National Public Debate Research Articles

Welfare stigma in a social democratic welfare regime during a decade of national public debate: production, contestation and continuities

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to investigate how welfare stigma is produced and counteracted in the public sphere in a social democratic welfare regime. The Norwegian case represents a generous welfare state that historically has been thought to lessen and avoid stigma connected to welfare benefits. While studies have identified a hardening anti-welfare consensus and stigma production in liberal welfare regimes, we know less about how the connection between welfare benefits, stigma production and resistance has played out in the recent developments in the social democratic welfare regime context. Public debates give access to a dynamic political battleground where different actors participate, and we analyse six welfare-related national debates covered in Norwegian newspapers between 2010 and 2019. We identify key stakeholders, symbolic boundaries used to distinguish deserving from undeserving recipients, and we discuss the outcomes and wider functions of these debates. The debates contain moral aspects of welfare and allegations of fraud by recipients in general as well as by targeted groups such as Somali single mothers, refugees and young adults. We find that stigmatizing framings known from other national contexts also enter the Norwegian debates and illustrate how welfare stigma production plays a role in promoting more selective welfare policies.

Ante‐factum legislative general vaccination mandates as a solution to legal hypocrisy in pandemics

AbstractWith the next pandemic likely not far off, the debate over the suitability of a broad, general vaccination mandate (GVM) goes on. This essay proposes a novel argument in favor of GVM—one based on the reality that left to its own devices, executive power, from governments to the local administration and even corporations, tends anyway to impose on the nonvaccinated restrictions of such harshness that vaccination becomes de facto mandatory. The most coercive measure was banning the nonvaccinated from the workplace, which was done—despite the fundamental importance of the right to work to the human being—without any genuine examination of the elements of balancing (necessity, proportionality) required whenever a right is limited by the authorities. Mandating vaccination de jure, by parliaments, before the next pandemic strikes would have the merits of avoiding legal hypocrisy and would be achieved following national public debate and a thorough process of balancing the rights at stake.

Contested and Uncontested Religious Landscape Markers

This paper analyses the relationship between the “politics of religious symbolism” and thephysical landscape of post-communist Albania. It examines the proliferation of crosses on highly visible peaks, especially in Northern Albania where both Muslims and Catholics live. The paper combines qualitative and quantitative methods to understand the basis of this phenomenon, and conducts field interviews to reveal the exclusivist nature of Catholicism as its main driving factor. While most Catholics believe this exclusivity is their right, many Muslims feel provoked by attitudes they describe as offensive. Although the phenomenon has been marginalised from national public debate under the auspices of “religious tolerance”, the tension it has created is very much present.

Exploring national trajectories of organic agriculture in Africa. Comparing Benin and Uganda

Why and how organic agriculture has been developing in Africa is under-studied, especially from a political stance. We explore two contrasting empirical case studies of national organic trajectories: Uganda and Benin. In both countries, organic agriculture emerged in the 1980s around food security stakes and spread in the 1990s through certified export value chains, with a faster development in Uganda than in Benin. From a theoretical perspective, this paper proposes an original analytical grid to study national trajectories of institutionalization of organic farming in Africa, based on three main variables: the policy regime in place in the country (including socio-economic and agrifood dimensions); the relative interest of public and private foreign actors in organic agriculture; and the strength of the national organic agriculture movement. Our results show that the degree of institutionalization of the Green Revolution paradigm in the country is of capital importance for explaining developments in organic farming, particularly its materialization through the increasing use of synthetic inputs: institutionalizing organic farming means deinstitutionalizing agrochemicals. We also show that the high level of extraversion of organic agriculture development in Africa through its focus on certified export value chains raises long-term questions of farmers' empowerment and of local consumers/citizens' access to local organic food. Finally, national organic agriculture movements can play a crucial role by politicizing certain issues in national public debate, such as pesticides' impacts on human and environmental health, and by advising governments in organic policy framing and implementation. Applying the proposed socio-political analytical grid to new national or regional African case studies will help to further enrich the empirical knowledge on organic food and farming in Africa.

