Mobilizing for Democracy

Mobilizing for Democracy

Author: Vera Schatten Coelho

Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.

Published: 2013-04-04

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 1848139152

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Mobilizing for Democracy is an in-depth study into how ordinary citizens and their organizations mobilize to deepen democracy. Featuring a collection of new empirical case studies from Angola, Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, this important new book illustrates how forms of political mobilization, such as protests, social participation, activism, litigation and lobbying, engage with the formal institutions of representative democracy in ways that are core to the development of democratic politics. No other volume has brought together examples from such a broad Southern spectrum and covering such a diversity of actors: rural and urban dwellers, transnational activists, religious groups, politicians and social leaders. The cases illuminate the crucial contribution that citizen mobilization makes to democratization and the building of state institutions, and reflect the uneasy relationship between citizens and the institutions that are designed to foster their political participation.


International Encyclopedia of Civil Society

International Encyclopedia of Civil Society

Author: Helmut K. Anheier

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2009-11-24

Total Pages: 1722

ISBN-13: 0387939962

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Recently the topic of civil society has generated a wave of interest, and a wealth of new information. Until now no publication has attempted to organize and consolidate this knowledge. The International Encyclopedia of Civil Society fills this gap, establishing a common set of understandings and terminology, and an analytical starting point for future research. Global in scope and authoritative in content, the Encyclopedia offers succinct summaries of core concepts and theories; definitions of terms; biographical entries on important figures and organizational profiles. In addition, it serves as a reliable and up-to-date guide to additional sources of information. In sum, the Encyclopedia provides an overview of the contours of civil society, social capital, philanthropy and nonprofits across cultures and historical periods. For researchers in nonprofit and civil society studies, political science, economics, management and social enterprise, this is the most systematic appraisal of a rapidly growing field.


Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics

Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics

Author: Jay Drydyk

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-07-16

Total Pages: 582

ISBN-13: 1317236092

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The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics provides readers with insight into the central questions of development ethics, the main approaches to answering them, and areas for future research. Over the past seventy years, it has been argued and increasingly accepted that worthwhile development cannot be reduced to economic growth. Rather, a number of other goals must be realised: Enhancement of people's well-being Equitable sharing in benefits of development Empowerment to participate freely in development Environmental sustainability Promotion of human rights Promotion of cultural freedom, consistent with human rights Responsible conduct, including integrity over corruption Agreement that these are essential goals has also been accompanied by disagreements about how to conceptualize or apply them in different cases or contexts. Using these seven goals as an organizing principle, this handbook presents different approaches to achieving each one, drawing on academic literature, policy documents and practitioner experience. This international and multi-disciplinary handbook will be of great interest to development policy makers and program workers, students and scholars in development studies, public policy, international studies, applied ethics and other related disciplines.


Scandinavian Information Systems Research

Scandinavian Information Systems Research

Author: Karlheinz Kautz

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2010-08-10

Total Pages: 165

ISBN-13: 3642148735

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This book contains the refereed proceedings of the First Scandinavian Conference on Information Systems (SCIS), held in Rebild, Denmark, in August 2010. The conference was held in conjunction with the traditional IRIS seminar for information systems research in Scandinavia, and its objective was to extend and formalize part of the seminar to a full conference by presenting high-quality research with a particular view on the Scandinavian research community. At the same time, SCIS aims to continue with the Scandinavian information systems research tradition, which has for several decades placed emphasis on the relevance of practical results for users, industry and society at large. The 10 papers accepted for SCIS were presented in one single track and cover topics like requirements engineering, organizational integration, IT governance, adaption of standard software, and outsourcing. Each submitted paper was reviewed by three program committee members from Scandinavia, USA, and Australia; and this thorough selection process resulted in an acceptance rate of 25%.


Africa's Urban Revolution

Africa's Urban Revolution

Author: Doctor Edgar Pieterse

Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.

