This thesis examines the conditions for participation in the decision making process of a possible mine establishment in Storuman municipality in the north of Sweden. This is done through a case study where the main actors are the mining company Nickel Mountain AB, the municipality Storuman and the Sami village Vapsten. As a theoretical framework Cecilia Eriksson’s division of democratic theories is used as a starting point. Methods as described in deliberative democratic theory, such as discussion by effected community members, are seen as a method within the participatory democratic tradition, not a theory of its own. To describe what happens where in the process in Storuman a model of analysis created by Hans Wiklund is used. The model divides different parts of the political system and the public into arenas where democratic deliberation and political actions can take place; the parliamentary complex, the administrative complex and the public sphere. Criteria for this democratic deliberation and participation are then applied to the deliberation and actions; generality, autonomy, power neutrality and ideal role-taking. The method used is qualitative textual analysis. The main question of this thesis is: Does the political decision making process around the establishment of a mine give any room for participatory democracy with deliberative elements? In order to answer this main question the following three questions are also asked: 1. Within which arenas were the three actors given the possibility to communicate? 2. What forms of participation exist within the decision making process? 3. Does the participation meet Wiklund’s criteria for democratic deliberation? The thesis concludes that the political decision making process surrounding a possible mine establishment gives little room for participatory democracy with deliberative elements. There are few ways of affecting the decision making process and important interests at stake; valuable minerals, minority rights for Sami people, job opportunities and regional growth.

Sammanfattning Denna uppsats undersöker deliberation i en zambisk kontext. Syftet är att undersöka hur zambiska lärare och elever ser på förekomsten av deliberativa samtal som undervisningsform, samt utröna om det finns några skillnader och likheter i denna syn mellan olika skolformer i Zambia. Undersökningen har genomförts på tre olika skolor i Zambia som var och en representerar de dominerande skolformerna: statlig skola, privat skola samt ideell skola, i fortsättningen kallat Community School. Vi valde att förlägga vår studie till ett land som skiljer sig från Sverige i både ekonomiskt och kulturellt avseende för att få en fördjupad förståelse och en nyanserad bild av den pedagogiska verksamheten i olika kulturer. För att besvara våra forskningsfrågor genomfördes 12 intervjuer, 2 elevintervjuer och 2 lärarintervjuer på tre olika skolor. Innehållet i intervjuerna konkretiserades genom Tomas Englunds fem kriterier för ett deliberativt samtal. Undersökningen visar på elevers och lärares olika uppfattningar om det deliberativa samtalet som undervisningsform. Resultatet visar att zambiska lärare och elever anser att diskussioner är vanligt förekommande. Diskussionerna är utformade på ett sätt där eleverna stundtals får ställa sina åsikter mot varandra, lyssna till det bättre argumentet och i viss mån nå konsensus. Eleverna känner sig för det mesta trygga att uttrycka sig, vilket lärarna arbetar för att främja. Alla elever upplever att de kan ifrågasätta lärarna, men de exempel som givits handlar främst om fakta- och stavfel. De flesta diskussionerna sker utan lärarens närvaro, något som uppmuntras av lärarna. Även dessa diskussioner är enligt eleverna lärande. Det finns skillnader mellan skolorna vad gäller deliberativa undervisningsmetoder. På Skola 2 menar lärarna att ifrågasättande är något positivt som bör uppmuntras och lärarna är mer benägna att övervaka elevdiskussioner än vad lärarna på de andra skolorna är. På Skola 1 uttrycker både elever och lärare att lärarna ska respekteras på grund av deras högre ålder, något vi anser kan hämma deliberationen. Lärarna på Skola 3 är de enda som ger uttryck för bestraffningar om de inte blir åtlydda, vilket också hämmar deliberation enligt vår uppfattning. Generellt är det Skola 2 som särskiljer sig från Skola 1 och 3, som i många avseenden liknar varandra.

