Sites Listed Under Public Sphere Talk Category
On November 17, 2009 the Board of the World Bank approved a new policy that will help strengthen the norm of transparency in governance in the global system.
Excerpt from:
The Transparency Revolution Reaches the World Bank
Why is change so difficult to achieve, even when it seems to be the best solution for a certain problem? We could start by recalling human nature that is usually risk adverse. Probably this derives from our genetic memory going back thousands of years when deviating from a known routine and venturing into the unknown could jeopardize one’s life.
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What Does It Take to Bring About Change? (PART I)
Here is an important initiative led by the Carter Center that I was part of and that we would like to bring to the attention of our readers. What follows is the text from the Carter Center: “Participants from the African Regional Conference on the Right of Access to Information today released the Regional Findings and Plan of Action to advance the right in Africa
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Plan of Action to Advance the Right of Access to Information in Africa
“Leaders who pander to public opinion lose respect” – an interesting headline we found in last Wednesday’s Financial Times, opening a comment by Economist and columnist John Kay . Kay makes two common mistakes in his article: First, he confuses public opinion with the popularity of an individual.
Go here to see the original:
Leaders Who Ignore Public Opinion Lose Their Offices
Last month, I had the pleasure to meet again with Shaazka Beyerle , Senior Advisor at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict , during her visit to Washington. Sina and I first met Beyerle in Doha and were impressed by her research on civic campaigns to fight corruption; I had the chance to speak with her by phone in December and was happy to continue our conversation in person in February.
This is an extended quote from the New York Times of February 19, 2010, from a story titled ‘Afghan Push Went Beyond Traditional Military Goals’ : “Before 10,000 troops marched through central Helmand Province to wrest control of a small Afghan town from a few hundred entrenched Taliban fighters, American officials did something more typical of political than military campaigns: they took some polls.
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That Poll in Marja and What It Means for Us
When I try to wrap my head around the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for development, I usually don’t get much further than “blogging” and “text messages.” It was therefore enlightening to attend today’s World Bank Institute Keys to Innovation Discussion Series on “Developers for Development: Using Open Source Technology in Disaster Response and Beyond.” Five presenters from open source organizations introduced their projects. The relevance of those projects is painfully obvious in the aftermath of the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.
Continue reading here:
Still a Niche? ICTs for Disaster Response and Development
You know the usual story: a political community is sundered by ethnic or sectarian conflict, things fall apart; after a hot season or two of killings and mayhem peace is negotiated, and the domestic political process resumes.
In my last post , I mentioned some of the problems that public opinion as a political force can pose when citizens aren’t sufficiently informed or just don’t care about political issues. I mentioned Walter Lippmann’s suggestion to relieve citizens of their participation in political decision making and leave it all up to experts. Another suggestion comes from political scientist John Zaller , who calls for a “burglar alarm journalism.” The principle is related to Lippmann’s: Zaller proposes to leave the evaluation of political issues to, of all things, the media.
Excerpt from:
The Burglar Alarm Standard of News
In my last post I wrote about the issue of public awareness, which Alasdair Roberts explains is one of the three main challenges facing India in its effort to implement the Right to Information Act (RTIA). Another challenge that Roberts names is bureaucratic indifference or hostility
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Tackling Indifference and Hostility with Respect and Pride
“The man who lacks sense enough to despise public opinion expressed in gossip will never do anything great” – this is from Hegel ‘s Philosophy of Right (1822). It’s no secret that at CommGAP, we’re all big advocates for public opinion, nevertheless we need to be aware of some of the problems that public opinion poses in its role as political factor
India’s 2005 Right to Information Act (RTIA) was described earlier on this blog by my colleague Darshana Patel , who saw first-hand some of the innovative efforts by district governments in the state of Maharashtra to implement the RTIA. She concludes her post with a caveat: legislation is important, but it is the actual use of it that leads to its effectiveness—and that use depends on public awareness. This important point, among others, is discussed in detail by Alasdair Roberts of Suffolk University Law School in his informative paper, “ A Great and Revolutionary Law?
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Do Ordinary Indians Care about Their Right to Information?
Economists dominate international development, and, in the case of the World Bank , well, that is an instance of full spectrum dominance. In an article in Public Choice (2010) 142:1-8, titled ‘Persuasion, slack, and traps: how can economists change the world? ‘, Bryan Caplan has some bad news as well as some good news.
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How Can Economists Change the World?
As you can see from many of our blog posts, we’re somewhat struggling with getting a good grip on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and their role for governance and accountability. We’re also somewhat split along the lines of enthusiasm and scepticism with regard to the possibilities of using ICTs to straighten out a distorted public sphere and further development
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eProcurement: At the Beginning of Every Major Change, There’s a Little Website
I attended the last six talks at the Symposium on Hate on Saturday, which brought together the (mostly postgraduate) talents of the English and Philosophy departments of both UCD and TCD. I’m sorry to have had to miss the first few talks, as there was some really interesting material presented at the symposium, and quite a heated discussion got going at the end of it
The rest is here:
Footnotes to the Symposium on Hate, Part 1: On the Importance of Hatred
Will public opinion kill health care reform in the US? Naturally, I don’t know the answer to that question. What is interesting is how a reform process that appeared close to conclusion can wobble mightily upon the apparent signaling of public displeasure
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Will Public Opinion Kill Health Care Reform in the US?
It is conceivably possible, and some think extremely likely, that future biogerentological research will afford the human species the capacity to extend the span of our natural lives indefinitely. (The prospect is of an indefinite period of youth, not of increasing senescence without death.) This possibility makes clearer a contradiction in the way many of us think about mortality. That modern medicine is a valued and much sought after commodity indicates that the vast majority of us believe death to be a bad thing .
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A Problem in the Ethics of Life Extension
In my last blog post , I introduced agenda setting as a fundamental media effect: The media sets the public and the political agenda by bringing issues to the attention of the audience and of policy makers. Agenda setting has a little brother, priming, sometimes called second order agenda setting. Priming effects of communication are important for decision making, for example which candidate to vote for in an upcoming election
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Media Effects II: Priming
CommGAP believes that social norms transformation is key to fighting petty corruption; we believe that one of the biggest impediments to anti-corruption efforts from the perspective of ordinary citizens is when corruption and bribery become so institutionalized in society that people view corruption as the fixed and incontestable norm. To break down such a system, the public’s ignorance of their rights, cynicism, fear of reprisal and mentality of submission to the status quo must first be defeated
See the article here:
What Makes Regular Folk Become Anti-Corruption Advocates?
talk with an array of wonderful photographs (available at www.ncuscr.org) –of Service as a child (he was born in Sichuan); as an adult working in China, including his personal meetings with Mao Zedong in Yanan; and his tribulations at the hands of the FBIs J. Edgar Hoover and later Senator Joseph McCarthy.
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Podcasts – Episosde Two – NCUSCR Member Program – Meet the Author: Lynne Joiner