Representation Of Citizens Research Articles

Factors influencing the numerical representation of citizens of Arab origin in the French National Assembly

France now hosts the largest Arab population in Europe, most of which is Muslim. An often portrayed scenario is the possible “Arabization” or “Islamization” of France during the coming decades as a consequence of the numerical growth and the claimed religious motivation of members of the Arab Diaspora in the French Republic. The transformation of France into an Arab or Muslim state necessitates that national political institutions be held by French Arab or Muslim citizens. Therefore, an in-depth examination of the political power French citizens of Arab origin have in one of the most important political institutions, the National Assembly, is necessary. An evaluation of the three factors that influence the numerical representation of French citizens of Arab origin in the Assembly: (1) the political trends prevailing among members of the Arab Diaspora; (2) the political trends prevailing within the French receiving society; and (3) the political consequences of the electoral system as it operates within th...

Is IWRM achievable in practice? Attempts to break disciplinary and sectoral walls through a science-policy interfacing framework in the context of the EU Water Framework Directive

The word ‘integrated’ is prone to different interpretations in relation to various disciplines and sectors. When approaching operational water management, one would dream that integration would encompass effective links between scientific disciplines and technical features, with a good knowledge of interactions among different environmental compartments (land/water, terrestrial/coastal, surface/groundwater etc.), of pollution pathways, of various pressures and impacts (including from climate change) etc. The world of management effectively involves many different actors, representing different economic sectors (e.g. agriculture, industry), the civil society, stakeholder organisations, including the representation of citizens, and it is often (wrongly) thought that any kind of decision-making is carried out in an agreed and harmonious way. The theory is at least paved through IWRM principles as they are conceived within the framework of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), so we might say that we have actually no choice but to make it work!! But what is the reality in practice? The difficulty is to consider mandatory policy obligations on the one side, technical feasibility and scientific knowledge on the other side, and reflect whether and how these can be properly interfaced. This has been the subject of dynamic discussions within the past 6 years in the framework of EU-funded research projects aiming to support policy WFD developments and implementation. One of the key conclusions of these discussions among scientists, policy-makers and stakeholders underlined the need to develop a conceptual framework for a science-policy interface related to water, which would enable to gather various initiatives and knowledge. This paper discusses on-going developments in this field with an European perspective.

Substantive and Descriptive Representation in Swiss Cantons

Representation is crucial for democracy: good representation helps to increase responsiveness, foster electoral turnout, increase political interest and include minorities. However, what good representation should be is debated. In this contribution we distinguish the substantive and the descriptive approach of representation. While the two forms start from different normative assumptions, they both suggest the same impact of high degrees of representation: increased political interest, higher electoral participation and better minority inclusion. We examine the degree of representation of cantonal citizens in the Swiss national parliament. Our results suggest that the cantons differ concerning substantive and descriptive representation. The two forms seem to be mutually exclusive. Testing for the different impacts, the results suggest a better performance of descriptive representation fostering political interest and weakening the attenuating impact of gender on the formation of political interest. Our contribution should be understood as a tentative draft for a more in‐depth analysis of political representation in Switzerland.

Bureaucracy, Democracy and Exclusion: Why Indigenous Knowledge Holders Have a Hard Time Being Taken Seriously

This paper explores inherent tensions between two democratic ideals: citizen representation and accountability of the state. Specifically, I argue that the method by which state officials make themselves accountable—through their creation of the appearance of transparency—results in the exclusion of alternative, non-scientific ways of knowing, including those that are gendered, local and indigenous, because these ways of knowing often employ non-standardized methods which are not “transparent” in the same way as science and therefore easily dismissed by state officials as indefensible to citizens’ questioning. I explore this tension by drawing on examples from ethnographic work I completed with two groups of knowledge practitioners, Kwakwaka’wakw First Nations (Native American) traditional marine harvesters and government biologists, both of whom work with clams.

As fontes do espaço político: técnicas eleitorais e práticas deliberativas nas cidades Italianas (séculos XII - XIV)

Para quem pesquisa, nas práticas usuais da Idade Média, os vestígios de um espaço de mediação política, o mundo das comunas italianas dos séculos XII-XIV oferece um laboratório privilegiado de observação. O desenvolvimento de instituições representativas (conselhos "legislativos" e colégios "executivos") se caracterizou pela utilização de técnicas de seleção de pessoal dirigente destinadas a evitar o monopólio de algumas famílias e a garantir a rotatividade das atribuições no seio das classes dirigentes. O presente artigo examina as fontes, notadamente estatutárias, que definem as modalidades de representação dos cidadãos chamados a governar ou a tomar decisões. Ele retoma a cronologia de instauração do princípio de representação que se impõe sobre o de unanimidade. Examinando igualmente os processos eleitorais, ele busca precisar o que os contemporâneos desejavam valorizar por meio da seleção eleitoral dos governantes. Uma atenção particular é dada às questões materiais dos votos e dos escrutínios (segredo das eleições, instalação de graus eleitorais, etc.).

