Search results for "Public Administration"
showing 10 items of 1623 documents
Conclusion: Transfer of the Rhetoric of Procedure to British Debating Societies
2016
In the concluding chapter, Haapala demonstrates why nineteenth-century British rhetoric should be appreciated more than previous studies suggest. While highlighting the political relevance of the British debating societies, the chapter illuminates the crucial role of the transfer of the rhetoric of procedure from the House of Commons to the Union Societies. Instead of focusing on the role of speech-making in British political culture, it puts forward an interpretation of the Unions as forerunners in the adoption of parliamentary procedure.
Political Legitimation and European Public Spaces: Communication as Practice and Resource
2018
In this chapter, the author offers an analysis of European public spaces and follows with a discussion of the transformations in the European Commission’s communication strategy since September 2004. For the first time, the European Commission openly challenged the monopoly of political legitimacy of national political institutions. It was involved in the construction of a new communication strategy that would fill the gap between supranational segmented publics and general national publics. This risky political move involved the redefinition of the status of political communication, the reinforcement of the communication aspect in all of the Commission’s activities, the recruitment of new …
Academics as Politicians and as Operators of Global Governance
2018
In this chapter, the author scrutinizes the links between politics and academe in global governance. He analyzes two cases, those of former president of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso and philosopher Michel Foucault, that exemplify different types of political engagement. Social scientists play a key but concealed part in the steering of global governance. Under and beyond global institutions, they partake in the development of influential transnational professional groups. By producing practical knowledge for everyday or ‘banal’ global governance, social scientists shape the politically imaginable at more institutional levels. Yet others provide at a higher level of abstractio…
Politics of Parliamentary Government
2018
The chapter takes up the powers of the parliamentary government, its historical formation in Westminster and the parliamentary control of administration by rhetorical means. The parliamentary polity includes the various power struggles both in parliament and of parliament with government and administration of a polity. The vote of no confidence and a wider repertoire of tools for parliamentary control and oversight of both government and the bureaucracy around it will be discussed. This aspect illustrates the relevance of procedure and rhetoric as inherent to the parliamentary type of government. Reducing parliamentarism to the government vs. opposition divide tends to alter the rhetorical …
Understanding Debate as Politics
2017
The book’s core idea is to present and explain how different actual and virtual debates can be understood and analysed as political actions. We want to provide tools and ways for grasping the complex phenomenon of politics by concentrating on debate, including debates carried out in, or reflected by, documents. The approach proposed allows for a nuanced and detailed understanding of politics, as it does justice to the aims of political actors, taking into account their actions, interests, moves and strategies, and situating them in relation to the different contexts in which their contributions make a difference. The first chapter presents the theoretical and methodological background by an…
Improving Civic and Citizenship Education in Latvia
2021
The chapter characterizes citizenship education in Latvia within the national education system and on the level of public interest and involvement. The article particularly focuses on a large school education reform carried out in Latvia since 1991. The chapter concludes with recommendations for further research in the field of citizenship education in Latvia, as well as for policymakers. As regards possible policy changes, the author suggests raising civic competence, and replacing the sometime exaggerated manifestations of patriotism with awareness about security issues, individual and democratic values, and the sense of belonging at different levels. In addition, an aim should be to enha…
Party leadership in Poland in comparative perspective
2016
The aim of this paper is to analyse leadership in Polish political parties in comparative perspective. In the further parts of this paper, the methods of leader selections, their competitiveness, as well as reasons for their stepping down are discussed. Similarly to the western political parties, the Polish ones have been changing their methods of leadership selection. So far each time it has consisted in a formal increase in the inclusiveness of the selection. The reasons for transferring the rights relating to the leadership selection to party members were brought closer to the premises typical for Westminster democracies rather than the consensual ones. The analysis of the Polish case sh…
Federalism, Cultural Policies, and Identity Pluralism: Cooperation and Conflict in the Spanish Quasi-Federal System
2014
The division of cultural policy between different levels of administration and the coordination between them in federal countries is a relatively neglected area of research, even though the cultural sphere always requires a balanced combination of autonomy and governance. A particularly interesting case of this equilibrium arises in Spain; often described as a quasi-federal system, both regarding its model of state and within the sphere of cultural policy. However, we demonstrate that, despite the broadly decentralized development of cultural administration in Spain—a plurinational and multicultural state—different recent judicial and political processes are distorting the quasi-federalism …
Directly Elected Mayors vs. Council Appointed Mayors – Which Effects on Local Government Systems?
2016
This chapter compares the Italian and the Spanish case discussing the influence of having elected or appointed mayors on local government systems. Five elements of the local government systems are compared: the electoral system and its influences on the political composition of the local government; the local government structure and the distribution of functions and powers between Mayor and council; the role of political parties; scrutiny of executive and accountability; citizen participation. Our comparative analysis highlights that overall directly elected mayors have ensured better efficiency in terms of quicker and faster decision making processes, even if mostly at the expenses of dem…