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Using ethnographic research from Pakistan, this paper argues that social accountability programmes that overlook the role of intermediaries in clientelistic states risk undermining the wider democratising projects they seek to support. It proposes a theory of 'isomorphic activism' that describes how these public authorities appropriate others' opportunities to participate in politics and, in the process, undermine democratic norms. Isomorphic activism is shown to be more likely when programmes are based on ideals of civil society that render activism a technical exercise, depoliticise it and blind donors to power inequalities. The challenges the paper highlights are important given calls for development programmes to change by whom and how politics is done, whilst granting local ownership to participants and demonstrating value for money. They should also be of interest to those concerned by the spread of reductive views of civil society activism within donor organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the literature on political corporate social responsibility (PCSR) by considering the forward‐looking, political responsibilities of corporations in relation to structural injustice, based on a critical engagement with Iris Marion Young's Social Connection Model (SCM) of responsibility. Although Young's SCM serves as a key reference point in the PCSR literature, engagement with her work tends to be superficial and lacks critical engagement. By offering a more developed engagement with Young's SCM, this paper addresses several themes that have been highlighted as being insufficiently developed in the PCSR literature. In particular, this paper considers (i) the grounds for corporate political responsibility in relation to structural injustice rather than globalization; (ii) the scope of corporate political responsibilities vis‐à‐vis other actors; and (iii) the role of power in relation to deliberative processes and in relation to scope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effect of state‐society relations (SSR) in the industrial sector on the sustainable economic growth of post‐Revolution Tunisia. The empirical part of the paper depends mainly on qualitative data collected from fieldwork interviews with the most important actors and publications of civil society organizations. The paper suggests the presence of state capture as the defining characteristic of SSR in post‐Revolution Tunisia. The combination of having powerful tycoons, weaker state, and ineffectively organized social actors produced conditions that harmed sustainability. These settings allowed tycoons to violate environmental regulations and prevented Green innovation through the adoption of Green technologies. Yet, factors such as low value‐added creation, increased labor‐intensity, and low environmental awareness or prioritization all interact with state capture to lower sustainability. In those sectors where tycoons are active and dominant, competing social actors are incapable of effectively exploiting the presence of a freer political system, ultimately failing to successfully organize resisting coalitions, as evident in the textile sector. While higher resistance is witnessed where tycoons are not dominant as was the case in the phosphate sector, tycoons could still use the situation to their advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil society is seen as a key actor within and for global development. However, spatial representations of civil society within the global development landscape are dominated by scale, place, and verticality, neglecting more relational understandings of civic participation. Engaging with archipelagic thinking, drawn from the work of Édouard Glissant, Derek Walcott, and others, this paper makes a case for thinking about civil society through archipelagic relational ontologies. By employing an archipelagic lens to empirical material from research with civil society groups in Barbados and Grenada, the paper explores the relational creativity and metamorphic transformations that are part of civil society action. Utilising an archipelagic lens to think about civil society organising emphasises how civil society activity is produced, performed, and operationalised through creative relational arrangements that span (and contest) dominant spatial categories. For civil society actors this 'metamorphic creativity' – the crafting of these relations, the bringing together of 'bits and pieces', and the transforming and reworking of these relations to produce new forms and spaces of civic activity – is key to sustaining civil society and their own civic identities. This illustrates the creative, yet fragile nature of civil society, concluding that through these metamorphic relations civil society actors foster new civic spaces and identities, yet civil society simultaneously may also be constituted through, and potentially (re)produce (new) hierarchies of power. Civil society is seen as a key actor within and for global development. However, spatial representations of civil society within the global development landscape tend to neglect relational understandings of civic participation. This paper engages with archipelagic thinking to explore the importance of creative relationalities for civil society organising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climatic changes can cause unpredictability in flood regimes that traditional flood risk management (FRM) approaches may struggle with. Therefore, flood resilience is seen as a supplementation to these approaches, putting a larger emphasis on flood acceptance and minimising consequences. An (emergent) group contributing towards flood resilience is civil society. This paper examines how civil society contributions can be furthered and guided in the Netherlands as well as exploring potential limitations in doing so. To achieve this, England is used as a good practice example due to a more developed and defined role for civil society being present here. Data were collected on both actual (England and the Netherlands) and potential (The Netherlands) civil society contributions. These were compared to identify potential