Searching for Participatory Governance in Korea

This study examines the possibilities and challenges of committee governance in President Roh Moo-hyun's “Participatory Government” initiative in Korea. Governing by committee or commission gained more prominence in the Roh administration (2003‐07) than in any other administration previously. The analysis in this paper builds on the theory of participatory governance in line with the “new governance” approach. It empirically examines the Presidential Commission on Sustainable Development (PCSD) established in response to the “Agenda 21” initiative. In particular, this study addresses why governing by committee has limitations in representing non-state actors in the national policy-making process. It analyses government reports and statistics as well as survey and interview data from former committee members and public officials. The major findings suggest that, whereas the PCSD improved representation of citizens in the national policy process, the internal decision-making process was limited to a small number of participants that included public officials rather than a more diverse range of committee members.

Inequalities in Non-Institutionalised forms of Political Participation: A Multi-Level Analysis of 25 Countries

Various studies suggest that while institutionalised and electoral forms of political participation are in decline in Western societies, non-institutionalised forms of participation (like demonstrating, political consumerism or signing petitions) are on the rise. However, this expansion of the political action repertoire of citizens also entails the question of equal participation opportunities. It can be argued that contemporary ideals of democratic participation assume an equal representation of citizens' interests. In this article we analyse the equality of participation patterns using comparative data from the 2004 ISSP survey. Our results suggest that non-institutionalised forms of participation increase patterns of inequality due to education but strongly reduce or even reverse gender and age inequalities. As such, both institutionalised and non-institutionalised forms of participation have specific (dis)advantages from the perspective of preserving equal access to democratic decision-making procedures.

The Saliency of Political Cleavages and the “Dark Sides” of Social Capital: Evidence From Spain

This article explores the effects that a salient political center—periphery cleavage has on the structure (social networks) and outcomes (political attitudes) of social capital. The comparison of different regions within the same country supports the thesis that social capital is a reflection of the context in which it takes place. In this framework, social capital undermines equal representation of citizens’ identities. Second, political fragmentation is reproduced by the existence of more bonding than bridging social capital. Finally, it allows for the identification of scenarios in which involvement in informal social networks leads to both positive and negative consequences for citizens’ attitudes toward politics.

If You Must Be Hospitalized, Television Is Not the Place: Diagnoses, Survival Rates and Demographic Characteristics of Patients in TV Hospital Dramas

This study maps the distribution of diagnoses, survival rates, and demographic profiles of patients in primetime hospital dramas and compares the results with actual hospital data. Complete seasons of ER, Chicago Hope, and Grey's Anatomy are content analyzed and compared with a survey of U.S. hospitals. Compared to real-world patients, hospital patients on television have a lower representation of Hispanics, senior citizens, infants, and women; and a higher representation of White, middle-aged men. The medical diagnoses of TV patients are biased toward dramatic diseases such as mood disorders and medical problems that are graphic and easily visible. The mortality rate among TV patients is nearly nine times higher than that of hospital patients in the real world. The results are discussed from the perspectives of media system dependency theory and cultivation theory.

