bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Introduction: history, problems, and theories of policy analysis in Argentina
Authors: Cardozo Nelson , Bulcourf Pablo
Published: January 2024

This introductory chapter seeks to develop the fundamental concepts of the book, providing a meta-theoretical framework for addressing the study of the disciplinary fields. In this section, we furnish a general characterization of the country, its distinctive aspects, the political system, and the different levels of government that are relevant for policy analysis. The proposal in which we frame this work is the studies on the history and development of public administration and policy sciences. In this way, we will show the general guidelines of the development of policy analysis in Argentina, pointing out the milestones from the democratic period, marked by: first, the creation of postgraduate programs from the 1980s; second, the increase of academic production with the reform of the state at the end of the 20th century; finally, the specialization of sub-areas promoted by the creation of research centers. We find a final stage in the last decade with the consolidation of degrees in administration and public policy. At the same time will be discussed the main topics analyzed in Argentina, as well as the theoretical frameworks used and their methodologies, focusing on the relationship between academic production on public policy and policy making, which contributed to the development of this sub-area of knowledge.
Public policies in complex societies: Argentina, a case of a cyclical society
Authors: Delgado Daniel García
Published: January 2024

This chapter proposes as a general objective to show an analytical device to analyze public policies in complex societies such as those of Latin America. Specifically, we propose a style and method for analyzing public policies that refer to four aspects. This method integrates policies within broader processes of change, framed, first, by a theory of the State Area and Public Policies of FLACSO Argentina, and, second, on models of the state–society relationship that integrates recent changes of governments, of development models. Third, this style of analysis and methodology prioritizes the capacity of the agency of the actors over the institutional. This approach focuses on power and conflict in the distribution of resources and public goods involved in all aspects of the public policies. Our society is complex and cyclical, due to the conflict between two coalitions of power and political traditions: the neoliberal and the national-popular. Both projects hold a promise of sustainability. Fourth, and finally, we use three levels of understanding of the public arena: the global dimension; the national dimension; and the local dimension, which identifies endogenous aspects of public policies such as processes and the interaction of civil society actors with public bureaucracies.
The styles of policy analysis in Argentina: analytical frameworks in debate
Authors: Rey Mabel Thwaites , Ciolli Vanesa
Published: January 2024

This chapter analyzes the policy analysis analytical frameworks applied to the Latin American and the Caribbean realities. The academic literature is produced in the central countries, mainly the Anglo-Saxon world and, to a lesser extent, in France. Four decades ago, Oscar Oszlak and Guillermo O’Donnell wrote: “Estado y políticas estatales en América Latina: Hacia Una Estrategia de Investigación” (“State and state policies in Latin America: Towards a research strategy”), an article that became a classic reference, to achieve a more accurate understanding of Latin American state dynamics. In this work, the proto-model outlined facilitates the understanding of public policies as the state “in motion”. After decades of using this model, we identified shortcomings and gaps – both in teaching, and policy analysis in academic and governmental research – that we want to help fill. This way, we propose to provide new methodological tools that complement and deploy the model of Oszlak and O’Donnell.
Policy analysis in the bureaucracy: the production of knowledge for professional public management training
Authors: Campos Ríos Maximiliano
Published: January 2024

This chapter seeks to analyze some aspects related to training in Argentina’s senior public management. While we consider the relationship established with segmentation and knowledge management, changes in relations between the state and society have structured increasingly complex social relationships. The public administration itself does not escape this. Thus, we can see how the existing specialization processes in the scientific and technological field impact on the civil service. The work will introduce the dilemmas around the training systems for senior public management, based on the knowledge segmentation, capabilities, and competencies that are required. We have to conceive the design and implementation of training and education programs from the perspective of an agile, flexible, modern, transparent, inclusive, and open paradigm. This can and should be linked to the “knowledge management” that the organization itself does. We consider it a fundamental element to provide quality services and equal opportunities to all citizens.
Policy analysis in professional organizations: the contribution of the Argentine Association of Public Administration Studies
Authors: Pando Diego , Darmohraj Adrián
Published: January 2024

This chapter traces the history of the Argentine Association of Public Administration Studies (AAEAP), a civil society organization that was born 21 years ago due of a process of convergence of people interested in the state, administration, and public policies as a professional field. The institution is mainly oriented towards building bridges between different actors (public servants, academics, political, union leaders, and members of other civil society organizations) through multiple activities such as conferences, lectures, workshops, roundtables, publications, thematic communities, and dissemination of information in social networks, among others. All these activities are aimed at the analysis and exchange of ideas from a plural and open perspective with a focus on the state, administration, and public policies in Argentina. The scope of this chapter is to describe in-depth the contributions of this organization to the analysis of public policies. To this end, we will look at the main activities of the AAEAP and their impact on the field of public policy. We will review the production of documents, books, and declarations produced by the association focusing on the areas, problems, and main ideas developed in the last 20 years.
Democratic governance and the role of think tanks in the public policy cycle in Argentina
Authors: Diéguez Gonzalo , Chmielewski Demian González
Published: January 2024