avenues for Dutch civil society contributions to flood resilience that can be further investigated. The research shows that the most promising avenues are improving advocacy from citizens, improving local flood awareness and developing relationships between FRM authorities and existing citizen groups that can be harnessed and mobilised to support flood resilience. Additionally, the research also provides insights into potential limitations for transferring resilience approaches from one context to another beyond the cases discussed in this publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key functions of environmental law is to amplify the voice of those seeking to hold the powerful to account for their environmental performance. Now that the UK has exited the EU's legal and institutional architecture, we turn to domestic law to glimpse the future of environmental accountability. This paper reviews the measures in the Environment Bill. Accountability measures are only ever as effective as the energy of those making use of them. This paper argues that environmental civil society needs to act strategically and collectively to shape the institutional arrangements provided by the (hoped for) Environment Act 2021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyze the changing nationalist narratives of golden age in the Balkans. By zooming in on the case studies of the late nineteenth‐ and early twenty‐first‐century South‐East European societies, I explain how and why the images of the mythical past are articulated differently in the two historical periods. I argue that in the nineteenth century golden age rhetoric was mostly a top‐down phenomenon centered on transforming Balkan peasantry into the loyal members of their new nation‐states. By the early twenty‐first century, this process has reached its institutional limits and the golden age narratives have become a bottom‐up phenomenon: the key agents of their creation and dissemination are members of civil society, social movements, and ordinary people. I focus on the structural processes that underpin this change to explain the historical dynamics of nationalisms. The paper is based on the qualitative text analysis using nineteenth‐century and early twentieth‐century archival materials and the documents from the contemporary mass media, official records, educational materials, and popular culture in the Balkans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impacts of three cash transfer programs, one for orphans and vulnerable children (CT‐OVC), one for older persons (OPCT) and a universal social pension (Inua Jamii Senior Citizens' Scheme), for citizen‐state relations in areas of Kenya that experienced high levels of electoral violence in 2007. Drawing on 40 interviews with civil servants and community leaders and 16 focus group discussions with both beneficiaries and non‐beneficiaries of the cash transfer programs conducted across two sub‐counties in Nakuru, this paper argues that the central state, in the wake of post‐electoral violence, effectively mobilised state power to make and enforce geographic targeting decisions down to the village level in an effort to mitigate ethnic tensions and strengthen citizen‐state relations. The paper further argues that the success of such localised distribution in strengthening citizen‐state relations has been limited due to incomplete program coverage, limited information about targeting procedures, and citizens' prior experiences with the state which collectively undermine citizens' perceptions of inclusion and exclusion at the local level. These findings are brought into conversation with other research on cash transfers and citizenship across Kenya to parse out the ways in which the impacts of cash transfer programs for citizen‐state relations are mediated by state infrastructural power, citizens' prior experiences with the state, and key aspects of program design. The paper also examines the implications of these findings for other countries across Africa that have experienced generalised electoral violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sweden has long been regarded as a 'model' for societal development. Recently, with the rise of an anti‐immigrant party and negative news coverage of crime, the image of a progressive Sweden has frayed. Positive models for societal development have existed in the past and included the United States during the heyday of modernization theory. This paper argues that positive models are useful, partly to crystallize options among the much‐debated varieties of capitalism, and partly as ideals which can be held up by social thinkers and publics as aspirations for the good society. This paper reviews the evolution of the Swedish model from a 'middle way' between Soviet communism and American capitalism to a welfare state under strain. It also examines how the Swedish model has been reinforced by its high international standing. The perceptions of Sweden abroad and domestically have changed in recent years. While these perceptions have correctly identified challenges not just for Sweden but also for other countries with similar problems, Sweden's government and civil society may be able to address them. The paper explores the lessons that can be learned from the current shortcomings and potential renewal of the strengths of the Swedish model, including its wider influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016, debates about the localisation of humanitarian aid have intensified. Dominant discourse focuses on reform, although calls for the broader decolonisation of aid are mounting. This paper examines the impact of neoliberal‐inspired competition that incentivises institutional expansion and clashes with localisation. It introduces the concept of the 'conflict paradox' to illustrate how armed conflict and restricted humanitarian access for international actors can both empower and disempower local and national humanitarian actors (LNHAs). These themes are then demonstrated using case studies of Myanmar, Somalia, and Somaliland, revealing the potential for LNHAs to demand humanitarian system change, as well as the challenges to doing so. The paper concludes that for localisation to