Published: 2014-01-09

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 1780325231

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The facts of Africa’s rapid urbanisation are startling. By 2030 African cities will have grown by more than 350 million people and over half the continent's population will be urban. Yet in the minds of policy makers, scholars and much of the general public, Africa remains a quintessentially rural place. This lack of awareness and robust analysis means it is difficult to make a policy case for a more overtly urban agenda. As a result, there is across the continent insufficient urgency directed to responding to the challenges and opportunities associated with the world’s last major wave of urbanisation. Drawing on the expertise of scholars and practitioners associated with the African Centre for Cities, and utilising a diverse array of case studies, Africa's Urban Revolution provides a comprehensive insight into the key issues - demographic, cultural, political, technical, environmental and economic - surrounding African urbanisation.


Critical Perspectives on Open Development

Critical Perspectives on Open Development

Author: Arul Chib

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2021-02-16

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 026236333X

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Theoretical and empirical analyses of whether open innovations in international development instrumentally advantages poor and marginalized populations. Over the last ten years, "open" innovations--the sharing of information without access restrictions or cost--have emerged within international development. But do these practices instrumentally advantage poor and marginalized populations? This book examines whether, for whom, and under what circumstances the free, networked, public sharing of information and communication resources contributes (or not) towards a process of positive social transformation. The contributors offer both theoretical and empirical analyses that cover a broad range of applications, emphasizing the underlying aspects of open innovations that are shared across contexts and domains.


Universities and Global Human Development

Universities and Global Human Development

Author: Alejandra Boni

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-14

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1317587189

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This book makes the case for a critical turn in development thinking around universities and their contributions in making a more equal post-2015 world. It puts forward a normative approach based on human development and the capability approach, one which can gain a hearing from policy, scholarship, and practitioners dealing with practical issues of understanding policy, democratising research and knowledge, and fostering student learning - all key university functions. The book argues that such an approach can elucidate development debates drawing on local, national and international issues and examples to show why higher education matters for sustainable development goals both in educational and social terms. It advocates a new arena of engagement with universities as key sites of development and freedoms beyond human capital and challenges development omissions and gaps around university education. The book explores how the human development approach addresses the following core ideas: the meaning of well-being, the idea of agency, participation and democratic citizenship, how to address inequalities, the relation between local and global, and the idea of equitable partnerships. This book is addressed to researchers and postgraduate students in development studies, university education, the capability approach and human development community.


Citizen Initiatives and Democratic Engagement

Citizen Initiatives and Democratic Engagement

Author: Sumona DasGupta

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-11-12

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1136196730

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This book looks at a series of citizen-led campaigns to provide information about and energise the institutions of local self-governance in India following the 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts. Staggering in their outreach and magnitude, the campaigns, popularly known as PEVACs (Pre-election Voters’ Awareness Campaigns), reached out to huge swathes of the population, particularly in rural India, through a unique network that incorporated civil-society organisations across the country, the media and the State Election Commission itself. The book journeys through the heat and dust of these extraordinary campaigns, drawing from a repertoire of field reports and interviews to reflect on the significance of this ‘experiment’ on deepening democracy in India. In particular, it analyses the methodology of the campaigns and posits that this itself became an extraordinary exercise in democratic practice, indicating the shape that deliberation and dialogic practices could actually take on the field. As the campaigns moved from district to district, through their street plays, posters, pamphlets, jagrut yatras, candidate–voter dialogues, rehearsals of voting procedures, setting up of information booths, and participatory workshops for newly elected representatives, a new dialogical experiment was born and shaped. By examining these campaigns, this book emphasises the idea that governance is not just the business of central (federal) governments but also of citizens outside the formal institutions of governance, without whose active participation democracy cannot be deepened.


The Politics of Development in Morocco

The Politics of Development in Morocco

Author: Sylvia I. Bergh

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-01-30

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1786731169

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Since the mid-1990s, Morocco has sought to present itself as a model of genuine and gradual reform, with decentralisation as a key tenet of this. Here, Sylvia Bergh investigates the dynamics of popular participation and local governance, testing the extent to which the current structure builds local capacity, or whether it is, in fact, a tool for 'soft' state control. She narrates the realities of local administration and civil society to shed critical light on questions of democratic transition in North Africa. Her assessment of decentralisation and participatory development projects in rural Morocco, and the legal and policy frameworks in which they operate, leads to the conclusion that they have generally not yet led to an expansion of a civil society able to build local capacity or enhance bottom-up empowerment. Grounded in an approach of the 'anthropology of policy', this book makes an important contribution to literature on the democratisation, development and governance in North Africa.