Documents found
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771.More information
This article presents the methods, the analyzes and the results of a research project looking at the media coverage of social assistance in Quebec and at the opinions that Quebecers hold towards social assistance policies and their beneficiaries. Research findings are situated and discussed within the broader context of social assistance policy reforms in Quebec. This article positions public communication activities carried out by social and political actors in close connection with the power relations that influence social policy reforms.
Keywords: assistance sociale, politiques publiques, représentations médiatiques, opinion publique, Québec
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773.More information
As part of a research project subsidized by the Québec Bar Foundation, this paper focuses on the availability of forums which would enable citizens concerned with the scientific and socioeconomic impacts associated with the cultivation and marketing of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), to make their opinions known to governmental authorities.
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774.More information
AbstractThe basic principles of local democracy are built on an ideology according to which citizen's participation is easier at such a scale. From this point of view, municipalities are “natural” democracies free from any conflict. But the creation of participative forums leads to reconsider the presumption of the apolitical nature of local democracy. By reviewing 40 years of municipal life of Quebec City, this paper demonstrates the paradigmatic transformation of municipal democracy brought about by the progressive adoption of the project of neighbourhood councils.
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776.More information
This text describes the evolution of policies at Quebec's Ministry of the Environment between 1973 and 2003, and attempts to discern the principal tendencies regarding the Ministry's use of regulatory, economic, voluntary, and direct instruments for the protection of air, water, and soil. The analysis of the data initially demonstrates that the number of interventions increased between 1983 and 1998. These interventions, as the authors remark, draw more often on regulatory instruments against water pollution, voluntary ones against air pollution, and economic ones against soil pollution, particularly for the management of solid waste. These results are interpreted from the perspective of "new governance" theory as it presents itself in the analysis of public policy.
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777.More information
SummaryThis article analyzes the ethnie community by emphasizing its political dimensions without, however, neglecting its other dimensions. The ethnic community is considered as a political community (polity) without a state, which has led to the question of how it governs itself and in what way it manages its public affairs. Four phenomena related to the capacity for making choices and realizing collective projects are considered here : the definition of boundaries, forms of government and their functioning, management of conflicts within the group, and the mobilization and participation required for collective action. The manner in which the group is governed is influenced by the fact that it is in a minority situation, that membership in the community is voluntary, and that the community itself is heterogeneous and therefore subject to internal divisions. This analysis is limited to groups made up of immigrants and their descendants.
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779.More information
In this text, the author tries to demonstrate that beyond the text, the interpretation of economic and social rights often depends on the choices made by judges and on their will to participate to socioeconomic change. To demonstrate this, the author will first mobilize the case law of the Indian Supreme Court; secondly that of the South African Constitutional Court. It will emerge that a constitution which limits socioeconomic rights to mere principles of interpretation does not necessarily constitute an obstacle to the judicial recognition of real economic and social constitutional rights. On the other hand, a clearly progressive constitution, in which all rights have the same normative status, is not a guarantee of a very progressive case law. Indeed, everything depends on the interpretation that judges choose to give to these rights and the interpretation they make of the context.
Keywords: Droits économiques et sociaux, interprétation, séparation des pouvoirs, contrôle de constitutionnalité, Inde, Afrique du Sud, Economic and social rights, interpretation, separation of powers, judicial review, India, South Africa