scholarly journals Transparency in algorithmic decision-making: Ideational tensions and conceptual shifts in Finland

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-432
Author(s):  
Pertti Ahonen ◽  
Tero Erkkilä
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Access ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Policy ◽  
Semantic Fields ◽  
Research Material ◽  
Government Documents ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
And Shifts

This article uses a theoretical and methodological framework derived from the political theorist Quentin Skinner and the conceptual historian Reinhart Koselleck to examine ideational and conceptual tensions and shifts related to the transparency of algorithmic and other automatic governmental decision-making in Finland. Most of the research material comprises national and international official documents and semi-structured expert interviews. In Finland, the concepts of ‘algorithmic transparency’ and other ‘transparency of automatic decision-making’ are situated amongst a complex array of legal, ethical, political, policy-oriented, managerial, and technical semantic fields. From 2016 to 2019 Finland’s Deputy Ombudsman of Parliament and the Constitutional Committee of Parliament pinpointed issues in algorithmic and other automatic decision-making with the consequence that at the turn of 2019 and 2020, the Ministry of Justice started moving towards the preparation of new legislation to resolve these issues. In conclusion and as expected, Finland’s version of the Nordic tradition of the public sphere with established legal guarantees of public access to government documents indeed has both important enabling and constraining effects upon resolving the transparency issues.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleni Loukopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Literary Marketplace ◽  
The Public ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Modernist Studies

The introduction offers a brief outline of the key issues in Joyce scholarship. It analyses the methodological framework of the book. It draws largely on the methodological models of New Modernist Studies scholarship, which advocates a return to the historical contingencies of the literary marketplace and to the ways modernist literature was formed against specific socio-economic modes of production and circulation. The book argues that the issues of influence and publicity interventions are crucial and that the examination of modernist networks of promotion and their publication outlets including magazines should not be segregated from the wider study of the public sphere.

Building democracy from below: a case from rural Tanzania

2008 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine A. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
The Public ◽  
Rural Village ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Rural Tanzania ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right

ABSTRACTFocusing on events in a rural village in Tanzania during 2001–02, this paper examines the changing nature of state/society relations in Tanzania. Drawing on experience from previous years of fieldwork in the early 1990s, it becomes apparent that villagers are beginning to change the way they engage with the state. These new approaches are framed in part by the discourse of democracy, with which Tanzanians have become familiar since the economic and political liberalisation policies of the 1990s. These events reveal a new sense of the right to participate in decision-making on how to use key development resources. They also illustrate how local elites can threaten to capture benefits for their own gain. As Tanzanians begin to demand more rights to participate in the public sphere, their achievements enlarge our understanding of what might constitute civil society.

Democratising the global order: from communicative freedom to communicative power

2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 431-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES BOHMAN
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
The Other ◽  
Global Order ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One ◽  
Communicative Power

AbstractWhile there is much discussion of the need for democracy in transnational institutions, there is less discussion of the conditions for their democratisation. To address this deficit, a general account of democratisation is necessary. I propose that democratisation is dependent on the joint realisation of two conditions: communicative freedom and communicative power. Democratisation thus requires, first, publics and associations in which communicative freedom is realised on the one hand; and, second, institutions that link such freedom to the exercise of communicative power to decision making on the other. In order for these conditions to be met, civil society must be expanded into the public sphere. The transformation of communicative freedom into communicative power can be promoted only by institutions that recognise the decisional status of publics, which in turn depend on civil society to generate the deliberative benefits of the plurality of perspectives. Communicative power is not merely spontaneously generated through publics, but also through publics expressly formed through democratic institutional design.

scholarly journals Pluralism, Disagreement, and the Status of Argument in the Public Sphere

2005 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Asen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Social Function ◽  
Responsibility Attribution ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Status ◽  
Democratic Societies ◽  
The Public Sphere

Argument teachers and scholars have frequently invoked external justification-impressing one's viewpoint upon another-as the primary social function of argument. Pluralism and fundamental disagreement in contemporary democratic societies raise questions regarding the status of argument, including the functions argument should serve. In this essay, I suggest alternatives of agenda expansion, responsibility attribution, and identity formation as important functions of argument in diverse societies. These alternative functions are especially important under conditions of social inequality, since they allow less powerful individuals and groups to confront more powerful actors in situations where decision making is not open to all.