Instruments for the implementation of the constitutional right to assemblies and participations in the digital space from Moldova

The protection of fundamental rights has become an axiom that no longer requires the luxury of argumentation. From another point of view, the protection of human rights on the Internet is only emerging. This is all the more so, as the internet plays an important role in people’s daily lives and in all aspects of human society. The impact of the Internet on social, economic and cultural activity is also growing. The scientific research will be devoted to the following aspects related to meetings and participations in the digital space in the Republic of Moldova: (1) freedom to choose web pages, applications or other services for setting up, joining, mobilizing and participating in groups and social assemblies; (2) the right to peaceful online protest; (3) freedom to use available online tools to participate in local, national and global public policy debates, legislative initiatives and public elections.

L’ecologia politica latinoamericana dei movimenti indigeni in Ecuador: il caso della CONAIE

This work is focused on the analysis of the interconnections between Latin American political ecology and socio-environmental movements in Ecuador. Specifically, through the practices of CONAIE (Confederación de las Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador), it will analyzed the importance of indigenous movements in the political dynamics of the Country and the socio-ecological theories and practices that the indigenous confederation has introduced into the national public debate.

Ordinary Citizens in Swiss Public Television News: Representing a National Public Sphere?

ABSTRACTSimilar to the European Union, Switzerland faces the challenge of a multilingual and multicultural public sphere. The swiss media finds itself in-between the goals of providing a national Swiss public and ensuring a political, social, and cultural integration on a domestic level. Therefore, the portrayal of ordinary citizens in public debates on Swiss television news becomes a matter of citizen actors representing the “people’s voice” as counterbalance to elite and civil institutional actors; as well as citizen actors as a representation of Switzerland’s multilingual and multicultural public sphere as an element of understanding, solidarity, and exchange between the three language areas. Our quantitative content analysis within the news of the first channels in each language region (SRF 1, RTS un and RSI LA 1) shows that although ordinary citizens function as counterparts to political and other elite actor groups, their high visibility does not equate strong voices being heard in the national public debate. Ordinary citizens very rarely get the chance to actively raise their voices or represent voices from other language areas.

The European Union in the media coverage of the 2019 European election campaign in Italy: towards the Europeanization of the Italian public sphere

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the patterns of Europeanization of the Italian public sphere during the 2019 European Elections campaign. Europeanization is meant as a multifaceted process. The visibility and salience of the European Union (E.U.) within the public debate is realized by dynamics involving different actors, in terms of interactions, connections and contaminations between different public spheres. The aim of the article is to clarify whether and to what extent the Italian media covered the E.U. during the European Parliament (E.P.) elections campaign and more precisely to assess through which dynamics of Europeanization the E.U. entered the domestic public debate. We relied on data from a human content analysis carried out on 10 Italian media outlets during the seven weeks before election day. Our findings suggest that, compared to 2014, the visibility of E.U. and E.U. related issues is increasing within Italian media coverage. Italian media still maintain a neutral approach to the issue, resisting to Eurosceptic claims from political parties and public opinion. With regard to the Europeanization, we found that media tend to focus on the vertical dimension especially, providing visibility to domestic actors addressing the E.U. and its political actors. Elements of horizontal Europeanization, instead, are mainly referred to events from other E.U. member states, with few connections among political actors. All in all, our results confirm the idea of a growing centrality of the E.U. within national public debate combined with signals of more structured and substantial Europeanization.

