countries

We present original survey data on preferences for foreign aid in 24 donor countries from 2005 to 2008. On publicly-funded foreign aid (Official Development Assistance, or ODA), we find patterns that are consistent with a standard model of democratic policy formation, in which donations are treated as a pure public good. Controlling for perceptions of current ODA, we show that individual preferences for ODA are (i) negatively correlated with relative income within a country-year; and (ii) positively correlated with inequality at the country level. We extend the analysis to explain variation in the gap between desired aid and actual ODA, arguing that lobbying by high-income special interest groups can divert resources away from the median voter’s preferred level of aid. Consistent with this, we observe that ODA is significantly lower where policymakers are more susceptible to lobbying. Finally, we present a novel test of competing “crowding out” hypotheses. Self-reported private aid donations are negatively correlated with actual ODA, and positively correlated with perceived ODA. This finding is consistent with an emerging argument in the literature, whereby ODA crowds out private aid by enabling charities to forego fundraising activities and crowds in private aid through a signaling channel.

Democratize Health Policy Through Citizen’s Charter in North Bengkulu District

This research is analyzing about how the policy of democratization and regional autonomy can born Citizen’s Charter in public sevice. The purpose of the regional autonomy implementation is to shortening the distance of service among goverment and the society, so the local goverment can understand more about desires, aspirations and needs of the community compared with the central government who has longer distance from the society. The effort to shortening the distance makes the execution of regional autonomy needs some changes and inovations in giving the service in order to match with the society needs. The result of this research shows that the democratization and regional autonomy policy still can’t born the Citizen’s Charter in local public service yet, particularly in health care services contract in the Arga Makmur city, North Bengkulu. Realization of the Citizen’s Charter principles in the Puskesmas Arga Makmur, North Bengkulu district is proved to have different characteristics with the Citizen’s Charter which occurred in Java commonly. In North Bengkulu, the implementation of the Citizen’s Charter not only need strong political will from local goverment, budget support (General Revenue and Expenditure Budget/ APBD), the availability of adequate infrastructure, commitment and quality of the resource officers, community support, the importance of shifting paradigm in society toward formal treatment like Puskesmas, but also need a personal leadership for the head of Puskesmas. Without any initiation from personal leadership, it can be sure that the implementation of Citizen’s Charter in regional seems can’t be running well.

Labour market regulation and subjective well‐being in low‐income countries

AbstractA growing literature suggests social democratic policies, as exemplified by the welfare state and active labour market policies, promote higher levels of life satisfaction compared to the neoliberal agenda of austerity, smaller government and more ‘flexible’ labour markets. In this article, this inquiry is extended to low‐income countries. A theoretical argument is developed for why labour market regulation (LMR) (rather than social welfare spending or the general size of government) is a more appropriate locus of attention outside of the industrial democracies. The relationship between LMR and several measures of well‐being is then empirically evaluated, finding robust evidence that people live more satisfying lives in countries that more stringently regulate their labour market. Moreover, it is found that positive benefits of LMR on well‐being are the largest among individuals with lower incomes. The implications for public policy and the study of human well‐being are discussed.

On Democratic Reason

Our responsibilities for democracy are sharper, more demanding than at any time since my childhood. If we are to renew democracy and secure knowledge, policy schools, as Helmut Anheier insists, must advance democratic policy reason with clarity, dedication, and purpose.

Gauging fiscal worlds: how the EU countries balanced equality and wealth between 2007 and 2016

Can income equality and national wealth go hand in hand? This issue has long marked the distance between the neoliberal and the social democratic policy paradigms. By combining so far unrelated streams of literature, we sketch a theoretical framework in which fiscal policies shape four “fiscal worlds”, each of them characterized by a special balance between income equality and national wealth. Then, we resort to Boolean algebra and fuzzy sets to develop a measure that encompasses both these policy outcomes at once without assuming any a priori functional relationship. Last, we assess the heuristic capacity of our measure by mapping the EU countries’ membership to the four fiscal worlds from 2007 until 2016 and the trajectories they followed.

