Search

Focuses on options for reforming European governance. White Paper of the European Commission.

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]

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]

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]

Copyright of Canadian Geographer 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 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.)

The paper sets the context for the special issue on ‘Collaborative engagement for sustainability in the Asia-Pacific region’. The relevance and risks of cross-sectoral strategic alliances for sustainable development vary greatly across the region. Potential alliances face unique hurdles given different public challenges, political systems, types of development, forms of civil society and cultural traditions. The four papers in the special issue highlight some key issues that have not been well explored in the current literature, such as the role of collaboration in state-centric societies, the applicability of a tri-sectoral model (of state, business and civil society) in places where ownership and accountability are more complex, and the business rationale for partnering when there is limited consumer, media or civil society demand for voluntary action. In this special edition the papers bring further light to some of these debates. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction Between September 2012 and December 2015, a series of national and regional consultations, aimed at resolving a persistent dynamic of conflict between law enforcement agencies (LEAs) and civil society organizations (CSOs) working on issues of access to HIV services in high-priority countries for people who use drugs have been organized by the HIV/AIDS Section of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, the Law Enforcement and HIV Network (LEAHN) and other international organizations. The aim of these consultations has been to understand, at a national and regional level, the key points of tension between police and CSOs and how to overcome these tensions to enhance access to and uptake of services by key populations, including people who inject drugs, sex workers, men who have sex with men and transgenders. This commentary briefly describes the methods, process, content and key outcomes of these consultations held across diverse number of countries and regions, including Africa, South East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. Discussion While the context varies, this paper highlights that there are commonalities that drive a persistent dynamic of conflict and therefore also common methods for resolution of conflict and forging partnerships. Both policing and CSOs have key sectoral responsibilities and reform agendas to implement to ensure that as an individual agency they are able to meet their obligations as partners in the HIV response. Using the key outcomes of discussions and recommendations from these consultations and drawing on existing literature, the objective of this paper is to present a preliminary model that roadmaps the critical path from resolution of conflict to partnership between LEAs and CSOs. Conclusions This paper seeks to highlight that critical resources are required to support ongoing development and harnessing of partnerships between LEAs and CSOs and argues that these resources should not just come from global HIV funding mechanisms but should be part of a more mainstreamed security sector reform agenda that understands the mutual benefits that programming for human rights-based policing reform would have on HIV, development and security. [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.)

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.)

This paper examines how geographers can contribute to debates concerning transitional justice. Recent scholarship in criminology has identified a residual 'legalism' in the enactment and study of transitional justice: trial processes and the perspectives of jurists have been prioritised over wider processes of social healing and the perceptions of non-legal actors. This paper explores how geographers can contribute to challenging this prioritisation of legal processes within the study and practice of transitional justice. This is achieved through an examination of attempts to establish forms of transitional justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the end of the war in 1995. Specifically, the paper explores the establishment in 2005 of the War Crimes Chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the civil society-based strategies it has employed to reach out to witnesses and victim populations. The paper makes two interlinked arguments. First, it examines how the international response to the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina placed justice at a distance from victim communities. Second, the paper argues that civil society activities undertaken to widen access to justice have opened up new spaces of deliberation and critique. It is argued that these spatialities point to possibilities of deliberative conceptions of justice fostered beyond legal institutions and processes. [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.)

