Salient Public Issue Research Articles

With greater popularity comes less responsibility: the popularity fallacy of Big Vs’ public participation on Sina Weibo

Although popular users are more influential on social media, there may be a popularity fallacy in their public participation. We examined the relationship between the popularity of the most influential verified users (also known as “Big Vs”) of Sina Weibo and their participation in 63 of the most salient public issues from 2013 to 2016. The results support the existence of the popularity fallacy for Big Vs. Although the popularity of Big Vs has an indirect positive impact on their public participation because of the mediation of public influence, their popularity also has a direct negative impact on their public participation. Overall, their popularity hurts their public participation. We further explain the findings from the perspective of Big Vs’ occupational categories and impression management strategies. The results of this study shed light on our understanding of the limited role played by social media in influencing public participation.

Recommendations for linking climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction in urban coastal zones: Lessons from East London, South Africa

Climate-related disasters in coastal urban areas are intensifying with significant impacts on populaces, environments, and ecosystems. Hence, climate-related disaster preparedness is now acknowledged by climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction experts. However, there is limited knowledge of communities and policy-makers on the integration of climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR). This paper through the lens of resilience theory presents goals towards linking coastal climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction from the case study of East London, coastal city in South Africa. This study gathered data through a semi-structured survey, aimed at defining salient public issues to improve CCA and DRR policies, public participation inclusion, and programmes. This study shows that the knowledge of CCA and DRR is relatively low in the study area, also the provision of disaster information by the local authority is quite low. Conversely, most of the respondents affirm that available disaster information is always in locally understood languages, this is important in understanding disaster early warning by local dwellers. Accordingly, in disaster information dissemination, the government should be proactive and responsive in spreading information that covers every people. Further work that respects the importance of indigenous knowledge for CCA and DRR integration is needed i.e. local participation in the framework of development endeavours, through the inclusion of indigenous people in policymaking at the sub-national, national and international levels, this would help them to participate in administrative processes that affect them; providing a resilient community, improved adaptive capacity and sustainable living. Effective flexibility, adaptability, interoperability among stakeholders at various levels are key ingredients to reaching these goals.

The Role and the Future of Deliberative Mini-publics: A Citizen Perspective

The last decades have witnessed a spread of democratic innovations. Chief among them are deliberative mini-publics that gather randomly selected citizens to discuss salient public issues with the aim of generating some kind of ‘uptake’ in the broader political system. Political theorists have addressed the pros and cons of such innovations. Nevertheless, little is known about the citizens’ perspective on such mini-publics and on their role in the political system. Drawing on qualitative in-depth interviews, this article scrutinizes participants’ expectations. Findings show that they are motivated by internal expectations (desire of sociability, learning, and civic duty) and external expectations (presence and voice). Participants fundamentally perceive mini publics as a way to enrich the linkage between voters and their representatives, without forsaking the logic of electoral delegation. This work suggests that citizens may have complex and evolving conceptions of democracy.

Police Reform Through an Administrative Lens: Revisiting the Justice Department’s Pattern or Practice Initiative

The U.S. Department of Justice’s “pattern or practice” initiative has been used to address systemic police misconduct in cities like Ferguson, Los Angeles, and Baltimore. Despite its clear relevance to administrative theory building and the practice of organizational change, the subject remains almost entirely unknown to public administration scholars. This article is designed to serve as an introduction to pattern or practice reform and a detailed agenda for future scholastic and practical contribution, with focus on three areas where administrative scholars could be of particular insight: (a) public personnel management, discretion, and accountability; (b) the influence of legal principles on the management of public bureaucracies; and (c) representative democracy and federalism. Engagement with the issue not only gives administrative scholars a voice on an increasingly salient public issue, but also would add depth and a much-needed perspective to management of such an important policy initiative.

Public Anthropology in 2015:Charlie Hebdo, Black Lives Matter, Migrants, and More

In this review essay, I focus on how anthropologists have addressed salient public issues such as the European refugee and migrant crisis, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the attack on the Paris office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Public anthropology relies on slow ethnography and fast responses to breaking news stories. It is theoretically informed but reaches out to audiences beyond the academy. Drawing on proliferating anthropological contributions to news media and blogs, as well as scholarly articles and books, I explore how anthropologists today counter grand narratives such as the “clash of civilizations”; how they grapple with risky popular misconceptions of culture, difference, and suffering; and how they surface less visible forms of compassion, care, and solidarity that have long sustained our species. The challenges of this era of growing polarization and anti-intellectualism appear to have energized rather than quieted public anthropology. [public anthropology, Charlie Hebdo,Black Lives Matter, migrants, year in review]

Public Deliberation with Climate Change: Opening up or Closing down Policy Options?