Democratization and museum policy in South Korea

ABSTRACTThis article examines the two distinct historical policy paths taken by the South Korean government in the late twentieth century towards the democratization of museums. One was based on the creation of a museological public sphere as an extension of the political democratization movement of the 1980s. This demonstrated the potential to become a valuable component of the wider incipient national public sphere within which civic subjects could discuss their individual and collective historical memories. However, despite this potential, a museological public sphere failed to influence the general trajectory of national policy regarding the democratization of museums that had been in development since the early 1980s. This other policy path towards cultural democratization was triggered by the award of the Seoul Olympics in 1981. It was based on public participation and entitled the ‘cultural Olympics’. An important strategy of the cultural Olympics was the construction of a new institutional infrastructure to expand the public right to enjoy culture. This path facilitated an increasing entanglement with neoliberalism in 1990s. Finally, the 1997 IMF crisis furthered the association between a superficial idea of democratization through institutional expansion and the practices of neoliberalism, a trend which continues within South Korean museum policy today.

Two against Lincoln: Reverdy Johnson and Horatio Seymour, Champions of the Loyal Opposition by William C. Harris

Reviewed by: Two against Lincoln: Reverdy Johnson and Horatio Seymour, Champions of the Loyal Opposition by William C. Harris Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai Two against Lincoln: Reverdy Johnson and Horatio Seymour, Champions of the Loyal Opposition. William C. Harris. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017. ISBN 978-0-7006-2412-6, 264 pp., cloth, $34.95. In Two against Lincoln: Reverdy Johnson and Horatio Seymour, Champions of the Loyal Opposition, William C. Harris illustrates the ways a US senator and a wartime governor challenged Republican policies during and after the Civil War. Harris's double political biography focuses on these men's public lives and is a welcome addition to recent works that have highlighted the roles of those who opposed the most extreme positions on both sides of the Civil War. The first section of the book focuses on Johnson's lengthy public service career, and the second concentrates on Seymour's wartime and Reconstruction era experiences. Reverdy Johnson, a former Whig from Maryland, initially supported Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and helped keep his state in the Union. Siding with Democrats on many issues, he opposed the Emancipation Proclamation, the recruitment of black troops, and the use of military forces on the home front. However, he surprised many when he supported the Thirteenth Amendment. He believed that "the amendment—not the arbitrary action of the president or Congress … met the test of constitutionality for abolishing slavery" (5). Johnson comes off as a leading intellectual voice in legal arguments of the day. During the Dred Scott case, he advanced that Congress had no authority to limit slavery in the territories, an argument that the Supreme Court later infamously adopted. During Reconstruction, he claimed that the Fourteenth Amendment did not apply to individual acts, reasoning that the Supreme Court eventually concurred with. If people are familiar with Horatio Seymour at all, they know him as the Democratic candidate for president in 1868. Harris argues, however, that Seymour's "loyal [End Page 308] opposition to questionable Lincoln and Republican policies and actions should not be overlooked" (3). The New York governor made a reputation for himself as a champion of Union home front issues, lambasting the Lincoln administration for violating the civil liberties of citizens, becoming "the Democratic Party's leading spokesman" (144). He proved "to be a thorn in Lincoln and the War Department's side in their efforts to administer military conscription in the Northeast," vehemently opposing the federal draft (155). Despite his opposition, Seymour administered the laws and provided troops from his state to the war effort. Writing double biographies can be challenging, but this volume effectively conveys the ideological position from which these men advocated their moderate to conservative wartime positions. Harris makes the case that these men had "remarkable consistency" in their views and both "came to the conclusion that the Republicans represented a serious threat to civil liberties (for whites) and to the federal system of government created by the Founders" (2). He treats the development of the two men's ideologies somewhat inconsistently, however: he explains Johnson's ideological growth through the antebellum era but provides less than a page of background about Seymour's intellectual development. Harris could have strengthened his work by adding more comparison between the subjects of his work and other moderate conservatives. Neither Johnson nor Seymour seems to have realized that their ideological beliefs led them to an impasse that would have destroyed the Union. During the secession crisis, both men shared James Buchanan's paralyzing beliefs about what the federal government could and could not do to halt secession. Although Johnson declared that federal property "must at all hazards be defended, [and] the power of the National Standard preserved," he "rejected the use of force to maintain the Union" (27). Seymour, too, "expressed the view that the federal government had no constitutional authority to force a state to remain in the Union" (121). Comparing Johnson to men like John Bell and Edward Everett would also have greatly enhanced the analytical component of this volume. Read alongside recent works by A. James Fuller and Matthew Mason, Two against Lincoln should provide readers interested in nineteenth-century political...

