Organizations in the Ugandan civil society sector have faced legal and extra-legal restrictions on their operations, a phenomenon referred to as the ‘shrinking civic space’ which has been on the rise globally. The Ugandan government has taken several measures towards controlling the operational space of, especially organizations working on issues of human rights, anti-corruption, electoral democracy, and social justice and accountability issues in the oil and gas sector. This thesis presents a within-case comparison over time, by analyzing the shrinking civic space of non-governmental organizations working in the oil and gas sector in Uganda between years 2012-2018. The aim is to review the changes of the national legal framework that took place in 2013, 2016 and 2017, and compare the extra-legal and legal restrictions that oil and gas NGOs have faced before and after the alterations. This study finds that while the legal restrictions imposed in 2013-2017 went further than the laws previously in place, the NGOs in the oil and gas sector already faced similar restrictions before – implying that the implementation of the new laws was part of formalizing restrictions of the civic space which were already practiced.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Jason Brody / It is easier for users to say that they frequent a park because they like the greenery than to say instead, that a park offers opportunities to meet or watch other people (Marcus, 1998).One of the main reasons people visit parks is to engage in both overt and covert social interaction (Gehl, 2010). Many people desire the opportunity to interact with others as a means of fulfilling their social well-being, but it is often unattainable in a civic space due to the lack of activities that promote social interaction. The lack of activities is specifically relevant in and around Washington Square Park, primarily due to a series of physical and social dilemmas the site faces. Washington Square Park is an underused civic space that has the potential to establish itself as a social civic anchor for downtown Kansas City, Missouri. Developing Washington Square Park into a civic space that promotes social interaction will help to achieve this potential. It will also help to bridge the gap with the current physical and social dilemmas that hinder the space. Through a process of literature review, precedent studies, and site analysis, project goals were established. To achieve these goals a set of design interventions were formed to address the physical and social dilemmas in and around the site. These interactions will then inform a final design for Washington Square Park that promotes a healthier lifestyle through social interaction for the users of the site.

This dissertation explores both the evolving nature of the public encounter--where state and citizen meet--and the virtual civic space in which the meeting occurs through an examination of selected state and federal web sites. The examination uses multiple qualitative measures and an architectural perspective to bridge the gap between traditional physical-space based government and the virtual-space of e-government. The research focuses on identifying salient e-government issues and explicating their implications for public encounters, public administration practitioners and scholars, and traditional government institutions. The implications of e-government on the exercise of administrative discretion, the digital divide, and policy making are explored. Select prescriptions are offered for public administration education, practitioners and scholars. E-government architecture is conceptualized along two dimensions: the normative and the aesthetic. The normative dimension refers to the extent to which certain key norms or values are fulfilled or emphasized in web site architecture while the aesthetic dimension refers to whether certain technical features of what is considered good message design or high message quality are present. The normative tradition of public administration in combination with prior e-government research is used to construct evaluation criteria for assessing latent public values contained in government web site features and content. Information architecture, information presentation, and instructional message design literature are used to construct aesthetic criteria for determining the message character of web sites. Focus groups and a survey questionnaire are used to both challenge and triangulate the web site data analysis. An argument is made for eliminating the distinction or dichotomy between the two modes of government action--traditional and that of e-government. A unification of the two is proposed as part of an overall strategy for addressing the restructuring and reorganization of extant institutional arrangements necessary to support an integrated approach to e-government and traditional service delivery. Caution is urged with respect to proposals for embedding government services and information within existing commercial and entertainment web sites lest democratic values be subordinated to financial interests. / Ph. D.