This chapter analyzes the development of think tanks oriented to public policies in Argentina. Since the dawn of democracy in 1983, Argentina has seen a surge of interest in policy analysis. Political parties, private companies, universities, and citizens have stepped up to the political arena to form and increasingly shape public policy. Thus, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and think tanks took a privileged place among those stakeholders, often playing a key role in articulating several perspectives to strengthen the public interest. Over the last 35-plus years, the political context proved to be in favor of those experiences. Liberty and civil rights have expanded the scope of action for the civil sector, NGOs, and think tanks. Nevertheless, the civil sector has confronted several challenges throughout the same period. First, the fiscal restriction has been a common note in the democratic period. NGOs and think tanks in Argentina professionalized their work over the last years, working on an evidence-based analysis and with mixed methods, including both quantitative analysis and qualitative inquiry on documents and stakeholders. Based on, but not limited to, the Anglo-Saxon tradition of quantitative analysis, reports, and presentations, the civil sector extended its advocacy actions and a permanent dialog with policy makers.
Policy analysis in private research centers: the Center for the Study of State and Society and its production on state and public policies in Argentina
Authors: Bulcourf Pablo
Published: January 2024

The Center for the Study of State and Society (CEDES) is one of the most important scientific research centers in the field of social sciences in Argentina. For decades, its area of Public Policy and Management has been one of the most outstanding and original places for the production of knowledge on the state, administration, and public policies, not only in Argentina but also in Latin America as a whole. This center was created in 1975, the year before the military coup that would give rise to the cruelest dictatorship in Argentina. This organization was a safeguard for independent scientific production. Meanwhile, the universities and a large part of the intellectual field were persecuted, and their members were dismissed, persecuted, and many of them had to go into exile or were part of the long lists of the disappeared. The foundation survived among the few “catacombs” of independent knowledge in Argentina, financed by international entities and its members. Oscar Oszlak, Guillermo O’Donnell, and Marcelo Cavarozzi, among others, developed their research here. In this chapter, we will review the academic production, focusing on the working papers, reports, and books published by this foundation from 1975 to 2020.
Policy analysis at the universities: teaching comparative public administration with a Latin American perspective
Authors: Oszlak Oscar
Published: January 2024

This chapter presents a possible approach to teaching comparative public administration (CPA), based on the experiences of a teacher of this subject in Latin American universities. Training on CPA is quite familiar in master’s programs of the region, in which one course of the curricula is usually devoted to the comparative study of public management and public policies. Teaching these courses admits multiple approaches, in terms of goals, contents, and methodologies. A helpful methodology used is to ask students at the beginning of the CPA courses about their expectations regarding what they hope to learn after the instruction. The answer is consistently the same: they would like to know how bureaucracies function in other countries, what are their differences with those in their home country, and other similar concerns.
Pandemic narratives: telling stories about COVID-19 and its risks
Authors: Alaszewski Andy
Published: January 2024

Risk often appears as a very abstract impersonal concept, probabilities expressed by numbers. For policy makers, it is precisely the apparent objectivity, lack of emotion and the malleability of numbers that make them so attractive. Such impersonal accounts of COVID-19 and its risk were challenged by narratives in the multiplicity of competing media. These alternative narratives were often based on a narrative matrix that combined factual reporting with subjective accounts of suffering. The numbers remained important, as they demonstrated the heightened risk and vulnerability; but alongside them were personal stories and images that helped readers identify specific victims and empathise with their suffering. Readers could make sense of the objective reality of the numbers through the emotions of friends and relatives of the victims, both their sadness at losing a loved one and their anger at the failure of those responsible to protect them.
Challenges in applying design thinking to public policy: dealing with the varieties of policy formulation and their vicissitudes
Authors: Howlett Michael
Published: January 2024

