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The main objective of this book has been to review the theoretical, political and societal implications of participatory governance. Before turning to the latter two of these, let us first try to come up with some preliminary theoretical conclusions. We have found participatory governance to be located somewhere between theories of democratic government and theories of governance. On the one hand, participatory governance makes mandatory an extension of the theory of democracy taking account of both the format and the logics of the new type of polity shaping the European political space. Klaus-Dieter Wolf’s discussion of the legitimacy of governance beyond the state brought us towards the idea that the specific milieu of governance beyond the state is more conducive to deliberative democracy than to majority voting. However, the question of how to operationalize the idea of deliberative democracy is far from being solved. On the other hand, the notion of participatory governance has confronted us with the need to change our ideas about citizenship. More precisely, the transition from a traditional context of democratic control towards a context which almost unavoidably suffers accountability deficits involves a parallel transition from the concept of citizen to something else. At this point, we have elaborated on the notion of holder as the collective embodiment of participatory governance arrangements at the European and at other levels.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the way in which archives were accessed and analyzed using a particular framework. Research into the development of child welfare and protection social work in Ireland will be used for the purpose of illustration. While the original research related to developments from 1862–1991, this paper will concentrate on the role of female philanthropists and female social workers from 1900–1950. In this short presentation, I wish to begin with a brief outline of the theoretical framework underpinning the archival research carried out. The challenges of firstly accessing and then analyzing archival material are discussed in this context. Following on from this, I illustrate the complexities of archival research through use of a case study from my own research referred to above. I conclude with some pointers for effective and valid archival research in historical study.

The paper represents an attempt to construct a partial concept of the emergence and maintenance of an environmental movement under critical conditions — the collapse of state socialism and transition to wild capitalism accompanied by a systemic crisis of society and its basic values. The underpinning of the proposed concept is the idea that an environmental movement as a collective social actor is reproduced in interactions with a context of different kind and scale. The more the movement’s contexts become turbulent and hostile, the stronger its shift from the production of collective actions towards the reproduction of its own organizations and networks. The paper examines the major elements of this reproduction process: key values, the type of social reflection, the nature of the resources and the mode of their mobilization, the space of economic, social and political opportunities, the degree of the integration of the movement’s organizations into global organizations and networks.

This paper focuses on the use of referendums that decide on the future status of a given territory: namely whether or not such a territory will become independent. I first identify two fundamentally different sub-types of such a referendum: the referendum-as-a-weapon, which is a device used by political elites to augment their own powers, and the referendum-as-a-solution, which is a device agreed to by all sides as part of a conflict resolution process. Empirical evidence appears to show that the referendum-as-a-weapon is more frequently used in a non-democratic context. Moreover, the referendum-as-a-solution is rarely used after a period of violent conflict, despite its potential for conflict resolution. Using examples from the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia, I argue that, far from being a solution to fundamental conflicts within society, the referendum-as-a-weapon, when used to decide the status of a given territory, can often exacerbate such conflicts. I conclude that if such a referendum is held in deeply divided societies in which state institutions are weak and the state’s capacity to maintain a monopoly over the use of force is challenged, there is a high risk of civil war.

In this paper I explore the relationship between education and social capital in the context of the ageing of many of the world’s populations, including almost all European countries. This major demographic trend requires a fresh approach to lifelong learning. I present a new model for the structuring of the educational lifecourse, drawing on work carried out as part of a UK enquiry into the future of lifelong learning. I present the case for analysing the distribution of learning opportunities by four different age groups, but I also argue that learning provides important bonds between different generations.

The majority of European universities have undergone a management reform that emphasises economic efficiency. This could be expected to offer opportunities for implementing top-down measures to promote equal opportunities for women and men working in academia. Applying these measures in practice turns out, however, to be difficult, especially in a university context. In this paper, I draw on my practical experience as the Equal Opportunities Officer at the University of Zurich and on my research on setting up a Gender Studies Graduate School to derive four insights that should be taken into account when considering ways to promote equal opportunities in an academic environment: 1. Pay attention to the “power of veto” in academia; 2. Remember nothing will happen without bottom-up support; 3. Take into account the power of tacit knowledge; and 4. Discover how particular gender equality strategies are accepted in a given context or considered a matter of taboo in everyday gender knowledge, and then combine these findings with scientific gender knowledge.

