Digital surveillance technologies using artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as computer vision and facial recognition are becoming cheaper and easier to integrate into governance practices worldwide. Morocco serves as an example of how such technologies are becoming key tools of governance in authoritarian contexts. Based on qualitative fieldwork including semi-structured interviews, observation, and extensive desk reviews, this chapter focusses on the role played by AI-enhanced technology in urban surveillance and the control of migration between the Moroccan–Spanish borders. Two cross-cutting issues emerge: first, while international donors provide funding for urban and border surveillance projects, their role in enforcing transparency mechanisms in their implementation remains limited; second, Morocco’s existing legal framework hinders any kind of public oversight. Video surveillance is treated as the sole prerogative of the security apparatus, and so far public actors have avoided to engage directly with the topic. The lack of institutional oversight and public debate on the matter raise serious concerns on the extent to which the deployment of such technologies affects citizens’ rights. AI-enhanced surveillance is thus an intrinsically transnational challenge in which private interests of economic gain and public interests of national security collide with citizens’ human rights across the Global North/Global South divide.
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While there is extensive research on how Russian interference – in particular Russian disinformation operation – has played out in different European countries, indications of Russian interference directly targeting EU, its institutions or policies received little attention. This paper argues why there is good reason to assume that the EU, its institutions and its policies are an ideal a target for authoritarian regimes to exploit. It then explores in what ways, if any, Russian disinformation campaigning targeted EU institutions and their policies during the political and electoral campaigns leading up to the European Parliament (EP) elections of May 2019. In this context disinformation campaigning in terms of both network flows and contents (‘narratives’) have been examined, on the basis of a review of various reports identifying Russian interference and disinformation and of analyses of overall disinformation flows in Europe and the use of a database monitoring occurrences of disinformation.
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The Middle East and North Africa region has been absent form stocktaking exercises on social accountability initiatives (SAI), an umbrella term to designate citizen-led tools aimed at socio-political change. We argue that this sidelining is unwarranted, given the proliferation of participatory governance initiatives, civic associations and popular mobilisation in Arab societies after 2011. Whereas the struggle for improved accountability in the Arab world remains under-researched, analysis of authoritarian regime tactics has proliferated. The fact is, however, that many Arab societies have experimented with mechanisms to apply political pressure on corrupt elites while international donors have launched diverse SAIs, including community score cards and participatory and gender-responsive budgeting initiatives. In this chapter, we first identify this double gap: not only has the literature on SAIs overlooked the MENA region but scholarship on the Middle East has largely failed to recognise initiatives launched across the region over the past decade as SAIs. Then, we aim to address the blind spot of Arab SAI’s as pathways towards improved governance. Finally, we present an overview of extant literature and introduce a set of four research questions to better understand what social accountability means for people on the ground. These questions focus on the various meanings of social accountability (musā’ala vs muhāsaba), its modes of mobilisation, the responses from authorities to such initiatives and their overall outcomes.
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Civil society as a social sphere is constantly subjected to change. Using the Dutch context, this article addresses the question whether religiously inspired engagement is a binder or a breakpoint in modern societies. The author examines how religiously inspired people in the Netherlands involve themselves in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and voluntary activities. Religious involvement and social engagement in different European countries are compared and discussed. In addition, the author explores the models of civil society and applies these to both the Christian and Islamic civil society in the Netherlands. Using four religious ‘identity organizations’ as case studies, this article discusses the interaction of Christian and Islamic civil society related to secularized Dutch society. The character and intentions of religiously inspired organizations and the relationship between religious and secular involvement are examined. This study also focuses on the attitude of policymakers towards religiously inspired engagement and government policy on ‘identity organizations’ in the Netherlands.
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Slovakia is in political turmoil since the conservative populist and Putin-versteher Robert Fico won the 2023 elections. Following the authoritarian playbook, the new government has targeted cultural organisations, especially those associated with LGBTQ+-communities, with a series of repressive laws and political appointments. To fight back, a group of cultural workers formed the Open Culture! platform, establishment of a new cultural workers, and declared the Slovak Culture Strike on the 5th of September 2024. They rally around three simple demands: good governance, fair payment, and an end to political censorship. The Culture Strike strike quickly garnered massive support among cultural workers throughout Slovakia, including those working in public institutions. It is still going strong, having developed into a serious movement. In this article, the organizers behind the strike are interviewed.