progress towards decolonisation, fundamental ideological shifts away from the neoliberal competitive mindset are essential. Notably, there is a need to move from low‐quality localisation (subcontracting) to high‐quality localisation grounded in solidarity and an emancipatory agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Queer refugees are misfits in the global political economy of migration. While international human rights law has provided some room for queer acceptance, queer refugees face organised abandonment—marginality, erasure, and invisibility—as they attempt to survive in the face of ongoing displacement. This paper explores queer refugee survival in Nairobi, Cape Town, and Paris, and examines the netted practices of the state, non‐state actors, and civil society embedded in a landscape of heteronormativity and anti‐migrant sentiment. In so doing, this paper emphasises queerness as a form of precarity inseparable from the overarching violence of race, class, and capital. With this critique in mind, queer refugee survival is constrained by the lack of access to shelter, community, and work‐related social reproduction. In short, queer refugees face deeper marginality than their cis‐gendered and heterosexual counterparts as they attempt to survive in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of DOMES: Digest of Middle East Studies is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Policy & Internet is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Swiss Political Science Review is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the new global development goals guiding the work of mainstream development actors until 2030. The shift to "sustainable development" marks a response to climate change and constitutes a rebranding of international development as global development, prominently by the UN, World Bank, and IMF. In this paper, I draw from recent fieldwork in Bolivia to question what is being globalised. In response to calls for northern geographers to better attend to new forms of coloniality and knowledge production, I take seriously indigenous agendas for development, land, and sovereignty to critique Agenda 2030 with decolonial territorial agendas and theories of environmental justice. I argue that the implementation of Agenda 2030 has reconfigured the borderlands between international development and indigenous territorial agendas. In a drastic reworking of the "boomerang effect," development infrastructure is being disconnected from anti‐extractive indigenous territorial politics, as the modes of engagement between states, the private sector, and NGOs are reconfigured by the unifying agenda of sustainable development – weakening both indigenous struggles for territorial sovereignty and the environmental remit of the SDGs. An environmental justice perspective locates the case of the Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro (TIPNIS) Secure case within a bigger struggle between local claims to land and global extractive capital, foregrounding that decolonial agendas for territory are entangled with contemporary extractive capitalism. In seeking consensus between states, the private sector, and civil society, the SDGs minimise the sites of conflict that instruct "sustainable development," revealing both a critical weakness of the SDGs and a pathway towards their greater effectiveness. The 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the new global development goals guiding the work of mainstream development actors until 2030 and constituting a rebranding of international development as global development, prominently by the UN, World Bank and IMF. In this paper, I draw from recent fieldwork in Bolivia and take seriously indigenous agendas for development, land, and sovereignty, critiquing Agenda 2030 with decolonial territorial agendas and theories of environmental justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The launch of the European Pillar of Social Rights occurred at a phase of endogenous critical juncture for Social Europe. By analyzing the Pillar's formulation and adoption process, we investigate to what extent the European Commission used the involvement of civil society and policy responsiveness to foster change in the modes of governance and legitimize stronger intervention in the social sphere, by re‐launching the methods of coordination introduced in the 1990s. Methodologically, we rely on a content analysis of EU policy documents before and after the public consultations, a content analysis of over 60 position papers and on interviews with policy actors. We find that despite increased openness and responsiveness, the Pillar initiative did not allow to alter the predominance of 'soft law' routes and patterns of intergovernmentalism characterizing the governance of EU social policy, a result that further qualifies the conditions that lead (endogenous) critical junctures to generate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is fierce controversy in the United States over whether parents should be able to choose their children's schools and/or curriculum. To discuss the pedagogical arguments inherent in this question, Todd Alan Price and Ruprecht Mattig begin with the classical concept of Bildung as developed by Wilhelm von Humboldt around 1800. Next, they compare Humboldt's ideas with the ideas of John Stuart Mill and Milton Friedman, who stand in the tradition of liberal thought, as Mill was strongly influenced by Humboldt and Friedman, in turn, by Mill. Finally, they consider Friedman's role as a central figure in the school choice movement, and are thus able to trace a line of thought from Humboldt to actual controversies. Price and Mattig's analysis here shows that the liberalism of Humboldt, Mill, and Friedman revolves around diversity and choice in education. Moreover, it traces that in the process of translating, translocating, and transcontextualizing Humboldt's original thought through Mill to Friedman, the complexity of arguments about education and the role of parents and the state in a liberal society has been unduly reduced. The authors conclude the paper by proposing a principle for thinking about the relationship between different educational