This paper will critically examine the latent normative content of approaches to difference in political theory via their conceptions of community and culture. I argue that it is particularly important and interesting to do so in the context of ‘Canadian political theory,’ at least in respect to its dominant strand – here I have the pioneering work of Will Kymlicka, Charles Taylor and the wide landscape of their philosophical legacy in mind – because it is widely regarded as being at the leading edge of international scholarship on multiculturalism and accommodation of minorities in Western polities.

The audience of a book written in German will obviously be mostly composed of people living and working in one of the German speaking countries. It may seem strange therefore to come across a chapter which is not only written in English but which relates to an Eng-lish context. Nevertheless, the contextualization is important as the subject of the chapter, formative assessment (FA), is increasingly entering international education discourses as a good idea (see for example OECD 2004) whose conceptual development and empirical justification emanates from Britain. It relates to the theme of this book, since, from some of the claims made for it, one might assume that the practice of FA necessarily leads to a pedagogy of equity. By tracing its conceptual development within its political context, I am aiming to disrupt this assumption. I shall suggest that there is no single conceptualization of FA, but rather that its central ideas have been appropriated in different ways according to perceptions about teaching-learning and the way that educational change is enacted through the relationship of policy to research. While many advocates of Assessment for Learning (AfL) the slogan under which FA has recently become better known, contend that it is nec-essarily a way of improving learning, my work has suggested that this is an over-simplification. I will suggest that FA has a great deal to offer as a pedagogy of equity, but I hope to be offering my German, Austrian and Swiss readers some ideas about the condi-tions under which this may be possible and those under which it may not. As it involves teachers and students responding to students‟ work, FA emphasizes both interaction and the making of judgements. In this lies its power and potential for learning, but this does not accrue straightforwardly. I shall argue that the possibilities of formative assessment derive from the way that it is practised and the way that it is theorized. Because the whole paper is a tour around the ambiguities of FA as, amongst other things, a dynamic set of social peda-gogic practices or a powerful educational technology, I shall not begin with a definition. Instead I will beg the reader‟s patience, but assure you that definitions will emerge espe-cially in the second half of the chapter, though even here the many concrete examples which I would like to have included are precluded by lack of space. I can only refer the reader to other publications cited in the chapter.

In the field of Social Network Analysis various concepts for the identification of subgroups in relational empirical networks as well as different theoretical aspects linked to different kinds of subgroups have received a lot of attention over the last years. In this context the problem of the consequences that arise from the choice for a certain grouping procedure for the object under investigation (e.g. the process of the spread of information) are rarely addressed. Hence, this is not very surprising since process data, that would allow a respective examination, are rather scarce. The data presented in this paper give this seldom opportunity and permit (at least rudimentary) the confrontation of a chosen grouping and the real course of the process. Such an examination is as well important for the decision on an adequate grouping procedure as it is for the identification of criteria which might be used for the description of the information flow within and between groups. Under some circumstances, a large part of the course of the information process may already be explained by a certain grouping.

This paper provides an analysis of the context and the preconditions of evaluations in the area of gender equality policies in tertiary education.1 As this article will show, the process of evaluating gender equality policies in higher education is embedded in a contradictory context of interests and conflicts, of ensuring quality and allocating resources. Nonetheless, evaluations are becoming an increasingly important topic, not least because they constitute one of several instruments used to ensure quality in gender equality policies. In addition, evaluations are, or at least can be, instrumental in political processes and political decisions within a university. This is true for evaluations in all fields but specific fears about evaluation arise where gender equality policies are concerned. There are several reasons for this. One is that evaluations could be used to cut spending. Another reason is that evaluations might also be used to legitimize earlier political decisions that were insensitive to gender equality considerations. A third possible reason is that some gender equality policy and gender research professionals have encountered evaluations which did not take the particular conditions of gender equality policies into account due to a lack of knowledge and experience in the field (Widmer/Levy 2006, Maurer/Wecker 2003: 24).