Communications scholars recognize two related trends in twenty-first century politics: the rise of information and communications technologies promising major changes in civic participation and a growing disconnection between citizens and their governments. The coexistence of these trends raises some interesting questions about the role of ICTs for enabling new forms of civic participation. How can new technologies better enable civic participation? This report proposes a typology for evaluating online civic participation projects that allows researchers to analyze the goals, designs, and outcomes of particular projects. The typology also incorporates Arnstein’s (1969) ladder of citizen participation in order to enumerate the relationships between the project’s goals and its outcomes and to provide a flexible model for understanding the democratic conceptualizations manifested in particular projects. The report analyzes three online civic participation projects, highlighting their innovations and discussion their levels of citizen participation. The analyses suggest that a project’s goals, designs and outcomes are related to, and inform, its desired and realized levels of citizen participation. The review also suggests clarifications to Arnstein’s ladder for future use in understanding online civic participation. The report’s evaluative typology can aid in the interpretation of past online civic participation projects and guide the conceptualization and implementation of future projects in order to facilitate the development of more direct connections between citizens and governments and more open and transparent democratic governance structures. / text

Kyoto University (京都大学) / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(地域研究) / 甲第19105号 / 地博第179号 / 新制||地||61 / 32056 / 京都大学大学院アジア・アフリカ地域研究研究科アフリカ地域研究専攻 / (主査)教授 梶 茂樹, 教授 重田 眞義, 准教授 高田 明, 准教授 山名 淳 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当

This dissertation offers a new reading of Athenian democracy, focusing on the connection between the politics of accountability and the dynamics of political advice. I analyze Athenian institutions, norms, and practices comparatively, alongside their autocratic counterparts. I show how Greek thinkers relied on a common conceptual apparatus to understand, defend, and criticize patterns of accountability and unaccountability across regimes. I explore how powerful, unaccountable political actors – whether autocratic rulers or democratic assemblies – could solicit and secure good advice, and how accountable advisers could advise them effectively and safely. In stressing similarities between counsel across regime types, I challenge the characterization of Athens as a deliberative democracy. The sumboulos (adviser) was an important figure in Greek conceptions of both democratic and autocratic politics. Athenian orators are best understood – and understood themselves – as the accountable sumbouloi of the Athenian demos. This identification casts them not as co-deliberators with their fellow citizens but rather as participants in a common Greek tradition of advising powerful figures, a tradition that found expression across political contexts. The important role of sumbouloi in both democracies and autocracies follows from the structural similarity between the two regime types. The Athenian demos, gathered together in the Assembly and in the Popular Courts, was understood to have competencies and powers akin to those of an autocratic ruler. In particular, both the demos and the autocrat were recognized as unaccountable rulers able to hold others – including their advisers – to account. Given the power imbalances structuring relationships between sumbouloi and decision makers in both democracies and autocracies, both practicing orators and theoretically inclined observers came to see that the problems and opportunities associated with having (or choosing) to speak to the powerful were comparable across regimes. The issues at stake in the demos-adviser relationship could fruitfully be compared to those at stake in the autocrat-adviser relationship. Questions such as how the powerful could recognize good advice and good advisers and what the possibilities and limitations of frank advice were under conditions of risk were not regime-specific. Insofar as ancient Greeks had a theory of political counsel, it was a strikingly portable one. / Government

The concept of deliberation, both theoretically and empirically, was examined in the Chinese blogosphere by content analyzing Internet blog posts and comments, associated with sixty hotspot incidents in China from 2007 through 2009. Measurements of analytic and social processes were made and the factors that affect these processes were examined to identify deliberative patterns in the blog posts and comments. The findings suggest relatively substantial deliberative outcomes in the blog posts about the incidents, especially relating to the analytic process. Two variables were examined with respect to the factors that determine deliberation: an incident’s category (non-threatening, threat to performance, and threat to legitimacy) as classified under the command and control system, and information availability (news availability and total information availability) about the incident. Findings support the theoretical framework proposed in the study and suggest the following logical sequences: Firstly, the Chinese command and control system is a significant factor in explaining deliberative outcomes about incidents that can be categorized according to their level of considered threat to the system. An incident that was considered to be at a higher level of threat linked to a higher level of deliberation. Secondly, the command and control system also determines the information availability of an incident but in a negative way— incidents with higher threat levels have lower levels of information availability. Thirdly, information availability, in turn, predicted deliberation on its own—higher levels of information availability link to lower levels of deliberation. Moreover, information availability functioned as a moderating variable between the command and control system and the deliberative outcomes. Posts that were associated with non-threatening and threat to performance incidents, with higher levels of information availability, tended to have a lower quality of deliberation. Posts associated with incidents that were a threat to legitimacy, with lower level of information availability, yielded similar deliberative patterns that were of relatively high quality. / text