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What you don’t know can’t hurt you: this seems to be the current approach for responding to disinformation by public regulators across the world. Nobody is able to say with any degree of certainty what is actually going on. This is in no small part because, at present, public regulators don’t have the slightest idea how disinformation actually works in practice. We believe that there are very good reasons for the current state of affairs, which stem from a lack of verifiable data available to public institutions. If an election board or a media regulator wants to know what types of digital content are being shared in their jurisdiction, they have no effective mechanisms for finding this data or ensuring its veracity. While there are many other reasons why governments would want access to this kind of data, the phenomenon of disinformation provides a particularly salient example of the consequences of a lack of access to this data for ensuring free and fair elections and informed democratic participation. This chapter will provide an overview of the main aspects of the problems associated with basing public regulatory decisions on unverified data, before sketching out some ideas of what a solution might look like. In order to do this, the chapter develops the concept of auditing intermediaries. After discussing which problems the concept of auditing intermediaries is designed to solve, it then discusses some of the main challenges associated with access to data, potential misuse of intermediaries, and the general lack of standards for the provision of data by large online platforms. In conclusion, the chapter suggests that there is an urgent need for an auditing mechanism to ensure the accuracy of transparency data provided by large online platform providers about the content on their services. Transparency data that have been audited would be considered verified data in this context. Without such a transparency verification mechanism, existing public debate is based merely on a whim, and digital dominance is likely to only become more pronounced.
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The Salvation Army has been battling social problems in the Netherlands for more than 125 years. Over the course of this period, the Dutch Salvation Army has developed into a well-known faith-based organization as well as an important professional social service provider. These two characteristics: religious work and social work, are regarded by the Army as essential to its identity, and are considered distinct but in – separable. However, as this study shows, during much of the Army’s history this bilateral character created an inescapable field of tension. This became explicitly clear with the development of the Dutch social policy system during the twentieth century, when the evolving relationship between the Salvation Army and the Dutch government created certain problems for both actors. How would the government cooperate with a valued social service provider that had an explicit faith-based identity? And on the other hand, how did the Army cope with this relationship in relation to its identity? The work presented in this thesis was supported by the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht (HU) and the VU University Amsterdam.
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Can you remember the last time the ground gave way beneath you? When you thought the ground was stable, but for some reason it wasn’t? Perhaps you encountered a pothole on the streets of Amsterdam, or you were renovating your house and broke through the floor. Perhaps there was a molehill in a park or garden. You probably had to hold on to something to steady yourself. Perhaps you even slipped or fell. While I sincerely hope that nobody here was hurt in the process, I would like you to keep that feeling in your mind when reading what follows. It is the central theme of the words that will follow. The ground beneath our feet today is not as stable as the streets of Amsterdam, your park around the corner or even a poorly renovated upstairs bedroom. This is because whatever devices we use and whatever pathways we choose, we all live in hybrid physical and digital social spaces (Kitchin and Dodge 2011). Digital social spaces can be social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook, but also chat apps like WhatsApp or Signal. Crucially, social spaces are increasingly hybrid, in which conversations take place across digital spaces (WhatsApp chat group) and physical spaces (meeting friends in a cafe) simultaneously. The ground beneath our feet is not made of concrete or stone or wood but of bits and bytes.
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In this chapter, we first summarise the findings from the country chapters on the multiple meanings of SA, documenting terms, translations and contrasting understandings between citizens and public officials. Second, we highlight how civil mobilisation tends to be cyclical over time and is often mediated by brokers. Strategies to spur stakeholders into action rely on a delicate balance of both collaboration and confrontation. Third, we examine the responses from authorities to SAIs, finding that reactions are uneven and that all civic innovators fear appropriation or co-optation by officials. Fourth, we assess overall outcomes of Arab SAIs and highlight that the transformative potential of SAIs exists especially at municipal level, if four conditions for success are present (trust, proximity, endorsement, evaluation). We also point out that the actual outcomes of SAIs in Arab societies have, so far, been limited due to design deficiencies (emphasising short-term objectives and limited context sensitivity) or because of officials’ resistance in active or passive forms. We characterise SAIs as a discursive action format that is best understood with a relational approach to power. In a final section, we formulate recommendations for activists, officials and donors on how to make SAIs more effective.
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Wat hebben maatschappelijk werkers, leraren in het middelbaar onderwijs, ondernemers in een grootstedelijke winkelstraat, schoonmakers in een verzorgingstehuis en hbo studenten in de Randstad met elkaar gemeen? Dat ze werken en leren in een omgeving waar 'autochtone' Nederlanders niet meer vanzelfsprekend in de meerderheid zijn. Integratie is hier een zaak van een samenleving van minderheden geworden. (Hoe) lukt het mensen om in zo'n 'superdiverse' omgeving relaties aan te gaan over de grenzen van hun 'eigen' groep heen: op welke terreinen vinden ze elkaar, en wanneer stokt de communicatie? En welke rol spelen verschillen in cultuur hier eigenlijk bij? Dit boek bevat het verslag van een aantal casestudies naar alledaagse omgangsvormen in de grootstedelijke samenleving, verricht door onderzoekers verbonden aan het lectoraat Burgerschap en Diversiteit van De Haagse Hogeschool.
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