Testing for linguistic injustice: territoriality and pluralism

This article develops a linguistic injustice test. Language policy measures passing the test conflict with the normative ideal of equal language recognition. The first part of the test checks for external restrictions – language policies that grant more recognition to one language group than to another. The second part of the test checks for internal restrictions – language policies that grant more recognition to some members of a language group than to other members of the same group. The article then applies the linguistic injustice test to two models of linguistic justice: linguistic territoriality and linguistic pluralism. It is argued that real-life cases of linguistic territoriality tend to pass the test. It is argued that instantiations of linguistic pluralism tend to fail the test.     

Haiti's democratic challenge

This paper examines the emergence of a humanitarian frontline in several operational contexts. Over the past 15 years, and since 2001 in particular, the international aid sector has been confronted by a climate of polarisation. With the traditional aid and donor landscape dominated by Western or Western-aligned parties who are sometimes involved in armed conflict too, aid organisations face the impact of the supposed or real instrumentalisation of development and relief in a wider security and geopolitical control agenda. At the same time Western or Western-associated secular development models that are often promoted by traditional aid have either encountered their limits or failed in several parts of the global periphery. The expanded space for religion resulting from globalisation and the social changes that it causes have also expanded the space for faith-based development and relief actors, especially in operational situations that have a large cultural and ideological dimension. The paper focuses on the Islamic world and Islamic faith-based aid, but several factors and trends discussed in it bear relevance for Christian faith-based aid and majority Christian parts of the global periphery as well.     

New Public Management in Dutch Local Government

This article investigates the adoption of New Public Management (NPM) in Dutch local government. According to Hood's concept of NPM, it will show the extent to which Dutch municipalities have adopted businesslike instruments and styles. Following Pollitt's framework on studying public management changes, a distinction will be made between changes in ideology, instruments, practices and impacts. The article concludes that, unlike ideological and instrumental innovations, the evidence for NPM-like practices and impacts is limited. To put it crudely, a lot of apparent changes in Dutch local government seem to be only skin-deep.     

Everyday Fixers as Local Heroes: A Case Study of Vital Interaction in Urban Governance

This article exemplifies the importance of viable coalitions in processes of neighbourhood development and local governance. Elaborating on the notion of the ‘everyday maker’, discovered in Danish local politics by Bang and Sörensen, this article further explores the characteristics and conditions of organising capacity, using the case of the Neighbourhood Development Corporation in the Dutch city of The Hague as a paradigmatic case. This case shows that individual actors, ‘everyday fixers’ or ‘local heroes’, can make a real difference in local politics if they are well connected to a supportive structure and if they are sensitive to the logic of the situation at hand. Context matters, sometimes impedes, but smart individuals can also make it work.     

Contextualising City-regional Issues,Strategies and their Use: the Flemish Story

This paper presents a contextualised analysis of what might be called the city-regional debate. The debate is unfolded in terms of four types of city-regional issues, eight common strategies to tackle the latter and the use thereof in Flanders. It is concluded that the way in which city-regional issues are dealt with in Flanders can be explained by its regime, consisting of an administrative, political and cultural dimension, in terms of a centralistic policy style combined with a weak institutional position of local governments, by a ‘localisation’ of regional politics and policies, both dominated by an anti-urban bias.     

In the Name of the Father? Christian Militantism in Tripura,Northern Uganda,and Ambon

Although armed groups and political violence referring to Islam have attracted increasing attention since the start of the global war against terror, one particular religion can hardly be described as the main source of inspiration of what is commonly referred to as “terrorist acts of violence.” Faith-based violence occurs in different parts of the world and its perpetrators adhere to all major world faiths including Christianity. As such, this article treats three cases of non-state armed actors that explain their actions as being motivated by Christian beliefs and aimed at the creation of a new local society that is guided by religion: the National Liberation Front of Tripura, the Lord's Resistance Army, and the Ambonese Christian militias. It analyzes the way by which they instrumentalized religion against respective backgrounds of conflict rooted in social change, the erosion of traditional identities, imbalances of power, and widening communautarian faultlines.     

Internet applications in the political sphere: perceptions and views of political institutions in South Africa

Abstract

The study described in this article consisted of a survey that was conducted among a sample of South African political institutions and organisations, and that was aimed at investigating their views and perceptions with regard to the use of the Internet. The main research question posed by the current study was: What are the views of politically orientated institutions in South Africa on their use the Internet, and what are their perceptions on how the Internet could impact on democratic processes in the country? The aim of this exploratory research study was to obtain information that could cast light on the issue of how likely it was that the Internet would contribute to a deliberative democracy in South Africa. The survey revealed that the Internet was perceived to have a significant role to play with regard to political and democracy issues in South Africa. However, if certain problems (the lack of access, the lack of basic and computer literacy, and the lack of training) were not adequately addressed by means of an integrated government Internet strategy, the ability of the Internet to impact positively on democracy in South Africa would be very limited.     

Notes and topics

The European Union's difficulty in functioning is to a large degree a result of its decision-making mechanisms, which expose any measure to a veto by a scant minority or even a single state. A flexible model of Europe, one of differentiated integration, attempts to overcome this deadlock. The flexible model is based on the simple and reasonable idea that a member state which dissents is not obliged to associate itself with a certain initiative, but cannot stop the others from carrying it out. Under certain “virtuous” conditions, flexibility would not involve the risk of breaking up the Union. On the contrary, it would offer dynamic instrument for reconciling the requirements of unity and diversity and promoting the process of European integration.     

Balanced or Biased? Interest Groups and Legislative Lobbying in the European News Media

This article examines the coverage of legislative lobbying in European news media. The starting point thereby is that lobbying in the crowded European Union (EU)-level interest community is not only a struggle for direct access to policymakers, but that in order to realize policy goals many interest groups rely on political attention generated by the media. Our main research question is how media attention is skewed toward particular interests and which factors explain these varying levels of prominence. Our empirical analysis is based on a set of 125 legislative proposals adopted by the European Commission between 2008 and 2010. For all these cases we identified 379 interest organizations that made public statements, we coded the amount of media attention these organized interests gained, the type of statements they made as well as some key organizational features. While the aggregate levels of attention look pretty balanced, our evidence shows that media prominence is skewed toward particular types of interests; in particular that organized interests which oppose a proposed policy gain significantly higher levels of media attention.