Civil society organisations (CSOs) comprise a diverse range of associations, including non-governmental organisations (NGOs), community groups, political parties and social networks. Nevertheless, despite heterogeneity, regulators, funders and donors often treat CSOs as homogeneous when demanding accountability. This paper highlights differences in to whom CSOs across different categories (or types) perceive themselves to be accountable, what for and the different practices they undertake to discharge accountability. It calls for stakeholders to acknowledge diversity in accountability across different CSO types. This survey-based research finds CSOs weight upwards and downwards stakeholders equally, and undertake voluminous reporting. They would benefit from negotiating multiple-use mechanisms, especially with dominant stakeholders. In combining stakeholder and accountability theory, the research highlights specific CSO types needing further study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The World Bank's endorsement in the 1990s of institutional reforms as a constitutive dimension of economic development led to the adoption of a governance agenda. The paper analyses the role the Bank exercised in Argentina and explains its influence in the adoption of a new state model, of new state civil society relations and on particular key components of democracy. This paper argues that while the Bank has helped to set up an agenda of reform regarding governance problems, the push for particular policies and practices has also produced partial and contradictory results on the consolidation of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT In this paper we analyze whether cross-sector partnerships enable companies to respond to the specific conditions at the base of the pyramid (BOP). We develop three hypotheses in which we argue how cross-sector partnerships support companies to face unfamiliar conditions in these markets. We test the developed hypotheses against the data of 103 companies operating in BOP-markets. The results show that companies rely on organizations from the civil society sector in order to meet customer needs. Partners from the business sector are supportive when responding to restrictive market conditions. Institutional partnerships should be considered when companies aim at responding to the regulatory environment. We outline theoretical and managerial implications and reflect some limitations of the study. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a strategic perspective for business to contribute to the innovation of societal systems. Sustainability issues at the level of societal sectors cannot be addressed by single organizations but need to be thought of as systemic challenges in which business, government and civil society each play different roles. Sustainability involves structural changes over longer periods of time, and requires co-evolutionary changes in technology, economy, culture and organizational forms. We propose that the transition management framework offers a fruitful way to analyze such co-evolutionary processes of social transformation and subsequently develop strategies to influence and accelerate such processes. We present the case of two firms working in this new context of transition management in The Netherlands. From these cases we conceptualize a more general approach for business to redefine and reframe the societal context in which it is operating and develop novel business strategies. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the new collaborative environmental governance, an enterprise that involves collaboration between a diversity of private, public, and non-government stakeholders who, acting together towards commonly agreed goals, hope to achieve far more collectively, than individually. Such an approach appears to blur the familiar sharp boundaries that separate ‘the state’ from civil society, yet we still know very little about exactly what this blurring of public and private adds up to, and what its implications are. This new form of governance is examined through the lens of three Australian case studies. Each of these studies involves participatory dialogue, flexibility, inclusiveness, transparency, institutionalized consensus-building practices, and, at least to some extent, a shift from hierarchy to heterarchy. The paper examines the relationships between new and old governance, the architecture of these new initiatives, the role of the state, and the importance of negotiating in ‘the shadow of hierarchy’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Winter Commission Report was centrally concerned with improving the performance of state and local governments. Since the issuance of the commission’s report in 1993, the delivery of services by state and local government has been substantially changed by the growing role of nonprofit organizations in providing public services and representing citizen interests. As a result, state and local governments and nonprofit agencies are faced with complex governance challenges. The central argument of this paper is that despite the dramatic changes in the relationship between government and nonprofit organizations in recent years, the key tenets of the Winter Commission report—the need for improved training and education, greater transparency and accountability, more emphasis on performance, and improved citizen engagement—remain deeply relevant in improving the governance of the public services in an increasingly complex policy process and service delivery system at the state and local levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the resiliency of community recovery after a natural disaster. We argue that a resilient recovery requires robust economic/financial institutions, political/legal institutions, and social/cultural institutions. We explore how politically and privately created disaster preconditions and responses have contributed to or undermined institutional robustness in the context of the Gulf Coast's recovery after Hurricane Katrina. We find that where postdisaster resiliency has been observed, private-sector responses contributing to the health of these institutional arenas are largely responsible. Where postdisaster fragility and slowness has been observed, public-sector