Co-Producing Sustainability: Reordering the Governance of Science, Policy, and Practice
C. Wyborn, Amber Datta, Jasper Montana
et al.
Co-production has become a cornerstone of research within the sustainability sciences, motivating collaborations of diverse actors to conduct research in the service of societal and policy change. This review examines theoretical and empirical literature from sustainability science, public administration, and science and technology studies (STS) with the intention of advancing the theory and practice of co-production within sustainability science. We argue that co-production must go beyond stakeholder engagement by scientists to the more deliberate design of societal transitions. Co-production can contribute to such transitions by shifting the institutional arrangements that govern relationships between knowledge and power, science and society, and state and citizens. We highlight critical weaknesses in conceptualizations of co-production within sustainability sciences with respect to power, politics, and governance. We offer suggestions for how this can be rectified through deeper engagement with public administration and STS to offer a broad vision for enhancing the use, design, and practice of a more reflexive co-production in sustainability science.
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Political Science
The Dynamics of Political Control of the Bureaucracy
B. Wood, R. Waterman
Modern governments: in search of a relevant model of the public administration system
Rashid T. Mukhaev
The rapid changes in the modern world raise questions about the ability of national governments to manage them in the face of local and global turbulence. The subject of the analysis is the effectiveness of modern governments and the factors determining the ability of the public administration system to recognize and promptly eliminate emerging threats and challenges. The purpose of the study is to construct an effective model of executive power in the context of uncertainty and the formation of a multipolar world order. The research methodology is a binary comparative analysis of the structure and functioning mechanisms of governments in the parliamentary (FRG) and presidential-parliamentary (France) forms of government based on relevant markers and performance indices. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the empirical measurement of the functional characteristics of executive authorities based on markers that determine the level of effectiveness of the public administration systems of Germany and France. The scientific novelty of the study is the empirical measurement of the functional characteristics of executive authorities based on markers that determine the level of effectiveness of public administration systems in Germany and France. The results of the study identify variables that correlate the effectiveness of government functioning in classical and non-classical systems of public administration: methods of government formation and its structure, modes of interaction between the cabinet and parliament, legal investiture of government, type of party system. The practical significance of the study is that correlations have been identified between the effectiveness of the mechanism of functioning of government models and the mode of interaction between the legislative and executive authorities, the way the cabinet is formed and its legal investiture. In conclusion, practical recommendations are formulated to improve the effectiveness of the public administration system in Russia in the context of uncertainty, the implementation of CBR and Western restrictions.
Political institutions and public administration (General), Social sciences (General)
Assessing Generative AI value in a public sector context: evidence from a field experiment
Trevor Fitzpatrick, Seamus Kelly, Patrick Carey
et al.
The emergence of Generative AI (Gen AI) has motivated an interest in understanding how it could be used to enhance productivity across various tasks. We add to research results for the performance impact of Gen AI on complex knowledge-based tasks in a public sector setting. In a pre-registered experiment, after establishing a baseline level of performance, we find mixed evidence for two types of composite tasks related to document understanding and data analysis. For the Documents task, the treatment group using Gen AI had a 17% improvement in answer quality scores (as judged by human evaluators) and a 34% improvement in task completion time compared to a control group. For the Data task, we find the Gen AI treatment group experienced a 12% reduction in quality scores and no significant difference in mean completion time compared to the control group. These results suggest that the benefits of Gen AI may be task and potentially respondent dependent. We also discuss field notes and lessons learned, as well as supplementary insights from a post-trial survey and feedback workshop with participants.
Feedback dynamics in Politics: The interplay between sentiment and engagement
Simone Formentin
We investigate feedback mechanisms in political communication by testing whether politicians adapt the sentiment of their messages in response to public engagement. Using over 1.5 million tweets from Members of Parliament in the United Kingdom, Spain, and Greece during 2021, we identify sentiment dynamics through a simple yet interpretable linear model. The analysis reveals a closed-loop behavior: engagement with positive and negative messages influences the sentiment of subsequent posts. Moreover, the learned coefficients highlight systematic differences across political roles: opposition members are more reactive to negative engagement, whereas government officials respond more to positive signals. These results provide a quantitative, control-oriented view of behavioral adaptation in online politics, showing how feedback principles can explain the self-reinforcing dynamics that emerge in social media discourse.
A New Generation of Energy-Economy Modeling at the U.S. Energy Information Administration
J. F. DeCarolis, S. Siddiqui, A. LaRose
et al.
