The Privatized State

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Chiara Cordelli: “Many governmental functions today—from the management of prisons and welfare offices to warfare and financial regulation—are outsourced to private entities. Education and health care are funded in part through private philanthropy rather than taxation. Can a privatized government rule legitimately? The Privatized State argues that it cannot.

In this boldly provocative book, Chiara Cordelli argues that privatization constitutes a regression to a precivil condition—what philosophers centuries ago called “a state of nature.” Developing a compelling case for the democratic state and its administrative apparatus, she shows how privatization reproduces the very same defects that Enlightenment thinkers attributed to the precivil condition, and which only properly constituted political institutions can overcome—defects such as provisional justice, undue dependence, and unfreedom. Cordelli advocates for constitutional limits on privatization and a more democratic system of public administration, and lays out the central responsibilities of private actors in contexts where governance is already extensively privatized. Charting a way forward, she presents a new conceptual account of political representation and novel philosophical theories of democratic authority and legitimate lawmaking.

The Privatized State shows how privatization undermines the very reason political institutions exist in the first place, and advocates for a new way of administering public affairs that is more democratic and just….(More)”.

It’s not all about populism: grassroots democracy is thriving across Europe

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Richard Youngs at The Guardian: “The past decade has been a bruising one for the health of European democracy. The dramatic authoritarian turns in Hungary and Poland have attracted most attention, but nearly all European governments have chipped away at civil liberties, judicial independence and civil society.

With Covid accentuating many of the challenges posed by populism, disinformation and a collapse in public trust, the narrative of democracy labouring in deep crisis is now well established. Yet as the threats have mounted, so have efforts to defend and rethink Europe’s democratic practices.

Most spontaneously, there has been an increase in the frequency and intensity of mass protests, even during the pandemic, many in support of democratic values. People have mobilised against corruption or around particular policy issues and then taken on a broader democratic reform agenda. This has been the case in Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia, the women’s strike in Poland, the Sardines movement in Italy, the Million Moments movement in the Czech Republic and protests in Malta initially triggered by journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder. Climate movements such as Extinction Rebellion are also beginning to marry their ecology demands to concerns with democratic reform. People invented new forms of protest under Covid: for example, Polish citizens protested against new abortion laws and the timing of elections by taking to their cars in procession, honking horns and playing alarms out of their windows, still in full compliance with restrictions on public gatherings.

New civil society initiatives aim at tackling polarisation. One example is a project called Arguments Against Aggression, which tries to equip people with more empathetic communication and debating skills than those typically experienced on social media and has now run in seven EU member states. Meanwhile, Covid has given rise to hundreds of civic mutual aid initiatives, such as En Première Ligne in France whose website puts those who need help directly in touch with local volunteers. Civil society organisations are also working more closely with protest movements. The Corruption Kills group in Romania, for example, evolved from anti-corruption protests and an outpouring of public anger at the deaths of more than 60 people in a nightclub fire. Online initiatives, meanwhile, are reclaiming the positive democratic potential of digital technology, finding new formats to feed citizens’ views into policymaking.

More and more citizens’ assemblies have sprung up…(More)”.

Government Lawyers: Technicians, Policy Shapers and Organisational Brakes

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Philip S.C. Lewis and Linda Mulcahy: “Government lawyers have been rather neglected by scholars interested in the workings of the legal profession and the role of professional groups in contemporary society. This is surprising given the potential for them to influence the internal workings of an increasingly legalistic and centralized state. This article aims to partly fill the gap left by looking at the way that lawyers employed by the government and the administrators they work with talk about their day to day practices. It draws on the findings of a large-scale empirical study of government lawyers in seven departments, funded by the ESRC. The study was undertaken between 2002-2003 by Philip Lewis, and is reported for the first time here. By looking at lawyers in bureaucracies the interviews conducted sought to explore what government lawyers do, how they talked about their work, and what distinguished them from the administrative grade clients and colleagues they worked with….(More)”.

