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What Remains in Mind? Effectiveness and Efficiency of Explainers at Conveying Information
Get PDFWhether and to what extent mass media contribute to the acquisition of knowledge depends fundamentally on the senses addressed by a particular medium. However, there is a lack of current research investigating the effectiveness and efficiency of (new) media, like scrollytelling and explainer videos, at conveying information, compared to established formats like text and audio. To fill this research gap, I conducted an experimental online survey (N = 381) with medium as the independent variable (explainer text vs. audio vs. video vs. scrollytelling) and the recall of information as the dependent variable. The subjects were presented with a popular scientific presentation on the environmental consequences of meat consumption in order to examine a socially relevant, controversial topic and to explore the possible consequences of dissonance on recalling information. As the present study demonstrates, the traditionally lower reputation of moving images in regard to the effectiveness of information transfer is not always justified. Rather, the results show that scrollytelling and video lead to a significantly more extensive recall than audio and in part text media. However, when considering exposure time, text turns out to be the most efficient medium. The dissonance perceived by the participants did not have any significant influence on their recall of information
The EU Multi-Level System and the Europeanization of Domestic Blame Games
Get PDFBlame games between governing and opposition parties are a characteristic feature of domestic politics. In the EU, policymaking authority is shared among multiple actors across different levels of governance. How does EU integration affect the dynamics of domestic blame games? Drawing on the literatures on EU politicisation and blame attribution in multi-level governance systems, we derive expectations about the direction and frequency of blame attributions in a Europeanized setting. We argue, first, that differences in the direction and frequency of blame attributions by governing and opposition parties are shaped by their diverging baseline preferences as blame avoiders and blame generators; secondly, we posit that differences in blame attributions across Europeanized policies are shaped by variation in political authority structures, which incentivize certain attributions while constraining others. We hypothesize, inter alia, that blame games are “Europeanized” primarily by governing parties and when policy-implementing authority rests with EU-level actors. We test our theoretical expectations by analysing parliamentary debates on EU asylum system policy and EU border control policy in Austria and Germany
Democracy or Oligarchy? Unequal Representation of Income Groups in European Institutions
Get PDFIn this study we examine the representation of income groups in two EU-level institutions, the Council and the European Parliament. We find that the political positions of these institutions, and especially of the Council, are always on the right compared to European citizens, though closer to the wealthy among them. However, a more systematic analysis of congruence between different income groups and the Council reveals that while the poor are systematically underrepresented, the rich are not systematically over-represented. This holds both when we examine the poor and the rich across the EU as a whole and when we cluster them according to their respective member states
Is There Room for Targeting within Universalism? Finnish Social Assistance Recipients as Social Citizens
Get PDFThis article focuses on the role of means-tested social assistance in Finland, which is often considered one of the Nordic welfare states described as having a universal welfare model. The article scrutinises the capacity of the final safety net to enhance the social citizenship of social assistance recipients. The Finnish social security system combines social insurance (earnings-related benefits), universal benefits (flat-rate benefits), free or affordable public services, and social assistance as a means-tested and targeted element, and thus it is a discussion on the degree of universalism that best captures the nature of universalism in the Finnish welfare state. Because the final safety net includes public services (especially social work) and income transfers (especially social assistance), its ability to strengthen social citizenship depends on both elements—separately and as a combination—as there may be a simultaneous need for financial aid and services. Whilst national registers provide data on social assistance, there is no national register data on municipal social services, which is why a survey was conducted. In this study, the heterogenic clients supported by the final safety net were described based on an open-ended question in the survey data. Statistics were then used to evaluate the frequency of client groups (capable clients, persistent clients, invisible clients, safety net dropouts). The article concludes that universalism as a social policy principle is challenged by the diversity of the clientele
Conceptualizing Testbed Planning: Urban Planning in the Intersection between Experimental and Public Sector Logics
Get PDFUrban planning is, in many countries, increasingly becoming intertwined with local climate ambitions, investments in urban attractiveness and “smart city” innovation measures. In the intersection between these trends, urban experimentation has developed as a process where actors are granted action space to test innovations in a collaborative setting. One arena for urban experimentation is urban testbeds. Testbeds are sites of urban development, in which experimentation constitutes an integral part of planning and developing the area. This article introduces the notion of testbed planning as a way to conceptualize planning processes in delimited sites where planning is combined with processes of urban experimentation. We define testbed planning as a multi-actor, collaborative planning process in a delimited area, with the ambition to generate and disseminate learning while simultaneously developing the site. The aim of this article is to explore processes of testbed planning with regard to the role of urban planners. Using an institutional logics perspective we conceptualize planners as navigating between a public sector—and an experimental logic. The public sector logic constitutes the formal structure of “traditional” urban planning, and the experimental logic a collaborative and testing governance structure. Using examples from three Nordic municipalities, this article explores planning roles in experiments with autonomous buses in testbeds. The analysis shows that planners negotiate these logics in three different ways, combining and merging them, separating and moving between them or acting within a conflictual process where the public sector logic dominates
A Marriage of Convenience: Responsive Populists and Responsible Experts
