Coordination and citizen participation

This study investigates the validity of the assumption that coordination and citizen participation are related inversely and, thus, are incompatible as features in the same social service reform strategy. Seventeen social service organizations situated in the same urban area were studied. Data were obtained by structured interview. The concepts of coordination and citizen participation were operationalized by means of scales. The findings support the validity of the assumption noted above. Although interpretations of the findings can be provided, they are post-factum. This implies a need for explanatory research which might be guided by theories of community power structure and of organizational behavior.     

An analysis of citizen participation in anti-poverty programmes

This article explores citizen participation, describing levels,forms and benefits of participation by local community members.In particular, it analyses citizen involvement in anti-povertyprogrammes, drawing on primary research in Jamaica, where asocial fund forms a major plank of the national government'spolicy and programme to reduce poverty. Using naturalistic inquirymethods, the research sought evidence of citizen participationin social fund subprojects aimed at improving community infrastructureand social services and strengthening community organizations.This article discusses four types of participation revealedby the research and the implications for community-level approachesto economic improvement and social change.     

The evaluation of citizen participation in policymaking: Insights from Portugal

While citizen participation in policymaking is on the rise worldwide, the scholarly debate centring around its evaluation has not developed to the same extent. The article discusses the methodology and findings of the evaluation of the project “Portugal Participa: Caminhos para a Inovação Societal” which started at the end of 2014, and was implemented in 2015 and 2016, in Portugal. As the project promoted actions at both national and local levels, the evaluation accounted for both layers with a major focus on the analysis of procedures and outputs to examine its success. Through the application of a multi-method approach – data collection and analysis, cost-effectiveness assessment, interviews, pre-post surveys, and counterfactual focus groups – involving a wide array of agents – political representatives, civil servants, NGOs, citizens, national academia, and the funding sponsor – findings have helped retrieve three main insights that aim to contribute to future research on the evaluation of citizen participation in policymaking, which should shed light on: the (re)connection of multiple agents; the role within the governance systems; and the pursuit of social inclusion.     

Integral citizen observatory of Los Cabos: popular participation conscious and competent

ABSTRACT

According to the United Nations data more than half of humanity lives today in the cities, but it is expected that in 2050 it could be almost 80% of the global population. That means a transformative role of cities at all levels in the coming decades. Participation and democracy in the twenty-first century must be promoted and practiced from the cities. A popular participation based on the observation, and also in an active participation within the management of the government can promote good governance where citizens can be empowered to achieve a higher level of democracy in our cities but also in our society. Currently therés an international standard on quality management in local government; ISO 18091:2014, it contains 39 indicators on public policies that local governments cannot stop attending. I would like to present in this article the success case of the Integral Citizen Observatory of Los Cabos (OCI Los Cabos) based on this international standard, as a model of smart citizens aware and competent. It has been such a good job that the incoming Mayor has included it in the actual Municipal Development Plan for Los Cabos 2015–2018, the diagnostic report data and the proposals of the Integral Citizen Observatory.     

Labour market participation among young refugees in Sweden and the potential of education: a national cohort study

This register-based study examined the importance of education on labour market participation among young refugees in Sweden. The study population consisted of unaccompanied (n?=?1606) and accompanied refuges (n?=?4142), aged 23–26 years in 2006–2010, after 7 years of residence in Sweden. Native Swedish, aged 24 years (n?=?347,255) constituted the comparison population, with intercountry adoptees (n?=?6689) as an alternative reference group. Gender-stratified multinomial regression models indicated that unaccompanied and accompanied male and female young refugees had higher risks of being in insecure work force and NEET compared to native Swedes with comparable levels of education. However, young refugees and intercountry adoptees with primary education had similar risks of poor labour market outcomes. The educational differences within each group concerning the risk of being in insecure work force were comparable. With the exception of unaccompanied females, secondary education seemed to be less protective against being in NEET among young refugees compared to native Swedes and intercountry adoptees. We conclude that while young refugees face employment disadvantages, education has the potential of mitigating poor labour market outcomes in this group.     

Ethopolitics and the financial citizen

While personal debt has been the subject of intense research activity over the past decade, in particular from think tanks and government bodies, it remains relatively undertheorized and neglected in general by the social sciences. This article offers a novel theoretical frame for the analysis of personal debt – and personal overindebtedness in particular – by highlighting the construction of deviance from financial behavioural normativities. Using Nikolas Rose's concept of ‘ethopolitics’ to describe the relocation of government from questions of rational administration to those of everyday morality and ethics, this article presents two characterizations of deviance from an ethopolitical imaginary of financial citizenship: irresponsibility and incapability. From this framework, the article explores the nature of the state sponsored normalization of indebtedness and the stigmatization of overindebtedness as a corollary of ‘delinquent’ dispositions and dependencies. This article suggests that UK government policy concerning financial responsibility has been shaped by an ethopolitical imaginary of financial citizenship which is based upon a skewed understanding of structure and agency which has its parallel in the attribution of unemployment to ‘worklessness’.     