The Future of Citizen Engagement: Rebuilding the Democratic Dialogue

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Congressional Management Foundation: “The Future of Citizen Engagement: Rebuilding the Democratic Dialogue” explores the current challenges to engagement and trust between Senators and Representatives and their constituents; proposes principles for rebuilding that fundamental democratic relationship; and describes innovative practices in federal, state, local, and international venues that Congress could look to for modernizing the democratic dialogue.

cmf citizen engagement rebuilding democratic dialogue cover 200x259

The report answers the following questions:

  • What factors have contributed to the deteriorating state of communications between citizens and Congress?
  • What principles should guide Congress as it tries to transform its communications systems and practices from administrative transactions to substantive interactions with the People it represents?
  • What models at the state and international level can Congress follow as it modernizes and rebuilds the democratic dialogue?

The findings and recommendations in this report are based on CMF’s long history of researching the relationship between Members of Congress and their constituents…(More)”.

Citizen Needs – To Be Considered

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Franzisca Maas, Sara Wolf, Anna Hohm and Jörn Hurtienne outlining “Requirements for Local Civic Participation Tools. In this paper, we argue for and present an empirical study of putting citizens into focus during the early stages of designing tools for civic participation in a mid-sized German town. Drawing on Contextual and Participatory Design, we involved 105 participants by conducting interviews, using Photovoice and participating in a local neighbourhood meeting.

Together with citizens, we built an Affinity Diagram, consolidated the data and identified key insights. As a result, we present and discuss different participation identities such as Motivated Activists, Convenience Participants or Companions and a collection of citizen needs for local civic participation, e. g., personal contact is irreplaceable for motivation, trust and mutual understanding, and some citizens preferred to “stumble across” information rather than actively searching for it. We use existing participation tools to demonstrate how individual needs could be addressed. Finally, we apply our insights to an example in our local context. We conclude that if we want to build digital tools that go beyond tokenistic, top-down ways of civic participation and that treat citizens as one homogeneous group, citizens need to be part of the design process right from the start. Supplemental material can be retrieved from https://osf.io/rxd7h/….(More)”

Study finds growing government use of sensitive data to ‘nudge’ behaviour

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Alex Hern: “A new form of “influence government”, which uses sensitive personal data to craft campaigns aimed at altering behaviour has been “supercharged” by the rise of big tech firms, researchers have warned.

National and local governments have turned to targeted advertisements on search engines and social media platforms to try to “nudge” the behaviour of the country at large, the academics found.

The shift to this new brand of governance stems from a marriage between the introduction of nudge theory in policymaking and an online advertising infrastructure that provides unforeseen opportunities to run behavioural adjustment

Some of the examples found by the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR) range from a Prevent-style scheme to deter young people from becoming online fraudsters to tips on how to light a candle properly. While targeted advertising is common across business, one researcher argues that the government using it to drive behavioural change could create a perfect feedback loop.

“With the government, you’ve got access to all this data where you can see pretty much in real time who you need to talk to demographically, and then on the other end you can actually see, well, ‘did this make a difference?’,” said Ben Collier, of the University of Edinburgh. “The government doing this supercharges the ability of it to actually work.”

The British government’s fondness for minor behavioural modification tactics began in the David Cameron era. Since the foundation of the Behavioural Insight Team – or “nudge unit” – at No 10, ministers eagerly looked for tweaks to help people pay car tax or encourage people to buy loft insulation.

The examples of influence government uncovered by the SCCJR range from deeply serious to almost endearingly silly. At one end of the spectrum is the National Crime Agency’s “Cyber-Prevent” programme, which involves identifying young people at risk of becoming involved in cybercrime…(More)”.

Future of e-Government: An integrated conceptual framework

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Suresh Malodia, Amandeep Dhi, Mahima Mishra and Zeeshan Ahmed Bhatti: “The information and hyper-connectivity revolutions have caused significant disruptions in citizens’ interactions with governments all over the world. Failures in implementing e-government interventions suggest the lack of an integrated approach in understanding e-government as a discipline. In this study, we present an overarching and integrated conceptual framework of e-government grounded in robust qualitative research to describe the factors that must be integrated to implement e-government successfully. Drawing insights from 168 in-depth interviews conducted with multiple stakeholders in India, this study defines e-government as a multidimensional construct with customer orientation, channel orientation and technology orientation as its antecedents. Building on customer orientation and relationship marketing theories, this study proposes that the most significant factor impacting success in implementing e-government projects is citizen orientation, followed by channel orientation and technology orientation. The study also identifies the digital divide, economic growth and political stability as moderators of e-government. Furthermore, the study proposes the tangible and intangible outcomes of e-government with perceived privacy and shared understanding as moderating conditions. Finally, the study presents relevant theoretical and practical implications with future research directions….(More)”.