institutions in democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid expansion of oil palm plantations in Indonesia has generated a large and growing number of conflicts between rural communities and palm oil companies over, mainly, access to land. Employing a detailed documentation of 150 such conflicts in four Indonesian provinces, this paper assesses and evaluates how local, national and international NGOs help communities address their grievances. We find that rights‐based activism characterises only a small portion of NGOs working on land conflicts, as a more common strategy revolves around political brokerage. NGOs generally fail to achieve significant impact, with the partial exception of (those connected with) international NGOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: Guidelines establish a framework for how therapeutics and vaccines are developed, assessed and approved. They influence which innovations are likely to be approved in the European Union (EU), and thus, they have an impact on the pipeline decisions taken by research‐based industry. This study analyses the level of acceptance for changes suggested by stakeholders within the authoring groups at the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Methods: We looked at 87 guidelines from EMA Working Parties (WPs) launched for consultation between 2013 and 2017. Acceptance of stakeholder proposals and the time between the end of consultation and guideline adoption were studied as well as the openness of different WPs to accept changes. Results: Adoption of a guideline after the close of public consultation took at least 4 months, with an average of 12–16 months. The number of accepted and rejected comments were nearly equal across the stakeholders, with government having slightly higher chance for acceptance. Academia and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) had generally higher chances to have their comments accepted for general and indication‐level guidelines. Government and individual companies had highest acceptance for molecule‐level guidelines and trade associations for indication‐level guidelines. Only a third of the comments related to scientific content of the guideline. Conclusion: This pattern of progress in regulatory science at EMA demonstrates the essential and interrelated role of academia, industry, government and civil society—described as the quadruple helix model—to promote establishment of a strong innovation ecosystem in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In societies where civic space is closing, integrity in the civic sector is critical for its sustainability. Where state regulatory frameworks are inadequate, or worse, manipulative, self‐regulation can help defend the sector's integrity and strengthen the ability of civic associations to serve the public and contribute to democracy. This paper describes the strategic role in self‐regulation of a particular type of third sector actor in Mexico, the coordinating body or civic network. A case study of the Mexican Center for Philanthropy (CEMEFI) and its Accreditation in Institutionalization and Transparency project illustrates the contribution of NGO networks in service to the sector, and their key role in diffusion of norms of transparency and accountability within the civic sector and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how dynamics between Brazil's right‐wing populist government and civil and uncivil organizations affected the role of civil organizations, especially rights‐based ones, and Brazil's democratization process. These dynamics contributed to stripping policies of their progressive nature and rejecting the values of diversity, freedom, and equality. Our analysis relies on the inhabited institutions approach to comprehend the role of action, interaction, and meaning in institutionalized spaces. We analyzed two policy fields—gender, sexual, and reproductive rights, and ethnic and racial relations—through documents and in‐depth interviews. Our analysis shows that Bolsonaro's government mobilized mechanisms related to institutional changes, the replacement of actors, and their interactions to inhibit civil society organizations' influence in policy formulation and provision and strengthen the participation of uncivil groups, thereby legitimating conservative ideas and discourses, and closing civic space for NGOs with rights‐based agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A decade ago an exploration of civil society in South Africa, Tajikistan and Argentina highlighted its role in supporting democratization. Despite continuing global autocratic trends since then, South Africa and Argentina have remained vibrant democracies with strong civil societies. Tajikistan, in contrast, remains autocratic, and civil society has apparently weakened in recent years. However, at the grassroots level a combination of traditional grassroots organizations and Internet organizing provides a more complex picture of the relationships between local participation, ties with other civil society organizations, democratization and development. The purpose of this paper is to highlight both these relationships and the contrast between local democratization and national autocracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the actual and potential contributions of community‐led initiatives (CLIs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As examples of self‐determined practical action for sustainability and social justice, CLIs prefigure many of the intended outcomes of the SDGs. Existing evidence shows that CLIs are already contributing, at local scale, to almost all of the SDGs, and achieving particular success in bringing different goals into synergy. However, these achievements are based on ethics, guiding philosophies, issue framings, practical goals and ways of organising that differ significantly from those behind the formulation and delivery of the SDGs. Embracing those differences, and with them greater plurality and ongoing critical self‐reflection, would allow the SDGs to transcend certain self‐limiting contradictions, particularly concerning the role of economic growth. Such a shift in orientation is essential