In this paper I want to examine what some have seen as one of the most significant issues in global politics at the beginning of the twenty-first century: the widespread (re)emergence of religiously-motivated political actors in the context of post-cold war international relations and globalisation. I will focus chiefly on two contemporary transnational religious actors — the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the Roman Catholic Church — and assess claims that such actors are a threat to states’ sovereignty.

The aim of this paper is to give an outline of the way in which women participated in building up social welfare between the beginning of the century and the end of the Second World War. The focus will be on the institutionalization of professional social work in Portugal by referring to the organizations of the women’s movement (the feminists2, the Catholic women and the first female politicians). I will show how social work became a field for new professions for women in the 1930s and 1940s and how the Organization of Catholic Women (Mulheres Catolicas) contributed to the professionalization of social work. In this context the question must be asked in what way new possibilities were being opened up for Portuguese women.

The current essay attempts to render explicit and analyze some of the basic risk factors of Bulgaria’s socio-political development as of 2002. As one can see, the condensed conclusion is that the overall risk is that the network of state institutions may fail to perform some of its essential functions, partly due to internal, societal factors. The state of politics and society today should, however, be placed in the context of the entire post-1989 development. Therefore, the introduction indicates basic characteristics of Bulgaria’s transition stages. Thereafter, we concentrate on the proper topic of the paper, the risk factors of the post-transition period.

This paper has been developed in the context of a wider ESRC funded project called ‘The School English Project’, developed by an inter-university group of academics from the Universities of Keele, Southampton and the Institute of Education, London. As the Subjectivity in the School Curriculum Group, we have been working together for some years to attempt to unravel the complex interplay of policies, structures, cultures, values, and pedagogy taking place in the classroom context. Our current project, from which the data presented here is drawn, focuses on the production of English as a curriculum subject in 3 multi-ethnic urban schools across 9 UK classrooms, looking at the positioning of the students as subjects both learning English and as being, or becoming, themselves, English. In Bernstein’s (1990) terms, we are looking at what is being relayed in the English classroom, including particular constructions of ‘Englishness’.

In 1954, a descendant of the last Tjaube king Mankoto, named Rudolf Haushiku dictated to a teacher of Shambiu a lengthy text in the local dialect, which he claimed to be a historic account or chronicle of the former owners of the country, the so-called waTjaube. This text was handed over to the late Father Bernhard Hartmann of the Roman Catholic Mission at Shambiu, who in his turn passed a copy to the present writer in 1965. If this text is really a reliable report of the past as his author claims, it could play a key role in reconstructing the history of the whole Kavango area. However, the text shows many features which make us cast some doubt on its historic reliability. In this paper, we shall therefore pursue the question whether the contents of the text are true in the sense of historic truth or whether it is fictional in the sense of oral literature. In our scrutiny, we apply a twofold method. At first, we shall analyse the inherent structural and stylistic criteria of the Tjaube text including motives, types and themes within the context of the fictional oral literature of the same area. In a second step, we shall compare the textual criteria with undoubted chronicles of the same region and, in addition, with a chronicle of East Africa. By this combination of comparative and contrastive methods, we hope to clear up the true nature of the Tjaube text.

The increasing complexity in the environment of today’s organizations has challenged the organizational system significantly. Due in large part to the emergence of conglomerates and multinational corporations, the communication subsystem of the typical organization has had to evolve as well. This paper begins with an introduction to the problem of a turbulent, adversarial environment and the concomitant need to develop a theoreticalrather than descriptive-body of knowledge in public relations to help practitioners cope with that external context.

The term confessionalism as used in this paper calls for an explanation. It originated as a recent construct introduced into English usage by students of Lebanon’s history and politics. In that context the term denotes a political system which recognizes and acknowledges the power and importance of communal loyalties and seeks to regulate communal conflict by distributing political power and administrative positions according to an accepted formula. (1)