Regional climate services illustrated with experiences from Northern Europe

In this article, we discuss the advisory capacity of climate science for political and societal decisions. To provide options, open up perspectives and enhance the understanding for the dynamics of climate is a task we name climate services. After a general discussion, experiences of providing these services on a regional and local scale – Northern Germany, the metropolitan area of Hamburg and the Baltic Sea Basin – during the last few years is reviewed.Key components of this regional climate service is the establishment of a regional climate office, of regional IPCC-like assessments of knowledge about regional and local climate change, and detailed homogeneous data sets describing changing weather statistics (i.e., climate) in past decades and in perspectives for the next several decades.

Do labour laws protect labour in India? Union experiences of workplace employment regulations in Maharashtra India

The debate over labour market regulations in India is highly polarised. Advocates of labour market deregulation suggest that the labour law framework in the country confers disproportionate powers on workers and trade unions in the formal sector of the economy, resulting in industrial conflicts and poor productivity. Using workplace union survey data from the state of Maharashtra, this paper examines the veracity of these claims. Maharashtra is recognised as a state with a broadly pro-worker labour law framework. We find that even pro-worker labour laws at best offer only weak protection to workers and unions in the formal sector establishments. Unions find themselves increasingly vulnerable to employer hostility. We discuss these findings in the context of the role of state and judiciary in employment relations and of union links with political parties.

The Europe of Elites. A Study into the Europeanness of Europe's Political and Economic Elites

Contents: 1 Introduction: European integration as an elite project, Heinrich Best, György Lengyel, and Luca Verzichelli; 2 Europe à la carte? European citizenship and its dimensions from the perspective of national elites, Maurizio Cotta and Federico Russo; 3 Ready to run Europe? Perspectives of a supranational career among EU national elites, Nikolas Hubé and Luca Verzichelli; 4 National elites’ preferences on the Europeanization of policy making, José Real-Dato, Borbála Göncz, and György Lengyel; 5 The other side of European identity: elite perceptions of threats to a cohesive Europe, Irmina Matonyté and Vaidas Morkevicius; 6 Elites’ views on European institutions: national experiences sifted through ideological orientations, Daniel Gaxie and Nicolas Hubé; 7 Patterns of regional diversity in political elites’ attitudes, Mladen Lazic, Miguel Jerez-Mir, Vladimir Vuletic, and Rafael Vázquez-García; 8 The elites–masses gap in European integration, Wolfgang C. Müller, Marcelo Jenny, and Alejandro Ecker; 9 Party elites and the domestic discourse on the EU, Nicolo Conti; 10 Elite foundations of European integration: a causal analysis, Heinrich Best; 11 Elites of Europe and the Europe of elites: a conclusion, Heinrich Best; 12 Appendix. Surveying elites: information on the study design and field report of the IntUne elite survey, György Lengyel and Stefan Jahr.

Civil service reform trends in public personnel management: Experiences from the Commonwealth of the Bahamas

This study has explored the potential for implementing a merit-based public personnel system in The Bahamas, a former British colony in The Commonwealth Caribbean. Specifically, the study evaluated the use of merit-based public personnel management practices in areas of recruitment, selection, promotion, training and employee development and performance evaluation. Driving forces and barriers which impact merit system successes and failures as well as strategies for institutionalizing merit system practices are identified. Finally the study attempted to apply the developmental model created by Klingner (1996) to describe the stage of public personnel management in The Bahamas. The data for the study was collected through in-depth interviews with expert observers. ^

The Effects of Civic Education on Political Knowledge

Traditionally political knowledge was regarded as an important potential outcome for civic education efforts. Most of the currently available research, however, tends to focus on non-cognitive goals, despite the fact that studies repeatedly have shown that political knowledge is an important resource for enlightened and engaged citizenship. In this article, we investigate whether civic education contributes to political knowledge levels. The analysis is based on the Belgian Political Panel Survey, a two year panel study among 2,988 Belgian late adolescents. The analysis shows that experiences with group projects at school contribute significantly to political knowledge levels two years later on. Furthermore, we can observe an interaction effect as those who are already most knowledgeable about politics, gain most from these group projects. Classes about politics, on the other hand, did not have an effect on knowledge levels. In the discussion, it is argued that civic education can have strong cognitive effects, but that these effects are not always related to classical civic education efforts.

