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Migration-Related Conflicts as Drivers of Institutional Change?
Get PDFThis article examines the role of social conflicts in the context of migration and discusses the relation between such conflicts and institutional change. We understand conflicts as tensions that evoke contradiction between different social groups or institutional actors. Varied urban contexts together with dynamic immigration of heterogeneous population groups can induce negotiation processes that affect institutional settings and actors. Conflicts have therefore been an integral part of urban coexistence, and cities have always been places where these conflicts play out. We assume that conflicts are social phenomena, which have multiple causes and effects. Public assumptions about conflicts in connection with migration often have a negative or destructive impetus, while conflict theory ascribes to conflicts potential positive effects on societal change. Conflicts can represent forms of socialization and the possibility of adapting or changing social conditions. This article discusses the extent to which migration-related conflicts induce institutional change. Using qualitative empirical results from the BMBF-funded research project MigraChance, we present a case study that reconstructs the emergence and course of a conflict surrounding the construction of a Syriac-Orthodox church in Bebra (Hesse) in the 1990s. Analyzing this conflict both in depth and in relation to its local context, we show that migration is only one part of what we refer to as migration-related conflicts, and we shed light on the complexity of factors that can result in institutional change. Change can also occur indirectly, in small steps, and with ambivalent normative implications
Ranked Choice Voting and Youth Voter Turnout: The Roles of Campaign Civility and Candidate Contact
Get PDFRanked choice voting (RCV) has become increasing popular in the United States as more cities and states begin allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference. This change in election system has been linked to increased campaign civility and mobilization, but with little evidence suggesting these benefits lead to increased voter turnout in the general population. This study argues that RCV elections may not increase overall voting but will increase youth voting. Considering young Americans, who have become increasingly pessimistic towards politics and are also heavily reliant on mobilization for participation, this study argues that increased campaign civility and mobilization may work to offset the negative feelings and lack of political engagement that plague young Americans. Using a matched study of individual level voter turnout for seven RCV and fourteen non-RCV local elections from 2013 and 2014, we find that there is no statistical difference in voting rates between RCV and plurality cities for the general public. Yet, in line with our hypotheses, younger voters are more likely to vote in RCV cities. Further, we find that increased contact in RCV elections accounts for a larger portion of the increased voter turnout compared to perceptions of campaign civility. Findings suggest RCV acts as a positive mobilizing force for youth voting through increasing campaign contact
Editor’s Introduction: The Promise and Peril of Ranked Choice Voting
Get PDFDissatisfaction with two-party politics is at an all-time high in the US. As extreme polarization and minority rule persist, a possibility of an electoral reform becomes increasingly more likely. This editor’s introduction discusses the ranked choice voting (RCV) as an alternative to the current single-member geographic districts with winner-take-all plurality elections in the US. The articles for this thematic issue critically evaluate whether RCV lives up to its promise in improving democracy in the US. Like any rule or institutional change, it has benefits and drawbacks. The empirical and historical research presented here focuses on the implementation and use of RCV in the US compared to other countries. This thematic issue offers new insights into the promise and perils of RCV as a way to aggregate votes in elections that ensure that the winning candidate receives a majority of the votes cast
The European Green Deal: What Prospects for Governing Climate Change With Policy Monitoring?