responses contributing to the frailty of these institutional arenas are largely the cause. In other words, we engage in a comparative institutional analysis of civil society, entrepreneurial commercial society, and government agencies and political actors in the wake of a natural disaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In "Evangelium Vitae" Pope John Paul II calls for a renewal of culture to combat the culture of death. He criticizes various aspects of a pluralistic, liberal society—a type of society that he claims is based on moral relativism and a view of democracy that becomes a substitute for moral law. He maintains that such a view trivializes moral choice. In this essay I argue that John Rawls's notion of a liberal society as an overlapping consensus of comprehensive doctrines can avoid relativism while allowing for reasonable debate among opposed positions. While Rawls maintains that comprehensive doctrines, including religions, should employ a form of public reason that is not a unique feature of any one comprehensive doctrine, I argue that this requirement is too strong. One is often justified in appealing to features of comprehensive doctrines other than one's own, features that are unique to the doctrines themselves. Such an appeal does not pretend to be neutral as public reason would seem to be. In the final section of the paper I discuss some suggestions made by the Pope regarding actions in civil society that are independent of debates about legal change and suggest some ways in which they might contribute to desired cultural transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that civil society is declining has been much discussed recently, for example, by Fukuyama (Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. New York: Free Press, 1995) and Putnam (The American Prospect 13 (Spring):35-42, 1993: Nobel Symposium, Uppsala, Sweden, August 27-30, 1994, PS: Political Science and Politics, December: 664-683). At the same time, another stream of research suggests that racial tolerance is increasing through time (Quillian, American Journal of Sociology 101 (3):816-860, 1996: Firebaugh and Davis, American Journal of Sociology 94 (2):1:251-272. This paper combines ideas from several intellectual traditions to suggest that economic conditions may affect civil society, which in turn may influence social tolerance. These ideas are explored, using multivariate analysis of pooled General Social Survey data from 1972 to 1994. The results suggest that the fabric of civil society and economic conditions may contribute somewhat to espoused tolerance. Greater economic security, together with tile attitudes fostered by a vibrant civil society including greater trust and less anomia, appear to increase espoused social tolerance. Period effects and the effects of other demographic factors remain strongly related to expressions of tolerance. While alternative interpretations may be offered depending on whether the interaction terms. Year X Education, or Cohort X Education, are included in the analysis, the high correlation between the two suggests that these interpretations cannot be seen as oppositional. Finally and most important, the analysis reveals many parallels between espoused racial and homosexual tolerance, suggesting a more generalizable model of social tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that much scholarly work on civil society and alternative development has three weaknesses: it understates the diversity among popular organizations and their ideas about development alternatives; it pays insufficient attention to the economic dimensions of alternatives; and it understates the potential importance of the local state. Drawing on experiences from highland Bolivia, we suggest that a closer engagement with the dilemmas encountered in practical attempts to pursue development alternatives can suggest ways forward in each of these areas. Linking scholarly and practical work is thus important for theoretical reasons as well as ones of relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out an approach to the analysis of political power in terms of problematics of government. It argues against an overvaluation of the 'problem of the State' in political debate and social theory. A number of conceptual tools are suggested for the analysis of the many and varied alliances between political and other authorities that seek to govern economic activity, social life and individual conduct. Modern political rationalities and governmental technologies are shown to be intrinsically linked to developments in knowledge and to the powers of expertise. The characteristics of liberal problematics of government are investigated, and it is argued that they are dependent upon technologies for 'governing at a distance', seeking to create locales, entities and persons able to operate a regulated autonomy. The analysis is exemplified through an investigation of welfarism as a mode of 'social' government. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of neo-liberalism which demonstrates that the analytical language structured by the philosophical opposition of state and civil society is unable to comprehend contemporary transformations in modes of exercise of political power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil society has been on the lips of many theoreticians of the 1989 revolutions, in the West as well as in East Central Europe. The hope is that civil society, as a concept and a programme, will help post-communist societies out of their current political predicament. How reasonable a hope is this? How useful is the concept of civil society at the present time; either in the East or the West? This paper first considers the historical career of the concept. It then goes on to examine its fruitfulness in the current conditions of western and East European society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Has civil society declined in the United States in the past 20 years? Multiple indicators suggest evidence for decline. This paper questions Robert Putnam's generational explanation for decline and suggests an alternative explanation, namely the structural economic transformation of the U.S. and how it has been managed. Individuals' perceptions of economic distress