Policy design is a type of policy formulation activity centred on knowledge application in the creation of policy alternatives. Expected to attain public sector goals and government ambitions in an effective fashion, it can be undertaken many different ways. The current literature on policy design features an ongoing debate between adherents of traditional approaches to the subject in the policy sciences and those importing into policymaking the insights of design practices in other fields such as industrial engineering and product development: ‘design-thinking’. Issues examined in more traditional approaches to policy design are very wide-ranging and address a wide variety of formulation modalities and their strengths and weaknesses. Efforts to promote ‘design-thinking’ in the public policy realm, on the other hand, focus on policy innovation and rarely deal with issues such as the barriers to implementation, political feasibility or the constraints under which decision-making takes place. This chapter discusses these differences and argues adherents of design-thinking need to expand their reach and consider not only the circumstances facilitating the generation of novel ideas but also the lessons of more traditional approaches concerning the political and other challenges faced in policy formulation and implementation.
Designing environments for experimentation, learning and innovation in public policy and governance
Authors: Waardenburg Maurits , Groenleer Martijn , Jong Jorrit De
Published: January 2024

There has been much debate about the contribution of ‘design thinking’ to the fields of public policy and governance. This chapter makes an empirical contribution to this debate by examining the Organised Crime Field Lab – an environment for experimenting with, learning about and innovating in collaborative governance. The study involved working with 18 different multi-agency collaborations involving over 160 professionals as they developed novel approaches to fighting organised crime. Combining quasi-experimental and action research methods, our analysis offers valuable insights into how an environment can be designed that creates the conditions to support collaborations in overcoming the most common challenges in their design process. In particular, we find that a specially designed environment including a structured but flexible problem-solving space, an inclusive facilitative process and a custom-made accountability structure can support collaborative design processes.
When design meets power: design thinking, public sector innovation and the politics of policy-making
Authors: Lewis Jenny M. , McGann Michael , Blomkamp Emma
Published: January 2024

Responding to the need for innovation, governments have begun experimenting with ‘design thinking’ approaches to reframe policy issues and generate and test new policy solutions. This paper examines what is new about design thinking and compares this to rational and participatory approaches to policymaking, highlighting the difference between their logics, foundations and the basis on which they ‘speak truth to power’. It then examines the impact of design thinking on policymaking in practice, using the example of public sector innovation (PSI) labs. The paper concludes that design thinking, when it comes in contact with power and politics, faces significant challenges, but that there are opportunities for design thinking and policymaking to work better together.
Designing institutions for designing policy
Authors: Peters B. Guy
Published: January 2024

Policy design has returned to the centre of discussions of public policy, both for academics and practitioners. With that interest in policy design has come an interest in organisations and institutions that will do the designing, with much of the interest being in structures such as policy laboratories that attempt to foster innovation. These organisations tend to exist outside government hierarchies and support collaborative designing with stakeholders and citizens. This paper examines the potential of these structures from an organisational perspective. Although they do offer great promise as sources of innovation they also confront a number of institutional barriers and dilemmas. This paper focuses on those barriers and dilemmas, as well as some possible means of overcoming them.
Using a design approach to create collaborative governance
Authors: Bryson John M. , Crosby Barbara , Seo Danbi
Published: January 2024

In complex, shared-power settings, policymakers, administrators and other kinds of decision makers increasingly must engage in collaborative inter-organisational efforts to effectively address challenging public issues. These collaborations must be governed effectively if they are to achieve their public purposes. A design approach to the governance of collaborations can help, especially if it explicitly focuses on the design and use of formal and informal settings for dialogue and deliberation (forums), decision making (arenas) and resolution of residual disputes (courts). The success of a design approach will depend on many things, but especially on leaders and leadership and careful attention to the design and use of forums, arenas and courts and the effective use of power. The argument is illustrated by examining the emergence and governance of a collaboration designed to cope with the fragmented policy field of minority business support.
Developing outcomes measurements in Contextual Safeguarding: explorations of theory and practice
Authors: Lloyd Jenny , Owens Rachael
Published: January 2024

How do you measure if a context is safer? What does it mean to change the social conditions of abuse? And how would you measure such changes? Children’s social care services are under increasing pressure to be able to demonstrate and evidence the outcomes of their work. Practitioners developing Contextual Safeguarding (CS) approaches are not immune from these pressures. This chapter outlines what a CS outcomes framework would be required to do – in theory – and discusses the challenges and realities of doing so – in practice. Drawing on experiences of developing a CS outcomes framework in one local authority, the authors reflect on the current challenges and steps needed to create an outcomes framework.
Black vaccination reticence: HBCUs, the Flexner Report and COVID-19
Authors: Siler-Holloman LaTonia A. , Holloman Tiffany R.
Published: January 2024

The Progressive Era was a time of tremendous growth in the US higher education system. Framed by Critical Race Theory, this chapter explores how the prevailing hierarchal ideologies of the time led to the biased evaluation and closure of Black medical schools, as well as the marginalisation of Black medical professionals. The chapter links the historical racial discrimination in education to the contemporary healthcare disparities and distrust in Black community.
An exploration of the label ‘BAME’ and other existing collective terminologies, and their effect on mental health and identity within a COVID-19 context
Authors: Moshie-Moses Ibiyemi
Published: January 2024

