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Given the weaknesses of mainstream democratisation since the 1980s, the authors present a cutting edge examination of dynamics of political change in the direction of more substantive democracy. While focusing on the Global South, they also draw comparisons from historical and contemporary experiences from Scandinavia.
Breaks new ground in the study of participatory governance by combining qualitative and quantitative research methods. Donaghy uses data from Brazil's 5,564 municipalities and fieldwork from five Brazilian cities to test whether participatory municipal housing councils are associated with an increase in adoption of social housing programs to benefit the poor.
A fresh appraisal of the nature and significance of the democratic left in the Global South.
Although much prized in daily conversation, good listening has been almost completely ignored in that form of political conversation we know as democracy. This book examines the reasons why so little attention has been paid to the listening aspect of democratic conversation, explores the role that listening might play in democracy, and outlines some institutional changes that could be made to make listening more central to democratic processes. The focus on listening amounts to a reorientation of democratic theory and practice, providing novel perspectives on enduring themes in democracy such as recognition, representation, power and legitimacy—as well as some new ones, such as silence. Es...
This book examines the rise, spread and decline of participatory budgeting in Brazil. In the last decade of the twentieth century Brazil became a model of participatory democracy for activists, practitioners, and scholars. However, some thirty years later participatory budgeting is in steep decline, and on the verge of disappearing from Brazil. Drawing from institutional, political choice, civil society, and public administration literature, this book generates theory that accounts for the rise and fall of an innovative democratic institution. It examines what the arc of the creation, spread, and decline of participatory budgeting tells us about the long-term viability and potential democratic impact of this innovative democratic institution as it spreads globally. Will the same inverted trajectory plague other countries in the future, or will they be able to sustain participatory budgeting for greater periods of time?
As Brazil and other countries in Latin America turned away from their authoritarian past and began the transition to democracy in the 1980s and 1990s, interest in developing new institutions to bring the benefits of democracy to the citizens in the lower socioeconomic strata intensified, and a number of experiments were undertaken. Perhaps the one receiving the most attention has been Participatory Budgeting (PB), first launched in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 1989 by a coalition of civil society activists and Workers&’ Party officials. PB quickly spread to more than 250 other municipalities in the country, and it has since been adopted in more than twenty countries world...
"Examining the historical experience of different countries, a thought-provoking volume, taking on a global perspective to explain inequality the defining issue of our time reveals that our inability to act in concert, both rich and poor, is what is falling apart, not the world itself, and shows how it is within our power to address it, "--NoveList.
The global population is projected to reach almost 10 billion by 2050, and food and feed production will need to increase by 70%. Wheat, maize and sorghum are three key cereals which provide nutrition for the majority of the world's population. Their production is affected by various abiotic stresses which cause significant yield losses. The effects of climate change also increase the frequency and severity of such abiotic stresses. Molecular breeding technologies offer real hope for improving crop yields. Although significant progress has been made over the last few years, there is still a need to bridge the large gap between yields in the most favorable and most stressful conditions.
Flooded provides insights into the little-known effects of dam building through a close examination of Brazil's Belo Monte hydroelectric facility, the fourth largest dam in the world. Klein tells the stories of dam-affected communities, such as fishermen and displaced urban residents, as well as their advocates, including activists, social movements, public defenders, and public prosecutors. This ground-level perspective shows how local democracy is at once strengthened and weakened by a rapid influx of government resources. In the midst of today's climate crisis, Flooded showcases the challenges and opportunities of meeting increasing demands for energy in equitable ways.
This anthropological study of grassroots community leaders in Porto Alegre, Brazil’s leftist hotspot, focuses on gender, politics, and regionalism during the early 2000s, when the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores) was in power. The author explores the ways community leaders make sense of official notions of citizenship and how gender, politics, and regional identities shape these interpretations. Junge further examines the implications of leaders’ deep ambivalence toward normative participation discourses for how we theorize and study participatory democracy, citizenship, and political subjectivity in Brazil and beyond.