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The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between citizen participation and the level of trust in government’s decisions and policies; as well as examining the impact of disclosure of information on the level of citizens’ engagement with governments’ projects. In addition, testing the real motives behind Egyptian citizens’ participation in financing national projects. The study is applied to the “New Suez Canal,” which was finished in only one year opposing the three years implementation period suggested by some studies.

The researcher depended on secondary and primary data as well in working on this paper. She used secondary data gathered from scholars and from domestic and international institutions. Then, she conducted a field study and collected data through distributing 384 Likert Scale questionnaires containing 34 self-administered among respondents to test the following: 1. Citizens perceptions regarding the level of trust in government’s decisions and policies. 2. The impact of citizens’ trust on their willingness to participate in governments’ projects. 3. Is ‘public service motivation’ (PSM) behind citizens’ willingness of participating in national projects. 4. Is the ‘high expected profit of Suez Canal Investment Certificates’ behind citizens participation in national projects.

H1 and H2 have been accepted as trust, transparency and citizen participation proved to be important pillars of building a participatory government. Moreover, citizens’ participation in national projects encouraged national and international enterprises to invest in the canal provision. H3 and H4 are accepted and the statistical study revealed dual contradicting results regarding the motive of citizens’ financial participation in the New Suez Canal project. The justification for the contradiction is that right after the 2011 up-rise, Egyptian citizens were overwhelmed with patriot emotions and feelings pushing them to participate in national projects. At the same time this patriot drive was moderated by the “performance-based rewards and citizens” self-interests’ pushed by the Egyptian government (offering a high-interest rate for Suez Canal Certificates at that time). Citizens might be motivated to participate in national projects triggered by many factors: public service drive – patriotism or self-interest.

The study needs further deeper investigation and empirical pieces of evidence to answer the following questions: would different participatory actions result differently in other circumstances? Do individuals’ levels of PSM vary over time? Besides, the researcher needs to find ways to test PSM against various motives such as self-interest, which needs to be confirmed empirically.

The author came up with important recommendations for central government and decision-makers in Egypt and is based upon the study’s statistical results. The most important recommendations were: central government and decision-makers should frame a policy designed to promote citizens’ participation in decision-making drawing on the guidelines for civil participation in political decision-making. Decision-makers in the central government should work local and regional authorities to update and improve local and regional regulations concerning the participation of citizens in local public life and promote a culture of democratic participation shared by communities and local authorities. Performance-based rewards (high-interest rate) are moderating the citizens’ public service motivation (PSM – patriot sense) and citizens may be motivated by different factors such as public service drive – patriotism or self-interest.

The study is tackling an important issue, which is civil participation in political decision-making. It is also discussing promoting cultural awareness regarding the importance of democratic participation shared by communities and local authorities. The study came up with certain findings proving Egyptian civil society’s willingness in participating with the government in national projects; believing in its socio-economic benefits.

Finally, the study is of value, as it could be considered a pilot study representing the outcomes of citizen participation in national projects; in addition, it can be considered as a road map to policymakers. Moreover, the findings provide a set of recommendations and policies for governments and decision-makers to undertake tangible actions to accelerate citizen participation in further projects and decisions and be able to establish a democratic system in developing countries.

The study examines how introducing joint municipal arm's length bodies (ALBs) into municipal waste management has influenced the preconditions of democratic governance.

The authors describe and explain the democratic implications of joint municipal agencification by reviewing the perspectives of representative and participative democracy. Through this approach, the authors apply the exit–voice framework developed by Albert Hirschman to highlight the potential roles and rights of citizens. This research includes country case studies of Finland and Norway. The authors analyse and systematize Finnish and Norwegian waste and organizational policies by reviewing national regulatory documents, commentaries and guidance materials to identify the fundamental missions and institutional traditions of the alternative organizational forms of joint ALBs.

The study findings highlight that joint agencification has an adverse effect on the democratic governance of waste management policy and services even though these are public monopoly services. They also demonstrate that all joint municipal ALBs limit the classic elements of representative democracy in general, and that private-law ALBs limit residents' rights to influence and participate.

This study contributes to local public management studies by applying Hirschman's theory to comparative reviews of joint agencification and ALBs. It revealed the similarities and differences between the different organizational forms of joint ALBs applied in Finland and Norway. It also demonstrated how the democratic rights of residents depend on how municipalities collaborate.

This paper aims to provide an evaluation of the new education system, based on Life Skills and Citizenship Education (LSCE), in Egyptian primary schools. This study analyzes how effective could be the implementation of LSCE in the process of constructing active democratic citizens, in particular, in the case of Egypt, highlighting problems facing the new education approach.