This chapter explores the links between existing collective terminologies and their effect on identity and the collective mental health of racialised communities in the UK. It considers the existing literature on collective racial language, taking issue with terms ‘BAME’, ‘BME’, ‘POC’, ‘Minority Ethnic’, ‘Ethnic Minorities’, ‘Visible Minorities’, with attempts to methodically move towards a more Compassionate, Accurate, Linguistically sound and Contextually conscious (CALC) collective phrase for people who experience racism. The chapter notes the detrimental impact of combining a global pandemic, which problematises ‘BAME’ people with ambiguity and confusion, and its effect on individual and collective consciousness. Through this analysis I argue the need for a new collective term determined by the people. The result of my investigation, however, is that an objective outcome cannot be achieved when dealing with identity and the subjective.
Reviewing the impact of OFQUAL’s assessment ‘algorithm’ on racial inequalities
Authors: Mallett Bruno
Published: January 2024

This chapter investigates whether OFQUAL’s briefly used assessment ‘algorithm’ systematically produced unequal grade outcomes along racialised categories. Inspired by student-led protests in August 2020 following initial outcomes produced by the algorithm, this chapter evaluates core concerns raised throughout the protests, which positioned the algorithm’s outcomes as socially discriminatory by design.
History and styles of policy analysis in Thailand
Authors: Boossabong Piyapong
Published: January 2024

This chapter provides the historical background and styles of policy analysis in Thailand. The history started when policy analysis was introduced as the elites’ governmental instrument and bureaucratic practice. After that, with the domination of the United States during the Cold War, policy analysis in Thailand was influenced by the American system. Following this was the era of policy analysis under the rise of think tanks, corporations and money politics. Then policy analysis shifted to meet citizens’ demands for participation when Thailand had a democratic constitution and when populist policies emerged. The current thinking of policy analysis reflects the paradoxical and complex landscape depicting the tug-of-war between old and new values in Thai society. The chapter also addresses the main styles of Thai policy analysis, especially how policy analysis in Thailand usually goes beyond speaking truth to power and how it operates within the coexistence of formal and informal contexts.
Methods of policy analysis in Thailand: bureaucratic, managerial, academic and participatory orientations
Authors: Santhitiwanich Arunee
Published: January 2024

This chapter elaborates on the key methods of policy analysis in Thailand, classified by underlying values and policy learning continuity. Four types of methods are highlighted, including bureaucratic-oriented methods, managerial-oriented methods, academic services methods and participatory methods. It is evident that bureaucratic-oriented methods are primarily used and that they operate through the mechanisms of advisory boards, planning divisions and information hierarchies. In contrast, participatory methods are introduced as complementary methods, especially through ad hoc and third parties. The main process of public participation is via public hearings or referendums, which are usually limited in influencing policy decisions because they are perceived only as one item on the checklist of things to do for managing public projects. For academic services methods, the focus is on using expert opinions with interdisciplinary perspectives, while managerial-oriented methods are based on New Public Management, which utilises performance management, strategic tools and standardised processes.
Policy analysis in Thai local governments
Authors: Chamchong Pobsook
Published: January 2024

This chapter provides an insight into policy analysis revealed through the investigation of the autonomy of Thai local governments. Although the central government uses regional governmental bodies as its limbs and intervenes in local government with rigid regulations and guidelines, the local government has some policy roles to play within its authority. The chapter analyses that, with the top-down centrally driven system, local policy analysis is based mainly on legal framework and resources dependency. It argues that the area-based development discourse initiated by the central government restored the hidden bureaucratic dominance in local government system. Such discourse overshadows the decentralisation and weakens the representative status of local governments in local policy analysis and development. The chapter also emphasises that Thai local governments appear to be regarded as semi-autonomous units who merely implement the centralised policy decisions even though their autonomous status is constitutionally enshrined.
Parliamentary committees, legislative supporting agencies and policy advice
Authors: Sudhipongpracha Tatchalerm
Published: January 2024

This chapter offers an overview of the structures of the Senate and the House of Representatives, as well as the functions that may allow the parliamentarians to incorporate policy analysis tools in their work. These functions include the parliamentary ‘question time’ and parliamentary committees. The former enables parliamentarians to scrutinise the executive branch and acquire information necessary for their legislative tasks, while the latter is an important mechanism to make laws and shape public policies. This chapter also explores the parliament’s research and administrative services, including the personal staff, for each individual parliamentarian and general research services offered by the parliamentary administration. With the fact that the current constitution has deprived the Thai parliament of its legislative and oversight powers, this chapter demonstrates that the Thai parliamentarians have tried to use what they have for communicating to the electorate that alternatives to the executive branch’s policy proposals are available.
The role of expert policy advisory boards, consultants and think tanks in policy analysis
Authors: Poocharoen Ora-orn , Jongruck Patamawadee , Chattragul Phanuphat , Khumsupa Malinee
Published: January 2024