if the SDGs are to move from reinforcing to challenging the root causes of unsustainability and injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A unique model of government and civil society cooperation has emerged in Ukraine since the Revolution of Dignity in 2014 and grew even more important amid the full‐scale invasion of Russia. Recent reforms and teacher professional development in Ukraine build on this model that promotes addressing national‐level challenges in equitable partnerships between government and civil society organisations (CSOs). This paper considers examples and results of their cooperation and draws on: (1) experiences in teacher education—specifically, from the EdWay national platform and the SEE Learning programme, both implemented by EdCamp Ukraine NGO (EdCamp); (2) national sociological studies—specifically, the 2018 study Teach and Learn, and the 2021 Feasibility Study on Opportunities for Social and Emotional Learning in Ukraine; (3) and data from the 2022 case study SEE Learning in Ukraine Through Teachers' Eyes: Before, During, and After the War. Experiences and study data demonstrate the need to support Ukrainian teachers in developing social and emotional skills both for self‐help and for students. These findings align with the requirements of the current New Ukrainian School reform. The authors discuss the potential education CSOs possess in addressing teacher needs for developing emotional and ethical competence and corresponding soft skills. It may be predicted that government and civil sector collaboration will continue to play an important role in the development of education in Ukraine. These expectations are supported by Ukraine's involvement in the 2023 OECD Survey on Social and Emotional Skills where EdCamp is the designated national research centre in Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until the 1990s, secular feminism prevailed in the socialist Balkan countries, while religious feminism appeared only as an exception in the works of certain Catholic theologians. After democratic changes, gender equality was reaffirmed, but there was no dialogue in feminist knowledge production between secular and religious feminists. This paper presents initiatives by religious scholars and activists aimed at overcoming the secular‐religious divide in achieving gender equality. It looks at two key regional initiatives: Believers and Citizens, and the Feminism and Religion online school. These initiatives established collaborations between feminist scholars from various academic disciplines, religions, and worldviews and connected activists from civil society organizations and religious communities. The interreligious and interdisciplinary nature of these initiatives is unique not only in the Balkan region but also in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The North Korean authorities have the responsibility to protect (R2P) their people from starvation. Yet, reports of death from starvation in North Korea have been consistent since the widespread famine during the so‐called "Arduous March." According to Amartya Sen, in a society with massive starvation and food refugees, famine crises are not merely due to food availability decline (FAD). Instead, the dominant variable in such crises is the food entitlement decline (FED) of vulnerable social groups. Therefore, since the repeated failure of the North Korean government to fulfill its responsibility justifies and obliges the international community to act, the "food entitlement" of the North Korean people needs to be further explored from social, economic, and political perspectives to help clarify and validate such international responsibility. Focusing on Kim Jong‐un's leadership since 2012, this paper explores the substance and causes of FAD and FED in North Korea and monitors any changes. To seek effective commitments from the international community, including South Korea, the current research also analyzes the impact of the persistent violation of the people's right to food on the North Korean economic‐social system and political regime, and the ensuing influence on the human rights situation with reference to the cases of Vietnam, China, and Mongolia in terms of the dichotomic social differentiation, beginnings of the civil society, and political change in the late‐communist stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Policy & Internet is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Local governments have led the way on climate action in the United States. While the federal government has largely stood to the side, local governments have made great efforts to adopt policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A large and robust literature in urban politics has explored the variables that influence local government action on climate change in the United States. Issue severity and resident ideological preferences have been identified as two of the most important factors in local climate action. Governments that are more likely to face major impacts from climate, such as coastal communities, and governments serving more liberal residents have both been found to pursue climate policy at higher rates. In this paper we suggest that these relationships are better understood as conditional. We argue that the effect of issue severity will be moderated by ideology. When residents are liberal, issue severity will matter. When residents are conservative, the impact will be muted. We find strong evidence for this hypothesis. Coastal governments and governments that have experienced drought adopt more climate policies, but this is conditional on the ideology of residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes empirically to the international debate on the drivers for the formation of civil society organizations (CSOs) by testing three separate hypotheses: demand, supply and integration. To investigate this question, we analyse the CSO sector in Iraq, which transformed since 2003 from being implicitly banned to being a central pillar of poverty alleviation and social service provision with thousands of formally registered organizations. Using OLS regression analysis with district level and official register