The Science–Policy Nexus in Collaborative Governance: Use of Science in Ecosystem Recovery Planning

Across many social–ecological systems, policy makers and scholars increasingly call for science to inform policy. The science–policy interface becomes especially complex as collaborative approaches include multiple stakeholders working together across jurisdictions. Unfortunately little is known about how much and how science is used in collaborative governance for social–ecological systems. This exploratory study examines instrumental, conceptual, and symbolic use of science in a science‐rich collaborative planning case in the Puget Sound, USA. It also examines the influence of science, relative to other factors, in collaborative planning, and what factors affect it. Results from a survey and document analysis indicate the prevalence of conceptual use of science, with relatively little symbolic use. Some factors promoting conceptual and instrumental use discourage symbolic use. Overall, while science is seen as influential in this science‐rich context, its influence is balanced by local stakeholder preferences and contextual information.     

Neighborhood disorganization, substance use, and violence among adolescents in Puerto Rico

This study investigates the role of neighborhoods in adolescent violence in poor neighborhoods in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The study is part of a larger longitudinal project examining risk and resilience in adolescents' ages 12 to 15 years old and their caregivers. Using a cross-sectional design, a self-completion questionnaire, and an interviewer questionnaire, the authors assessed violent behaviors among participants across demographics, characteristics, and neighborhood social disorganization using the concepts of physical disorders and social disorder. Adolescent violence was positively associated with social disorder. The finding that adults in these neighborhoods walk around with visible firearms and engage in fighting, may have led adolescents to perceive that violence is an accepted behavior. Furthermore, socially disorganized neighborhoods might be less likely to organize on their own behalf because the occurrence of negative experience limits the amount of social support and resources that are available in the neighborhood.     

Who catches the biotech train? Understanding diverging political responses to GMOs in Southeast Asia

Agricultural biotechnology in general and ‘genetically modified organisms’ in particular present, depending on whom you believe, either great opportunities for – or threats to – the future of farming and of food security in Southeast Asia. As a reflection of this cognitive rift, countries in the region have adopted divergent policies on genetically modified crops. Although both countries strove to become biotech pioneers in the 1990s, today the Philippines has emerged as the regional leader in this second Green Revolution, whereas Thailand effectively has rejected the new technology. How can we explain these divergent biotechnological trajectories? In this essay I argue that the answer is to be found in the impact of the Asian financial crisis of 1997, which paved the way for mobilization and empowerment of opponents of agricultural biotechnology in Thailand, but not, or much less so, in the Philippines. In Thailand, genetically modified crops came increasingly to be perceived as incompatible with an ascendant and eventually hegemonic new development paradigm – sufficiency economy.     

Society and the Second Age of Machines: Algorithms Versus Ethics

The term “Second Machine Age” was used by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee in their book of the same name as an indication of the impact of AI technology on people, society, and the economy. The term seeks to analyse the age we actually live in, its hidden patterns, which jobs and fields of study have a perspective, and which do not. It is about the second industrial revolution that is going on right now, and it changes the world no less radically than the first one, driven by the steam locomotive. Exponential growth of digital technologies, digitization of everything and recombinant innovation is a driving engine and fuel of the Second Machine Age. However, the ethical issues of this change remain unaddressed. Artificial intelligence is currently being dealt with by a great many scientists and philosophers who ask many questions. The most important questions are whether the machines can think, whether we will give them the copyright, which the animals do not have until now, and the question whether AI can has its own ethics. The study focuses on these issues, and uses concrete examples to show our unpreparedness for these topics.     

Regional security cooperation reinvented: Western Balkans counterterrorism initiative

ABSTRACT

This article argues that the Western Balkans Counterterrorism Initiative (WBCTi), originally a Slovenian proposal of late 2014, represents an efficient form of regional security cooperation, particularly when regional EU integration is considered. The Initiative that was accepted by the Justice and Home Affairs Council of the EU in late 2015 is the first of its kind. It is aimed at both incorporating and integrating all forms of international assistance that concern increasing the capacity to prevent and combat terrorism, violent extremism, and radicalisation leading to terrorism. Additionally, it is directed at decreasing duplication of actions by international actors and raising levels of efficiency of security cooperation and reform. This article analyses the Initiative by focusing on its structure and claiming that its specific framework represents an innovative approach establishing a fully functional regional structure outlining EU-Western Balkans security cooperation.     

Can ‘Citizen in Uniform’ Survive? German Civil–Military Culture Responding to War

This article points out the role of perceptions, hereafter referred to as ‘civil– military culture’, that German society holds about the German armed forces. Analysing the discourse in German newspapers concerning Bundeswehr missions abroad since the early 1990s, and the engagement in Afghanistan in particular, it is argued that options to use the military abroad were circumscribed mainly to humanitarian tasks. This was so because German soldiers have been perceived in accordance with the official concept of a ‘citizen in uniform’, which has strong ethical implications, and consequently the Bundeswehr was seen as a humanitarian and rescue organisation. However, since the discourse in 2009 made it clear that the internalised civil–military culture no longer provides adequate guidance regarding how to approach a war-like situation such as that in Afghanistan, the entire German civil–military culture is challenged.