Get PDFThe European Green Deal (EGD) puts forward and engages with review mechanisms, such as the European Semester and policy monitoring, to ensure progress towards the long-term climate targets in a turbulent policy environment. Soft-governance mechanisms through policy monitoring have been long in the making, but their design, effects, and politics remain surprisingly under-researched. While some scholars have stressed their importance to climate governance, others have highlighted the difficulties in implementing robust policy monitoring systems, suggesting that they are neither self-implementing nor apolitical. This article advances knowledge on climate policy monitoring in the EU by proposing a new analytical framework to better understand past, present, and potential future policy monitoring efforts, especially in the context of the EGD. Drawing on Lasswell (1965), it unpacks the politics of policy monitoring by analysing who monitors, what, why, when, and with what effect(s). The article discusses each element of the framework with a view to three key climate policy monitoring efforts in the EU which are particularly relevant for the EGD, namely those emerging from the Energy Efficiency Directive, the Renewable Energy Directive, and the Monitoring Mechanism Regulation (now included in the Energy Union Governance Regulation), as well as related processes for illustration. Doing so reveals that the policy monitoring regimes were set up differently in each case, that definitions of the subject of monitoring (i.e., public policies) either differ or remain elusive, and that the corresponding political and policy impact of monitoring varies. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of the findings for governing climate change by means of monitoring through the emerging EGD
Variants of Ranked-Choice Voting from a Strategic Perspective
Get PDFRanked-choice voting has come to mean a range of electoral systems. Broadly, they can facilitate (a) majority winners in single-seat districts, (b) majority rule with minority representation in multi-seat districts, or (c) majority sweeps in multi-seat districts. Further, such systems can combine with rules to encourage/discourage slate voting. This article describes five major versions used, abandoned, and/or proposed for US public elections: alternative vote, single transferable vote, block-preferential voting, the bottoms-up system, and alternative vote with numbered posts. It then considers each from the perspective of a ‘political strategist.’ Simple models of voting (one with two parties, another with three) draw attention to real-world strategic issues: effects on minority representation, importance of party cues, and reasons for the political strategist to care about how voters rank choices. Unsurprisingly, different rules produce different outcomes with the same sets of ballots. Specific problems from the strategist’s perspective are: ‘majority reversal,’ serving ‘two masters,’ and undisciplined third-party voters (or ‘pure’ independents). Some of these stem from well-known phenomena, e.g., ranking truncation and ‘vote leakage.’ The article also alludes to ‘vote-management’ tactics, i.e., rationing nominations and ensuring even distributions of first-choice votes. Illustrative examples come from American history and comparative politics. A running theme is the two-pronged failure of the Progressive Era reform wave: with respect to minority representation, then ranked voting's durability
Transforming Worker–Client Identities: From Shelters to Housing First
Get PDFThe Housing First (HF) approach to counteracting homelessness, stemming from the USA, is advocated as a blueprint for homelessness policy change in Europe, including the Nordic countries. In contrast to traditional homelessness policies based on shelters as the first step towards ending homelessness, the HF policy discourse regards access to one’s own housing as a basic human right that should not be conditional upon good or acceptable behaviour. Building on ethnographic research in a Swedish HF unit striving to implement the HF approach ‘by the book,’ which includes both focus group interviews with workers and observations of worker–client interactions during home visits, we show how the new HF policy challenges both workers and clients, who used to encounter each other in shelters but now meet in clients’ own homes, transforming their identities. We demonstrate how workers account for transformations in worker–client identities by referring to how they and their clients used to think, talk and act, thus contrasting their new identities with their former selves. Moreover, in their efforts to accomplish their actual work tasks within the framework of the new HF policy discourse in the homes of formerly homeless clients, we show how workers struggle with their identities when they encounter clients in practice. In their accounts of policy change, the workers embraced their new identities with pleasure, but in practice, they were hesitant when dealing with issues of concern, such as their clients’ use of tobacco, alcohol and drugs. In sum, it becomes complicated in practice
“It’s about Living Like Everyone Else”: Dichotomies of Housing Support in Swedish Mental Health Care