The politics of Latino publics: Immigration reform,political participation and intention to vote

Latinos are the largest U.S. minority group and are poised to play an increasingly important role in U.S. society. Public relations practitioners who work in politics should be interested in what motivates young Latinos to participate in politics. This study reports the findings of a national nonprobability survey with young Latinos (N = 434). The analysis explores how demographic variables, acculturation, political ideology and media use predict perceptions of the importance of immigration reform, reported political participation, and vote likelihood in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Of the dependent variables, findings show that acculturation (β = ?0.13) only predicts perceptions of the importance of immigration reform, suggesting acculturation’s effects are issue specific. Interest in politics is the largest influential factor in predicting all of the dependent variables.     

Voting and Social Inclusion in Sweden

Three decades ago, Sweden extended municipal and provincial voting privileges to non‐citizen residents arguing that it would increase political influence, interest and self‐esteem among foreign citizens. The aim of this paper is to explore the act of voting as a measure of social inclusion by comparing voting propensities of immigrants (people born outside Sweden), their descendants (born in Sweden) and native Swedish citizens (those who have citizenship through jus sanguine) while controlling for a range of socio‐economic, demographic characteristics, contextual factors and a set of “hard” and “soft” social inclusion related variables. In particular we focus on the impact of citizenship acquisition ‐‐ does the symbolic act of attaining citizenship result in increased voting participation on the part of Swedish residents who are not citizens by birth. We use the Swedish 2006 electoral survey matched to registry data from Statistics Sweden to assess the correlates of voting by Swedish‐born and immigrant residents. Using instrumental variable regressions we estimate the impact of citizenship acquisition. We find that acquisition of citizenship makes a real difference to the probability of voting. Immigrants who naturalise are in general far more likely to vote than those who do not.     

Citizen participation in neighborhood health centers for the poor: the politics of reform organizational change, 1965-77

Through a longitudinal study of neighborhood health centers for the poor in the United States, this paper presents an analysis of the political economy of change within reform organizations. In the final accounting, we seek to explain the shift in the role of poor people participating in health care decision making from that of program developer and change agent to the role of program restrictor. We conceptualize the neighborhood health center (NHC) as a reform organization whose initial objective was to use health care as a tool for achieving political and economic development within low-income rural and urban communities. The analysis, based on a prospective study of NHCs between 1965 and 1977, using interviews with citizen board members, NHC project administrators, NHC physicians, HEW decision elites, and oral history interviews with former Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) administrators and directors, exemplifies the generic social organizational problem of how social, political, economic, and ideological forces shape the emergence and performance of a new reform organization.     

Social-movement Unionism in Theory and in Sweden

Many union leaders and observers of unionism in industrially advanced countries have recently argued for stronger links between unions and social movements but their arguments leave the nature of social movements underspecified. This article reviews the literature on social movements and argues in favour of a minimalist theory of the social actor rather than choose between American and European approaches to studying social movements. Both Melucci's European approach and McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly's American approach to integrating the European and American schools of thought on social movements are inadequate to the task of specifying social-movement unionism. Hindess's minimalist theory of the social actor and articulated arenas of conflict offers a stronger approach to understanding social-movement unionism and appreciating its strategic pertinence in particular times and places. Two episodes of contention in Sweden illustrate the advantages of a minimalist theory of articulated social-movement unionism.     

Intergenerational Initiatives in Sweden

ABSTRACT

It is pointed out in this report that the intergenerational perspective is conspicuous by its absence in Sweden, compared to several other countries where specific programmes exist for activities across generational boundaries. Activities across generational boundaries have also been a specific area where financial incentives for local projects have been provided in recent years through the government's project, Freedom of Choice/Older People and Public Health. But despite these efforts, comprehensive and systematic measures to develop and strengthen contacts across generational boundaries have been few and far between in Sweden. Instead, official measures within various areas have targeted different groups, often defined in terms of their age and stage of life course.     

Personal assistance in Sweden

This article provides an overview of the Swedish personal assistance program for persons with severe impairments, introduced in 1994. The personal assistance program makes it financially possible for people with severe disabilities to appoint a personal assistant, by themselves or through a provider, to create support adapted to the individual and to optimize the person's influence over how the support is arranged. The article describes how the reform has increased the opportunity for people with severe disabilities to choose their own way of living. Overall, the personal assistance has enhanced the quality of life for people with severe disabilities and their families.     

Family policy in Sweden

Sweden has a well-developed family policy, organized around the goals of family economic security and physical well-being, voluntary parenthood, gender equality, and children's rights. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of family policy in Sweden, beginning with a brief history of the development of family policy goals and a consideration of the reasons for the consensus on family policy goals that has arisen. Details are provided on programs designed to reach goals, and the success of these programs is evaluated. The impact of recent economic and political developments on the future of family policy making in Sweden is also discussed.She is also Adjunct Professor of Women's Studies. Her research interests focus on work-family linkages in industrial societies and their implications for gender equity. She is currently researching the impact of corporate culture on men's participation in child care in Sweden. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.