Search results for "Civil Society"
showing 10 items of 134 documents
Towards “global zero”: the role of the Holy See in the campaign on nuclear disarmament
2019
On 7 July 2017 at the UN headquarters in New York the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted, the first multilateral legally-binding instrument for nuclear disarmament negotiated in the last twenty years. The very signing of the Treaty must be seen as an extraordinary achievement because it represents a historic step in the seven decades long debate on nuclear weapons. One of the most significant achievements of the decade-long campaign is the engagement of civil society and non-state actors to such a degree that it was recognized through the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). The crucial supporter of the cam…
Europe’s Path to Public Reason
2012
Chapter 7 highlights how addressing public issues publicly is a main target of European institutions, considering their commitment to the identification of shared values and the protection of rights. In consideration of this, it is reasonable to ask whether the “Public Reason” set forth by Rawls can be somehow applied to Europe’s current perspective, understanding it to be the ruling criterion governing public issues. A major obstacle is to be found in the anti-pluralistic attitude which is widespread across the European states. However, constitutionalism, which is nowadays widely rooted on a global scale, makes contemporary political communities to characterize by disagreement and by the n…
INTEGRATION IN LATVIA: FLOWS AND EBBS IN NATIONAL AND EUROPEAN CONTEXT
2016
Russian-speaking communities in the member states of the European Union (EU), especially the Baltic States and Germany, have earned special attention, in recent years, as subjects of important integration policies, on one hand, and the main targets of Russia’s propagandist efforts, on the other. Because a significant part of Russian-speaking communities accepted these efforts, questions were raised concerning the effectiveness of previous integration policies to strengthen the national identity and invoke a feeling of political togetherness. Thus the factors fostering and triggering integration and the relations between civic and ethnocultural components of integration are of wide interest.…
Civil society organizations and social innovation. How and to what extent are they influencing social and political change?
2017
This study aims to understand how civil society organizations (CSOs) perform and influence public arenas. The focus of this paper is the transformative scope of social innovation initiatives promoted by CSOsin two public arenas in Brazil: the fight against electoral corruption and the protection of children and adolescents’ rights. The research consisted of three stages: 1) controversy mapping to understand the configuration ofthese public arenas and compare the trajectories of the public problems studied; 2) observation of the “field of experience” of some CSOs that perform in these arenas; and 3) analysis of “political grammars” produced in public arenas, connecting them to the performanc…
The Prospects for the Social Economy in a Changing World
1997
Even if the ‘social economy’ has traditionally been marginalized and a subordinated form of production within capitalist societies, the economic, social, territorial and environmental problems of the present times have tended to make it a strategic instrument. This is not only because of its qualities as an economic and management instrument, but also because it is an expression of a dynamic and creative civil society. The aim of this paper is to show the potential of the social economy, the way it has been encapsulated during the postwar period and the conditions that now favour its full development. In the face of new challenges, the efficiency criterion, hitherto used to assess alternati…
El sector no lucrativo en el marco de la nueva era tecnológica: el desafío del Crowdfunding social en España. Análisis del caso de la asociación Alba…
2017
Los albores del siglo XXI se presentan a las economías y las sociedades en el marco de un desafiante doble cambio de paradigma. Uno, alentado por el neoliberalismo gobernante en gran parte del mundo avanzado, que ha provocado que la propia sociedad admita la arresponsabilidad de las estructuras gobernantes en la prestación de los servicios que componen el Estado del bienestar. Otro, tecnológico, que ha cambiado el modo en que la sociedad se informa, se comunica y se relaciona. Frente a estas dos realidades la sociedad civil ha tomado conciencia de su papel transformador e impulsor de cambios, así como de las crecientes necesidades de atención social que han surgido en este principio de sigl…
Outside‐in Politicization of EU–Western Africa Relations: What Role for Civil Society Organizations?
2021
This article explores the empirical relevance of researching outside-in politicization processes in European studies. To this end, it examines to what extent and how civil society organizations (CSOs) have contributed to the politicization of EU policies towards Western Africa in two cases: the negotiation of Economic Partnership Agreements and the EU's engagement with the G5 Sahel. CSOs were strongly engaged in the trade negotiations, while they were largely excluded from the G5 Sahel process. In both cases this was due to CSOs' own initiatives, or the absence thereof, with these strongly linked to being either invited or discouraged by official actors. The article argues that authority tr…
Institutions and Rural Stagnation in Eastern Indonesia
2018
This article addresses why agricultural productivity is still very low in peripheral parts of eastern Indonesia. The paper identifies rules and norms underpinning traditionalism. It further addresses how increased land-use efficiency can be supported while maintaining communal land ownership. Information collected from in-depth interviews was analysed based on new institutional economics (NIE) theory. I argue that the government, adat leaders, the Catholic Church, leading businesses, and internationally funded NGOs are organisations contributing to the status quo. Policy recommendations include awareness among international donors of what NGOs really do. Civil society organisations could co…
Le commerce équitable et la société civile internationale : une chance pour la mondialisation d'un droit de l'économie solidaire
2003
SUMMARY The international trade law passes through a crisis of legitimacy following the inequitable character of its rules and the irrelevance of its principles to the peculiarities of the North-South relations. Being the legal translation of the capitalist free market economic system, these rules are to protect the mercantile and free trade values. In order to overcome this crisis the movement of fair trade has emerged and has since its origin been supported by members of the international civil society. Fair trade means taking into account the standard of living and the conditions of employment of the marginalized producers in developing countries so as to improve them. This study is an a…
Technology Assessment of Socio-Technical Futures: A Discussion Paper
2019
Problem: Visions of technology, future scenarios, guiding visions (Leitbilder) represent imaginations of future states of affairs that play a functional role in processes of technological research, development and innovation—e.g. as a means to create attention, communication, coordination, or for the strategic exertion of influence. Since a couple of years there is a growing attention for such imaginations of futures in politics, the economy, research and the civil society. This trend concerns technology assessment (TA) as an observer of these processes and a consultant on the implications of technology and innovation. TA faces increasing demands to assess imaginations of futures that circu…