Political Ecology of the Chure Region in Nepal

Conservation of Chure landscape is at the limelight of public policy debate given its geo-ecological and socio-economic prominence and its real and perceived environmental degradation. The dominant narrative of the Chure environmental crisis coupled with increasing pressures of some political constituencies prompted government’s declaration of the Chure as Environmental Protected Area. This policy response of the state has engendered contestations and dissonance among different actors associated with the Chure. This paper is based on review of relevant literature, direct observation and participation in the national and regional policy dialogues and public debate. We identify two broad strands of contested actors: the ones who strongly favor the government policy decision and those who are opposing it. We argue that this can be attributed to the competing understandings of the problem and the proposed solutions to the Chure conservation. Actors’ understandings of the Chure are based on their own identical political strands and do not necessarily reflect the underlying causes at the ground. The politics of scientific facts and evidences is also critical to this contestation. We identified three major strands of management approaches in the Chure discourse: state centric, community based and state-community collaborative. Deliberative scrutiny of current policies and attention to the political ecology of conservation could help arrive at negotiated understanding of the problem and sustainable approach to the Chure management.

PISA and the criticism of Finnish education: justifications used in the national media debate

ABSTRACTThis study examines the Finnish media debate surrounding the OECD-led PISA Study during the periods 2001–2009 and 2013–2014. The empirical focus of the study is on how debaters dissatisfied with Finnish education have justified their criticism in the context of debating PISA and how the justifications used have changed as Finland’s PISA ranking has changed. The study argues that as Finland’s ranking in PISA 2012 apparently deteriorated, this lent great support to the critical arguments voiced in public in Finland. Criticism no longer needed to be based on the proclamation in public of the international success of the Finnish education system which had previously been an integral part of the PISA discussion. Instead it was legitimate to note the deterioration in Finland’s PISA ranking. This poorer ranking was used as an authority with other sources of legitimate information when proposing what various reforms Finland should undertake. Of especially great help in publicizing such views was that the national political elite, which had long succeeded in dominating the national public PISA debate, were unable in the face of the changed ranking to offer convincing explanations for this change in the ranking or to propose what measures should be undertaken in consequence. That is, the obvious decline in the PISA ranking and the inability of the previously so well placed political elite to manage the public debate on the changed PISA rankings fuelled a critical discussion on education which was rhetorically much more challenging in the earlier publicity surrounding PISA.

Fracking Lancashire: The planning process, social harm and collective trauma

To date there have been very few studies that have sought to investigate the crimes, harms and human rights violations associated with the process of ‘extreme energy’, whereby energy extraction methods grow more ‘unconventional’ and intense over time as easier to extract resources are depleted. The fields of rural sociology and political science have produced important perception studies but few social impact studies. The field of ‘green criminology’, while well suited to examining the impacts of extreme energy given its focus on social and environmental ‘harms’, has produced just one citizen ‘complaint’ study to date. It is vital that more social and environmental impact studies become part of the local, national and international public policy debate. To this end, in the following paper we seek to move beyond perception studies to highlight the harms that can occur at the planning and approval stage. Indeed, while the UK is yet to see unconventional gas and oil extraction reach the production stage, as this article shows, local communities can suffer significant harms even at the exploration stage when national governments with neoliberal economic agendas are set on developing unconventional resources in the face of considerable opposition and a wealth of evidence of environmental and social harms. This paper takes a broad interdisciplinary approach, inspired by green criminological insights, that shows how a form of ‘collective trauma’ has been experienced at the exploration stage by communities in the North of England.

Fragmented national public media debate on international forest issues: a case study of Germany

Over the past two decades, a number of international forest-related policies have evolved at the global and regional levels. The elements of this International Forest Regime Complex, however, are not equally relevant to all countries. This study analyzes the main actors’ positions in the public media debate in Germany and identifies links to the interests of the actors. First, the study explores the international regime related forest issues. A qualitative content analysis of the public media debate in one high-quality newspaper and in internet sources of relevant state and private actors analyzes the arguments of these actors in the issues. The results show that the debate of international forestry issues is fragmented and conflicting in Germany and that the conflict between use and protection structures in the public media debate is not supported by the data. Drivers of conflicting arguments are mainly associations representing protection, as well as user interests. The ministries avoid confrontation in public. Alliances between public agencies and lobby groups are seldom. Due to the strategic use of the public media, the debate does not indicate very well the existing conflicts about the main issues of the international forest regime in Germany.