have increased since 1972 and are related to changes in indicators of civil society, including associational memberships, trust, anomia, and espoused racial and gay tolerance. Economic distress is also related to political interest and participation. Other consequences of an eroding civil society are discussed, including rising crime and inhibited economic productivity [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freedom of association can include the right of labour unions to take collective action in the interest of their members. In this regard, it is presumed that unions increase worker freedom. However, there is little literature on how worker freedom as self‐actualization is linked to union collective action involving coalition‐building with civil society. This article uses the notions of freedom according to Berlin (1969) and MacCallum (1967) to assess the meaning of such coalition‐building for worker freedom. It then employs a radical democratic perspective (Laclau and Mouffe 2001) of union engagement with the Just Transition in New Zealand to explore how unions enhance worker freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We know from the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature that civil society organizations (CSOs) play a crucial role in helping businesses transition towards more responsible and sustainable business models. Yet, in the circular economy (CE) field, such understanding is still scarce. This article develops a theoretical framework for understanding the dynamic interplay between business and civil society in CE transitions, understanding their mechanisms and strategies for cooperation and contestation. We develop the concept of 'CE boundary work' to understand how CSOs interact with firms to bring about CE innovation, outlining three ideal types: campaign based, resource efficiency based and circular design based. This contributes to our understanding of how CE transitions can be brought about effectively through cross‐sectoral interplays between civil society and business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an evolving deliberative system, a crucial question is how deliberation of ordinary citizens differs from that of professional politicians. This study compares the deliberative capacity of citizens and political elites on exactly the same issue, namely a direct democratic initiative in Switzerland on the expulsion of criminal immigrants. In concrete, I perform a quantitative content analysis of the quality of citizen deliberation in an online poll and compare this to the quality of deliberation in representative politics, namely in the non-public committee and public floor debates in the Swiss parliament. The findings show that political elites reach much higher levels of justification rationality than ordinary citizens, but achieve lower levels in terms of respect. I conclude that citizen deliberation, while useful as an advisory tool, cannot replace serious deliberative scrutiny in representative politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

GeoHealth as a research paradigm offers the opportunity to re‐evaluate common research engagement models and science training practices. GeoHealth challenges are often wicked problems that require both transdisciplinary approaches and the establishment of intimate and long‐term partnerships with a range of community members. We examine four common modes of community engagement and explore how research projects are launched, who has the power in these relationships, and how projects evolve to become truly transformative for everyone involved. Plain Language Summary: GeoHealth research is often partnership focused. We describe four common models for community‐engaged GeoHealth research and highlight the central characteristics of each, while daylighting the lived experiences of LEAD Agency activists. We note a range of outcomes emerge which can foster science‐based environmental health policy making and lead to justice focused actions. Key Points: The GeoHealth research community often engages actively with civil society in the research enterprise, but often uses various modelsThe models of engagement, from researcher‐heavy to community‐heavy, have very different outcomesA new model of training and support is required for the GeoHealth community to more productively engage with civil society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization means many things for governments around the world in terms of governance. Questions that are left unexplored in the public administration literature are what changes in the globalization of production mean for governments and their relationships with business and civil society, and what the implications are for public administration. The authors develop a conceptual framework that governments can use to shape their interactions with business in more strategically and mutually beneficial ways. The data are derived from extensive fieldwork in the emerging economies of Southeast Asia. Key challenges to government include the importance of understanding global value chains, value chain-related trade facilitation, investment in logistics, the strengthening of enterprise clusters, effective education, skill development and training, and the governance risks inherent in value chains and networks. The essay concludes with a discussion of five key considerations for public administration in thinking, planning, and acting strategically in relationships with the private sector regarding the globalization of production. These considerations are crucial for creating business environments that strengthen economic development and manage societal concerns in ways that are aligned with public values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although (the relevance of) stakeholder management receives considerable attention in literature, the problem of actual stakeholder identification is yet unresolved. This article analyses the potential contributions of critical systems thinking to solving this problem. Especially Ulrich's notion of boundary critique, by which he focuses on stakeholder roles and particularly the role of ‘the affected’, seems a fruitful contribution. By adapting the role definitions towards a project context, including project dynamics, and adding operating instructions, a method has been developed that can be used for actual stakeholder identification in organizational projects. This method is demonstrated on two projects. The results show that this adapted version of boundary critique, which in its original form mainly is used in the context of civil society, is also relevant in an organizational profit-based context. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Tocqueville (1835), civil society has been recognized as a cornerstone of liberal democracy. But populists claim to be the only legitimate representatives of the people, leaving no space for civil society. Are populism and civil society enemies? To answer this question, we look at voters' choices in Europe. We find that individuals belonging to associations are less likely by 1.6–2.8 percentage points to vote for populist parties, which is large considering that the average vote share for populist parties is between 12% and 22%. This result survives a large number of robustness checks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Agoras of the City States of the Classical Greeks were public spheres where democracy was lived by citizens who made collective decisions about issues affecting their daily lives. The Agora Project—New Agoras—is a metaphor for social action contexts in which people can make collective decisions about their future. People in the settings of their families, neighborhoods, community groups, organizations and institutions have the potential to organize themselves as evolutionary design communities. Participants in the Agora Project collectively enjoin to establish a new public sphere that can sustain a meaningful actionable design dialogue among individuals within and across New Agoras. These New Agoras, communicatively linked, would serve as the infrastructure for democratic civil society and a system of public spheres animated by evolutionary conversation and guided by evolutionary design with purpose of self-guided evolution of the society—cultural evolution of our species, Homo sapiens sapiens. Critical to the Agora Project is the establishment of stewardship communities. The task of these communities is to create knowledge bases for evolutionary inquiry, develop resources for evolutionary learning and explore suitable approaches, methods and technologies. This article will present an overview of the Agora Project and the Agora Steward Community that has evolved in relation to the project. Organization of the article includes: (1) an examination of the evolution of humankind, (2) a discussion of conscious purposeful evolution, (3) an examination of the Agora of ancient Athens, (4) an introduction of the New Agoras as a metaphor for social action in contemporary society, (5) a discussion of the New Agoras as public spheres for democratic civil society, (6) a description of the Agora Project, and (7) a discussion of the New Agoras as public spheres for evolutionary design. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a list of mini-symposium references on social sciences. In 1990, " The Politics of Righteousness: Idaho Christian Patriotism," by James A. Aho. In 1997, " Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock and Family Reproduction in Victorian America," by Nicola Beisel. In 1997, "The Marketing of Rebellion in Global Civil Society: Political Insurgencies. International Media, and the Growth of Transnational Support," by Clifford Bob. In 1995, "When We Were Good: The Folk Revival," by Robert Cantwell.

Close to two thousand environmental human rights defenders have been killed in 57 countries since 2002, with about four losing their lives every week in 2019. Many of these defenders represent Indigenous Peoples and local communities protecting ecosystems from large‐scale environmentally destructive projects. As the positive contributions of Indigenous and local communities to biodiversity conservation become better recognized, so should the losses and risks that they face. Despite major efforts at documenting abuses and protecting defenders, many blind spots and gaps remain. Here, we call for the conservation community to put the protection of defenders at the heart of its strategy to slow down and reverse the current onslaught on the environment. The conservation community can respond in a number of ways including reaching out to its constituencies, working together with the human rights community, and mobilizing its networks, field offices, and presence in remote areas to denounce abuses and counter isolation. In doing so the conservation community can advance the collective agenda bringing together conservation and environment‐related human rights through the Post‐2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the changing attitudes the Army's role in French society. The armed forces, whose existence protects the integrity, ensures the prestige and serves the ends of a civil society, can be seen as a mere instrument, or as an emanation of this society. The former approach characterized pre-revolutionary Europe, in which all dynasties recruited mercenary troops whilst relying on the nobility's tradition of service to the sovereign and quest for military glory to provide the cadres of their armies. The second was exemplified under the Revolution by the nation-in-arms endeavoring to repel the onslaught of a European coalition. To a new kind of warfare, directed against the principles on which the organization of the civil society rested, corresponded a new kind of army. Since it was no longer separated from the community, it was bound to reflect the divisions existing therein and to become involved in internal political upheavals. Even when military intervention in the political sphere was ordered or prompted by the government of the country, as was repeatedly the case in the last years of the revolutionary period, it created a dangerous precedent. The republican ideal of a national army resulted in making the army responsible for the fate of the State, even though it did not seek this responsibility. Therefore one of the contradictions latent in this ideal led to bonapartism, a name given to political theory popularized by Napoleon Bonaparte, of solving political dilemmas by the use of force and to entrust power to a military leader.