Participatory data stewardship

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Ada Lovelace Institute: “Well-managed data can support organisations, researchers, governments and corporations to conduct lifesaving health research, reduce environmental harms and produce societal value for individuals and communities. But these benefits are often overshadowed by harms, as current practices in data collection, storage, sharing and use have led to high-profile misuses of personal data, data breaches and sharing scandals.

These range from the backlash to Care.Data, to the response to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s collection and use of data for political advertising. These cumulative scandals have resulted in ‘tenuous’ public trust in data sharing, which entrenches public concern about data and impedes its use in the public interest. To reverse this trend, what is needed is increased legitimacy, and increased trustworthiness, of data and AI use.

This report proposes a ‘framework for participatory data stewardship’, which rejects practices of data collection, storage, sharing and use in ways that are opaque or seek to manipulate people, in favour of practices that empower people to help inform, shape and – in some instances – govern their own data.

As a critical component of good data governance, it proposes data stewardship as the responsible use, collection and management of data in a participatory and rights-preserving way, informed by values and engaging with questions of fairness.

Drawing extensively from Sherry Arnstein’s ‘ladder of citizen participation’ and its more recent adaptation into a spectrum, this new framework is based on an analysis of over 100 case studies of different methods of participatory data stewardship. It demonstrates ways that people can gain increasing levels of control and agency over their data – from being informed about what is happening to data about themselves, through to being empowered to take responsibility for exercising and actively managing decisions about data governance….(More)”.

Design as Democratic Inquiry

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Carl DiSalvo: “Through practices of collaborative imagination and making, or “doing design otherwise,” design experiments can contribute to keeping local democracies vibrant.

In this counterpoint to the grand narratives of design punditry, Carl DiSalvo presents what he calls “doing design otherwise.” Arguing that democracy requires constant renewal and care, he shows how designers can supply novel contributions to local democracy by drawing together theory and practice, making and reflection. The relentless pursuit of innovation, uncritical embrace of the new and novel, and treatment of all things as design problems, says DiSalvo, can lead to cultural imperialism. In Design as Democratic Inquiry, he recounts a series of projects that exemplify engaged design in practice. These experiments in practice-based research are grounded in collaborations with communities and institutions.

The projects DiSalvo describes took place from 2014 to 2019 in Atlanta. Rather than presume that government, industry—or academia—should determine the outcome, the designers began with the recognition that the residents and local organizations were already creative and resourceful. DiSalvo uses the projects to show how design might work as a mode of inquiry. Resisting heroic stories of design and innovation, he argues for embracing design as fragile, contingent, partial, and compromised. In particular, he explores how design might be leveraged to facilitate a more diverse civic imagination. A fundamental tenet of design is that the world is made, and therefore it could be made differently. A key concept is that democracy requires constant renewal and care. Thus, designing becomes a way to care, together, for our collective future…(More)”.

World Public Sector Report 2021

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

UN-DESA: “Five years after the start of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, governance issues remain at the forefront. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted even more the importance of national institutions for the achievement of the SDGs. The World Public Sector Report 2021 focuses on three dimensions of institutional change at the national level. First, it documents changes in institutional arrangements for SDG implementation since 2015. Second, it assesses the development, performance, strengths and weaknesses of follow-up and review systems for the SDGs. Third, it examines efforts made by governments and other stakeholders to enhance the capacity of public servants to implement the SDGs. Based on in-depth examination of institutional arrangements for SDG implementation in a sample of 24 countries in all regions, the report aims to draw attention to the institutional dimension of SDG implementation and provide lessons for national policymakers in this regard. The report also takes stock of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on national institutions and their implications for delivering on the 2030 Agenda….(More)”.