Given the rapid pace of energy system development, the time has come to reimagine the U.S. Government's capability to model the long-term evolution of the domestic and global energy system. As a primary custodian of these capabilities, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is embarking on the development of a long-term, modular, flexible, transparent, and robust modeling framework that can capture the key dynamics driving the energy system and economy under a wide range of future scenarios. This new capability will leverage the current state of the art in modeling to produce critical insight for researchers, decision makers, and the public. We describe the evolving demands on energy-economy modeling, the capacity and limitations of existing models, and the key features we see as necessary for addressing these demands in our new framework, which is under active development.
International Journal on Culture, History, and Religion Volume 6 Issue 2 (2024)
International Journal on Culture, History, and Rel
Welcome to Volume 6, Issue No. 2 of the International Journal on Culture, History, and Religion (IJCHR). We are excited to present our new journal logo and front cover design. Our editors and editorial board members look forward to your engagement with this issue. We believe it will inspire us to explore different perspectives, critically evaluate ideas, encourage meaningful discourses/dialogue, and present emerging trends and issues related to our better understanding of the interaction between culture, history, and religion in the context of the post-COVID-19 world. This will be achieved through the following topical themes:It is imperative to evaluate the distance learning experiences of university students during the COVID-19 pandemic. This assessment should focus on the students’ readiness, engagement, and performance and the university and administration’s support in addressing academic and non-academic issues the students face (Aguilar et al.). The moral standards within Higher Education Institutions among faculty and students should also be considered (Kong).Encourage individuals living in religiously diverse societies to participate in meaningful dialogue to promote the holistic development of community members (Kachappilly). Specifically, this involves recognizing the daily challenges automotive mechanics face in the Philippines as they strive to provide affordable transportation for the general public while supporting their families (Ignacio).It is suggested that climate sensitivity be integrated into the senior high school religious education curriculum under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Lipa (Rosales) as a response to the call of Laudato Si. Likewise, it is important to give attention to the historical, socio-political, and catechetical significance of the tradition of performing Sinakulo in Malolos, Bulacan, Philippines (Eballo & Eballo).Happy reading!
Micro-fundamentos de la corrupción: motivaciones individuales, racionalidad y comportamiento corrupto
Rodolfo Sarsfield
La teoría de la elección racional ha dominado durante mucho tiempo el estudio de la corrupción y el diseño de las políticas y prácticas anticorrupción. A pesar del auge, aceptación y difusión de este enfoque, muchos países, no obstante, no han logrado avances en la reducción del comportamiento corrupto (Heywood 2017; Marquette y Pfeiffer 2015; Mungiu-Pippidi, 2023; Persson, Rothstein y Teorell 2013; Rose-Ackermann y Palifka 2016). Una razón de tal fracaso podría ser que los supuestos de elección racional sobre las motivaciones de los individuos son demasiado simplistas. Una consecuencia que se desprende de tal estado de cosas es que...
Political institutions and public administration (General)
Derecho de acceso a la información pública en las colectividades territoriales de Francia
Noel Armas Castilla
En este trabajo identificamos los elementos definitorios del derecho de acceso en el seno de las colectividades territoriales francesas, así como las previsiones de su régimen de impugnaciones. Además, se realiza una comparación con la regulación de esta misma materia en nuestro Derecho.
Political institutions and public administration (General), Accounting. Bookkeeping
Political Leaning Inference through Plurinational Scenarios
Joseba Fernandez de Landa, Rodrigo Agerri
Social media users express their political preferences via interaction with other users, by spontaneous declarations or by participation in communities within the network. This makes a social network such as Twitter a valuable data source to study computational science approaches to political learning inference. In this work we focus on three diverse regions in Spain (Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia) to explore various methods for multi-party categorization, required to analyze evolving and complex political landscapes, and compare it with binary left-right approaches. We use a two-step method involving unsupervised user representations obtained from the retweets and their subsequent use for political leaning detection. Comprehensive experimentation on a newly collected and curated dataset comprising labeled users and their interactions demonstrate the effectiveness of using Relational Embeddings as representation method for political ideology detection in both binary and multi-party frameworks, even with limited training data. Finally, data visualization illustrates the ability of the Relational Embeddings to capture intricate intra-group and inter-group political affinities.
Political DEBATE: Efficient Zero-shot and Few-shot Classifiers for Political Text
Michael Burnham, Kayla Kahn, Ryan Yank Wang
et al.