Humanity is on a deeply unsustainable trajectory. We are exceeding planetary boundaries and unlikely to meet many international sustainable development goals and global environmental targets. Until recently, there was no broadly accepted framework of interventions that could ignite the transformations needed to achieve these desired targets and goals.As a component of the IPBES Global Assessment, we conducted an iterative expert deliberation process with an extensive review of scenarios and pathways to sustainability, including the broader literature on indirect drivers, social change and sustainability transformation. We asked, what are the most important elements of pathways to sustainability?Applying a social–ecological systems lens, we identified eight priority points for intervention (leverage points) and five overarching strategic actions and priority interventions (levers), which appear to be key to societal transformation. The eight leverage points are: (1) Visions of a good life, (2) Total consumption and waste, (3) Latent values of responsibility, (4) Inequalities, (5) Justice and inclusion in conservation, (6) Externalities from trade and other telecouplings, (7) Responsible technology, innovation and investment, and (8) Education and knowledge generation and sharing. The five intertwined levers can be applied across the eight leverage points and more broadly. These include: (A) Incentives and capacity building, (B) Coordination across sectors and jurisdictions, (C) Pre‐emptive action, (D) Adaptive decision‐making and (E) Environmental law and implementation. The levers and leverage points are all non‐substitutable, and each enables others, likely leading to synergistic benefits.Transformative change towards sustainable pathways requires more than a simple scaling‐up of sustainability initiatives—it entails addressing these levers and leverage points to change the fabric of legal, political, economic and other social systems. These levers and leverage points build upon those approved within the Global Assessment's Summary for Policymakers, with the aim of enabling leaders in government, business, civil society and academia to spark transformative changes towards a more just and sustainable world. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A substantial body of literature in the management discipline has evolved to make the case for and analyze the impacts of cross‐sector partnerships (CSPs). Yet, not all of these CSPs manifest the requisite collaborative propensities to achieve much more than superficial sustainability. Moreover, other disciplines like economics need to be brought to bear on analyses of such partnerships. In this article, we frame sustainable development challenges as collective action problems. We argue that over‐emphasizing the role of a single actor or institution will not yield genuine sustainability. Instead, we propose that a collaborative orientation is necessary for business managers as they deal with challenges as expansive and complex as those presented by goals of the sustainability of the natural environment. Cross‐sector collaborative partnerships (CSCPs) are needed to achieve collective responsibility, wherein dialogic CSCPs issue in a new paradigm of collaborative markets. Market‐based solutions that ignore or minimize the important contributions that may be made by government, academia, and civil society organizations must give way to new models of collaboration across sectors. We identity specific challenges and opportunities for cross‐sector collaboration and provide case examples. There are important limits to addressing environmental and ethics problems from a single sector focus, and we show how meaningful sustainability can be facilitated within a dialogic cross‐sector collaborative perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Child labor in global supply chains is increasingly addressed through multistakeholder initiatives. However, the participation of stakeholders with distinct views and interests can generate tensions. Based on interviews with civil society actors, this research finds that tensions exist between the normative‐ethical and political‐strategic dimensions of multistakeholder initiatives, which are manifest in the existence of international and national norms and their contextual application, in definitions of child labor, risk and responsibility, and in doubts about corporate incentives to join multistakeholder initiatives. In addition, tensions exist concerning the effectiveness of supply chain auditing, enabling broader labor rights as a means to remediate child labor, and whether standards need to be mandatory or self‐regulation suffices. The success of collaboration depends on the effective navigation of these tensions. Failure to do so can undermine the legitimacy of multistakeholder initiatives from the perspective of civil society actors. The research finds that due diligence, in the shape of human rights risk assessments, is not subject to normative‐ethical/political‐strategic tensions, and can play a key role in the success of multistakeholder initiatives and the fight against child labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: As a group, transwomen in Peru have the highest prevalence of HIV (>20%) in the country, but they have little access to HIV prevention, testing and care services. Until recently, Peru's national HIV programme did not recognize transwomen and had remained essentially static for decades. This changed in December 2014, when the Ministry of Health expressed its commitment to improve programming for transwomen and to involve transwomen organizations by prioritizing the development of a "Targeted Strategy Plan of STIs/HIV/AIDS Prevention and Comprehensive Care for Transwomen." Discussion: A policy dialogue between key stakeholders - Peru's Ministry of Health, academic