The Vivisection of the Snark

As popular writer for children, Lewis Carroll grew adept at subverting the A paternalist logic which subordinated children to the whims of their powerful elders. This concern with the plight of the powerless extended into other areas as well, and in the 1870s Carroll became increasingly concerned about the use of animals as objects for study in English physiological laboratories. As public debate over the ethics of animal experimentation grew more heated, the Oxford logician turned his analytic skills to the subject of vivisection. Anatomizing the logic which justified the accumulation of scientific knowledge at any cost, Carroll made significant contribution to the developing literature of animal rights. While Carroll was writing up his antivivisection pieces for the popular press, he was also engaged in the composition of his most ambitious nonsense poem, The Hunting of the Snark (1876). In this poem Carroll renders the scientific quest for knowledge and power as an absurd sea journey, in which an eccentric cross-section of English professionals set off in search of an elusive hybrid creature. There is much in the poem to suggest that Carroll's Agony in Eight Fits was his subversively nonsensical response to the agonies of the vivisection laboratory being vividly evoked in contemporary papers, journals, and pamphlets. While Carroll's mock-ballad has been read as an economic allegory, as parody of the Imperial nations' Race for the Poles, and even as an exploration of the rational philosophical tradition in Western thought, the poem has not been considered in relation to its most immediate social and scientific context, the vivisection controversy in which its author was so deeply embroiled. (1) As with the eclectic language of the social critical tradition employed by other antivivisectionist writers, The Hunting of the Snark brings variety of discourses and perspectives to bear on the allegedly disinterested disciplines in the burgeoning life sciences. In the process Carroll's poem exposes the close ties between professional advancement and the advancement of science, between the accumulation of knowledge and the accumulation of wealth and power. In response to growing public concern over the morality of experimental operations on live animals, Royal Commission investigation into the practice of vivisection was announced on May 24, 1875. Over the ensuing months testimony was gathered from laypersons and experts representing diverse spectrum of opinion on the topic. While spokespersons of the growing British scientific community testified alongside theologians, medical practitioners, politicians, and animal welfare advocates, it was clear that, in many respects, science itself was on trial. More specifically, the matter at issue was the right of scientists to pursue their research unhindered by State intervention or public scrutiny, even when the specific nature of that research was ethically questionable, and as such the investigation represents an important chapter in the history of scientific modernity. The closed doors of the physiological laboratory were opened to public inquiry in way that implicitly challenged the purity of the scientific pursuit of knowledge. Bruno Latour has argued that live in communities whose social bond comes from objects fabricated in laboratories; ideas have been replaced by practices, ... and universal agreement by groups of colleagues. (2) In basing our social actions on knowledge achieved in controlled experimental environments designed to exclude human bias, we agree to live in a world in which the representation of things through the intermediary of the laboratory is forever dissociated from the representation of citizens through the intermediary of the social contract (p. 27). Central to the model of scientific modernity advanced by Latour is the space of the laboratory as site for the production of knowledge, space that can only produce facts as long as its conditions remain pure and uncontaminated. …

In the public interest: assessing expert and stakeholder influence in public deliberation about biobanks

Providing technical and experiential information without overwhelming participants' perspectives presents a major challenge to public involvement in policy decisions. This article reports the design and analysis of a case study on incorporating expert and stakeholder knowledge without including them as deliberators, while supporting deliberative participants' ability to introduce and critically assess different perspectives. Analysis of audio-recorded deliberations illustrates how expert and stakeholder knowledge was cited, criticized and incorporated into deliberations. In conclusion, separating experts and stakeholders from deliberations may be an important prima facie principle when the goal is to enhance citizen representation on technical issues and related policy.

Root Root Root for the ??? Team: Franchise Free Agency and the Business of the NFL

Sports have long been deeply intertwined with society but in the past sixty years they have become a major economic industry. While professional sports franchises benefit their owners financially, they are also central to the culture of the city they represent. The dichotomy between sports as an integral part of society and sports as a business has been made apparent through the legal cases surrounding the moves of franchises in the National Football League. This paper analyzes the precedent set by the cases regarding the moves of the Oakland Raiders, Baltimore Colts, and Cleveland Browns. In all three, the courts have favored the sport franchise as a business rather than as a representation of local citizens. These franchise relocations have established a system known as "franchise free agency" in which the sport franchise is legally no different from any other corporation. Over the past thirty years, courts have determined that ownership of a team belongs solely to its legal owner and not to the team's fans or home city.

Rural Sociology and Democratic Planning in the Third New Deal

Abstract In the early 1940s, the agricultural New Deal was broader and more democratic than those aspects of it that survived World War II. Carl C. Taylor, who led the sociological research unit in the USDA’s Bureau of Agricultural Economics, and other rural sociologists shared a two-handed commitment to democracy. They merged social science with local knowledge and integrated federal action with citizen participation. These activist principles were best exemplified in a Third New Deal program called county land-use planning, within which sociologists played two roles. First, they "delineated" the boundaries of rural neighborhoods and communities so that the best representation of citizens on the local planning committees was obtained. With local citizen-researchers, Taylor’s sociologists delineated eleven thousand rural neighborhoods and nearly two thousand communities in thirty-two states. Second, they evaluated the planning program in a few select counties. The richest assessment was Arthur F. Raper’s study of Greene County, Georgia, "Tenants of the Almighty." He found that, despite racism, the program made tremendous physical, economic, and psychological gains among the county’s poor blacks and whites. However, a conservative Congress aborted the federal democratic-planning program in 1942; soon thereafter these anti-New Dealers banished critical social science from the USDA. The likes of which have not been seen since, at least not in the United States.

