Making sense of multilevel governance and governance coordination in Brazil: The case of the Bolsa Verde Programme

Brazil is an example of a challenging governance context par excellence: continental size, multi-levelled governance structures and diverse administrative cultures meet with ambitious, large-scale policy needs and objectives. The multilevel governance approach is applied here to analyse implementation and governance coordination of the Bolsa Verde Programme (BVP). Through a close reading of the narratives told by three programme officials – and zooming in on jointly exercised governance functions known from the metagovernance approach – we analysed how BVP’s programmatic governance coordination was made sense of. The analysis showed that our interviewees were well aware of the shortcomings of the governance coordination in BVP, understood as rather hierarchical, centrally driven and often tackling challenges of vertical multi-actor coordination in a reactive ad-hoc manner. However, since the implementers have been able to creatively and skilfully solve governance coordination challenges, possibilities for developing more systematic and inclusive (meta)governance approaches seem feasible.     

Fleetingness and media-ted existence. From Kierkegaard on the newspaper to Broderick on the Internet

Abstract

Increasingly, the modern world is ‘on speed’. Technology has, since the invention of the Gutenberg press, facilitated the ever more rapid, more widespread dispersal of information. The latest in the line of the mass information media, which runs from the book and newspaper through radio and television, is the Internet, a medium for which speed is measured in milliseconds, and for which the phrase ‘virtual reality’, or, more compact, ‘virtuality’, has thus been coined. Speed, however, relates not only to the dissemination of information, but also to its endurance: the quicker the medium, the more fleeting the presence of, and the more transitory one's encounter with a message. This brevity of encounter seems to some extent to run, phenomenologically, along with the range of the particular mass medium: the wider its reach, the quicker too the departure of its contents. In this sense, bigger is faster – though not necessarily with greater meaning, truth or integrity. Invasiveness and validity are not necessary corollaries. The power of the mass media lies in scope, rather than in depth. The existential impact this has on humans living in a world increasingly dominated by such mass media, has not passed by unnoticed. Some of the analyses are highlighted in this contribution, with some continued implications for living authentically in a media-ted world indicated.     

South African correctional official occupational stress: The role of psychological strengths

The objective of this study was to determine the dimensions of occupational stress of employees of the Department of Correctional Services in a management area of the Freestate Province of South Africa. A further objective was to investigate the role of psychological strengths, namely, work locus of control and affect, in the experience of occupational stress. A cross-sectional design was used. A simple random sample (n = 157) was taken. The correctional officer stress inventory was developed by means of factor analysis, and the work locus of control scale and the affectometer 2 were administered. Results indicated that an external locus of control and negative affect contribute to the experience of occupational stress. The most severe stressors for correctional officials have to do with a lack of resources.     

Aspects of Legislative Drafting: Some South African Realities (or Plain Language Is Not Always Plain Sailing)

It seems to me that a sort of hieratic language has developedby which the priests incant the commandments. I seem to seethe ordinary citizen today standing before the law like thelaity in a medieval church: at the far end the lights glow,the priestly figures move to and fro, but it is in an unknowntongue that the great mysteries of right and wrong are proclaimed.¹     

ISPs as ESPs:1 Different keyboard strokes for different Christian folks. A response to Britz and de Villiers on the Internet and Christian ethics

ABSTRACT

In an earlier Communicatio (2002) article de Villiers (2002, 16–21) discussed the idea of moral responsibility and the Internet. A year later Britz and de Villiers (2003, 333–358) expanded on this article in another journal, Verbum et Ecclesia (2003). The present article is a response to their ideas on Christian ethics and the Internet. A few reasons are presented why ethical deliberation on the Internet is important. The main points made by Britz and de Villiers are summarised. Interspersed throughout are alternative views on a broad framework on the matter of (Christian) ethics and the Internet.