A Study of How Economic Attitudes Are Shaped by Environmental Shocks and Life Experiences

Social attitudes, attitudes toward financial risk and attitudes toward deferred gratification are thought to influence many important economic decisions over the life-course. In economic theory, these attitudes are key components in diverse models of behavior, including collective action, saving and investment decisions and occupational choice. The relevance of these attitudes have been confirmed empirically. Yet, the factors that influence them are not well understood. This research evaluates how these attitudes are affected by large disruptive events, namely, a natural disaster and a civil conflict, and also by an individual-specific life event, namely, having children.

By implementing rigorous empirical strategies drawing on rich longitudinal datasets, this research project advances our understanding of how life experiences shape these attitudes. Moreover, compelling evidence is provided that the observed changes in attitudes are likely to reflect changes in preferences given that they are not driven just by changes in financial circumstances. Therefore the findings of this research project also contribute to the discussion of whether preferences are really fixed, a usual assumption in economics.

In the first chapter, I study how altruistic and trusting attitudes are affected by exposure to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami as long as ten years after the disaster occurred. Establishing a causal relationship between natural disasters and attitudes presents several challenges as endogenous exposure and sample selection can confound the analysis. I take on these challenges by exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in exposure to the tsunami and by relying on a longitudinal dataset representative of the pre-tsunami population in two districts of Aceh, Indonesia. The sample is drawn from the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR), a survey with data collected both before and after the disaster and especially designed to identify the impact of the tsunami. The altruistic and trusting attitudes of the respondents are measured by their behavior in the dictator and trust games. I find that witnessing closely the damage caused by the tsunami but without suffering severe economic damage oneself increases altruistic and trusting behavior, particularly towards individuals from tsunami affected communities. Having suffered severe economic damage has no impact on altruistic behavior but may have increased trusting behavior. These effects do not seem to be caused by the consequences of the tsunami on people’s financial situation. Instead they are consistent with how experiences of loss and solidarity may have shaped social attitudes by affecting empathy and perceptions of who is deserving of aid and trust.

In the second chapter, co-authored with Ryan Brown, Duncan Thomas and Andrea Velasquez, we investigate how attitudes toward financial risk are affected by elevated levels of insecurity and uncertainty brought on by the Mexican Drug War. To conduct our analysis, we pair the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS), a rich longitudinal dataset ideally suited for our purposes, with a dataset on homicide rates at the month and municipality-level. The homicide rates capture well the overall crime environment created by the drug war. The MxFLS elicits risk attitudes by asking respondents to choose between hypothetical gambles with different payoffs. Our strategy to identify a causal effect has two key components. First, we implement an individual fixed effects strategy which allows us to control for all time-invariant heterogeneity. The remaining time variant heterogeneity is unlikely to be correlated with changes in the local crime environment given the well-documented political origins of the Mexican Drug War. We also show supporting evidence in this regard. The second component of our identification strategy is to use an intent-to-treat approach to shield our estimates from endogenous migration. Our findings indicate that exposure to greater local-area violent crime results in increased risk aversion. This effect is not driven by changes in financial circumstances, but may be explained instead by heightened fear of victimization. Nonetheless, we find that having greater economic resources mitigate the impact. This may be due to individuals with greater economic resources being able to avoid crime by affording better transportation or security at work.

The third chapter, co-authored with Duncan Thomas, evaluates whether attitudes toward deferred gratification change after having children. For this study we also exploit the MxFLS, which elicits attitudes toward deferred gratification (commonly known as time discounting) by asking individuals to choose between hypothetical payments at different points in time. We implement a difference-in-difference estimator to control for all time-invariant heterogeneity and show that our results are robust to the inclusion of time varying characteristics likely correlated with child birth. We find that becoming a mother increases time discounting especially in the first two years after childbirth and in particular for those women without a spouse at home. Having additional children does not have an effect and the effect for men seems to go in the opposite direction. These heterogeneous effects suggest that child rearing may affect time discounting due to generated stress or not fully anticipated spending needs.

Ireland and the global economic crisis: one island, two different experiences

In this chapter, Ó hAdhmaill argues that responses to the global economic crisis which emerged in 2008 reflected a dominant ideological discourse, with ‘austerity’ being a tool in a wider agenda to reassert neoliberalist thinking in the global economy and welfare provision in the richer countries. In Ireland, North and South, however, the experience of, and responses to, the crisis and ‘austerity’ were different, reflecting different social, economic, and political contexts and influences, as well as different levels of democratic control. Ó hAdhmaill outlines some of these differences and argues that, while democratic control in smaller jurisdictions may be limited by the ‘real rulers’ of the world, global capital, people still have ‘agency’ and do not have to be mere passive observers of unfolding events.

