Multi-party Participation Research Articles

Consultative Authoritarianism: The Drafting of China’s Internet Security Law and E-Commerce Law

Through interviews and content analyses, this article conducted a comparative study of the drafting of China’s Internet Security Law (ISL) and E-Commerce Law (ECL). Although both had multiparty participants, they had very different substantive outcomes. Contrary to formalistic participation in the ISL, the ECL’s drafting involved considerable communication and negotiation. This difference was intended by the central party given its interests, and it was realized through its control over the scope, principle, direction and focus of the participation in the drafting, which is referred to as ‘leadership control’. This confirms the existence of consultative authoritarianism in China’s central lawmaking systems. The difference contributes to the theory by outlining indirect institutionalized control of the central party. This mode of control causes the authoritarian regime within the legal framework to occasionally be responsive and consultative, and at times fragmented, in realizing its interest in different situations. Such a polity still presents limits in terms of relieving contradictions in China. Power manipulation and attitudinal and fragmented problems can exaggerate such differences and result in the drafting of unreasonably polarized legislation. Interests and substantive power are essential for determining the limits and evolving directions of consultative authoritarianism. For further democratization, leadership control must be limited by the constitution and such limits must be afforded substantive power to become real and practical.

Effect of Post-Disaster School Social Work and Its Causal Analysis

This research, based on a case study of Foundation A’s Ya’an post-quake relief project, combines static group-to-group comparative experiments and discussions of focus groups to discuss and analyze the effect of post-disaster school social work and its cause in the four dimensions of psychological status, health status, learning status and behavior. Comparatively speaking, the post-disaster school social work has had the most notable positive influence upon the psychological status of the students in the disaster-stricken areas and some influence on their learning and behavior. The effect of the post-disaster school social work is related to the mode, professional level, value orientation and interaction status of the intervention. In the post-disaster relief, it is necessary to carry out school social work, to improve the recruitment system for social work, provide better services, build a multi-party participation mechanism and ensure an unimpeded feedback channel, so as to improve the relief effect.

Indonesia: On the Way to Universal Health Care

—Indonesia has been building a National Social Security System since 2004. Formal action to build the health component in the system (National Social Health Insurance Scheme, or JKN) started in 2005. In line with the JKN roadmap, full achievement of Universal Health Care is not expected until 2019. Preparations before the launch of JKN on 1 January 2014 involved multi-level and multi-sector efforts related to issues of equity of access, coverage, finance, quality of care (infrastructure, pharmaceuticals and medical devices, medical education), management information, and fees and tariffs. This commentary by Indonesia's Minister of Health examines the preparations and first eight months of JKN, and briefly discusses these various issues as well as the policy and practices in place at the time of launch. The article includes information on the early implementation of JKN and four lessons learned from the Indonesian experience of developing and launching national social health insurance: the importance of strong political commitment; the role of comprehensive analysis of the national health system; the use of multiparty participation in developing and implementing the plans; and the importance of systematic, continuous monitoring and evaluation from technical and administrative perspectives as well as patient satisfaction, to assure progress toward Universal Health Care.

E-Healthcare Interconnection Networking Services

The research effort for a national e-Health interconnection infrastructure and for the needs of supporting design guidelines is in great demand. Additional researches in eHealthcare network services are critical to universal deployment in operational and security service management aspects. This paper presents our solution framework for e-Healthcare interconnection infrastructure, operational management services with security control, QoS guarantee, and new networking services creation. In the interconnection arena, we take into consideration to incorporate service management, on-demand access, quality-of-service accounting, and system interconnection requirements. In the security realm, our results include an e-Healthcare network security solution that enables multi-party participation, allows variable visibility into selective parts of data, and guarantees end-to-end security control. Altogether, our research provides a much needed innovative infrastructure framework to address the challenges and requirements as presented in this paper. 

Rethinking the ‘Project’: Bridging the Polarized Discourses in IWRM

Integrated water resource management (IWRM) is a response to current acknowledgement of the complexity and wickedness of water management. IWRM aims to enable appropriate responses via multi-party participation. Adaptive management—purposeful learning for improved action—is a useful tool for integrating water resource management. It provides a framework to enable participatory processes and social learning to contribute to changed policies and practices. However, the institutional constraints on moving to adaptive management (and hence IWRM) are many and deeply entrenched. The paper explores these constraints by considering the almost unconscious, and generally uncritical, reliance on ‘projects’ in natural resource management. Using examples from Australia, it reflects on the defining features of natural resource management ‘projects’ and critically considers these in relation to the conditions needed for adaptive management, social learning and IWRM. Projects, bounded in time and space and strongly tied to political and financial cycles, encourage short-term planning and action, not to mention risk avoidance and solidification of power differentials. Active reflection on the nature of projects provides a useful space to explore a possible clash between the normative idealistic and the critical realist perspectives of integrating water management.