The study methodologies are twofold; the content analysis of the primary one new curriculum “Discover”, to assess the curriculum's strengths and weakness; and the questionnaire to the primary six students, to investigate the relationship among the twelve life skills.

Content analysis of the textbook shows that the learning process based on LSCE is appropriate for the construction of active citizens. The textbook provides Egyptian children with the necessary opportunities to learn and create, through creative participatory methods. The relationship between the social dimension and other dimensions has been proven by means of the chi-square test. The relationship between participation and the two approximately absent skills “resilience and empathy” has been clarified as both are strongly interrelated with participation. The results illuminate a strong relationship between participation and the remaining life skills.

More questionnaires are needed to assess the grade of life skills achievement among students in grade one and two, as it is regarded one of the limitations of the present study, owing to the complicated procedures and the limited time.

The research suggests the formulation of wider project-based activities to be included in the textbooks of all the primary grades. In this regard, real contribution with NGOs and local governments shall be developed to facilitate the involvement of children in actual projects, in accordance with their ages, and to encourage students to participate, as they notice the efficient results of their contribution.

The research stresses on the importance of enhancing participation, as it is proven through the chi-square test that it is strongly related to other skills.

The scarcity of analytical studies to evaluate the effectiveness of citizenship education programs on children, after the application of the new Egyptian education system.

The purpose of this paper is to test the effects of citizens’ support for two rival and opposing conceptions of political involvement, political consumerism and stealth democracy, on their attitudes about demand response (flexible consumption) and prosumerism (self-production) in the context of making of Finnish energy policy. Stealth democracy represents an established view on the role of citizens in energy policy making: the energy sector has traditionally been presented as a technocratic domain reserved for experts and businessmen. By contrast, political consumerism can be seen as an expression of “energy democracy”.

The data is based on a postal survey and an internet survey that were conducted in 2016 among a random sample representing Finns who were between 18 and 75 years. The dependence of the support for demand response and prosumerism on the endorsement of political consumerism and stealth democracy will be tested statistically (Pearson chi-square).

The endorsement of demand response mainly depended statistically on citizens’ attitudes towards political consumerism and stealth democracy. However, comparing electricity prices and changing electricity suppliers did not depend on adherence to political consumerism and stealth democracy. Nevertheless, in these cases, support was higher among the supporters of political consumerism than among supporters of stealth democracy. By contrast, the endorsement of prosumerism, for instance, in terms of factors that influence citizens’ decisions to invest in electricity generation in their households, depended statistically on citizens’ attitudes on political consumerism and stealth democracy.

It might be that the variables used in this study to measure stealth democracy are not specific enough. More generally, Finns’ willingness to support for stealth democracy may be based on or at least encouraged by the misunderstandings of democratic politics: more information is needed on the level of knowledge that citizens have about normative principles of democratic decision-making processes.

The implication of this study for energy policy making is that there are (at least in Finland) good preconditions for developing a decentralized energy system: citizens are ready to adopt a more active role as energy citizens in terms of demand response and prosumerism – irrespective of their attitudes on macro-level attitudes on governmental institutions. Democratization of the energy system could strengthen the legitimacy of energy policy making.

Citizens’ attitudes indicate that their potential for involvement needs to be strengthened in the spirit of energy democracy: the idea of energy democracy needs to be seen in terms of the demand for increased accountability and democratization of the energy sector that was previously not seen as requiring public involvement and was most often depoliticized and dominated by technocrats. However, strengthening energy democracy through demand response and prosumerism is not without its problems: utilization of these devices requires a relatively large amount of resources which depend on the individuals’ socio-economic position. Thus, energy democracy cannot replace but complement electoral participation as a form of energy policy involvement.

The contribution of this study is to fill a part of the research gap linking to ongoing energy transitions. As a socio-technical transition can take place only if citizens support and participate in it, we need to better understand citizens’ attitudes on energy consumption and production and energy policy involvement. Citizens’ attitudes on energy production and consumption are becoming more and more critical for managing the energy sector as a result of that the share of wind power and solar power is increasing in the energy system. In a decentralized energy system, citizens have to be prepared to change their modes of operation. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the originality of this study is to test the impact of citizens’ political attitudes on the endorsement of demand response and prosumerism.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the plausibility of four different mid-term paths of development of the European Union (EU): first, a political union or a European state; second, a differentiated and flexible integration of the polity; third, a covert and deepening integration of the polity outside of the political arenas; fourth, the disintegration and/or dissolution of the EU through the exit of individual members or a joint decision to terminate the union.