The Mutual Housing Experiment: New Deal Communities for the Urban Middle Class

Kristin M. Szylvian's meticulously researched study of the mutual housing movement from the New Deal to the 1950s provides rich insights into urban conditions of the time and national public policy debates. She illustrates ably that the movement for a national mutual housing program (with lodging built by the federal government and sold to resident-owned cooperatives) faced so many challenges that it is remarkable that any communities were built. Szylvian's early chapters trace the roots and rise of the mutual housing ideal and the career of its greatest champion, the New Dealer Lawrence Westbrook. Much of the text, however, focuses on the successful opposition that mutual housing plans aroused from many within Franklin D. Roosevelt's cabinet, conservative members of Congress, local politicians, and neighbors; only a few New Deal communities, most supported by unions, broke ground. Wider implementation occurred only as part of the thousands of units of permanent defense housing created under the Lanham Act during World War II. After many political battles during and after the war, however, perhaps fifteen thousand of these defense units were actually converted to mutual housing; most permanent defense housing was sold to private owners or converted to public housing. Szylvian then shows how proponents of postwar-era mutual housing, such as Alabama congressman John Sparkman and the indefatigable Westbrook, failed to gain passage of laws that would finance cooperatives because of continued conservative opposition and changing tastes. Szylvian ends by describing life in the remaining mutual housing communities, counting successes and failure.

Media Dissent and Peri-urban Land Struggles in Vietnam: The Case of the Văn Giang Incident

ABSTRACTThis article explores the role of media-led dissent in Vietnam's contemporary land struggles. The analysis focuses on Vietnamese-language material published online by domestic and foreign media about the so-called Văn Giang incident – a high-profile land dispute that shook the country between 2009 and 2012. Looking at how the media treated this incident broadens studies of land struggles in Vietnam, which up till now have focused on peasants’ resistance strategies. This case not only shows that media practitioners engage in dissent with regard to land politics, but also that they engage in more straightforward criticism of the state and its corporate redevelopment partners than what most analyses of rural land struggles in Vietnam, centered on the micro-level and on “lawful” (O'Brien) forms of resistance, would lead one to believe. Illustrating this point, the author shows that media dissent throughout the Văn Giang land dispute openly challenged the government's justificatory discourse about “displacement for development” as well as the mismanagement of land resources on which political and economic elites rely to dispossess peasants from peri-urban lands. If it has not yet provoked major institutional changes, the media's contribution to land struggles has nevertheless succeeded in creating a genuine, national public debate on land politics in rapidly urbanizing Vietnam.

Conflict Prevention and Deliberative Public Consultation: Focusing on the Comparison of Commission National du Debat Public, Almedalen Political Week, 21st Century Town Hall Meeting and 2014 Korean National Public Debate

Conflict Prevention and Deliberative Public Consultation: Focusing on the Comparison of Commission National du Debat Public, Almedalen Political Week, 21st Century Town Hall Meeting and 2014 Korean National Public Debate

Reformando a lei de direitos autorais: desafios para o novo governo na área da cultura

O processo de reforma da lei de direitos autorais brasileira (Lei 9.610/98) teve início em 2007, durante a gestão de Gilberto Gil no Ministério da Cultura, a partir do Fórum Nacional de Direito Autoral, do debate público e da consulta online do anteprojeto de modernização da lei. Desde então, o país presenciou movimentos de avanço e estagnação da reforma, esperando-se que com a nomeação de Juca Ferreira para o Ministério da Cultura em 2015, a reforma da lei entre novamente em pauta. Contudo, existem diversos desafios nesse percurso que serão brevemente analisados neste artigo.

Towards a Cultural Economy: Lessons from the American South-West

The United States has an enviable diversity of public lands that are held in trust for all Americans. However, there is a war raging in the US between exploitative and protectionist ideals. The war’s main victim is America’s public lands. Some believe that public lands — open landscapes preserved for their scenic beauty, ecological assets (especially clean air and water), and cultural and natural resources — are best used for mining these resources, specifically their energy (oil, gas, and coal) reserves. It is the responsibility of archaeologists to contribute their perspective on this national and international public policy debate and help to build a cultural economy perspective. In addition to highlighting heritage tourism economies built on travel, meals, souvenir, and lodging expenditures, archaeologists must help convey the value of preserving historic sites.

