29526 research outputs found
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River Rejuvenation and River Rights: Evolving Debates in India
No full textThis book draws on interdisciplinary research deploying ‘river rights’ and ‘water justice’ as conceptual frameworks to engage with laws and politics around waterbodies. It underlines the simultaneity of micro and macro aspects to make sense of the complexities around ‘river rejuvenation’ in India.This book engages with different ideas of rejuvenation, illuminating what goes under the name of rejuvenation, its impacts on the environment and communities dependent on rivers for their livelihood. At the micro level, several case studies offer a framework for understanding the reasons behind dying/degenerating small rivers across the country. At the macro-level, several chapters engage with the impact of laws, policies and role of community in river conservation. The volume also highlights the ongoing programmes such as Namami Mission for Clean Ganga and riverfront development projects.The book will be useful to students, researchers, and teachers in the field of Water Resources, Water Supply, Management of Climate-Induced Disasters, Development Studies, Law, Politics and Ecology. It will also be an invaluable companion to policy makers, general administrators, civil society organizations, media persons, and bilateral agencies like WHO, UNICEF, UNDP, UNEP, World Bank and Gates Foundation
From Prohibition to Digitalisation: 100 Years of Cameras in the Courtroom
No full textThis article traces the shifting relationship between the courts, the public, and the media in England and Wales since the 1925 prohibition on courtroom photography to the contemporary regime of livestreamed and recorded proceedings. Examining the material and political contexts within which the ban was introduced a century ago, it situates the ban on courtroom images within the first administrative turn of the judiciary, when mechanised record-keeping and the rise of the use of photography by the mass media threatened to destabilise judicial authority, existing class relations, and the courts’ control over judicial meaning-making. A century later, the return of cameras to the courtroom is analysed as part of a second administrative turn driven by digitalisation, datafication, and the transparency imperative. The paper demonstrates that rather than signalling a liberalisation of visual access, the reintroduction of cameras has been contingent on the judiciary’s enhanced capacity to produce, archive, and control its own ‘administrative images.’ Today, images of the courtroom operate simultaneously as instruments of surveillance and sources of data within a broader digital infrastructure of governance. The article argues that contemporary open justice, increasingly equated with transparency, no longer rests primarily on public observation of courts but on managed visibility through digital capture, thereby recasting the historic tension between law and images within the logic of algorithmic and data-driven judicial administration
The Unexpected Actor? Civil‐Military Relations and Regulatory Agency Control in Brazil
Full text linkDemocratic backsliding around the world has sparked debate about its impact on public administration and governance. This article explores a growing yet less visible phenomenon threatening democracy. It examines the influence exerted by authoritarian populists over autonomous regulatory agencies through militarized patronage, that is, the discretionary appointment of military officers to civil positions. Scholars have not fully untangled how and why contemporary populists employ militarized patronage, and much less is known about militarization of autonomous regulatory agencies. To fill this gap, we highlight enabling factors underpinning militarized patronage and draw on a unique empirical dataset that integrates military with civil service records to account for the militarization of autonomous regulatory agencies in Brazil during the far-right presidency of Jair Bolsonaro (2019–2022). The article deepens our understanding of the role of civil-military relations in restructuring regulatory governance during populist rule, and the effects of democratic backsliding on regulatory governance
The plural professional: How UN human rights experts construct their independence
Full text linkIndependent experts are routinely appointed by international organisations for specific short-term assignments. Existing scholarship has studied their career trajectories, accumulation of resources, and mobility across occupational settings to explain their power and capacity to pursue their own agendas. However, it has neglected the fact that many transnational professionals not only move between professions but also practise them simultaneously. By using the example of the United Nations special rapporteur, an independent human rights expert, this article addresses this under-theorised feature by theorising them as plural professionals, or actors who practise multiple professions simultaneously. This multiple positioning in several professional settings at once can create tensions in how they approach their work. But, as I argue, it is also the source of their expert independence, rooted in a transnational social space connecting multiple professional identities, resources, and skills. Independence viewed through this lens is a socio-historical category which is made up of the combination of professional, biographical, and institutional resources as embodied and strategically mobilised by plural professionals. This argument builds on my original dataset of the professional biographies of 122 thematic special rapporteurs and 30 biographical interviews
When digitalization pervades, business models converge: A conceptual model for the electricity industry
Full text linkWhile decarbonization in the electricity sector has been studied extensively, there has been less attention paid to the digital transition. Not only can digital technologies improve efficiency and reduce operational costs in this sector, but they also can enable new energy ecosystems, create new business models, and accelerate the energy transition itself. We present a conceptual model that offers insights into three key areas: industry structure, end products, and pricing strategies. Our recommendations are tailored to help energy firms, startups, and digital companies navigate these evolving dynamics. While the focus is on the electricity markets, these insights hold broader relevance and can be effectively applied to other industries in response to digital transformation
What is financial inclusion? A critical review
No full textFinancial inclusion (FI) has become a key policy for poverty reduction in developing countries. However, there is no consensus on what FI comprises, who should be included, and who will deliver this inclusion. The different interpretations may lead to implementations that do not correspond to the original intent. To provide a consistent definition of FI in the existing literature, this article reviews sixty-nine studies about FI. Built on the systematic review approach, studies are selected based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, as well as an explicit search strategy, thus providing a reliable and replicable outcome. After identifying the studies, we present a critical discussion about the underlying theoretical and empirical implications of the definitions of FI. We find that by making certain assumptions implicit, FI may be a policy that merely replicates microfinance initiatives. To overcome this issue, a new definition is suggested to highlight the policy’s underlying assumptions and objectives
Revealing Epistemic Injustice in the African Commission’s Reading of Indigeneity: The Case of the Endorois
No full textThe African Commission’s 2009 ruling in the case concerning the Endorois community, a pastoralist community based in the area around Lake Bogoria in Kenya, is hailed as one of the Commission’s most landmark achievements. In the case, the Commission found that the Endorois’s eviction from the Lake Bogoria reserve—their ancestral land—was in breach of their collective rights to consultation, cultural freedoms, and the right to property. There has been much praise for the Commission’s decision—especially its reading of indigeneity and cultural rights. This chapter explores a different dimension to the ruling: epistemic injustice. By viewing the Commission’s 2009 ruling in the Endorois case itself as a particular place, the chapter identifies instances of pre-emptive and testimonial injustice through the loss of voice, and hermeneutical injustice through the loss of vocabulary and grammar, inflicted on the Endorois community. These instances are drawn from interviews conducted with members of the Endorois Welfare Council, an entity set up in 1995 as the spokesperson for the Endorois in the legal complaints filed on behalf of the community
The Semantics, Ethics, and Rhetoric of ‘Resist’: A Natural Semantic Metalanguage Analysis
No full textThis article applies the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) to define resistance in both everyday usage and Foucauldian jargon. In doing so, it becomes clear that, while resistance is usually nonpartisan—two political actors can equally resist one another—in its Foucauldian sense, resistance entails the creation of new potentialities by subjects. Under this definition, Foucault effectively makes the ethical claim that resistance is a deontological good in which we are obliged to partake. The article considers the limits of this claim in relation to philosophical pessimism and modern left- and right-wing populism, before concluding that other kinds of activism are necessary to actualise those potentialities that will benefit the world
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