Search results for "517 Political science"
showing 9 items of 9 documents
Trust, mistrust and distrust as blind spots of Social Licence to Operate: illustration via three forerunner countries in nuclear waste management
2021
The notion of social licence to operate (SLO) has become a widely applied concept for companies in mining and resource extraction industries to manage their social and community relations, in the face of local criticism and opposition. SLO literature and practice have highlighted earning the trust of the local community as a key requirement for an SLO. This article addresses three weaknesses in how the current SLO literature addresses trust. The arguments are illustrated via examples from nuclear waste management in Finland, France and Sweden–three forerunners in implementing high-level nuclear waste repository projects. Nuclear waste management constitutes a relevant case for analysis, as …
Panama and the WTO: new constitutionalism of trade policy and global tax governance
2017
"Corrigendum" in Review of International Political Economy, 24(4), p. 738 (DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1332547). Tax havens and tax flight have lately received increasing attention, while interest toward multilateral trade policies has somewhat diminished. We argue that more attention needs to be paid exactly to the interrelations between trade and tax policies. Drawing from two case studies on Panama's trade disputes, we show how World Trade Organization (WTO) rules can be used both to resist attempts to sanction secrecy structures and to promote measures against tax flight. The theory of new constitutionalism can help to explain how trade treaties can 'lock in' tax policies. However, our c…
The Art of Being Ethical and Responsible : Print Media Debate on Final Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel in Finland and Sweden
2022
AbstractAfter decades of preparation, the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel has reached the construction stage in Finland, and the neighboring Sweden is likely to soon follow in the footsteps. These Nordic countries rely on a similar technical concept based on passive safety, advocated as a means of minimizing the burden to future generations. The scholarly literature on the ethics of nuclear waste management has thus far paid little attention to the views of the broader publics on the associated ethical challenges. This article helps to fill the gap through a longitudinal and comparative analysis of ethical discussion of the final disposal of SNF in news articles and letters to the edit…
Behind screens : challenges and opportunities of participatory online peace education in Finland
2022
This article discusses the challenges and opportunities of participatory online teaching and learning in higher education. It analyses an online peace education course taught during the Covid-19 pandemic in three Finnish universities between 2020–2021. The course explored fundamental mediation skills and practices of positive peace through participatory methods and applied drama. We show how the online setting affected students and teachers, by focusing on the challenges and opportunities for participatory pedagogy in an online environment. The course feedback from students (N = 23) was studied by content analysis and conjoined with the ethnographic observations of the authors. Our findings…
Working the fields of big data : Using big-data-augmented online ethnography to study candidate–candidate interaction at election time
2017
The paper proposes big-data-augmented ethnography as a novel mixed-methods approach to studying political discussions in a hybrid media system. Using such empirical setup, the authors examined candidate–candidate online interaction during election campaigning. Candidate–candidate interaction crossing party boundaries is scarce and occurs in the form of negative campaigning via social media, with the shaming of rival candidates and engaging in battles with them. The authors posit that ethnographic observations can be used to contextualize the computational analysis of large data sets, while computational analysis can be applied to validate and generalize the findings made through ethnography…
Healthy mistrust or complacent confidence? : Civic vigilance in the reporting by leading newspapers on nuclear waste disposal in Finland and France
2021
Trust and confidence have been identified as crucial for efforts at solving the conundrum of high-level radioactive waste management (RWM). However, mistrust has its virtues, especially in the form of “civic vigilance”—healthy suspicion towards the powers that be. This article examines civic vigilance in the form of “watchdog journalism,” as practiced by the leading Finnish and French newspapers—Helsingin Sanomat (HS) and Le Monde (LM)—in their RWM reporting. Although both countries are forerunners in RWM, Finland constitutes a Nordic “high-trust society” while France has been characterized as a “society of mistrust.” Employing the methods of frame analysis, key RWM-related news frames were…
The critical Swedes and the consensual Finns: Leading newspapers as watchdogs or lapdogs of nuclear waste repository licensing?
2020
Abstract The final disposal of spent nuclear fuel has long stirred up societal debate and controversy in most countries utilizing nuclear energy. Various discourses contextualising the issue affect both the general public and policy-making. Both Finland and Sweden are considered forerunners in implementing final disposal. In this paper we explore similarities and differences in media attention paid to final disposal in Finland and Sweden by focusing on two leading newspapers in each country during the time period of 2008–2015. A longitudinal comparative study suggests that there are clear national differences in the roles assumed by print media in the handling of the final disposal issue. I…
Up with ecology, down with economy? : The consolidation of the idea of climate change mitigation in the global public sphere
2018
Building on theories of valuation and evaluation, we develop an analytical framework that outlines six elements of the process of consolidation of an idea in the public sphere. We then use the framework to analyse the process of consolidation of the idea of climate change mitigation between 1997 and 2013, focusing on the interplay between ecological and economic evaluations. Our content analysis of 1274 articles in leading newspapers in five countries around the globe shows that (1) ecological arguments increase over time, (2) economic arguments decrease over time, (3) the visibility of environmental nongovernmental organizations as carriers of ecological ideas increases over time, (4) the …
The power of the economic outlook : an ideational explanation of the distinct pattern of Finnish wage setting within the Nordic context
2022
Industrial relations scholars are paying increasing attention to the role of ideas in explaining shifts in bargaining systems and wage policies. This article contributes to this growing body of literature by conducting a meso-level analysis of the uses and impacts of ideas in wage regulation policy processes in coordinated market economies. Through our in-depth case study of the Finnish policy process leading to the Competitiveness Pact of 2016, we argue that certain ideas – which we call the ‘economic outlook’ – prescribed and legitimized exhausting institutional resources in wage regulation and enabled temporary consensus among divergent interests regarding wage policy. The economic outlo…