Hora libre, una experiencia televisiva hacia la educomunicación

This article analyzes the experience of Hora Libre (Free Time), a television program hosted by boys, girls and young people on Argentine community TV channels between 2017 and 2018, as part of a series of public policies that promote exercising the right to communication. The topic will be approached from a critical perspective of educommunication, cultural studies, popular education theories and studies on communication policies in Argentina. In this way, a first systematization of the proposal will be carried out based on the analysis of the political-communication context, the intervening actors, the communication practices and the institutional logics which became evident in the project. Finally, this work is proposed as a space for reflection to act in future instances that bind the fields of communication and education in pursuit of strengthening democratic communication policies.

Iconoclast in Ink: The Political Cartoons of Jay N. "Ding" Darling by Richard Samuel West

Reviewed by: Iconoclast in Ink: The Political Cartoons of Jay N. "Ding" Darling by Richard Samuel West Paul V. Murphy Richard Samuel West, Iconoclast in Ink: The Political Cartoons of Jay N. "Ding" Darling. Columbus: The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, 2012. 194 pp. $24.95. Jay Norwood "Ding" Darling began his nearly fifty-year career as a cartoonist in 1900 when he joined the staff of the Sioux City Journal. Newspapers of that era were in transition, still at the center of partisan politics but also part of an emerging mass media that played an important role in integrating the towns and cities scattered across the country into a national popular culture. Darling contributed to both projects. He gained a national following, eventually earning two Pulitzer Prizes, while advancing a progressive political vision fostered by two prominent and gifted [End Page 179] Republican newspapermen. The first of these, George Perkins, initially hired Darling for the Journal. Gardner Cowles later lured him to the Des Moines Register and Leader in 1906, where Darling spent the bulk of his career. Darling perfected the gentle but biting single-panel, front-page political cartoon, using homey and charming images to bring public figures down to size and to translate complex issues into "everyday terms that anyone could understand" (5). He eventually gained a national audience through syndication by the New York Tribune. In collaboration with The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, Richard Samuel West has produced a handsome, large-format, and copiously illustrated volume attesting to Darling's abilities. West pairs a knowledgeable, well-illustrated eighty-page survey of Darling's art and politics with a selection of over one hundred cartoons, presented on a scale that almost matches the six-by-eight-inch format in which many originally appeared. Read together, they give a glimpse of a political world lost. Born in the tiny lakeshore village of Norwood (from which his middle name derived) in the upper stretches of Michigan's lower peninsula in 1876, Darling moved throughout Michigan and Indiana before his family settled in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1886. He was an energetic, irreverent youth, expelled from Yankton College in South Dakota for commandeering the president's horse and buggy and suspended from his next school, Beloit College, due to poor attendance and scholarship. At Beloit, he drew satirical drawings of his professors, signing himself as Ding, from "D'ing", a contraction that had become a habit with his father and brother. "Ding" Darling became the name by which he was known. He first attracted national notice as a cartoonist in 1907 with a fine panel featuring President Theodore Roosevelt sitting at the end of a makeshift diving board over a rural stream, splashing idly in the water, unsure what to do, while seven would-be rivals for the 1908 Republican presidential nomination—from William Howard Taft to Robert La Follette—lined up impatiently behind him. Darling exemplified a type of progressivism almost unknown in the Republican Party of today. He was skeptical of trusts and the business selfishness they embodied, optimistic regarding the regulatory power of government (to end child labor and regulate railroads, for example), and passionate in his belief in international government to prevent the scourge of war. He idolized Herbert Hoover and generally criticized Democratic policies, but he supported Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt when they advanced progressive aims, particularly in foreign affairs. He often [End Page 180] assumed the stance of a gentle prophet, skewering the inattentiveness, emotionalism, irrationality, hypocrisy, and alarmism that led to unjust and destructive policies. He hailed, instead, the enlightened, forward-thinking, disinterested, and fraternal impulses that promised a better future. In one wartime fantasy, Darling depicted a businessman and workingman becoming solicitous brothers in the trenches despite their mutual hatred in peacetime. Darling wrote a remarkably sober-minded assessment of the Soviet Union after a brief visit there in 1931. It revealed much about his temperament, condemning authoritarianism but issuing a biting warning as well. "If you are … afflicted with conservatism, one dose of Russia will make you well," Darling wrote. "Every American ought to make a trip to Russia at least once...