This chapter provides a broad picture of consultants, think tanks and advisory committees in Thailand’s public policy ecosystem. The role of foreign advisors or consultants before the transition to the constitutional monarch system is provided to explain how Thailand was modernised in the same direction as the West, despite not having been formally colonised. It also describes the role of monarch advisors in policy analyses of the country. This chapter also covers the emergence and typologies of modern-day policy advisory boards, consultants and think tanks. It provides a picture of how consultants and advisors are highly influential and important in Thailand’s policy networks today. Additionally, it argues that consultants are policy actors, who should be held accountable for their policy analysis, should be regarded as a profession, and should not perpetuate the noble aristocratic role of elites in the past.
Political movements as expression of public opinion for agenda setting in Thailand
Authors: Buddharaksa Watcharabon
Published: January 2024

This chapter examines political movements as a form of public opinion expression. It provides thick descriptions of five political movements that have pivoted the directions of policy analysis in Thailand. The main goal is to investigate how the agenda-setting process may be seen as a struggle to construct a new public discourse rather than be seen as merely a fight for sending messages to the government. The chapter employs Antonio Gramsci’s notion of ‘war of position’ – struggle in the terrain of ideas, thought and culture via mass media as a crucial tool – as a framework to explain the politics of agenda setting in Thailand. Since the 1997 political reformation, there were five distinct attempts to construct public discourse: demanding a strong state; rallying against Thaksin Shinawatra – the popular ex-prime minister; challenging the old regime with the domination of conservative elites; subverting the common sense; and, once again, for political reform.
The role of the community sector and civil society in policy analysis
Authors: Ungsuchaval Theerapat , Ariyasirichot Wachirawat
Published: January 2024

This chapter investigates the development and the role of civil society and the community sector in Thailand’s public policy ecosystem. They are operating across policy fields and taking up various roles in policy analysis, ranging from being a watchdog and a policy advocate of selected policy issues to a partner for public governance and policy execution. Since the 1960s, the sector has begun to be recognised by the Thai government and played a part in public policy processes of the country. The liberalisation of the government and the way it analyses policies during the late 1980s and 1990s has encouraged the involvement of civil society in institutional policy settings. This chapter also shows that the relationship with the state and public funding are key conditions for the sector to develop certain characteristics which favour the institutional mode of policy advocacy and has an ambivalent relationship with democracy.
Policy analysis instruction in Thailand
Authors: Whangmahaporn Piyakorn
Published: January 2024

This chapter examines the landscape of educational policy courses provided across recent programmes by major universities throughout the country, considering mainly the conventional perspective. It shows how public policy has been a popular subject for more than three decades in Thailand. It elaborates that most of the policy analysis education is in public administration programmes in bachelor’s and master’s degree courses. The main approaches of policy analysis instruction are either descriptive or prescriptive. Teaching public policy as an academic course can be traced back to when public administration majors and programmes in established universities started to introduce new subjects and aimed to create graduates who can work at the policy levels. Since then, public policy has become a core pedagogical element of public administration education and developed its trajectory under the shadow of public administration. For the last decade, specific standards have been issued to control the quality of the instruction of public administration with no specific attention to public policy.
Policy research in academic institutions
Authors: Aunphattanasilp Chumphol
Published: January 2024

This chapter seeks to investigate policy research conducted by academic institutions to identify the key paradigms that influence Thailand’s policy epistemic community. With the exploration of various policy research, the chapter points out that most existing policy studies in this country are either empirical-based or normative-based and that these are not usually connected to real policy debates and analysis. With the paradigmatic homogeneity, most works reproduce similar explanations, logics and imaginations. The chapter highlights that there is a lack of research that can be used to guide policy direction in the real world. There are few pragmatic and transformative policy studies that aim to handle real-world problems and make substantive changes. The more impactful policy studies are the advocacy projects that come with a defined goal depending on who is commissioning the project. The chapter assesses that these works rarely generate specific policy knowledge and serious discussions.
Knowledge Alchemy
Authors: Erkkilä Tero , Chou Meng-Hsuan , Kauppi Niilo
Published: January 2024