Social scientists quickly adopted large language models due to their ability to annotate documents without supervised training, an ability known as zero-shot learning. However, due to their compute demands, cost, and often proprietary nature, these models are often at odds with replication and open science standards. This paper introduces the Political DEBATE (DeBERTa Algorithm for Textual Entailment) language models for zero-shot and few-shot classification of political documents. These models are not only as good, or better than, state-of-the art large language models at zero and few-shot classification, but are orders of magnitude more efficient and completely open source. By training the models on a simple random sample of 10-25 documents, they can outperform supervised classifiers trained on hundreds or thousands of documents and state-of-the-art generative models with complex, engineered prompts. Additionally, we release the PolNLI dataset used to train these models -- a corpus of over 200,000 political documents with highly accurate labels across over 800 classification tasks.
Sentiment Analysis of Spanish Political Party Tweets Using Pre-trained Language Models
Chuqiao Song, Shunzhang Chen, Xinyi Cai
et al.
Title: Sentiment Analysis of Spanish Political Party Communications on Twitter Using Pre-trained Language Models Authors: Chuqiao Song, Shunzhang Chen, Xinyi Cai, Hao Chen Comments: 21 pages, 6 figures Abstract: This study investigates sentiment patterns within Spanish political party communications on Twitter by leveraging BETO and RoBERTuito, two pre-trained language models optimized for Spanish text. Using a dataset of tweets from major Spanish political parties: PSOE, PP, Vox, Podemos, and Ciudadanos, spanning 2019 to 2024, this research analyzes sentiment distributions and explores the relationship between sentiment expression and party ideology. The findings indicate that both models consistently identify a predominant Neutral sentiment across all parties, with significant variations in Negative and Positive sentiments that align with ideological distinctions. Specifically, Vox exhibits higher levels of Negative sentiment, while PSOE demonstrates relatively high Positive sentiment, supporting the hypothesis that emotional appeals in political messaging reflect ideological stances. This study underscores the potential of pre-trained language models for non-English sentiment analysis on social media, providing insights into sentiment dynamics that shape public discourse within Spain's multi-party political system. Keywords: Spanish politics, sentiment analysis, pre-trained language models, Twitter, BETO, RoBERTuito, political ideology, multi-party system
Is GPT-4 Less Politically Biased than GPT-3.5? A Renewed Investigation of ChatGPT's Political Biases
Erik Weber, Jérôme Rutinowski, Niklas Jost
et al.
This work investigates the political biases and personality traits of ChatGPT, specifically comparing GPT-3.5 to GPT-4. In addition, the ability of the models to emulate political viewpoints (e.g., liberal or conservative positions) is analyzed. The Political Compass Test and the Big Five Personality Test were employed 100 times for each scenario, providing statistically significant results and an insight into the results correlations. The responses were analyzed by computing averages, standard deviations, and performing significance tests to investigate differences between GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. Correlations were found for traits that have been shown to be interdependent in human studies. Both models showed a progressive and libertarian political bias, with GPT-4's biases being slightly, but negligibly, less pronounced. Specifically, on the Political Compass, GPT-3.5 scored -6.59 on the economic axis and -6.07 on the social axis, whereas GPT-4 scored -5.40 and -4.73. In contrast to GPT-3.5, GPT-4 showed a remarkable capacity to emulate assigned political viewpoints, accurately reflecting the assigned quadrant (libertarian-left, libertarian-right, authoritarian-left, authoritarian-right) in all four tested instances. On the Big Five Personality Test, GPT-3.5 showed highly pronounced Openness and Agreeableness traits (O: 85.9%, A: 84.6%). Such pronounced traits correlate with libertarian views in human studies. While GPT-4 overall exhibited less pronounced Big Five personality traits, it did show a notably higher Neuroticism score. Assigned political orientations influenced Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, again reflecting interdependencies observed in human studies. Finally, we observed that test sequencing affected ChatGPT's responses and the observed correlations, indicating a form of contextual memory.
"This is not a data problem": Algorithms and Power in Public Higher Education in Canada
Kelly McConvey, Shion Guha
Algorithmic decision-making is increasingly being adopted across public higher education. The expansion of data-driven practices by post-secondary institutions has occurred in parallel with the adoption of New Public Management approaches by neoliberal administrations. In this study, we conduct a qualitative analysis of an in-depth ethnographic case study of data and algorithms in use at a public college in Ontario, Canada. We identify the data, algorithms, and outcomes in use at the college. We assess how the college's processes and relationships support those outcomes and the different stakeholders' perceptions of the college's data-driven systems. In addition, we find that the growing reliance on algorithmic decisions leads to increased student surveillance, exacerbation of existing inequities, and the automation of the faculty-student relationship. Finally, we identify a cycle of increased institutional power perpetuated by algorithmic decision-making, and driven by a push towards financial sustainability.