Introduction

The presented papers are a collection of conference contributions. The conference titled Beyond Borders: Migration and (In)Equality in Central Europe in Comparison was both the major and closing event of an 18-month international project Migration to the Center funded by the EU program Europe for Citizens, the International Visegrad Fund, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic. The project examined how the EU Community acquis and other instruments impact migration and integration policies, practices, and lives of migrants in Central Europe and beyond. The participatory countries were represented by the following institutions: The Center for Independent Journalism (Hungary), the Institute of Public Affairs (Poland), the Peace Institute (Slovenia), the Human Rights League (Slovakia), and People in Need and the Multicultural Center (Czech Republic), the latter serving as the project coordinator. The project aimed to create an active network of Central European partners and their counterparts from the rest of Europe focused on migration and integration while drawing the attention of policy makers, experts, and the public to the common and country-specific challenges and successes in the implementation of migration legislation across the region. Its objective was to contribute to the cultivation of the migration-related issues debate and create conditions for inclusion of migrants into the policy-making process. The project covered the following themes considered crucial by the participating countries in the migration and integration process: (a) work and residence permit, (b) family reunification, and (c) study and training in the EU. The themes were explored by each of the project partners via two expert analysis articles, five migrant outputs related to the theme (in a variety of forms ranging from a recorded interview to photo stories, poetry, and short articles), and a national public debate in each country that was recorded and provided with English subtitles. These outcomes have been publicized on the project’s web pages www.migrationtothecentre.migraceonline.cz.

Dangdut Beyond the Sex: Creating Intercorporeal Space through Nyawer Encounters in West Java, Indonesia

Sexuality, morality and Islam have come to occupy an important place in Indonesia's national public debates, with the sexualisation of female performers of the popular dangdut genre often a central feature. Intercorporeal relationships through nyawer encounters, formed on stage between dangdut singer-dancers and dancing audience members, sometimes include sexually provocative interplay, and a direct and publicly visible money transfer from dancing audience members to performers often accompanies such interplay. As a result, national public debate in Indonesia, but also most academic work on dangdut performers, tends to reduce the subject matter around these female performers to conservative moralising and feminist discourses of exploitation or empowerment. Such debates overlook many of the performers' perspectives and experiences as singer-dancers, and do not adequately acknowledge the role of these performers in a creative intercorporeal process. This article demonstrates that nyawer encounters feature social practices that are usually neither exploitative nor immoral, nor solely empowering. Indeed, nyawer encounters involve a dialectical relationship between culturally embedded understandings of appropriate behaviour, which are subject to the specific cultural environment of dangdut performances in the local villages of West Java's north coast, and the rather fluid and dynamic virtues that evolve in the intercorporeal space created between performer and audience member. By exploring nyawer encounters through an approach that considers the embodied lived experiences of the performers, this article challenges the connection often made between nyawer encounters and immorality, revealing such encounters to be creative processes through which conventional values and codes of behaviours are negotiated.

Les normes d'emploi au défi de l'auto-entreprenariat et des micro-entreprises individuelles

Cet article propose une analyse comparative de la signification de l’auto-entreprenariat en France et des micro-entreprises individuelles au Brésil dans la redéfinition des normes d’emploi. Ces formes se situent au croisement de l’indépendance, du salariat et de l’informalité. La première partie de l’article retrace la dynamique socio-historique de ces catégories constitutives des régimes de normes d’emploi dans ces deux pays. La deuxième situe les formes de l’autoentreprenariat dans leurs contextes nationaux à partir de l’analyse socio-historique précédente et des débats publics nationaux qui les ont portés. La troisième partie propose une sociologie comparative des auto-entrepreneurs par la mise en regard croisée de portraits caractéristiques d’auto-entrepreneurs français et brésiliens.