Search results

This paper will discuss two problems that have plagued the literature on the Ward-Domar-Vanek labor-managed firm (LMF) model, the perverse supply response problem and the horizon problem. The paper also discusses the solution to the horizon problem and the alleged “solution” of a membership market.

This is a conceptual paper so it analyzes the two problems and shows how they can be resolved. It also shows how one alleged “solution” (membership market) is based on several conceptual mistakes about the structure of rights in a democratic firm.

The perverse supply response is based on the assumption that the members of a democratic firm can expel for no cause some members when it would benefit the remaining members. It is shown that the same perverse behavior happens conceptually and historically in a conventional firm under the same assumptions. The horizon problem is resolved by the system of internal capital accounts (ICAs) that has been independently invented at least four times.

The idea of a democratic firm is quite often dismissed by conventional economists: “At first it seems like a good idea but unfortunately it is plagued by structural problems such as the perverse supply response and the horizon problem.” Hence it is important to see that the first is not a problem under ordinary assumptions and that the second is a solved problem.

The perverse supply response problem can be reproduced in a conventional firm under similar assumptions, and the horizon problem is real problem for social or common ownership firms but is solved in the Mondragon-type worker cooperatives by the system of ICAs. This has been known and published since the early 1980s, but conventional economists ignore the solution and still cite it as an inherent structure problem of a democratic firm.

It has not been previously shown in the LMF literature that the perverse supply response can be reproduced in a conventional corporation under similar assumptions since the maximand for the conventional firm is not total market value but that value per current shareholder. The solution to the horizon problem using ICAs has long been “known” but never acknowledged in the conventional literature as if it was a necessary feature of workplace democracy. The idea of a membership market is analyzed and criticized.

This paper aims to shed light on the impact of personalized news media on the shared issue agenda that provides democracies with a set of topics that structure the public debate. The advent of personalized news media that use smart algorithms to tailor the news offer to the user challenges the established way of setting the agenda of such a common core of issues.

This paper tests the effects of personalized news use on perceived importance of these issues in the common core. In particular, the authors study whether personalized news use leads to a concentration at the top of the issue agenda or to a more diverse issue agenda with a long tail of topics.

Based on a cross-sectional survey of a representative population sample (n = 1,556), we find that personalized news use does not lead to a small common core in which few topics are discussed extensively, yet there is a relationship between personalized news use and a preference for less discussed topics. This is a result of a specific user profile of personalized news users: younger, more educated news users are more interested in topics at the fringes of the common core and also make more use of personalized news offers.

The results are discussed in the light of media diversity and recent advances in public sphere research.

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate about algorithmic news dissemination. While, currently, much attention is reserved for the role of platforms as information gatekeepers in relationship to the news media, maybe their ability to enable or hinder the audience in discovering and distributing news content is part of what really characterizes their influence on the market place of ideas.

Is the need for stability pre-empting the need for democratic values? How can the EU cope with two contradictory security requirements: the need to promote democratic norms and to secure geostrategic interests? This paper takes on the security-democracy dilemma in a complex way that transcends the realpolitik frame overshadowing the analysis of the EU’s policy orientation in the Southern Mediterranean while considering its normative role as a fig leaf for security interests.

This paper investigates the EU’s foreign policy orientation reflected in the ENP in terms of the two logics of action of consequentialism and appropriateness. Tracing changes at the policy level over time between 2011 and 2015, the paper zooms into the implementation of the “new” ENP in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia to highlight additional variation across countries.

Building on a document analysis of the official declarations for the policy-making level and of ENP action plans for the implementation level, the paper argues that local political dynamics and the level of the EU’s threat perception shape the EU’s response to the partner countries.

In the rational model of the democratic governing chain, intervening spaces at all levels are neglected in relation to the policy process. An intervening space is a group of persons with the power and responsibility to interpret policy at their level in an organization. The research question is as follows: How are democratic policy ideas visible in the intervening spaces of a governing chain in public schools?

The study is based on two municipalities representing the 25 most populated cities in Sweden. The data are based on interviews with 66 informants with leadership roles on the district level and two schools in each municipality.

Leadership is obviously more than making decisions. It is also about facilitating and creating trust, engagement, motivation and willingness to take responsibility. In this process, intervening spaces are central. They exist at all levels from the national ministry to the classroom. The empirical examples show the importance and challenges in how different leadership roles, relationships and interaction transform policy intentions to practice on the local level.

The authors contribute by highlighting the parallel interpretation processes that take place at various leadership levels locally. There are possibilities and challenges in aligning the intervening spaces into a rational governing chain. The findings indicate that intervening spaces and policy drift is vital to support, control and use professional competence in the process to transfer political ideas to classroom practice.