The principle of public participation is increasingly recognized as central for effective climate governance, although underpinning assumptions about what constitutes participation are not always clearly articulated. This article inquires into the challenges faced when lay citizens are asked to engage in deliberative ‘mini‐publics’ geared towards providing input into climate policy. While advocates claim that these innovative forums improve collective decision making by creating the conditions for a socially diverse constituency to learn about and deliberate on salient public issues, critics caution that the democratic potential of deliberative initiatives can be compromised from the outset by a deeper set of assumptions that position public meanings as the domain of expert institutions. Rather than opening up public issues to diverse meanings, mini‐publics can inadvertently close down public debate where only expert issue framings are considered valid, reasonable and credible. The admirable objective to include lay publics in climate policy can be limited in practice by a tendency to frame climate change as an inherently expert‐based issue. Defining the discussions as the exclusive preserve of experts can implicitly preclude wider public involvement, in turn limiting the knowledge and perspectives available for policy makers.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Most of the literature on courts in the post-Communist region assumes that a powerful judiciary is indispensable in the establishment of the rule of law. This assumption stems from the claim that only assertive and independent courts can constrain incumbent politicians and prevent them from acting above the law to further their own interests. Scholars applauded the bravery of the first Russian Constitutional Court, which challenged Boris Yeltsin and bemoaned the reluctance of the second one to challenge Vladimir Putin.1 They criticized the passivity of the Ukrainian Constitutional Court and praised the unparalleled activism of the Hungarian Constitutional Court as well as the unexpected activism of the Bulgarian Constitutional Court.2This article seeks to allay the enthusiasm for post-Communist judicial empowerment by showing that sometimes a powerful judiciary can threaten the rule of law. More specifically, the article uses an analytic narrative approach to demonstrate that the powerful Bulgarian Constitutional Court has fanned the flames of a war of attrition between the executive and the ordinary judiciary. There are no winners in this war of institutions (as the conflict is often dubbed in the Bulgarian press), only the occasional Pyrrhic victory. In large part due to this inter-institutional conflict, Bulgaria has become a poster child for failed judicial reforms among the post-Communist members of the European Union.Bulgaria's experience should serve as a cautionary tale for those post-Soviet states that are most advanced in their democratic transitions and also subject to EU pressure to advance the rule of law via the strengthening of their judiciary. This group, of course, includes the Baltics, Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine. While a measure of judicial independence is always desirable, judicial empowerment should not be pursued as a panacea. The Bulgarian war of institutions demonstrates that a powerful judiciary can carry potential negative externalities.Executive-Judicial Conflict and the Perils of Judicial Empowerment in BulgariaCourts are powerful when they have the jurisdiction to intervene in salient public issues, the discretion to deliver rulings of significant impact, and the authority to make powerful actors comply with their decisions.3 By all of these measures, Bulgarian courts (both the ordinary judiciary and the Constitutional Court) are powerful.4 However, Bulgaria is far from having consolidated the rule of law. On the contrary, the Bulgarian judiciary has not tackled corruption and organized crime. At best, is inefficient; at worst, corrupt. It is wildly unpopular with the public, which believes that the courts promote special private interests rather than justice. Annual reports, issued by the EU for the past decade, have criticized several Bulgarian cabinets for failing to push through the necessary judicial reforms. After the seeds of the EU enlargement policy failed to produce tangible results, in 2008 the EU resorted curtailed over 500 million euro in funding that Bulgaria was scheduled to receive.Instead of working together to fix the obvious problem, the two branches of the Bulgarian government have been locked in a bitter conflict for most of the post-Communist period. The executive has made numerous attempts to reduce judicial unaccountability and inefficiency through institutional changes. Every time a new draft of the 2001 Judicial Power Act (the law on the institutional organization of the judiciary) enters parliament, however, the judiciary cries foul and denounces the executive for its purported assault on judicial independence. Often, the judiciary also responds with rulings that undermine the government's policy program. Many of the battles end up in the Constitutional Court, which has inspired a trend toward the judicialization of Bulgarian politics, as the Constitutional Court invariably sides with the ordinary judiciary. The EU, in the meantime, keeps complaining-and rightfully so-that judicial reform is not producing any tangible results. …

Intra‐Organizational Constraints on Churches' Public Witness

We examine the effects of some oft‐overlooked influences on clergy public speech, an important component of a church's public witness. While there are many studies of denominational conflict, few studies connect denominational‐level conflict with the ways in which clergy address salient public issues to their congregations. We also explore the impact that the presence of a congregant who has struggled with his or her sexuality, that is, the contact hypothesis, has on clergy speech. We test these ideas using 2004 survey data from clergy in Columbus, Ohio concerning their speech on the state's constitutional ban on gay marriage. We find that these intra‐organizational constraints shape opinions that in turn affect speech, tempering indirectly the ability of clergy to present concerns about the proposed ban.

Forces and issues in the revival of interest in self-care: impetus for redirection in health.

Most health and medical care is provided by families and individuals to themselves. Self-care has become a salient public issue because of the emergence of chronic diseases as leading causes of death and disability; a new awareness of the limitations of conventional medical care; and social changes which emphasize greater personal control. Challenges arise in definition of professional roles in relation to organized self-care efforts, economic implications, and development of appropriate social policies. A negative potential exists for exploitation by interests which would limit movements for more equitable and higher quality health services, but should not obscure the positive potential for a strengthened partnership in health between the lay and professional worlds.