scientists, civil society, transgender leaders and international agencies - created the conditions for a change in Peru's national HIV policy for transwomen. Supported by the effective engagement of all sectors, the Ministry of Health launched a plan to provide comprehensive HIV prevention and care for transwomen. The five-year plan includes new national guidelines for HIV prevention, care and support, and country-level investments in infrastructure and equipment. In addition to new biomedical strategies, the plan also incorporates several strategies to address structural factors that contribute to the vulnerability of transwomen. We identified three key factors that created the right conditions for this change in Peru's HIV policy. These factors include (1) the availability of solid evidence, based on scientific research; (2) ongoing efforts within the transwomen community to become better advocates of their own rights; and (3) a dialogue involving honest discussions between stakeholders about possibilities of changing the nation's HIV policy. Conclusions: The creation of Peru's national plan for HIV prevention and care for transwomen shows that long-term processes, focused on human rights for transwomen in Peru, can lead to organizational and public-policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can research contribute to the implementation of the UN's upcoming global sustainable development goals? This was the question debated at a DFG / United Nations University conference in New York. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Attention to the negative effects of structural barriers on HIV efforts is increasing. Reviewing national legal and policy environments with attention to the international human rights commitments of states is a means of assessing and providing focus for addressing these barriers to effective HIV responses. Methods: Law and policy data from the 171 countries reporting under the Declaration of Commitment from the 2001 United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS were analyzed to assess attention to human rights in national legal and policy environments as relevant to the health and rights of key populations such as people who inject drugs, men who have sex with men and sex workers. Results: Seventy-eight governments and civil society in 106 countries report the existence of laws and policies which present obstacles to accessing HIV services for key populations. Laws and policies which positively affect access to HIV-related services, in and of themselves constituting structural interventions, were also reported. The dissonance between laws and how this impacts the availability and use of HIV-related services deserve greater attention. Conclusions: Recognition of the harms inherent in laws that constitute structural barriers to effective HIV responses and the potential positive role that a supportive legal environment can play suggests the need for legal reform to ensure an enabling regulatory framework within which HIV services can be effectively delivered and used by the populations who need them. Moving beyond laws and policies, further efforts are required to determine how to capture information on the range of structural barriers. Teasing apart the impact of different barriers, as well as the structural interventions put in place to address them, remains complicated. Capturing the impact of policy and legal interventions can ultimately support governments and civil society to ensure the human rights of key populations are protected in national HIV responses [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greater access and inclusion of civil society is a possible means of increasing participation in international governing processes and thus enhancing the democratic legitimacy of global governance. Yet, opening the doors of an international organization to civil society is often controversial. At the core of such controversies are costs and benefits that may arise from the inclusion of civil society. The aim of this article is to explore the opening of international organizations' doors to civil society actors, emphasizing state's preferences. To explore state preferences on civil society's access, this article looks at the WTO dispute settlement process and amici submissions, and asks: what factors shape states' preferences to allow civil society actors access? Drawing from a unique dataset on state preferences on amici submissions to the WTO's dispute settlement process, I argue that state preferences are shaped by the capacity to manage costs of civil society access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of civil society associations as schools of democracy has resulted in models of political participation that place an emphasis on membership in civic associations as a means of developing personal skills that are conducive to political participation. These suppositions seem well established. It is still contested, however, to what extent the particular characteristics of the associations that offer such membership have an impact on civic engagement. Expanding recent research that mainly builds on group characteristics aggregated from the characteristics of the associations' members, we apply the Swiss part of a unique multi-level data set, the CID-data, which provides information about approx. 