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 world is experiencing democratic backsliding such that the situation is down back to 1986. This has resulted in the global shrinking of civic space for civil society organizations (CSOs). NGOs engaging in advocacy activities are seen to be among the CSOs affected. Using four NGOs cases from Tanzania, the study contributes to the civic space debate by uncovering how advocacy NGOs become resilient.

The study is anchored in interpretivism and a cross-sectional case study design, following a qualitative approach path. Data were collected through interviews and a documentary review.

Results show that several strategies such as complying, building community back-up, collaboration, strategic litigation, using digital media and changing the scope are applied. However, strategies face obstacles including scope limitations, expected democratic roles, high cost, changes in the scope and being outsmarted by the government, and hence their effectiveness is questionable.

This study focused on advocacy NGOs. More studies can be conducted for other advocacy-related CSOs on how they become resilient.

While NGOs are allowed to exist in the country, their freedom continue to be curtailed. Even the effectiveness of resiliency becomes temporary and depends on the political will of the existing regime.

Tanzania NGOs have to build strong bonds with citizens, expand the scope of strategies and use deliberative democratic principles to educate the government to change laws and tolerate plural political culture. Also, NGOs in other countries with confined civic space can apply the same.

Democratic therapeutic communities (TCs), use a “flattened hierarchy” model whereby staff and clients are considered to have an equal voice, sharing administrative and some therapeutic responsibility. Using the sociological framework of interaction ritual chain theory, the purpose of this paper is to explain how TC client members negotiated and enforced community expectations through an analysis of power within everyday interactions outside of structured therapy.

The study used narrative ethnography, consisting of participant observation with two democratic communities, narrative interviews with 21 client members, and semi-structured interviews with seven staff members.

The findings indicate social interactions could empower clients to recognise their personal agency and to support one another. However, these dynamics could be destructive when members were excluded or marginalised. Some clients used their interactions at times to consolidate power amongst dominant members.

It is argued that the flattened hierarchy approach theoretically guiding TC principles does not operate as a flattened model in practice. Rather, a fluid hierarchy, whereby clients shift and change social positions, seems more suited to explaining how the power structure worked within the communities, including amongst the client group. Recognising the hierarchy as “fluid” may open dialogues within TCs as to whether, and how, members experience exclusion.

Explorations of power have not specifically focused on power dynamics between clients. Moreover, this is one of the first papers to look at power dynamics outside of structured therapy.

The purpose of this paper is to outline how the EU figures out the importance of strengthening its relations with Egypt as one of the most strategic countries in the region to keep the union secured and stable. The paper also assesses to what extent the EU succeeds to promote democracy in Egypt.

The EU pursues its policy through a series of both bilateral and multilateral agreements with Egypt aiming at positioning their relations in a strategic context. The research adopted different approaches as descriptive and analytical ones.

Following the Arab uprisings, the EU was caught by surprise and announced a paradigm shift in its relations and introduced a set of policies to foster democracy promotion that witnessed some successes but with extremely modest results in some areas compared to the costs of the process. The EU succeeded in important reforms in trade liberalization while it did not bring clear changes in the political arena in Egypt.

The findings of this paper convey that the Arab uprisings were a wake-up call for the EU. It was the right time for the EU to conduct such a strategic and sincere reflection based on the role it wants to play in the changing region. In addition, findings prove that the EU’s response to revolutionary events has been weak and hesitant, and the EU has not an effective role in promoting democracy in Egypt.

This paper aims to discuss the adequacy of restrictive measures. Providing a synopsis of a global movement toward the imposition of target restrictive measures. Questioning the success of targeted restrictive measures in obtaining behavioural change. Identifying a reversion to the implementation of wide ranging sectoral restrictive measures in an attempt to encourage immediate behavioural change. Accessing the success of using restrictive measures to encourage democratic regimes in Africa.

This study is a desktop research that examines European Parliament and Council issued Regulations for the jurisdictions of Iran, Russia and Belarus. Academic research is also used in identifying a pendulum swing by global legislatures with respect to the imposition of targeted measures to requiring the imposition of additional wide ranging sectoral measures.

Targeted measures can be circumvented using non-hostile third countries. Academic research identifies that wide reaching sectoral sanctions encourage regime change. Therefore, where targeted measures fail to give rise to their desired persuasive objectives. The legislator moves to introduce additional measures, also comprising of sectoral sanctions. Sectoral sanctions have been applied by the European Union in Iran, Russia and Belarus. The USA has taken measures to limit Russia ability to use Turkey as a transshipment hub. The African continent case study identifies the importance of creating an architecture founded on upholding positive governance and human rights standards. Failure to do so leads to a revolving system of authoritarian regimes, sanctioned by restrictive measures.

This paper is a desktop review composed by the author.

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.