New Immigrant, Old Story: Framing Russians on the Israeli Screen

New Immigrant, Old Story:Framing Russians on the Israeli Screen Olga Gershenson (bio) and Dale Hudson (bio) Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, nearly two million people escaped the former empire to pursue new lives in Israel, the United States, Germany, and other countries. By the mid-1990s, the "new Russian immigrant" had begun to emerge as a character in both commercial and art-house cinema in these countries.1 Because cinematic representations of immigrants often reveal more about the cultures producing and consuming such images and narratives than they do about actual immigrant experiences, the Russian immigrant character points to particular national responses to new waves of immigration at the onset of post–Cold War globalization, reflecting gendered, ethnic, and religious contradictions and inconsistencies within popular conceptions of national identity. In this article, we examine films about female Russian immigrants to Israel as sites of debates over nation and integration in the Israeli context, as well as sites of larger debates over accommodations and adjustments necessary for participation within the international community, particularly the international art-house film market. The new Russian immigrant character marked an important departure from representations of Russian characters outside Soviet-bloc cinemas prior to the collapse of the USSR. Previously, spies and defectors had embodied the majority of representations of Soviet citizens, particularly in Hollywood Cold War action-adventure films and spy thrillers. Since the fall of Soviet communism, Russian immigrants have appeared most visibly in films that, either directly or indirectly, are concerned with the Russian Mafia. These new Russian immigrant characters are typically male, such as the Russian mafiosi in Karma Local (US 1998; dir. Darshan Bhagat) and The Quickie (France/UK/Germany 2001; dir. Sergei Bodrov), as well as in the acclaimed television series The Sopranos (US 1999–2006; prod. David Chase). Although a female counterpart to the Russian mafiosi also appears in thrillers and action-adventure films, such as Birthday Girl (UK/US 2001; dir. Jez Butterworth), the figure of the Russian woman generally holds a different significance. Russian males are confined largely to the self-contained, predominantly homosocial, diasporic world of the Russian Mafia that evades assimilation into its host country. By contrast, Russian women more often assimilate into their host countries through heterosexual coupling, whether via prostitution, romance, or marriage. Recent international art films [End Page 25] featuring such characters include Black and White (US/Russia 1992; dir. Boris Frumin), Postmark Paradise (US 2000; dir. Thompson E. Clay), Russian Doll (Australia 2001; dir. Stavros Kazantzidis), and Balalaika (Turkey 2001; dir. Ali Özgentürk). Israeli cinema has also produced several similar films, including the television film Kalinka Maya (Israel 1997; dir. Eitan Londner), the absurdist satire Circus Palestina (Israel 1998; dir. Eyal Halfon), the sensationalist drama The Holy Land (Israel 2001; dir. Eitan Gorlin), the postmodern pastiche What a Wonderful Place (Israel 2005; dir. Eyal Halfon), and two romantic comedies: Saint Clara (Israel 1995; dir. Ari Folman and Ori Sivan) and Yana's Friends (Israel 1999; dir. Arik Kaplun). We choose to focus our analysis on Saint Clara and Yana's Friends because both films address questions about Israeli immigration, particularly shifts in immigration policy in response to national identity, and both enjoyed considerable visibility on the national and international film circuits. We read Saint Clara and Yana's Friends as immigration narratives that posit assimilation of female immigrants into Israeli society as amenable, indeed possible, only through romance with a sabra (native-born Israeli) man. Alone, Clara and Yana represent inassimilable immigrants, ones whose very identities embody indifference to, or disengagement from, Israeli-Zionist ideologies. Because these immigration narratives are told through the generic formulas of romantic comedy, they feature representations of women, who, invariably, mobilize their youth, beauty, and sexuality for survival within narrative structures of the relative powerlessness of immigrants. Saint Clara and Yana's Friends thus converge and depart from stereotypes of Russian women as femmes fatales, mail-order brides, or prostitutes on the international film circuit. By exploring the new character of the Russian immigrant woman within the specific context of Israeli cinema, we contribute to the study of the politics of Israeli cinematic representations of ethnicity, pioneered by Ella Shohat and continued...