This book introduces the concept of ‘knowledge alchemy’ to capture the generic process of transforming mundane practices and policies of governance into competitive ones following imagined global gold standards. Using examples from North America, Europe and Asia, it explores how knowledge alchemy increasingly informs national and institutional policies and practices on economic performance, higher education, research and innovation. The book examines how governments around the world have embraced global models of the world-class university, human capital and talent competition as essential in ensuring national competitiveness. Through its analysis, the book shows how this strongly future-oriented and anticipatory knowledge governance is steered by a surge of global classifications, rankings and indicators, resulting in numerous comparisons of various domains that today form more constraining global policy scripts.
All We Want is the Earth
Authors: Bresnihan Patrick , Millner Naomi
Published: January 2024

Sixty years ago, an upsurge of social movements protested the ecological harms of industrial capitalism. In subsequent decades, environmentalism consolidated into forms of management and business strategy that aimed to tackle ecological degradation while enabling new forms of green economic growth. The result has not only been an acceleration of planetary breakdown but the intensification of global inequalities. In this book we trace a counter-history of modern environmentalism from the 1960s to the present day. We focus on claims concerning land, labour and social reproduction arising at important moments in the history of environmentalism made by feminist, anti-colonial, Indigenous, workers’ and agrarian movements. We follow the ways that coalitions between movements continued to thrive where environmental action remained connected with decolonial and livelihood struggles. Many of these coalitions did not consider themselves ‘environmental’, and yet they offer ways forward in the face of escalating ecological damage and social injustice.
Class and Social Background Discrimination in the Modern Workplace
Authors: Capuano Angelo
Published: January 2024

This book exposes how inequalities based on class and social background arise from employment practices in the digital age; where the infiltration of personal and family life through social media weighs on who is hired and fired; where platforms can be used to hide job advertisements from people who live in certain parts of a city; where algorithms assess socio-economic data to filter candidates; where human interviewers are replaced by artificial intelligence with design that disadvantages candidates who use certain classed language; and where already vulnerable groups are disadvantaged by gamified recruitment, exploited by the technology driven gig economy or become victims of the post-pandemic shift to remote working. The extent to which or whether these inequalities create risks of discrimination based on certain protected attributes is examined, including ‘social origin’ in international labour law and the laws of Australia and South Africa, ‘social condition’ and ‘family status’ in laws within Canada, ‘family status’ in New Zealand law, and others. The analysis in this book reveals deficiencies in the ability of the law to address these inequalities, and thus makes proposals for law reform and the development of workplace policy which may help to disassemble the structural barriers which are being constructed in the digital age.
Representation, Resistance and the Digiqueer
Authors: Ellis Justin
Published: January 2024

The hybrid media ecosystem of older and newer digital media logics has enhanced the capacity to express oneself and to organize. At the same time, it has amplified the pre-digital fault lines of anti-LGBTQ stigma grounded in criminalization and pathology, reinforcing aspects of the hierarchy of human value. The continued stigmatization of same-sex attraction and related gender diversity can generate a range of representational harms. These harms can perpetuate bias-motivated conduct across and through digital media platforms, from algorithmic censorship to in-person assault and murder. This book analyses the context and consequences of the hybrid media ecosystem and its systems of technocratic governance for LGBTQ agency. The transformation of cultural production through digital platforms has restructured the terms by which culture is distributed and paid for. This transformation has emphasized the durability of anti-LGBTQ stigma, despite the expansion of legitimate categories of vulnerability enshrined in anti-discrimination law in many jurisdictions. The book’s case studies draw on debate over gender, procreation, religion, nationalism and tech-regulation, to consider the place of the ‘digiqueer’ citizen in the hybrid media ecosystem through case law, social media, news media reports and LGBTQ-tech advocacy. The book argues that the effects of stigma on LGBTQ expression is a form of information warfare, manifested in the manufacture of an imagined LGBTQ enemy, and the rationalization, normalization and monetization of stigma-driven exclusion based on that fiction. In doing so, the book analyses the power of meaning making through knowledge production processes, the material value of identity, and its relationship to realizing LGBTQ expression, relationship and conduct rights.
Participating in Peace
Authors: Jaramillo-Marín Jefferson , López-Lizarazo Luz Mery , Ruiz-Galvan Adriel , Louis Bishop Matthew , Mario Díaz-Arévalo Juan , Miguel Kanai Juan , Lombard Melanie , Rushton Simon , Shesterinina Anastasia , Staples Henry , Turton Helen Louise
Published: January 2024