Searching for Ways of Settling Land Conflicts by Peaceful Means in Cameroon: A Critical Analysis of the Peacemaking Role of the ‘Land Consultative Board’
Mbira C., William H. A.
The regulation of Land tenure systems is one of the main sources of conflicts in Africa and one of the continent’s most difficult realities to pin down. In its 1974 land reform, the Cameroonian legislature sought to strike a balance between traditional norms and modern instruments, between administrative, judicial and customary authorities, in order to establish an inclusive, democratic and peaceful system of land tenure. The establishment of the Land Consultative Board as the regulatory instrument the state planned to use in land matters was projected as the answer to this quest. While the original intention remains laudable - to enable the state, guarantor of the general interest to acquire a local instrument with the appropriate legitimacy and capable of ensuring the peaceful regulation of land tenure. It has to be said that, almost 50 years later, this ambition has not been achieved. The recurrence of land conflicts and the density of disputes reflect the inadequacy of the rules governing land tenure in Cameroon, depriving the board of any real regulatory authority. The central argument of this paper is that the legislator's ambition was not sincere because of the precedence of the administrative authority to the detriment of other actors. The choice of evaluating this working assumption through the theory of the instrumentation of public action is therefore essential. It makes it possible not only to determine the legislator's intention through textual and contextual analysis, but also to observe the interplay of actors around this regulatory instrument through an interdisciplinary approach. Between its structural inability to acquire real autonomy and the barely concealed desire to downgrade custom, its role has steadily diminished along with its influence, though without disappearing. It remains, however, the institutional relic where the philosophy of the “palaver tree,” supported by the practice of non-violence and democratic dialogue, can still survive, as well as the keystone of the entire land tenure system of the country. The analysis of the consultative Board’s peacemaking role through its instrumentation (or its instrumentalisation) opens up new perspectives for understanding the regulation of public action in our so-called Southern countries, especially for decision-makers, donors and any actor interested in the thorny issue of land tenure insecurity.
Dezinformacja – definicja, zagrożenia, reakcja
Agnieszka Bień-Kacała, Tomasz Kacała
The paper presents the definition and components of the Information Environment, its dimensions and occurring phenomena described as challenges and threats. Moreover, it includes characteristics of such terms: disinformation, misinformation and propaganda as constituting elements threatening democracy as well as mitigation measures that need to be taken in order to eliminate the negative consequences of the above-mentioned phenomena.
Law, Political institutions and public administration (General)
THE MOTIVATION COMPONENT OF LEGAL PROTECTION OF SOCIAL MORALS IN THE ACTIVITIES OF LAW ENFORCEMENT BODIES OF UKRAINE: CHALLENGES OF GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY
Sergiy Ruvin
The purpose of the article is to study the theoretical and legal discourse of the modern definition of the motivational component of the legal protection of public morality in the activity of law enforcement agencies of Ukraine. As a result of the conducted analysis, it is necessary to state that motivational orientation should be interpreted as a category of philosophical praxeology, which is most closely related to the concept of determination, and therefore, taking into account that motivation is an element and axiological, it is appropriate to emphasize the importance of confidence and conviction of a person in the correctness and reasonableness their own aspirations. This is possible provided there is a clear regulatory basis, especially when it comes to protocol and such responsible work as law enforcement. The article establishes that the motivation of a law enforcement officer closely interacts with legal deontology, which, by its very nature, determines the basic moral and social principles of interpersonal relations, which motivate in what way a law enforcement officer should understand his professional purpose, how exactly to interpret his mission, and, at most, to realize why the law enforcement profession exists at all. It was established that when investigating the motivational determination of the legal protection of public morality within law enforcement agencies, it is advisable to, first of all, talk about the implementation of the function of legal protection as a professional duty of representatives of law enforcement agencies, which follows from legal norms. It has been established that the problem of the relationship between public morality and the axiology of law enforcement activity is not only a complex topical question and a complex cognitive process, but, in fact, a new epistemological mechanism of scientific immersion in the ideological social foundations of the era of law enforcement system reforms, the era of revolutionary changes and, unfortunately, military realities of modern Ukraine. It is suggested that the motivational determination of the protection of public morality by law enforcement agencies, or their moral self-regulation, should be interpreted as a very comprehensive process, characterized by external and internal determinants, conditioned by the object of legal protection itself and dependent on the specifics of a specific law enforcement agency and its structural unit.
Education (General), Theory and practice of education
Political Conflict and Economic Growth in Post-Independence Venezuela
Dorothy Kronick, Francisco Rodríguez
Venezuela has suffered three economic catastrophes since independence: one each in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Prominent explanations for this trilogy point to the interaction of class conflict and resource dependence. We turn attention to intra-class conflict, arguing that the most destructive policy choices stemmed not from the rich defending themselves against the masses but rather from pitched battles among elites. Others posit that Venezuelan political institutions failed to sustain growth because they were insufficiently inclusive; we suggest in addition that they inadequately mediated intra-elite conflict.
