6th European Conference for Social Work Research In this paper, qualitative data are presented and analyzed to comprehend how social workers, volunteers, and users participate and construct change within hybrid practices. In the Nordic countries, there is an increasing concern about the stability of the social cohesion and the welfare states’ ability to secure inclusion and participation of people in marginalized positions.
MULTIFILE
In Western Europe, cities that host International Organizations (IOs) have to deal with more and more competition. The last decade many IOs settled in Eastern European and Asian countries. Distributing IOs over several cities in Europe for reasons of political balance and give-and-take among governments play a role in these decisions. However, public policy networks are more and more operational in these negotiations. Apart from the political and administrative actors, others – as private actors and external lobbyists – play a role as well. This often leads to increased complexity and ineffective decisions. This paper examines four cases in which political gameplay influenced the location decision-making of IOs in The Hague and Geneva. First, I will introduce the subject, research method and the four cases. Second, I will discuss how public policy networks are increasingly complicating factors to the settling processes of IOs. Third, a reconstruction of the settlement processes of four IOs will illustrate this.
Over the past 20 years, water quality in Indonesia has deteriorated due to an increase of water pollution. Research and analysis is needed to identify pollution sources and assess contamination in Indonesian water resources. Water quality management is not yet sufficiently integrated in river basin management in Indonesia, which mainly focuses on water quantity. Women are comparatively highly impacted by failing water resources management, but theirinvolvement in decision making processes is limited. Water quality deterioration continues to increase socio-economic inequality, as it are the most poor communities who live on and along the river. The uneven water quality related disease burden in Brantas River Basin widens the socio-economic gap between societal groups. In the Brantas region, cooperation and intention between stakeholders to tackle these issues is growing, but is fragile as well due to overlapping institutional mandates, poor status of water quality monitoring networks, and limited commitment of industries to treat their waste water streams. The existing group of Indonesian change makers will be supported by this project. Three Indonesian and three Dutch organisations have teamed up to support negotiation platforms in order to deal with institutional challenges, to increase water quality monitoring capacity, to build an enabling environment facilitating sustainable industrial change, and to develop an enabling environment in support of community concerns and civil society initiatives. The project builds on integrated water quality monitoring and modelling within a framework of social learning. The strong consortium will be able to build links with civil society groups (including women, farmer and fisher unions) in close cooperation with local, regional and national Indonesian governmentinstitutions to clean the Brantas river and secure income and health for East Java’s population, in particular the most vulnerable groups.