A Comparison of Subjective Experiences and Responses to Austerity of UK and Greek Youth. GreeSE Paper No.102

Following previous research carried out by Chalari (2014; 2015), this qualitative study explores the ways in which the younger generation in Greece and UK has been affected by austerity policy measures. These two countries have been at the forefront of intense social, political and economic transformations that have impacted particularly on young people’s current and future lives. This study aims to explore similarities and differences in young people’s subjective experiences and responses, as from this it may be possible to discern whether there is a general, long-term negative effect of austerity across Europe. The data shows that there are some similarities in the two cohorts’ subjective experiences and responses, but perhaps more interestingly some significant differences. The study discusses what the implications of these differences might be for young people and society in these countries, in terms of their impact on the abilities of the younger generation, in a way that has the potential to destabilize their personal and professional lives now and in the future.

Towards Empowerment: Narrative Study of Counselling Psychology Trainees and How They Make Sense of Their Personal and Professional Development in the Context of Their Past Experiences

The discipline of counselling psychology continues to grow and change in response to social, economic and political pressures. It has been argued that its quest for a coherent and distinct identity, which emphasises the possibility of the coexistence of multiple approaches, creates an inherently uncertain and dilemmatic training environment that may hinder the development of trainees’ professional identities. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the issue at hand, the aim was to explore how final year trainees and newly qualified counselling psychologists constructed and made sense of their emerging professional identities and what experiences, past and present, they drew upon in the context of their training to shape those identities. Applying narrative inquiry to analyse eight open-ended interviews, eight preliminary themes were originally identified in participants’ narratives, which with further refinements lead to stories of struggle and marginalisation, growth and discovery, and power and resilience. Participants’ stories of struggle and marginalisation emerged in reference to early family dynamics and stressful life experiences, which seemed to also foster a strong identification with the counselling psychology profession, while stories of growth and discovery focused on the importance of having supportive figures, who helped to instill a sense of security and create an atmosphere of openness. It was in this learning environment that participants felt it was possible to develop a more resilient, empowered professional self, which allowed them to shed an earlier sense of struggle and vulnerability. However, where more of an emphasis was placed on power and resilience, there seemed to be less room for participants to express other feelings that came into conflict with their preferred sense of professional self. While there seems to be a need for a ‘safer’ climate, in which trainees could voice and acknowledge anxieties, vulnerabilities and limitations, addressing concerns around power and vulnerability that may be contributing to the silencing of particular voices and identities may be equally important if trainees are to develop coherent and distinct counselling psychologist identities.

Disentangling Discrimination: The Impact of Political and Societal Discrimination on Democratic (Dis)Engagement

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Women, workplace militancy and political subjectivity in Britain, 1968-1985

This thesis examines the experiences and political subjectivity of women who engaged in workplace protest in Britain between 1968 and 1985. The study covers a period that has been identified with the ‘zenith’ of trade-union militancy in British labour history. The women’s liberation movement also emerged in this period, which produced a shift in public debates about gender roles and relations in the home and the workplace. Women’s trade union membership increased dramatically and trade unions increasingly committed themselves to supporting ‘women’s issues’. Industrial disputes involving working-class women have frequently been cited as evidence of women’s growing participation in the labour movement. However, the voices and experiences of female workers who engaged in workplace protest remain largely unexplored. This thesis addresses this space through an original analysis of the 1968 sewing-machinists’ strike at Ford, Dagenham; the 1976 equal pay strike at Trico, Brentford; the 1972 Sexton shoe factory occupation in Fakenham, Norfolk; the 1981 Lee Jeans factory occupation in Greenock, Inverclyde and the 1984-1985 sewing-machinists’ strike at Ford Dagenham. Drawing upon a combination of oral history and written sources, this study contributes a fresh understanding of the relationship between feminism, workplace activism and trade unionism during the years 1968-1985. In every dispute considered in this thesis, women’s behaviour was perceived by observers as novel, ‘historic’ or extraordinary. But the women did not think of themselves as extraordinary, and rather understood their behaviour as a legitimate and justified response to their everyday experiences of gender and class antagonism. The industrial disputes analysed in this thesis show that women’s workplace militancy was not simply a direct response to women’s heightened presence in trade unions. The women involved in these disputes were more likely to understand their experiences of workplace activism as an expression of the economic, social and subjective value of their work. Whilst they did not adopt a feminist identity or associate their action with the WLM, they spoke about themselves and their motivations in a manner that emphasised feminist values of equality, autonomy and self-worth.

