Despite renewed awareness of poverty and inequality, there has been a marked absence of past forms of popular mobilization. Populist, corporatist, clientelist, and broad mobilization around parties broke down in the 1970s and have not dominated in the new period of democratization. Citing the evidence presented in the articles in this volume, it is argued that new forms of popular representation are emerging, denoted as ‘associative networks’. Polycentric decision‐making, internationalized politics, the importance of new forms of communication, and the search for new policy answers had led to a new form of representation characterized by bringing a diversity of actors and organizations together in networks that rapidly reconfigure with changing circumstances, an emphasis on ‘cognitive politics’ and a more flexible style of conflict than direct confrontation. These are not pluralist ‘interest groups’, nor simply organizations in civil society, but varied links that tie civil society and polycentric government. A political process dominated by associative networks is not necessarily more democratic than other forms of popular representation. Whether it is democratic depends on institutions that link these networks and policy making (including parties and legislatures), and especially manage their rapid change as challenges and conditions change. Democracy also depends on whether citizens have the rights and resources to form and participate in such networks, and whether popular leaders find strategies that will take advantage of these new forms that require going beyond simple confrontation.
BBC ALBA is the first dedicated Gaelic-medium television channel in history. It launched in September 2008 and, in late 2010, announced that it would be carried on Freeview, in addition to Sky, Freesat, and BBC iPlayer, thereby widening access to Gaelic throughout Scotland. The channel is a BBC-licensed service that is presently operated as a partnership between the BBC and MG ALBA 1 . It combines three media (television, radio, and the internet) with an annual content budget of £14m while targeting a weekly viewership of 250,000 persons. In this article, we discuss the channel in the context of language planning for Gaelic in Scotland. We begin with a brief discussion of the policy framework out of which the channel arises, then analyse the kinds of economic impacts it is making, and finally consider its social importance for reversing language shift goals. The media have previously been critiqued in terms of their importance to the RLS for minoritised languages, but more recent criticism suggests that the advent of Web 2.0 means that media provision that is able to connect to its audience through multiple platforms (e.g. BBC ALBA) may, in fact, be a strong contributor to a language's present and future linguistic vitality. We argue that BBC ALBA is able to make a tangible economic contribution that is in line with broader RLS efforts for Gaelic in Scotland, but question the limits of media in terms of their ability to foster the acquisition and usage of minoritised languages, a key goal for language planning for minoritised languages.
Almost all agree that political systems in Latin America underwent a transformation in the 1980s. The usual quick description of this change was ‘democratization’. But whether one takes an optimistic or a pessimistic view of the level of democracy that was achieved, one thing was sure—the traditional forms of participation by, and representation of, the poor, the working population, and others structurally disadvantaged had changed. The chapters examine the labour organizations, political parties, indigenous and environmental groups that have emerged, sometimes amidst new forms of violence. Others recount efforts to rebuild social–democratic projects and to create new models of participatory politics in municipalities and around social programmes. There is no consensus on whether these new forms will produce more democracy. Rather, the chapters present a variety of conceptual tools to identify trends and assess their impact.
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