This book examines how, in the years before and since the 2016 peace agreement between the government and the FARC, communities in Colombia have been using dialogue as a way of participating in the building of peace. Seeking to understand the dynamics of community-level dialogues that aim to deal with the legacies of earlier violence and overcome ongoing conflicts, the book focuses on two regions: Catatumbo and Buenaventura/Mid-Pacific. These are extremely different in their social and economic contexts but have, in different ways, seized the initiative following disappointment at the failure to achieve real progress through the public participation mechanisms that were created as part of the national-level peace process. The aim of the book is both to document and draw lessons from these processes of dialogue, and also to examine the ways in which researchers can contribute to them. Building on Participatory Action Research (PAR), we combine our examination of local dialogues with reflections on the potential for PAR to support those processes. In doing so, the book examines the possibilities and limits of different forms of local agency, the prospects for non-extractive academic engagement and practical and theoretical lessons for participating in peace in other conflict-affected settings.
Disciplining Democracies
Authors: Black Lindsay
Published: January 2024

Under Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, Japan was designated as ‘Asia’s liberal leader’. Though this label primarily pertained to the Japanese government’s leadership on trade issues, Japan’s ‘value-based diplomacy’ also promised to place democratization, peace-building and human security at the forefront of Japan’s foreign policy. Myanmar’s transition to a ‘disciplined democracy’, following general elections in 2010, provided the Abe administration with an opportunity to emphasize Japan’s ‘value-based diplomacy’. The Abe administration sought to support Myanmar’s fledgling democracy through aid and investment and attempted to mediate in Myanmar’s long-standing ethnic conflicts.
Japan’s ‘value-based rhetoric’ masked a broader economic rationale, notably building Special Economic Zones and infrastructure to connect Myanmar’s neighboring Mekong states with the Indian Ocean. When violence broke out in Rakhine state, leading to the exodus of the Rohingya to refugee camps in Bangladesh, the Abe administration opted to support rather than pressure the Myanmar government. Despite Myanmar’s February 2021 coup, the connections between the Japanese government and business elites with Myanmar’s junta remain strong. As Myanmar descends into civil war, this book reassesses Japan’s designation as ‘Asia’s liberal leader’ and its commitment to human security. It demonstrates not only the disjuncture between the rhetoric of ‘value-based diplomacy’ and Japan’s foreign policy, but also the contradictions inherent to the rhetoric itself. Interrogating the discursive foundations of Japan’s foreign policy reveals how Japan’s foreign policy elites perceive Japan’s role in the liberal international order and the human beings this policy marginalizes and excludes.
Reading the Fortune Seeker: (Dis)Empowerment in the Dutch Refugee Experience
Authors: Veldhuizen Vera , Hagen Sietse
Published: January 2024

Abstract: Suspicion and distrust of migrants and asylum seekers have been part of the Dutch media landscape for decades, particularly regarding youth from Muslim countries. These minors have been framed as inherently violent, religiously radical, and incompatible with Dutch social mores by dominant cultural narratives, represented by both the media and political debates. The narrative framing young asylum seekers, especially Muslims, combined with the disenfranchisement suffered by refugees in the asylum-seeking process, means young refugees are systematically demonized and disempowered. This article analyses a novel that contradicts the pervasive narratives surrounding young asylum seekers in the Netherlands. De Gelukvinder stars a protagonist doubly oppressed by Dutch society, both as a refugee and a teenager. We analyze how the narrative reflects the power dynamics and agency involved in the Dutch asylum process and discuss how the novel itself, an award-winning co-written project between a Dutch-born adult author and an Afghan refugee teen, counteracts the disempowerment stemming from Dutch public discourse. We argue that De Gelukvinder empowers the adolescent asylum seeker whilst foregrounding to an adolescent audience the disempowerment refugees face when coming to the Netherlands.
Co-Opting Truth: Explaining Quasi-Judicial Institutions in Authoritarian Regimes
Authors: Gillooly Shauna N. , Solomon Daniel , Zvobgo Kelebogile
Published: January 2024

ABSTRACT: What accounts for the creation, design, and outputs of quasi-judicial institutions in autocracies? Prior research demonstrates that autocrats co-opt electoral, legislative, and judicial institutions to curtail opponents’ power and curry international patrons’ favor. However, scholarship on co-optation neglects quasi-judicial mechanisms, such as truth commissions, that can be useful for arranging a political narrative that bolsters a leader’s image while undermining his rivals. In this article, we formalize the concept of autocratic truth commissions—which account for one-third of truth commissions globally—and develop and test a novel theory of their origins, inputs, and outputs. We theorize that autocrats establish self-investigating commissions in response to threats to their symbolic authority and install rival-investigating commissions in response to threats to both symbolic authority and regime survival. We further argue that these two commission types take on different institutional forms and produce different outputs. Self-investigating commissions are afforded narrow mandates and produce reports that obscure basic facts. Meanwhile, rival-investigating commissions are granted wide mandates and culminate in accurate reports of rivals’ responsibility for abuses. We evaluate these expectations through comparative case studies of two autocratic truth commissions in Uganda, and find support.
Protecting the Right to Have Rights: Defending the Enfranchisement of Refugees
Authors: Dumitru Adelin-Costin
Published: January 2024