I denna uppsats undersöks hur problem kring bidragsgivning till civilsamhället framställs i Demokrativillkorsutredningen (SOU 2019:35) om skärpta demokratvillkor. Givet att civilsamhällesforskningen pekar på att det offentliga alltmer knutit civilsamhället närmare till sig är det intressant att studera den förändrade relationen i förhållande till den skärpta bidragsreformen. Med en kritiskt granskande ansats kombineras fenomenet shrinking civic space med Carol Bacchis policymetod What’s the Problem Represented to be (WPR) för att analysera statens föreställningar om det odemokratiska civilsamhället samt för att sätta begreppet krympande civilsamhällsutrymme inom en svensk kontext.  Studien av dagens civilsamhällsdiskurs visar att det odemokratiska civilsamhället antas hindras genom ökade kontroller både av de offentliga bidragsgivarna och organisationerna själva. För detta framstår civilsamhällsorganisationer behöva ha fullständig koll på sin verksamhet. Med dagens problemföreställningar och lösningsförslag konstruerar staten således en ny civilsamhällsroll kännetecknad av säkerhetsarbete, kontroll och misstänksamhet. Därmed identifieras modern demokratidiskurs i samverkan med säkerhetiseringsdiskursen bidra till en tudelning av civilsamhället med binära effekter som utgör en grund för att diskutera effekten shrinking space. Studien visar även en frånvaro av civilsamhällets särart samt att interna och externa maktrelationer under de nya demokrativillkoren kan få missgynnande effekter för nyare, mer kontroversiella och marginaliserade civilsamhällsgrupper. / In this essay I examine how problems concerning contributions to civil society are presented in the Democracy Conditions Inquiry (SOU 2019: 35) on stricter democratic conditions. Given that civil society research indicates that the public sector has become more closely associated with civil society, it is interesting to study the changed relationship in relation to the stricter benefit reform. With a critical approach, the phenomenon of shrinking civic space is combined with Carol Bacchi's policy method What's the Problem Represented to be (WPR) in order to analyze the state's notions of undemocratic civil society and to put the concept of shrinking civil society space within a Swedish context. The study of today's civil society discourse shows that the undemocratic civil society is assumed to be hindered by increased controls by both the public donors and the organizations themselves. For this, civil society organizations appear to need to have complete control over their activities. With today's problem representation and solution proposals, the state thus constructs a new civil society role characterized by securitization, control, and suspicion. Thus, modern democracy discourse is identified in collaboration with the security discourse to contribute to a division of civil society with binary effects that form a basis for discussing the effect shrinking space. The study also shows an absence of the special nature of civil society and that internal and external power relations under the new democratic conditions can have unfavorable effects for newer, more controversial, and marginalized civil society groups.

This thesis expands upon the dialogue between speed and architecture, investigating how architecture reinterprets the linear city, originally defined by the continuous fabric of the freeway and more recently reconfigured by the high speed rail line. Using the linear city as a site of exploration and high speed rail as a ground to test new typologies of architectural insertions at amplified speed, this thesis produces an extended civic space along the proposed high speed rail line connecting Tampa and Orlando. Combining a series of performance and commercial programs, this new typology will make the obscured visual experience along the extended territory of the rail line legible, through a sequencing of specific architectural intersections, exploring how monumental civic space will be made and occupied in the sprawl of the American city.

abstract: The lack of substantive, multi-dimensional perspectives on civic space planning and design has undermined the potential role of these valuable social and ecological amenities in advancing urban sustainability goals. Responding to these deficiencies, this dissertation utilized mixed quantitative and qualitative methods and synthesized multiple social and natural science perspectives to inform the development of progressive civic space planning and design, theory, and public policy aimed at improving the social, economic, and environmental health of cities. Using Phoenix, Arizona as a case study, the analysis was tailored to arid cities, yet the products and findings are flexible enough to be geographically customized to the social, environmental, built, and public policy goals of other urbanized regions. Organized into three articles, the first paper applies geospatial and statistical methods to analyze and classify urban parks in Phoenix based on multiple social, ecological, and built criteria, including landuse-land cover, `greenness,' and site amenities, as well as the socio- economic and built characteristics of park neighborhoods. The second article uses spatial empirical analysis to rezone the City of Phoenix following transect form-based code. The current park system was then assessed within this framework and recommendations are presented to inform the planning and design of civic spaces sensitive to their social and built context. The final paper culminates in the development of a planning tool and site design guidelines for civic space planning and design across the urban-to-natural gradient augmented with multiple ecosystem service considerations and tailored to desert cities. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Geography 2013

This thesis investigates the terrorist designation issued by Israel against six Palestinian civil society organizations in 2021. The organizations are based in the West Bank and remain designated as terrorist organizations according to Israeli law, despite rejections and condemnations by the European Union (EU), the United Nations (UN), and the United States (US). The investigation builds on an interpretive approach and in-depth semi-structured interviews with five of the six designated organizations. By using the theory of ontological counter-securitization to investigate a case of shrinking civic space, this thesis brings the theory to a new context. Given that the context of Palestinian civil society is understudied, the aim is to contribute new context-specific findings as well as theoretical knowledge. More specifically, this approach is aimed at better understanding views and means of resistance among the interviewed organizations. The findings show that the five organizations view their terrorist designation as a way to defund Palestinian civil society. It is further implied that the terrorist designation has impacted the organizations' relationship with their donors. To maintain their work, the organizations have undertaken a form of risk management. The analysis also shows that enhanced recognition, cooperation and conviction have constituted means of resistance. The main finding of the analysis concerns the construction of a new identity among the designated organizations. It is argued that this identity construction is a specific form of resistance against the shrinking civic space. The findings are central to enhancing the understanding of how security practices are resisted in asymmetric power relationships.