This thesis examines the quality and effectiveness of online political deliberation, within the framework of Jurgen Habermas’ public sphere and discourse theories. The thesis analyzes a deliberative process that took place online, in June 2011, as part of the Liberal Party of Canada’s Extraordinary Convention, specifically through content and discourse analysis of data from online discussion platforms. The analysis sought to ascertain whether the objectives of the convention were met, measured the quality of discourse and identified insights to support the creation of more effective spaces for political deliberation online. Analysis of the results revealed a difference in the discourse quality for each platform, attributed to the synchronicity or asynchronicity of the platform. The thesis concludes with suggestions for a design that makes use of both the synchronous and asynchronous features of the online discussion platforms in order to more specifically target the objectives of the political process.

This thesis examines the quality and effectiveness of online political deliberation, within the framework of Jurgen Habermas’ public sphere and discourse theories. The thesis analyzes a deliberative process that took place online, in June 2011, as part of the Liberal Party of Canada’s Extraordinary Convention, specifically through content and discourse analysis of data from online discussion platforms. The analysis sought to ascertain whether the objectives of the convention were met, measured the quality of discourse and identified insights to support the creation of more effective spaces for political deliberation online. Analysis of the results revealed a difference in the discourse quality for each platform, attributed to the synchronicity or asynchronicity of the platform. The thesis concludes with suggestions for a design that makes use of both the synchronous and asynchronous features of the online discussion platforms in order to more specifically target the objectives of the political process.

Moral questions surrounding businesses’ labour practices and the ethical management of working conditions in developing countries are gaining increasing attention. This dissertation is an exploratory investigation on moral imagination amongst managers and union stewards involved in the management of working conditions in the Kenyan tea industry. Semi-structured interviews were used to generate information from participants on their thoughts and experiences as they managed potentially morally-laden issues related to working conditions of lower-tier workers. Thematic analysis was used to examine the accounts participants shared, in order to uncover the deliberative processes participants engaged in as they strived to make sense of these issues. The use of a qualitative approach facilitated a comprehensive examination of the context in which these organizational stakeholders are embedded. The moral imagination framework allows for an examination of how individuals attend to contextual cues as they deliberate on situations of moral import in the work environment. Overall, the findings of this research show that there are diverse patterns of analysis of moral situations among organizational stakeholders. The findings provide empirical support for Bartlett’s (2003) argument that there are many, yet unexplored, intervening processes between problem perception and action when it comes to moral deliberation and decision-making. Among the managers in the study, they were found to include processes of attribution of agency for observed harm, analysis of individual, organizational and social consequences, reflection on conflicts of interest and values, as well as creative imagination in envisioning and enacting actions that could address perceived problems. Among the stewards, they included reflections on principles of justice and human rights, reflection on opportunities for self-development, as well as creative imagination. In addition, the findings suggest role-related differences in the nature of individuals’ moral deliberations. Managers often appealed to an ethics of care in their deliberations on their employees’ working conditions. Union stewards appealed to both an ethics of care and an ethics of justice.

Despite continued polarization along political party lines, it remains unclear how differences in political ideology impact the choices consumers make. The results of seven studies indicate that political ideology profoundly influences the way consumers think and behave. Liberals and conservatives are systematically drawn to distinct choice preferences where liberals prefer hedonic, novel, and desirable options, while conservatives prefer utilitarian, status quo, and feasible options. These findings are robust for multiple measures of political ideology across multiple choice sets. Differences in behavior are explained by the amount of deliberation used for a given decision. Liberals deliberate more than conservatives as they are more open to information while conservatives have a lower tolerance for ambiguous information. Implications for consumers, marketers, and policy makers are provided.