Get PDFThis thematic issue, “Varieties of Technocratic Populism around the World,” investigates ideological origins of technocratic populism and situates it among other types of populism. It is composed of 11 articles that bring together 18 scholars from around the world with a wide variety of perspectives. Technocratic populism is an output-oriented populism that directly links voters to leaders via expertise. It emerges as a response to a crisis of governance, reproaches mainstream parties for it and offers solutions that challenge traditional left–right divisions in politics. New leaders combine populism with technocracy: They offer expertise, often harnessed in business, but also a direct, personalized link to ‘ordinary’ citizens. Above all, they politicize expertise to gain legitimacy. Technocratic populism primarily responds to frustrations of the electorate with poor governance, not to nativist grievances or to the plight of the most vulnerable citizens. In a new social contract, it is expected that voters renounce politics and political parties and that they turn into spectators who observe how technocratic elites adopt solutions that benefit the ‘ordinary people.’ Technocratic populism is a growing challenge to pluralistic forms of representative democracy and calls for further scholarly attention
Planning for Exclusion: The Politics of Urban Disaster Governance
Get PDFMany disaster risk reduction (DRR) initiatives, including land use planning, tend to ignore existing long-term inequalities in urban space. Furthermore, scholars working on urban disaster governance do not adequately consider how day-to-day DRR governing practices can (re)produce these. Hence, following a recent interest in the political dimensions of disaster governance, this article explores under what conditions the implementation of DRR land uses (re)produce spatial injustice on the ground. We develop a theoretical framework combining politics, disaster risk, and space, and apply it to a case study in Santiago, Chile. There, after a landslide disaster in the city’s foothills in 1993, a multi-level planning arrangement implemented a buffer zone along the bank of a ravine to protect this area from future disasters. This buffer zone, however, transformed a long-term established neighbourhood, splitting it into a formal and an informal area remaining to this day. Using qualitative data and spatial analysis, we describe the emergence, practices, and effects of this land use. While this spatial intervention has proactively protected the area, it has produced further urban exclusion and spatial deterioration, and reproduced disaster risks for the informal households within the buffer zone. We explain this as resulting from a governance arrangement that emerged from a depoliticised environment, enforcing rules unevenly, and lacking capacities and unclear responsibilities, all of which could render DRR initiatives to be both spatially unjust and ineffective. We conclude that sustainable and inclusive cities require paying more attention to the implementation practices of DRR initiatives and their relation to long-term inequities
Disparate Projects, Coherent Practices: Constructing New Urbanism through the Charter Awards
Get PDFThe Congress for the New Urbanism’s (CNU) annual Charter Awards offers a rich set of documents with which to understand the discursive construction of the New Urbanism movement in the world. Every year, since 2001, developers and designers submit work representing their plans and projects to CNU for consideration of an award. In each case, a collection of urban design practitioners with expertise in New Urbanism comes together as jurors to evaluate the submissions. A handful of projects are recognized with an award and profiled in the Charter Awards booklet. This booklet offers a snapshot of what the movement’s awards program jurors in a given year see as its exemplary work and most innovative accomplishments. Using a framework for understanding the discursive labor that design award programs perform, I examine two decades worth of Charter Awards and analyze narratives and messages presented therein concerning how New Urbanism exists in the world. I advance three claims through this analysis. First, the Charter Awards as a text discursively constructs disparate projects and plans as part of a singular movement. Second, the Charter Awards narrate New Urbanism as a worldwide movement that transcends particularities of place, culture, and history. Finally, CNU uses the Charter Awards to effectively claim universal relevance to urban development despite the particularities of places and the divergence of development contexts
New Urbanism: Past, Present, and Future
Get PDFThe New Urbanism, initially conceived as an anti-sprawl reform movement, evolved into a new paradigm in urban design. Recently, however, some researchers have argued that the popular appeal of New Urbanism has eroded, the movement has lost its significance, and critical research on the broader theme has tapered off. In response, this article investigates whether the movement has lost its currency and explores the future of New Urbanism in the context of contemporary circumstances of development. The article begins with a brief description of the conceptualization of New Urbanism as an exception to the development trends of the time. Collaborative efforts of its protagonists that have contributed to the integration of New Urbanist concepts into other programs, policies, and development regulations are presented in the next section to describe its expansion, to clarify its mainstreaming, and to call attention to its broader impact. The concluding section presents contemporary circumstances of development and changes that are intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic, including those related to the nation’s demographics, climate change, technological advances, rapid growth of the digital economy, and acceleration of e-commerce to explore the significance of New Urbanism for future development
Public Administration and the Study of Political Order: Towards a Framework for Analysis
Get PDFThe contribution of this study is two-fold: First, it outlines a conceptual framework on political order; and secondly, it offers empirical illustrations on the case of Nordic cooperation. Taken together, the article makes a plea for public administration scholarship in the study of political order. Political order consists of a relatively stable arrangement of institutions that are fairly formalized and institutionalized. A common political order, moreover, entails that relevant institutions: (i) are fairly independent of pre-existing institutions; (ii) are relatively integrated and internally cohesive; and (iii) are reasonably able to influence governance processes within other institutions. The article empirically suggests that Nordic-level institutions are less likely to act relatively integrated and independently of member-state governments as well as being able to wield significant influence on public governance processes within member-state institutions