The right to adequate housing in International Human Rights Law: Polish transformation experiences

AbstractHousing rights are now one of the most fundamental social and economic human rights. It is therefore the duty of every country to implement such rights for its own citizens, irrespective of its economicdevelopment, political situation, or social conditions. Possession of appropriate living conditions determines, in fact, the possibility of using other, more advanced human rights (e.g. the right to health, right to development, right to peace, or access to culture). Realization of the right to adequate housing is increasingly problematic for developed countries. According to the United Nations, there areover 100 million homeless people worldwide and more than 1 billion inadequately housed. Poland is an example of a country particularly afflicted by housing problems after the Second World War.Experiences of Polish democratic transformation after 1989, therefore, provide interesting lessons (and warnings) for all countries wishing to deal with the social problems arising from housing difficulties.Keywords: right to adequate housing, human rights, housing rights, social transformation, transition, economic and social human rights, social issues, Poland, United Nations, communism.ResumenEl derecho a la vivienda es uno de los derechos humanos sociales y económicos más elementales. Por lo tanto, es un deber de todos los países implementar esos derechos para susciudadanos y ciudadanas, independependientmente de su desarrollo económico, situación política, o condiciones sociales. La posesión de adecuadas condiciones de vida determinala posibilidad de utilizar otros derechos humanos más avanzados (por ejemplo, derecho a la salud, derecho al desarrollo, derecho a la paz, acceso a la cultura). La realizacióndel derecho a una vivienda adecuada es cada vez más problemática para los países desarrollados. Según las Naciones Unidas, hay más de 100 millones de personas sin hogar en todo el mundo y más de 1000 millones alojadas en viviendas inadecuadas. Polonia es ejemplo de un país particularmente afectado por los problemas de vivienda después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Experiencias de la transformación democrática de Polonia después de 1989 ofrecen lecciones interesantes (y advertencias) para todos los países que deseen hacer frente a los problemas sociales derivados de las dificultades de vivienda.Palabras clave: derecho a la vivienda, derechos humanos, transformación social, transición, derechos económicos y sociales, cuestiones sociales, Polonia, Naciones Unidas, comunismo. 

Experiences From The Brazilian Atlantic Forest: Ecological Findings And Conservation Initiatives.

The Brazilian Atlantic Forest hosts one of the world's most diverse and threatened tropical forest biota. In many ways, its history of degradation describes the fate experienced by tropical forests around the world. After five centuries of human expansion, most Atlantic Forest landscapes are archipelagos of small forest fragments surrounded by open-habitat matrices. This 'natural laboratory' has contributed to a better understanding of the evolutionary history and ecology of tropical forests and to determining the extent to which this irreplaceable biota is susceptible to major human disturbances. We share some of the major findings with respect to the responses of tropical forests to human disturbances across multiple biological levels and spatial scales and discuss some of the conservation initiatives adopted in the past decade. First, we provide a short description of the Atlantic Forest biota and its historical degradation. Secondly, we offer conceptual models describing major shifts experienced by tree assemblages at local scales and discuss landscape ecological processes that can help to maintain this biota at larger scales. We also examine potential plant responses to climate change. Finally, we propose a research agenda to improve the conservation value of human-modified landscapes and safeguard the biological heritage of tropical forests.

The River And The Sea: Fieldwork In Human Ecology And Ethnobiology.

This article is a commentary on the experiences that motivated my decision to become a human ecologist and ethnobiologist. These experiences include the pleasure of studying and of having the sense of being within nature, as well as the curiosity towards understanding the world and minds of local people. In particular, such understanding could be driven by addressing the challenging questions that originate in the interactions of such individuals with their natural surroundings. I have been particularly interested in the sea and the riverine forests that are inhabited by coastal or riverine small-scale fishers. Sharing the distinctive world of these fishers enjoyably incited my curiosity and challenged me to understand why fishers and their families 'do as they do' for their livelihoods including their beliefs. This challenge involved understanding the rationality (or the arguments or views) that underlies the decisions these individuals make in their interaction with nature. This curiosity was fundamental to my career choice, as were a number of reading interests. These reading interests included political economy and philosophy; evolution and sociobiology; evolutionary, human, and cultural ecology; cultural transmission; fisheries; local knowledge; ecological economics; and, naturally, ethnobiology.