Unequal Citizenship

2019 ◽  
pp. 34-55
Author(s):  
Natasha Behl
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Gendered Violence ◽  
The Public ◽  
Indian State ◽  
Gang Rape ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
And Shifts

Chapter 3 focuses attention on women’s unequal experience of the Indian state through an examination of the debates surrounding the 2012 gang rape. Chapter 3 examines both the progressive political opening and the retrenchment of patriarchal norms following Jyoti Singh’s murder, and argues that this opening and retrenchment are emblematic of the Indian state’s radical promise of equality and its horrific failure to achieve this equality. An analysis of politicians’ responses demonstrates how gendered norms operate to exclude women in the name of inclusion. This analysis highlights the difficulty of eradicating gendered violence through legal reform, demonstrates the unpredictability of the political process, and shows how gendered norms operate in the public sphere to undermine and frustrate progressive change. The chapter outlines the difficulty of turning to the law as a liberatory strategy in a liberal democracy and shifts attention to other spheres of life as potential sources for more egalitarian social relations.

Entering the public sphere: the citizenship practices of US immigrants

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-106
Author(s):  
Caroline B. Brettell
Keyword(s):  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Fort Worth ◽  
The Public ◽  
Material Community ◽  
Research Material ◽  
Keynote Speech ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Individual

This paper originally delivered as a keynote speech at the Turkish Migration Conference 2015 in Prague, Czech Republic on June 25, 2015. It focuses on civic engagementi political participation and citizenship practices of Asian Indians in Dallas Fort Worth Metropolitan area drawing on qualitative field research material. Community participation is a process. Embedded in this observation is an understanding that as the individual branches out, he or she is becoming involved with associations with great civic and/or political presence, moving from one community of practice to another, and from a peripheral position to one of greater participation to invoke the ideas of Lave and Wenger. But equally, these activities illustrate how new immigrants construct their own sense of belonging as they engage with and interpret what it means to be an American and what kind of an American they want to be.

scholarly journals Nudge and the Manipulation of Choice

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pelle Guldborg Hansen ◽  
Andreas Maaløe Jespersen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
Central Component ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Acceptability ◽  
Central Tenet ◽  
Cass Sunstein ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Behavioural Policy

In Nudge (2008) Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein suggested that public policy–makers arrange decision–making contexts in ways to promote behaviour change in the interest of individual citizens as well as that of society. However, in the public sphere and Academia alike widespread discussions have appeared concerning the public acceptability of nudgebased behavioural policy. Thaler and Sunstein's own position is that the anti–nudge position is a literal non–starter, because citizens are always influenced by the decision making context anyway, and nudging is liberty preserving and acceptable if guided by Libertarian Paternalism and Rawls’ publicity principle. A persistent and central tenet in the criticism disputing the acceptability of the approach is that nudging works by manipulating citizens’ choices. In this paper, we argue that both lines of argumentation are seriously flawed. We show how the anti–nudge position is not a literal non–starter due to the responsibilities that accrue on policy–makers by the intentional intervention in citizens’ life, how nudging is not essentially liberty preserving and why the approach is not necessarily acceptable even if satisfying Rawls’ publicity principle. We then use the psychological dual process theory underlying the approach as well as an epistemic transparency criterion identified by Thaler and Sunstein themselves to show that nudging is not necessarily about “manipulation”, nor necessarily about influencing “choice”. The result is a framework identifying four types of nudges that may be used to provide a central component for more nuanced normative considerations as well as a basis for policy recommendations.