1000 activists from about 400 associations. This data allows us to measure group characteristics, such as the function of an association and its connection to the local elite, directly and thus provides us with a special opportunity for a multi-level analysis of activists nested in organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The postcolonial world of Melanesia is made up of diverse experiments, which combine modern and customary technologies of power into new hybrid assemblages. In the 1990s, there occurred a proliferation of landowner companies in rural New Britain. This happened in a context of neoliberalism where the state divested itself of many functions and services by allocating these to a supposedly more efficient private sector. In the Kaliai area, this new economic partnership between state and capital gave rise to more militarised forms of policing, which sought to protect logging by a large Malaysian company from growing local unrest. Supplementing these coercive state actions were private strategies, which used sorcery to intimidate opponents to logging as well as rivals within the landowner company. Opponents were bought off and alliances created through using customary exchange relations as well as through modern gifts of money, western goods and commoditised pleasures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental governance regimes concerned with the management of biological life have encouraged not only new forms of expertise, but also political activism and struggle. One such regime, the international Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (Biosafety Protocol), a subagreement of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) , seeks to monitor the potential risks of releasing living modified organisms, such as transgenic seeds, into the environment. Drawing on market-oriented visions of environmental conservation and risk management, the Biosafety Protocol is closely tied to the development of new bioeconomies and the ascent of neoliberal principles globally. NGOs and environmentalists have played prominent roles in the Biosafety Protocol by occupying spaces designated for civil society participation, raising the question of how activists both disrupt and sustain the neoliberal logics embedded in new regimes of environmental governance. I explore this question through ethnographic research in Costa Rica among activists, biosafety officials, and private biosafety auditors, where activists have engaged biosafety as part of a campaign against transgenic seeds. Working with limited resources and a genuine concern to manage the risks of agricultural biotechnology, officials draw on strategies that position both the market and civil society as key mechanisms of biosafety monitoring. Despite opposing transgenics and the concept of biosafety, activists participate in the government biosafety commission as civil society representatives and informally monitor local fields. Officials have labeled activists “biovigilantes,” viewing them as parallel to private biosafety auditors who subsidize the lack of state capacity in biosafety. Recent research on civil society and governance suggests that discourses of participation have depoliticizing impacts, encouraging specific forms of self-conduct that reinforce a dominant order of things. Illustrating how activists occupy and negotiate civil society and biosafety expertise, I argue by contrast that their engagement with biosafety is uneven and contradictory, revealing an unsettled struggle, rather than some prevailing governmental logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK's Climate Change Act offers a framework for civil society to achieve ‘low carbon’ realignment through to 2050. The Act is reviewed for its coherence as a mechanism for directing future policy. The legislation establishes a carbon budgetary process, mandates greenhouse gas reduction targets and strategies, and imposes a novel range of duties supported by processes for ensuring transparency concerning progress. Following an overview of climate change risks and likely economic consequences, the analysis identifies selected regulatory strategies. It explores the main statutory features, with an emphasis upon the implications of imposing mandatory duties on decision makers. An evaluation of the key policy choice of emissions trading is informed by perspectives of environmental justice, in particular as to questions of equitable burden-sharing in relation to impacts of climate change and related policies. A concluding section summarises reasonable expectations and ongoing challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tropical Medicine & International Health 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.)

Globalization, a process characterized by the growing interdependence of the world's people, impacts health systems and the social determinants of health in ways that are detrimental to health equity. In a world in which there are few countervailing normative and policy approaches to the dominant neoliberal regime underpinning globalization, the human rights paradigm constitutes a widely shared foundation for challenging globalization's effects. The substantive rights enumerated in human rights instruments include the right to the highest attainable level of physical and mental health and others that are relevant to the determinants of health. The rights stipulated in these documents impose extensive legal obligations on states that have ratified these documents and confer health entitlements on their residents. Human rights norms have also inspired civil society efforts to improve access to essential medicines and medical services, particularly for HIV/AIDS. Nevertheless, many factors reduce the potential counterweight human rights might exert, including and specifically the nature of the human rights approach, weak political commitments to promoting and protecting health rights on the part of some states and their lack of institutional and economic resources to do so. Global economic markets and the relative power of global economic institutions are also shrinking national policy space. This article reviews the potential contributions and limitations of human rights to achieving greater equity in shaping the social determinants of health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]