Political Context of the European Vaccine Debate on Twitter
Giordano Paoletti, Lorenzo Dall'Amico, Kyriaki Kalimeri
et al.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, fears grew that making vaccination a political (instead of public health) issue may impact the efficacy of this life-saving intervention, spurring the spread of vaccine-hesitant content. In this study, we examine whether there is a relationship between the political interest of social media users and their exposure to vaccine-hesitant content on Twitter. We focus on 17 European countries using a multilingual, longitudinal dataset of tweets spanning the period before COVID, up to the vaccine roll-out. We find that, in most countries, users' endorsement of vaccine-hesitant content is the highest in the early months of the pandemic, around the time of greatest scientific uncertainty. Further, users who follow politicians from right-wing parties, and those associated with authoritarian or anti-EU stances are more likely to endorse vaccine-hesitant content, whereas those following left-wing politicians, more pro-EU or liberal parties, are less likely. Somewhat surprisingly, politicians did not play an outsized role in the vaccine debates of their countries, receiving a similar number of retweets as other similarly popular users. This systematic, multi-country, longitudinal investigation of the connection of politics with vaccine hesitancy has important implications for public health policy and communication.
The subject matter of administrative law as a basic category For distinguishing sectoral principles of administrative law
N. Hryshyna
Problem setting. Administrative law as a fundamental branch of public law is a necessary tool in regulating the activities of public administration bodies, public organizations, enterprises, institutions, and organizations. Its influence is constantly felt by specific individuals. Norms of administrative law protect relations formed under the influence of civil, labor, financial and other branches of law. In recent years, administrative law has been in a state of transformation, a new ideology of relations between the state and the citizen is being formed, the administrative legal doctrine is undergoing fundamental changes, and administrative legislation is being updated. As a result, administrative law has turned from the law of state management into a branch that normatively defines and regulates the rights and obligations of public administration in relation to subjects of civil society. Analysis of recent researches and publications. A significant number of scientists dealt with issues of administrative law, its subject, principles, among which it is worth mentioning the works of such scientists as: V. B. Averyanov, Yu. P. Bityak, V. V. Galunko, R. S. Melnyk, A. A. Pukhtetska and others. However, despite the rather large number of works, questions related to the generalization of scientific positions, which highlight the subject of administrative law as a basic category for determining industry precepts, remain in most cases outside the attention of researchers, which makes it possible to talk about the need to carry out such research. The purpose of research is to clarify the role of the subject of administrative law as a basic category for determining the branch principles of administrative law. Article’s main body. The article is devoted to the peculiarities of the subject of administrative law as a fundamental criterion for determining the principles of administrative law. Of fundamental importance for updating the concept of the subject of administrative law were two theoretical conclusions that were made in the development of the ideas of the Concept of Administrative Reform in Ukraine. The transformation of the subject of administrative law is a factor in updating the content and classification of the principles of administrative law. The subject of administrative law is social relations that arise for the purpose of realizing and protecting the rights of citizens, creation of normal conditions for the functioning of civil society and the state. It follows that the main task of administrative law is to create a priority of legal conditions for ensuring by public administration the rights, freedoms and interests of man and citizen in the sphere of public administration. The subject of administrative law is a wide complex of social relations that arise in connection with the implementation of the functions of the state executive power, the content of which is the management of society. Ukraine’s new management model (with adapted principles of Good Governance) should be aimed at maximizing the scope of public participation in governance, ensuring that economic, social and political priorities are based on consensus in such a way that the voices of all citizens, even the poorest and most socially disadvantaged population groups were taken into account when making state decisions. The article emphasizes the fact that principles are the leading category in the administrative law of all continental European countries. The principles reveal the content of law, reveal the essence of law, its foundations, as well as the regularities of social life and needs, and highlight trends. In the theory of law, the principles of law mean the most general and stable requirements that contribute to the establishment and protection of social values, determine the nature of law and the direction of its further development. Conclusions and prospects for development. The principles of law are a natural phenomenon of legal science, which in their essence are universal and reflect modern approaches to their interpretation. In modern conditions, the principles of law have a universal character, as they must be taken into account by law-making subjects during the creation of norms for the legal regulation of social relations. The peculiarities of the subject of administrative law provide grounds for a new approach to updating and characterizing the principles of administrative law resulting from interdependence and influence on each other.