This open access book examines how digital technologies are used to promote citizen participation in democratic urban development. It assesses the emergence, use, applicability and functions of ...digital modes of citizen participation in multiple cities around the world, where political regimes invite ordinary citizens to partake in policy processes through information technologies. The book also explores these initiatives alongside issues of democracy, social justice and power. It is an essential reference for practitioners, policymakers and academics interested in the relationship between citizen participation, technology and urban governance.
Participatory budgeting (PB) has been one of the most popular local democratic reforms in Latin America in recent decades. This article examines what happened to PB when it was scaled up to the state ...level and integrated in a participatory system in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (2011–14). Using theories of deliberative systems, multichannel participation, ‘venue shopping’ (the practice of seeking the most favourable policy venue) and countervailing power, as well as a multimethod research design, we explain how the systems approach allowed for both deliberation and direct democracy and mobilised new sectors to participate online. However, on the negative side, the different participation channels undermined each other. Social movements migrated to other spaces, leaving the budgeting process open to control by well-established, powerful public-sector groups.
Area-based initiatives (ABIs) set out to improve livability and living conditions in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods by making use of extensive citizen participation. ABIs are often criticized for ...constituting a form of undemocratic tokenism; this creates the illusion that residents have a say over urban development because citizens are only given consultative power. This paper takes a different perspective. We follow the ‘systemic turn’ in democratic theory, which addresses how direct citizen participation can reduce problems of inclusion, communication, and collective action created by defects in representative democracy. We find evidence that our case, the Grønland-Tøyen ABI in Oslo, Norway, at its best, is able to include new, previously marginalized groups in formulating a collective will that eventually impact city government policy. We argue that these cases show the potential of ABIs to enhance government effectiveness, as the participatory process creates preferable solutions to those produced by city experts. We also argue that it is the narrow scope of the participation schemes, rather than the lack of power devolved to citizens, that limits the ABIs contribution to urban democracy. This hinders the ABI's ability to address social justice and puts the legitimacy of the participatory arrangements at risk.
•The paper argues ABIs have the potential to enhance urban democracy by including marginalized groups in decision-making.•The Grønland-Tøyen ABI in Oslo includes marginalized perspectives in policy formulation through targeted recruitment.•The narrow scope of participation schemes limits ABIs' ability to address social justice issues.•The paper argues that this narrow scope, rather than limited citizen power, hinder ABIs contribution to democracy.
Is transition support a hurdle to getting a job? Legard, Sveinung; Halrynjo, Sigtona; Danielsen Floer, Kristin Elisabeth
Scandinavian journal of disability research,
01/2016, Letnik:
18, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This article investigates the impact of school to work transition support for young disabled adults. We specifically examine the claims of what we have termed the 'hurdle theory' of transition ...support, which dominates Norwegian disability research. The fundamental assumption of this theory is that there is a negative relationship between transition support and employment outcomes. We use a cross-sectional sample of 245 young disabled Norwegian adults to examine this assumption, and find that transition support in the form of labour market programme (LMP) participation is negatively associated with employment outcomes, even when we control for other significant background variables. However, due to limits in our data and the non-arbitrary nature of transition support, we cannot rule out that there might be other explanatory variables that account for this association. Therefore, we also point to other potential explanations of the negative association and research designs better suited to investigate these claims.
E-participation research has mainly been concerned with the spread of e-participation technologies, but less with why some government organizations choose to use digital tools to consult citizens ...(e-consultation) whereas others go further and include them in the decision-making processes (e-decision making). This article is an in-depth, comparative case-study of the adoption of e-participation platforms in Oslo, Melbourne and Madrid, and develops an alternative explanatory framework using theories of institutional entrepreneurship and change. It shows that conventional adoption theory – focusing on resource slack, socio-economic development, competition and top-down mandates – is not able to account for the differences between these cases, and argues that the degree of e-participation should be understood as an outcome of the type and agenda of change agents, the level of institutional discretion, the strength of institutional defenders, and the resources of the change agents.
The aim of this article is, through empirical material from Norway, to grasp a particular form of non-profit professionalization spurred by the incorporation of policies of service user involvement ...in health care and in social services. By drawing on perspectives from the research on professionalization, our ambition is to increase the understanding of the nature of this form of professionalization, how it differs from other kinds of professionalization in the non-profit sector and why it achieves its distinctive features. We denote the professionalization of service users' work as representatives, as the making of 'professional amateurs' to capture its paradoxical nature – that while the process of professionalization resembles occupational professionalization, the voluntary workers who are becoming professionalized are still amateurs. It is professionalization in the form of increasing the competence of the voluntary workers, not professionalization through transforming voluntary work tasks into occupations and paid employment. It is a form of competence fundamentally resting on personal experience with the issues with which the work is concerned, not a competence to be achieved solely through education and professional training.
Is transition support a hurdle to getting a job? Legard, Sveinung; Halrynjo, Sigtona; Floer, Kristin Elisabeth
Scandinavian journal of disability research : SJDR,
2016, Letnik:
18, Številka:
1
Journal Article
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