Masculinity and National Language

The notion of a unified Japanese national language was an androcentric language ideology created during the period of Japanese nation-state building in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its association with masculinity, however, was accomplished without being explicitly stated, rendering the national language an unmarked, hegemonic ideology for the entire nation. The implicit masculinization of the national language was constructed in the gendered dispositions between language ideologies. Language ideologies in the period were gendered on three levels, “national language” vs. “feminine speech,” “schoolboy speech” vs. “schoolgirl speech,” and “masculine features” vs. “feminine features,” constructing the strong ties among masculinity, national language, and specific linguistic features. The masculine, unmarked status of the “national language” was negatively created by its asymmetrical relationship with ideologies concerning feminine, marked, and marginalized speech styles or linguistics forms. The asymmetrical disposition of gendered language ideologies formed iconic representations of female and male citizens. Standardization often involves both the construction and marginalization of feminine language varieties, which symbolically invent female citizens as the Inside Other, enabling a highly integrated construction of male citizenship.

Representação, partidos e sociedade civil na Argentina e no Brasil

Este artigo questiona se as organizações da sociedade civil (OSCs) podem e cumprem o papel de exercer uma função de representação em tempos de crise dos partidos políticos. Para tanto, ele examina práticas recentes de representação no Brasil e na Argentina, dois países onde os partidos políticos têm experimentado crises agudas depois de décadas de avaliações ambíguas a respeito de seus sistemas partidários. Em tais momentos, qualquer substituição de partidos por OSCs deveria ser facilmente identificável. Inicialmente, examinam-se as funções e o potencial de representação das OSCs, usando o modelo de partido político como referência. Em seguida, argumenta-se a partir de surveys já publicados e pesquisa de campo inédita, numa comparação focada em quão bem os partidos e OSCs têm desempenhado suas funções públicas e organizacionais no Brasil e na Argentina. A conclusão é a de que as OSCs não substituem os partidos como mecanismos de representação de interesses e valores dos cidadãos - e nem ao menos tentam fazer isso, exceto por um breve período, no auge da crise na Argentina. Em ambos os países, porém, as OSCs melhoram a qualidade de representação dos cidadãos.

The Political Representation of Europe's Citizens: Developments

What is a ‘European’ Parliament and who should vote for it? Should it be the ‘citizens’ of the European Union alone? If so, should it be all EU citizens, or only those who are resident in the member states? Or should the electorate include potentially all residents in the member states which comprise the EU and who are thus affected by decisions taken in the Parliament? Does anyone have a ‘right’ to vote for the European Parliament? And who should decide who votes for the European Parliament – the member states, or the EU itself? In other words, is there a single European concept of the European Parliamentary demos, or twenty-seven separate, but overlapping, national concepts?

Citizenship in Latin America

Introduction: Toward an Analysis of Citizenship in Latin America - the Editors. Latin American Citizenship and Democratic Theory - F. Hagopian. Conceptions of Citizenship. Citizenship Regimes, the State, and Ethnic Cleavages - D. Yashar. Citizenship in Disjunctive Democracies - J. Holston. Fields of Citizenship - A. Armony. Democracy and Citizenship in Latin America - J.H. Carens. Challenges for Citizenship. Neopluralism and Citizenship in Latin America - P. Oxhorn. Democracy Across Cultures: Does Gender Make a Difference? - R.A. Camp and K. Yanner. Crime and Violence: Challenges to Democracy in Brazil - L. Bitencourt. Democracy Assistance in Creating Citizenship - C. Sabatini. Promoting Active Citizenship. Between Paradoxes and Challenges: Promoting Citizenship in Bolivia - C.B. Ruiz. Democracy and Participation: The Case of Argentina - C. March. Citizen Representation and Participation in Ecuador - C. Montufar. Conclusion. Reconceptualizing Citizenship - H.C. Boyle. Citizens: Made, Not Born - the Editors.

The Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca

The Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca—APPO) grew out of the violent repression of a teachers’ strike in Oaxaca during the late spring of 2006. This chronicle is a description from inside, by a participant, of APPO’s process of decision making and increasingly popular representation of citizens’ discontent with federal and Oaxacan state authorities during the critical months from August 2006 to the violent confrontations with federal police and the military in late October and early November 2006.

The European Union: Democratic Legitimacy in a Regional State?*

AbstractDemocratic legitimacy for the EU is problematic if it is seen as a future nation‐state. If instead the EU were seen as a regional state – with shared sovereignty, variable boundaries, composite identity, compound governance, and a fragmented democracy in which the EU level assures governance for and with the people through effective governing and interest consultation, leaving to the national‐level government by and of the people through political participation and citizen representation – the problems of the democratic deficit diminish at the EU level. But they become even greater at the national level, where the changes to national democratic practices demand better ideas and discourses of legitimization. A further complicating factor results from problems of ‘institutional fit’, because the EU has had a more disruptive impact on ‘simple’polities, where governing activity has traditionally been channelled through a single authority, than on more‘compound’polities, where it has been more dispersed through multiple authorities.