ABSTRACT: In this article I challenge the interpretation of refugees as passive beneficiaries of political decisions and make a case for their enfranchisement. Starting from literature regarding the boundary problem of democratic theory, I make a republican case for including refugees in the demos. My novel approach emphasizes that bestowing electoral rights upon refugees is a separate question from offering them full citizenship. Enfranchising the refugees is a separate, and temporary prior measure of ensuring that their freedom is protected and that their rights are not imperiled by arbitrarily imposed decisions, at least in a world which is operating under a regime of controlled, closed borders. This preoccupation with feasibility constraints also aims to separate this article from recent contributions that defended the enfranchisement of refugees.
Mutually Assured Disruption: Globalization, Security, and the Dangers of Decoupling
Authors: Christensen Thomas J.
Published: January 2024

The evolution of transnational production in the Asia-Pacific over the past few decades has been a force for peace. Critics of globalization and proponents of US-China economic decoupling advocate policies that would not only harm the global economy but would increase the likelihood of military conflict. This article focuses on the national security benefits of US-China economic engagement and the regional economic integration of East Asia. Government interventions to protect national security and build more resilience in supply chains are needed but should be limited in scope so as to avoid fundamental damage to the complex economic interdependence that has fostered growth and helped to deter war.
Polarization-controlled Goos–Hänchen shift by weak value amplification in total internal reflection
Authors: Mandal Soumen , Das Akash , Pradhan Manik
Published: January 2024

We report what we believe is the first experimental evidence of a
polarization-controlled Goos–Hänchen (GH) shift for a fundamental
Gaussian beam (633 nm) of arbitrary polarization in the
vicinity of the critical angle of incidence at the glass–air interface
employing a quantum weak measurement technique. Characteristics of the
GH shift with different polarization angles and angles of incidence
are demonstrated. The experimental findings are in good agreement with
the theoretical predictions. This study establishes the critical role
of the polarization states of incident light to obtain maximum
amplification of a spatial GH shift. We expect that our results may
open a pathway toward highly tunable GH shifts that can boost new
applications in the modern optical device industry.
SiN integrated photonic components in the visible to near-infrared spectral region
Authors: Sanna Matteo , Baldazzi Alessio , Piccoli Gioele , Azzini Stefano , Ghulinyan Mher , Pavesi Lorenzo
Published: January 2024

Integrated photonics has emerged as one of the most promising platforms for quantum applications. The performances of quantum photonic integrated circuits (QPIC) necessitate a demanding optimization to achieve enhanced properties and tailored characteristics with more stringent requirements with respect to their classical counterparts. In this study, we report on the simulation, fabrication, and characterization of a series of fundamental components for photons manipulation in QPIC based on silicon nitride. These include crossing waveguides, multimode-interferometer-based integrated beam splitters (MMIs), asymmetric integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZIs) based on MMIs, and micro-ring resonators. Our investigation revolves primarily around the visible to near-infrared spectral region, as these integrated structures are meticulously designed and tailored for optimal operation within this wavelength range. By advancing the development of these elementary building blocks, we aim to pave the way for significant improvements in QPIC in a spectral region only little explored so far.
High-efficiency upconversion luminescence in UCNPs/CsPbBr3 nanocomposites enhanced by silver nanoparticles
Authors: Liu Wenting , Yang Tieshan , Cao Kunjian , Han Jing , Jiao Mengmeng , Zhang Shufang , Yang Chuanlu , Xu Qinfeng
Published: January 2024

Upconversion nanocomposites with multiple light-emitting centers have attracted great attention as functional materials, but their low efficiency limits their further applications. Herein, a novel, to the best of our knowledge, system for nanocomposites consisting of upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) and perovskite quantum dots (PeQDs) assembled with Ag nanoparticles (NPs) is proposed. Upconversion luminescence (UCL) operation from PeQDs is triggered by near-infrared (NIR) sensitization through Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) and photon reabsorption (PR). Especially, the photoluminescence (PL) emission efficiency is found to be significantly enhanced due to the increased energy transfer efficiency and radiative decay rate in the UCNPs/CsPbBr3 nanocomposites. The results offer new opportunities to improve the UCL properties of perovskites and open new development in the fields of LED lighting, solar cells, biomedicine, and so on.