Gendered power transformations in India’s Northeast: Peace politics in Nagaland

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 63-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita Manchanda ◽  
Seema Kakran
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
The Public ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
Power Transformations ◽  
Customary Laws ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

As the middle space for ‘post ceasefire-cold peace’ politics expanded in Nagaland in India’s Northeast, the Naga women’s question has emerged as symbolic of the intense social churning in traditional hierarchies around three sites of inequality: decision-making in the public sphere, patriarchal customary laws and property rights. The article tracks the shift in Naga women’s peace politics, from motherhood politics to asserting more equal modes of citizenship, and explores the emancipatory potential of Naga women’s emergence in the public sphere as key stakeholders in the peace process within a context of growing tensions in the relationship between gender and ethnicity.

scholarly journals Social media as public sphere: a stakeholder perspective

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius Rohde Johannessen ◽  
Øystein Sæbø ◽  
Leif Skiftenes Flak
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Communication Preferences ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Stakeholder Perspective ◽  
The Public Sphere

Purpose This paper aims to examine major stakeholders’ communication preferences in eParticipation initiatives and discuss how this affects the public sphere. Despite the potential of social media, it has proven difficult to get people actively involved in the decision-making processes. There is a need for more research on how stakeholders manage and use social media to communicate. Design/methodology/approach The study was conducted as a qualitative case study. Data sources include interviews, social media content, document analysis and field notes. Findings Communication preferences of stakeholders vary according to their salience level. Stakeholders with higher salience are less likely to participate in social media, whereas those who are less salient will use every available medium to gain influence. This challenges the opportunity to create a traditional public sphere in social media. Research limitations/implications The authors contribute to a better understanding of who participates in social media and why. Stakeholder salience analysis shows that in the case of citizen-initiated eParticipation, social media cannot be seen as a Habermasian public sphere. Practical implications The authors suggest two approaches for government officials’ handling of social media: to treat social media as a channel for input and knowledge about the concerns of citizen groups and to integrate social media in the formal processes of decision making to develop consultative statements on specific policy issues. Social implications The study shows that power and urgency are the most important salience attributes. These findings indicate that social media may not be as inclusive as early research indicates, and less active social media users may have power and influence through other channels. Originality/value The findings extend current knowledge of the public sphere by adding the stakeholder perspective in addition to existing evaluative models of the public sphere.

Illiberalism and the Exception in George Eliot's Early Writing

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 377-407
Author(s):  
Neal Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Victorian Novel ◽  
First Century ◽  
Early Writing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Adam Bede ◽  
Mill On The Floss ◽  
The Public Sphere

Over the past two decades, studies of the Victorian novel have been enriched significantly by a growing body of scholarship looking to the literature and letters of the period to affirm for the twenty-first century the theoretical and practical value of liberal conceptualizations of critical detachment and communicative decision-making procedures. In the process, the works of George Eliot (1819–1880) have come to be understood not only as modeling forms of critical detachment and rational decision-making but also as important contributors to what Amanda Anderson has identified as “the emergence of the [Habermasian] public sphere in Enlightenment Europe, a historical condition in which critique, argument, and debate inform developing political practices and institutions,” which “helped to consolidate … the legitimating force of public opinion and the rule of law, the successor to now delegitimated forms of absolute sovereignty.” However, I will argue here that Eliot's early writing in particular demonstrates a distinct lack of faith in the power of liberalism and its political procedures and that Eliot's early work in fact exposes the illiberal tendencies embedded in these procedures. Rather than asserting the authority of the public sphere, Eliot's important early novelsAdam Bede(1859) andThe Mill on the Floss(1860) consistently look beyond themselves, so to speak, to a providential authority that exceeds the tenets of realism in their efforts to resolve conflict and provide closure to the novels. For each novel, aesthetic coherence is secured not through “critique, argument, and debate” but through recourse to metaphysics and to extrasocial and/or extraprocedural decisions. In the following pages I align this phenomenon in Eliot's early writing with the controversial German legal scholar Carl Schmitt's concept of the exception in order to argue that, by appealing to the logic of providence to resolve their most intractable legal and ethical problems, these early novels in fact demonstrate Eliot's awareness of the practical limitations of proceduralism as a legitimate decision-making instrument.

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