data, we examine the geographic distribution of CSOs in relation to poverty levels in Iraq. We find no significant confirmation for demand side drivers that social service providing CSOs form in high poverty districts. Instead, we find strong support for CSO formation in governorate administrative centres, which confirms supply‐side drivers of CSO development. However, we do find some support for a higher concentration of human rights‐based CSOs in high poverty areas. The findings raise important policy implications for the UN Sustainable Development Goal of no poverty in an Iraqi context and internationally, but also how to fund CSOs to meet the demands of the primary recipients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Science Policy & Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper studies collective memory in divided societies. To do so, we begin by studying national memory in civil societies, where the nature of this memory is hegemonic. We use Gramsci's concept of hegemony to explain national memories in civil societies and differentiate it from that of contested memories in divided places. In order to explain memory in divided societies, we apply Ibn Khaldoun's concepts of 'aAsabiyah and Istitba'. Societies deeply divided tend to have contested memories at two levels: within a community which creates an internal other and outside the community where groups compete to impose their memory at the state level. We use examples from Lebanon, Northern Ireland and Bosnia‐Herzeogvina to explain the memory dynamics from a Khaldounian perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annals of Public & Cooperative Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

From climate change to potentially disruptive technologies to the COVID‐19 pandemic, our era is characterised by unprecedented complexity and uncertainty. Philosophy has always been a promising tool for facing puzzling scenarios. Yet, contemporary philosophy may not be able to successfully face our era's unprecedented complexity and uncertainty. On the one hand, contemporary philosophy results from a kind of hypertrophisation of logos restricting the forms of rationality legitimately usable. On the other hand, our era's unprecedented complexity and uncertainty seem to require not only restricted forms of rationality, such as logic and computation, but also other forms of rationality underdeveloped in our philosophical tradition, such as wisdom. This paper proposes reasons why increasing our focus on wisdom may help us face our unprecedentedly complex and uncertain era in four respects as philosophers: when educating our students; when publishing our work; when talking to civil society; and when acting in our technological era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid‐19 pandemic has been a massive disaster in Brazil, causing more than 350,000 deaths as of April 2021. Moreover, President Jair Bolsonaro suggested that already marginalised groups should take what came to them, as if they were an expendable surplus in his necropolitical perspective. However, civil society initiatives are emerging to tackle the impacts of this crisis. This paper adds to current literature on the forms and levels of resistance to disasters, using primary and secondary data pertaining to three key Brazilian groups: domestic workers; the urban poor in favelas; and indigenous Amazonians. The analysis indicates that their historical, political resistance has been a foundation upon which to develop disaster mitigation and their actions have built on and gone beyond previous modes of organising. More specifically, their responses have replaced a 'present–absent' federal government, entailed local, innovative adaptations, led to new public–private sector relations, and may offer the prospect of consolidation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the potential of civic science education (CSE), which includes experiences that have been intentionally designed to foster or enhance individuals' interactions with and/or engagement in science‐related public matters. To begin, we provide a theoretically‐grounded definition of CSE, including three sub‐categories: foundational, exploratory, and purposefully active. We then explore the scholarly arguments for why enacting CSE could help to support students' science learning and civic engagement and also strengthen civil society. Next, the paper examines current educational practices related to CSE, such as citizen science, exploring socioscientific issues, and various civic education pedagogies, detailing what researchers have learned from empirical studies of these practices. Building on this prior theory and research, we argue that CSE could motivate students both to learn science and become engaged in civic issues, with slightly different expected outcomes across the three CSE categories. We conclude by encouraging educators and researchers to explore the great potential of such practices, providing specific recommendations for curriculum development and empirical studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do the goals and activities of civil society organisations (CSOs) that are active in the field of immigrant welfare rights differ between autocracies and democracies? In this paper, we argue that a mechanism of CSO engagement plays out differently in these two political contexts because organisations adapt their goals and activities to the political regime they operate in. In the empirical analyses, we compare democratic Argentina and electoral‐authoritarian Malaysia using data from CSOs' public mission statements as well as from interviews with CSO members from both countries. We find that in Argentina, more universalistic constitutional provisions and commitments to international treaties allowed CSOs to reference norms of equal treatment, arguing for immigrant access to a variety of programmes, including non‐contributory social assistance benefits. In Malaysia, CSOs relied on moral frames of equality to a lesser extent. Instead, they advocated for inclusion in contributory schemes on the basis of deservingness of migrants given their contributions to society, focusing on minimum standards to guarantee that basic needs are met. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 20th century saw at least five regions of the world that gave themselves over to unspeakably evil regimes, each resulting in totalitarian dictatorships responsible for horrific suffering and deaths of millions of people. As part of a group of authors involved in various ways in the study of civil society and the common good, this author was invited to address what systems thinking could contribute to understandings of the emergence of such extensive evil. This article develops a qualitative model crafted to capture the generic structure and dynamics of the emergence of extensive evil in a society. Focusing on crucial stocks and flows and feedback loops, the map reveals eight areas where a healthy society may be vulnerable to the spread of such evil, with corresponding areas of resistance pushing back on its apparent inevitability. The paper concludes with reflections on values in systems thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Science Policy & Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

After nearly two and a half decades with a Land Law widely considered progressive, Mozambique is preparing to revise its legal framework for land. Land activists accuse the government of pursuing an authoritarian approach, excluding civil society participation, and falsifying public consultations. The revision would mark a major shift in Mozambique's land policy towards an even more neoliberal framework to allow the transfer of individual land titles. This turning point is a crucial moment for popular movements to mobilize against the consolidation of agrarian neoliberalism and fight for pro‐poor land policy that benefits small‐scale food producers and rural communities at large. While recognizing different rural and agrarian class formations and interests in Mozambique, I argue that embryonic forms of a cross‐class alliance are becoming apparent. As deagrarianization proceeds, the National Union of Peasants (UNAC) plays a key role in mobilizing the rural poor — petty commodity producers, farm workers, fishermen, small agrarian capitalists, and agrarian civil society at large — using left‐wing populism to oppose agrarian neoliberalism, which takes authoritarian forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation: While there is increasing evidence that taxation can contribute to greater government responsiveness and accountability, such positive outcomes are not guaranteed. If the environment does not enable tax bargaining, there is a risk that taxation will amount to little more than enforced extraction. Purpose: We consider how such enabling environments may be fostered and identify specific strategies that governments, civil society actors, and donors can adopt to strengthen the links between taxation, responsiveness, and accountability. Methods and approach: We undertake two case studies of tax transparency and taxpayer engagement in Ghana and Sierra Leone, making use of data from taxpayer surveys, focus group discussions (FGDs), and interviews with key stakeholders in government, civil society, and donor agencies. Findings: We highlight two key findings. First, meaningful transparency requires that information is comprehensive, relates to taxpayers' priorities, and serve as a basis for dialogue between taxpayers and governments. Second, there is a need to proactively encourage taxpayer engagement by supporting forums for engagement that taxpayers perceive as safe, secure and sincere. This has been most successful where governments have visibly demonstrated responsiveness to citizens' concerns, even on a small scale, while partnering with civil society to foster trust and dialogue. Policy implications: Our findings point to the need for taxpayer education and engagement programmes that make information more accessible and more directly relevant to taxpayers' everyday experiences. In particular, policymakers and development partners need to expand existing efforts to facilitate engagement and dialogue regarding what revenues are collected and how they are spent. We highlight the valuable role that civil society can play as translators of tax information, enablers of public forums, and trainers to support greater tax literacy and sustained taxpayer engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Politics & Policy is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Policy Studies Journal is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Recent events in Ukraine led to a surge in refugee migration originating from within Europe not seen since WWII. Using global data on daily news coverage, this research highlights that during the 8 weeks before the outbreak of open hostilities, there was no change in the relative interaction frequency between societal stakeholders and refugees. This changed dramatically in the 8 weeks thereafter: In neighbouring countries, the share of news reporting interactions with refugees rose from next to nothing to between 5 and 13%. In the rest of Europe, this share increased to 1% or 2%. Beyond governments, an event‐study reveals inter‐governmental organisations, civil societies and businesses as major societal forces driving not just the public discourse but levels of support for refugees. Initially, business actors displayed the strongest responsiveness to individuals in need: They became 25% points more likely to engage in material cooperation with refugees. Gradually fading support from non‐government actors suggests that prolonged humanitarian crises may require a continuous near‐real‐time monitoring system and the coordination of various stakeholders' contributions to ensure an efficient provision of aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This focus review summarizes climate politics in Taiwan at the global, the national, and the local level. The article begins with an introduction to Taiwan's emission profile, major actors, and recent policy development. At the global level, Taiwan's unique international status has limited its responses to climate change as mostly gesture policies, but recently corporate climate actions bloomed due to pressures from the supply chains. At the national level, Taiwan's