Chiang Kai-shek and the 1947 Reorganization of the National Government

When the Guomindang (GMD) took charge in 1927, it implemented the “political tutelage” system. Participation of other parties in politics was disallowed. But after the Anti-Japanese War (1937–45), under the combined effect of internal and external pressure, the GMD needed to adopt a constitution, reorganize government and establish multi-party participation. The April 1947 governmental reorganization was the starting point of a transformation from a “political tutelage” system to a constitutional system. Though this reorganization introduced many non-GMD members into the government, it did not change the GMD’s one-party dominance. Its desired transformation of China from one-party “political tutelage” into a constitutional democracy still remained limited.

Socializing Puros Pericos (Little Parrots): The Negotiation of Respect and Responsibility in Antonero Mayan Sibling and Peer Networks

This article examines family and peer practices of socialization that illuminate a culture specific social ontology of intentions (Duranti 2006). An interpretive approach to the study of children's language socialization and peer talk is adopted to analyze how local beliefs concerning children's socialization and development are afforded within multiparty participation frameworks that involve teasing and shaming routines. These routines are powerful discursive strategies in the everyday negotiation and co‐construction of peer politics and kin group social relationships. Data include ethnographic observational and naturally occurring video‐recorded quotidian interactions collected March 1998–March 1999 in San Antonio Aguas Calientes, a highland Guatemala Kaqchikel Maya town. [responsibility, intentionality, language socialization, peer talk‐in‐interaction]

Are there just two people in a dyad? Dyadic configurations in multiparty family conversations

Dyadic interaction does not necessarily imply that just two people are present. It is often possible to single out episodes of dyadic interaction in multiparty contexts that we analyse, such as family dinner table conversation. Within such a speech event, multiparty participation framework (variously organized) is the default conversational structure. Consequently, a groundwork(Goffman, 1964) is required for participants to gain space and exclusivity for a dyadic exchange.
 This paper shows how dyadic framework is made out of the multiparty default interactional structure of a family dinner. Furthermore, we analyze the resources participants deploy to protect the dyadic exchange from anothers intrusion and/or by the risk of desertion of one member of the dyad. Young and older children actively participate in that activity and learn to manage it through diverse dyadic settings. It is not the number of participants that unequivocally determines whether an interaction is dyadic or multiparty. Varying and complex participation frameworks, alliances, and challenges are built and transformed within family dinner conversation; it is in their locus of the interactive organization of ongoing activity in which children are socialized to a complex socio-cognitive activity.

The Participation Framework as a Mediating Tool in Kindergarten Journal Writing Activity

Drawing on data collected in an ethnographic study of kindergarten journal writing activity, this article demonstrates how students who are not directly participating in instruction are nevertheless key contributors to the social construction of literacy knowledge. More specifically, this study examines how the participation framework of writing activity constitutes and is constituted by the context for learning to write. Five interconnected roles in the participation framework are identified in the data and presented as a shared indexical context within which children's texts are interactionally negotiated. The author argues for a reconceptualization of classroom language and literacy practices from current dyadicbased participation frameworks to more expanded multi-party participation frameworks that allow for flexible access to the social construction of literacy knowledge. By changing the ways in which students participate in school-based literacy practices, students will be socialized to more democratic access to participation in classrooms and in the larger society. This reconceptualization of classroom language and literacy practices attempts to disrupt monolithic definitions of literacy as a reified set of neutral skills by challenging the sanctity of dyadic interaction in literacy activity.

Capturing the Complexity in Advanced Technology Use: Adaptive Structuration Theory

The past decade has brought advanced information technologies, which include electronic messaging systems, executive information systems, collaborative systems, group decision support systems, and other technologies that use sophisticated information management to enable multiparty participation in organization activities. Developers and users of these systems hold high hopes for their potential to change organizations for the better, but actual changes often do not occur, or occur inconsistently. We propose adaptive structuration theory (AST) as a viable approach for studying the role of advanced information technologies in organization change. AST examines the change process from two vantage points: (1) the types of structures that are provided by advanced technologies, and (2) the structures that actually emerge in human action as people interact with these technologies. To illustrate the principles of AST, we consider the small group meeting and the use of a group decision support system (GDSS). A GDSS is an interesting technology for study because it can be structured in a myriad of ways, and social interaction unfolds as the GDSS is used. Both the structure of the technology and the emergent structure of social action can be studied. We begin by positioning AST among competing theoretical perspectives of technology and change. Next, we describe the theoretical roots and scope of the theory as it is applied to GDSS use and state the essential assumptions, concepts, and propositions of AST. We outline an analytic strategy for applying AST principles and provide an illustration of how our analytic approach can shed light on the impacts of advanced technologies on organizations. A major strength of AST is that it expounds the nature of social structures within advanced information technologies and the key interaction processes that figure in their use. By capturing these processes and tracing their impacts, we can reveal the complexity of technology-organization relationships. We can attain a better understanding of how to implement technologies, and we may also be able to develop improved designs or educational programs that promote productive adaptations.