The paper uses strategic interaction analysis to identify the plausibility of each of these four possible outcomes. By systematically varying the relevant actors’, i.e. European Council’s and member states’, the European Parliament’s, the Commission’s, preferences over outcomes while holding constant institutional rules of decision making on the one hand, and systematically varying institutional rules on the other while holdings actors’ preferences constant, the paper comes to the conclusion that differentiated and flexible integration and covert integration are the most plausible mid-term paths of development.

The paper finds that neither a European state or deep political union nor a disintegration or even dissolution of the EU is the most plausible path of development. Rather, it concludes that flexible and differentiated integration as well as covert integration outside the political arenas are the most likely developments. However, it also draws attention to the political costs of flexible and differentiated integration which does not allow for an overall view of political and policy issues negotiated at one political table, limiting the scope of compromise formation and even leading to a fragmented polity. Covert integration consisting of mechanisms of hidden integration “invisible” to the wider public may lead to a democratic backlash, once citizens realize that integration has considerably deepened without their being aware of it.

Most publications regarding the future development of the EU are normatively driven, either conjuring an imminent disintegration, or invoking the necessity of a deepening integration leading to a political union. This paper, by contrast, seeks to assess the likely further development based on empirically identified factors and a logical argument.

Recent changes in university systems, debates on academic freedom, and changing roles of knowledge in society all point to questions regarding how higher education and research should be governed and the role of scientists and faculty in this. Rationalizations of systems of higher education and research have been accompanied by the questioning and erosion of faculty authority and challenges to academic collegiality. In light of these developments, we see a need for a more conceptually precise discussion about what academic collegiality is, how it is practiced, how collegial forms of governance may be supported or challenged by other forms of governance, and finally, why collegial governance of higher education and research is important.

We see collegiality as an institution of self-governance that includes formal rules and structures for decision-making, normative and cognitive underpinnings of identities and purposes, and specific practices. Studies of collegiality then, need to capture structures and rules as well as identities, norms, purposes and practices. Distinguishing between vertical and horizontal collegiality, we show how they balance and support each other.

Universities are subject to mixed modes of governance related to the many tasks and missions that higher education and research is expected to fulfill. Mixed modes of governance also stem from reforms based on widely held ideals of governance and organization. We examine university reforms and challenges to collegiality through the lenses of three ideal types of governance – collegiality, bureaucracy and enterprise – and combinations thereof.

This article aims to contribute to the critical accounting literature by reviewing how previous studies have addressed the topic of dialogic accounting (DA), examining the main themes investigated and discussing potential further developments of the DA research agenda.

The present study builds on a systematic literature review of 186 research products indexed on Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar that were published between 2004 and 2019 in 55 accounting or non-accounting scientific journals and 14 books.

First, a content analysis of each contribution informs a classification in terms of research design, methodology, geographical setting and sector of analysis. Second, a bibliometric analysis provides several visual representations of the network of research products included in our review using bibliographic coupling, cooccurrence and coauthorship analyses. Third, and most importantly, the main narrative review discusses the development of the research strand on DA from the seminal works that introduced the topic, through the core of critical contributions inspired by the struggle between democracy and agonism, to the most recent contributions, in which new topics emerge and innovative methodologies are applied to the study of DA.

The main contribution of this manuscript is twofold. In addition to providing a systematic, bibliometric and narrative review of the evolution of nearly two decades of literature on DA, the present study is intended to collect ideas for further research and to discuss how the advent of new technologies and the peculiarities of various institutional contexts can shape the future research agenda on this critical form of accounting.

The research aims to provide a longitudinal case study to understand how digital transformation can be embedded in municipal reporting frameworks. The central role of such technology becomes increasingly evident as citizens demand greater transparency and engagement between them and governing institutions.

Utilising a longitudinal case study methodology, the research focusses on Turin’s Integrated Popular Financial Report (IPFR) as a lens through which to evaluate the broader implications of digital transformation on governmental transparency and operational efficiency.

Digital tools, notably sentiment analysis, offer promising avenues for enhancing governmental efficacy and citizenry participation. However, persistent challenges highlight the inadequacy of traditional, inflexible reporting structures to cater to dynamic informational demands.

Embracing digital tools is an imperative for contemporary public administrators, promoting streamlined communication and dismantling bureaucratic obstructions, all while catering to the evolving demands of an informed citizenry.

Different from previous studies that primarily emphasised technology’s role within budgeting, this research uniquely positions itself by spotlighting the transformative implications of digital tools during the reporting phase. It champions the profound value of fostering bottom-up dialogues, heralding a paradigmatic shift towards co-creative public management dynamics.