"We build dwellings that, perhaps, satisfy most of our physical needs, but which do not house our mind."-- Juhani Pallasmaa My architecture thesis began with the question of the relationship and threshold between the realms of public and private and familiar and unfamiliar, while looking particularly in residential spaces. Humans consciously or unconsciously "use" the idea of their "home" environment to express something about themselves. The question that arose from this dialogue captured my attention which led me to explore a deeper meaning of what would be an ideal home for students like myself- ones who were starting a new chapter of their lives by moving to a foreign country. The idea of "Home" as a symbol of ones self, is a set of rituals, personal rhythms and routines of everyday life. The idea of Home cannot be produced all at once; it has a dimension of time and is a gradual product of the family's and individual's adaptation to the world. My thesis project has explored and proposed an architectural response to cultural diversity through student housing for existing Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area universities. The Mosaic is a place to express the personality and define the vessels of memories between individuals and society. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning

The worrying global trend of shrinking space for democracy and civil society necessitates a critical reevaluation, even within established democracies. While the urgency of the issue may at first appear less pronounced in a Western context, recent trends suggest a worrying similarity within the EU, particularly when it comes to the future of civil society organizations. This research delves into the potential effects and perceptions of recent changes in Swedish aid policy on civil society organizations. It examines how these changes may affect civil society autonomy, ownership, and overall effectiveness of development cooperation. The study considers the perspectives of civil society organizations using discourse analysis to understand their reasoning and concerns. Kingdon’s policy streams approach is used to provide valuable insights into the policy processes and by examining how CSOs experience access to civic space, how coping responses and autonomy evolve within our own political climate, we can discover potential parallels to experiences where the civil society is impeded. Should such parallels exist, especially with regard to a potential, albeit unlikely, similar experience in Sweden, proactive measures could be identified. Despite the complexities surrounding studying an ongoing phenomenon, this study finds (1) that there is a sense of negativity, especially among civil society groups, about the recent changes in development practices, (2) these changes might break established international agreements and make it harder for these groups to function effectively, (3) the uncertainty surrounding these changes is causing a lot of disruption and makes it difficult for civil society to know how to adapt, and (4) this uncertainty could potentially be a sign that civil society will have less freedom to operate in the future, and we need to be watchful to prevent that from happening.

The humanitarian space in the European Union is shrinking, causing unnecessary suffering and preventable deaths, or is it? Humanitarian organisations are calling on the respect of principled humanitarian aid, protection of humanitarian workers and unhindered access to the affected population namely, undocumented asylum seekers.They are blaming the prioritisation of national security interests over humanitarian concerns as well as the politicisation of aid for the shrinking humanitarian space. In doing so, humanitarian organisations are becoming the primary obstacle in their appeal for a greater humanitarian space by misinterpreting it as a borderless, apolitical arena governed by supra-national laws. Through a single case study of the humanitarian border in the EU, this study seeks to analyse to what extent the humanitarian space in the EU is really shrinking. The three-fold enclosed humanitarian pyramid theoretically guides the critical analysis of the qualities and virtues that make up the humanitarian space as constructed in the humanitarian arena. Furthermore, acts of humanity are clearly defined as either belonging to the humanitarian or civic space, thereby further enforcing the borders of the humanitarian space. This study finds that the humanitarian space as the humanitarian pyramid is unable to shrink, it is built to overcome obstacles and external pressures. As it cannot shrink, so it cannot grow; it is either complete orabsent. Originally, the humanitarian space debate was employed to promote safe and accessible humanitarian assistance and protection for affected populations. Today, the discourse is employed by humanitarian organisations to promote the agency space while the needs of rights-based individuals seeking assistance and protection has become secondary. The affected population is rendered invisible through a crisis narrative, only to be made visible through a greater humanitarian space. Humanitarian organisations need to abandon false narratives of apolitical and borderless ideals,especially when working within violent borders, and train on political literacy to improve cooperation with states.