Get PDFThe deinstitutionalization of psychiatric care has not only altered the living conditions for people with severe mental illness but has also greatly affected social services staff. In the Mental Health Act launched by the Swedish government in 1995, a new kind of service called ‘housing support’ and a new occupational group, ‘housing support workers,’ was introduced. However, housing support does not currently operate under any specific guidelines regarding the content of the service. This study explores housing support at local level in various municipalities of one Swedish county. The data is based on discussion with three focus groups: care managers, managers for home and community‐based support, and housing supporter workers. The perspective of institutional logics as a specific set of frames that creates a standard for what should or could be done, or alternately what cannot be questioned, is applied to analyze the constructed meaning of housing support. The meaning of housing support is constructed through three dichotomies: process and product, independence and dependence, and flexibility and structure. These dichotomies can be understood as dilemmas inherent in the work and organizing of housing support. With no clear guidelines, the levels of organizational and professional discretion create a space for local flexibility but may also contribute to tremendous differences in defining and implementing housing support. We discuss the potential consequences for housing support users implied by the identified discrepancies
University Applicants from Refugee Backgrounds and the Intention to Drop Out from Pre‐Study Programs: A Mixed‐Methods Study
Get PDFThe mixed‐methods project WeGe investigates key factors for refugees’ integration into pre‐study programs and conditions for successful transitions to higher education institutions (HEIs). In this article, we first examine the dropout intentions of international students and refugee students participating in formal pre‐study programs at German HEIs to disclose both barriers and resources. We use insights from migration research to extend theoretical student dropout models and analyse novel data from a quantitative survey with international and refugee students in pre‐study programs. Our findings show that refugee students intend to drop out from pre‐study programs more often than other international students. This difference disappears when other characteristics are controlled for. Effect decomposition shows that financial problems and perceived exclusion are driving dropout intentions of refugee students, whereas German language use in everyday life and a strong connection to the prospective field of study function as a resource and reduce the dropout risk. Depending on the reference group, deficits or resources of refugee students become apparent. This result suggests that refugees should be addressed as a student group in their own right. As a second step, we analyse qualitative expert interviews to reconstruct the staff’s perspectives on barriers and resources of refugee students to analyse how the driving factors of dropout intentions are represented in their knowledge. In particular, we show if and how this knowledge is used to address refugees and to develop inclusive educational concepts within pre‐study programs
Gender and Globalization of Academic Labor Markets: Research and Teaching Staff at Nordic Universities
Get PDFIn this article, we investigate how the globalized academic labor market has changed the composition of teaching and research staff at Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish universities. We use national statistical data on the gender and country‐origin of universities’ teaching and research staff between 2012 and 2018 to study how the globalized academic labor market has influenced the proportion of women across career stages, with a special focus on STEM fields. We pay special attention to how gender and country‐origin are interrelated in universities’ academic career hierarchies. The findings show that the proportion of foreign‐born teaching and research staff rose substantially at the lower career level (grade C positions) in the 2010s. The increase was more modest among the most prestigious grade A positions, such as professorships. The findings show significant national differences in how gender and country‐origin of staff intersect in Nordic universities. The study contributes to research on the gendered patterns of global academic labor markets and social stratification in Nordic universities
Landscape as a Potential Key Concept in Urban Environmental Planning: The Case of Poland
Get PDFRapid urban development increases the consumption of materials, energy, and water, resulting in an overproduction of waste and emissions. These cause many environmental threats, such as ozone layer depletion and rain acidification, leading to climate change. Therefore, the question arises on how to improve the effectiveness of tools that strengthen environmental protection. This discursive article presents an approach stressing the role of landscape in environmental protection in Poland. It indicates that landscape protection is an ecological, not just an aesthetic activity, as it is often considered in Poland. The landscape reflects all changes occurring in individual elements of the environment resulting from urban development. Through landscape transformations, one can track the growth and accumulation of adverse effects in the chain of environmental changes. Knowledge regarding the dynamics and scope of these transformations can improve ecological design and technologies. Therefore, the landscape condition should be treated as an indicator of sustainable development. If so, one could hypothesise that effective landscape protection contributes to minimising environmental and climate changes. The relationships between the landscape and environmental/climate threats discussed in this article prompt combining some tools related to these threats, which may ensure both effective landscape protection and sustainable development, leading to reduced climate change. The possibilities and benefits of integrating these tools are presented here as well. General considerations are supplemented with references to the situation in Poland to support the need for implementing a more policy-oriented and interdisciplinary approach to landscape protection