developmental state legacy has locked the country in a "high‐carbon regime" and struggled with the debate on nuclear power. Finally, at the local level, Taiwan seeks to facilitate climate actions with the principle of energy democracy, yet public participation still falls short and local land use conflicts will present enormous challenges. The article ends with a discussion on current knowledge gaps and invites future research to put Taiwan into comparative perspectives. This article is categorized under:Policy and Governance > National Climate Change Policy [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on welfare state regimes have been dominated by consideration of rich OECD/European and increasingly East Asian countries/territories, leaving South Asian cases such as Indonesia underexplored. The few existing studies that have explicitly tried to conceptualize the Indonesian welfare regime have resulted in little consensus. To address the resulting lack of clarity, this article reviews scholarly articles relevant to bringing Indonesia into the global welfare regime debate, specifically encapsulating how the country has been classified compared with its East Asia counterparts. Accordingly, we find that existing studies have mainly concentrated on the Indonesian health care and social protection expansion, which has led authors to conclude that this evolution demonstrates Indonesia's transition away from welfare productivism. By contrast, we argue that Indonesia's productivist characteristics have largely prevailed while informal networks, clientelism, strong families, and the limited effectiveness of the civil society movement created a specific social politics in Indonesia. We thus conclude that the causal mechanisms typically attributed to welfare development in more developed welfare geographies, including East Asia, cannot fully explain the evident institutional formation in the Indonesian case. The future research agenda for studying the welfare regimes in Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how empowerment‐focused Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) traverse scales and perform brokerage functions in helping rural women from marginal groups to connect to and influence powerholders in Indonesia. It identifies three brokerage mechanisms activated by these CSOs: brokering marginal groups' power bases through strengthening organising structures and sources of knowledge/resources; brokering spaces for women's influence on powerholders; and brokering networks with other women and authoritative actors to build supporting coalitions. The article also illustrates that contexts shape how CSO interventions affect change: heavy, resource‐intensive 'thick' brokerage strategies were important in deeply patriarchal contexts, whereas 'thin' brokerage strategies had some effects in places already more conducive to improving gender equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Politics & Policy is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Social trust is crucial for the functioning of societies and states as well as for the wellbeing of individuals. In this article, I expand on previous literature and scrutinise the role of definitions of group membership in the form of national belonging as a key predictor of three distinct dimensions of social trust: particularised trust, trust in strangers and identity‐based trust. Drawing on recent data from the European Values Study, I find that stronger ethnic conceptions of nationhood are related to higher identity‐based trust, whereas the reverse holds for trust in strangers. The latter relationship, however, must be qualified regarding majority conceptions at the respective national level. Results for particularised trust, however, point towards a more complex relationship than outlined in the theoretical expectations. Thus, this article contributes to extant literature by presenting a comprehensive argument linking all three dimensions to conceptions of nationhood challenging simplified notions of generalised trust. Further, I go beyond extant studies by combining conceptions of nationhood at the individual level with several country‐level variables to demonstrate the robustness of the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to our understanding of the complex role of civil society organisations (CSOs) in tackling precariousness through advice, advocacy and activism. It draws on qualitative data gathered primarily from two local CSOs in the north of England that help clients navigate a highly flexible labour market and an increasingly punitive welfare system. The findings reveal that in marginalised communities, CSOs compensate for retreating state services by providing clients with individual advice and advocacy, but there is little evidence of the grassroots activism observed in labour CSOs in North America. We argue that the uneven tradition of community organising across cities in the UK combined with the complex dependencies of service‐oriented CSOs on state resources has restricted their role to that of labour market intermediaries that serve primarily to integrate clients into low‐wage jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perceived neglect of the ocean to state and industry actors has seen frontier rhetoric emerge as it is rendered visible under the Blue Economy agenda. By framing the marine scape as underutilised, capitalist expansion is being legitimised. Drawing on the case of Namibia, I argue that the afterlives of colonialism and apartheid are being repurposed to present the ocean as a Blue Economy opportunity. The physical disconnection of citizens from the marine scape, and the dominance of fishing and mining industries, has been used by state and development actors to present it as empty of socio‐cultural relations. However, to declare Namibia's coasts and ocean as forgotten unless articulated through capital is to conceal that they have been labelled "no‐go" zones. I argue that, by considering exclusions and looking beyond proximity in discussions of equity and representation, the marine scape is articulated by civil society, to elucidate forms of resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]