International climate finance (ICF) is part of a broader climate justice movement, which is concerned with the tension that while the developed states in the Global North pollute the most, the...Show moreInternational climate finance (ICF) is part of a broader climate justice movement, which is concerned with the tension that while the developed states in the Global North pollute the most, the developing states in the Global South have to bear the consequences. ICF not only aims at reducing emissions, but mostly focuses on reducing the vulnerability of populations in developing states, through financial transfers from the Global North to the Global South. Climate justice movements insist on bottom-up policymaking, whereby power is handed back to non-state actors (NSAs) from the Global South. While the role of NSAs in international climate policies has been researched, their role in the specific finance programmes has been largely overlooked up until now. This paper therefore tries to contribute to the field through researching what role NSAs play in the design, implementation and evaluation of ICF programmes. This is done on the basis of content analysis of four of the United Nation’s climate financing programmes as part of its Green Climate Fund (GCF). This research concludes that the role of communities is only limited in the design and implementation stage, but much more present in the evaluation stage. The projects still have a very top-down focus and the involvement of the communities is hampered because of cultural and practical reasons. Strict objectives help to formalise the involvement of communities. While models of democratic pluralism and functionalism are already in place, a neocorporatist model could help the GCF to overcome difficulties in involving NSAs and to make their policies more effective and legitimate.Show less
Recent advisory reports on the Dutch parliamentary system, public scrutiny, and parliamentary upheaval following transgressive behaviour by the old speaker of parliament have drawn attention to the...Show moreRecent advisory reports on the Dutch parliamentary system, public scrutiny, and parliamentary upheaval following transgressive behaviour by the old speaker of parliament have drawn attention to the functioning of parliamentary administrations. The support staff of parliaments is a scarcely covered topic in political science. In a new body of literature, this article is only the second to examine parliamentary staff size quantitatively. It fundamentally extends the scope of previous research from western democracies to a much broader population of parliaments. Drawing on both a functionalist and an institutionalist framework, it hypothesises that population size, population non-linearity, clientelism, parliamentary competition, an interaction between clientelism and parliamentary competition, parliamentary culture, and institutional isomorphism influence the number of institutional and committee staff in parliaments. This research uses house-level data from 161 countries over ten years and employs multilevel analysis to test these hypotheses. It finds strong support that population size, population size non-linearity, and institutional isomorphism influence staff size, while it finds mixed support for parliamentary competition as a predictor of staff size. There was no support for parliamentary culture, clientelism, and the clientelism-competition interaction hypotheses. Additionally, previously thought insignificant predictors of staff size, such as assembly size and parliamentary powers, were, in fact, significant. This article is the first to look at parliamentary administrations, which are vital to the functioning of primary democratic institutions, from a global perspective. Due to the mixed results, it calls for more extensive research on different types of staff, further disentangling of the mechanisms posited, and further data collection to progress understanding of this veiled political and administrative institution.Show less
I appeal to analytic functionalism and the ability hypothesis to address the problems posed by inversions arguments. I argue that it is reasonable to reject inversion arguments if we accept a...Show moreI appeal to analytic functionalism and the ability hypothesis to address the problems posed by inversions arguments. I argue that it is reasonable to reject inversion arguments if we accept a combination of analytic functionalism and the ability hypothesis, and that alternative theories are fundamentally more problematic.Show less
This thesis investigates the reasons for the reappearance of late modernist utopian architectural projects in recent artist films. Three films by three different artists (Martha Rosler, Dorit...Show moreThis thesis investigates the reasons for the reappearance of late modernist utopian architectural projects in recent artist films. Three films by three different artists (Martha Rosler, Dorit Margreiter and Patrick Keiller) have been selected for their critical use of post-war architecture in film or video and the way they look specifically at suggestions of revolutionary social changes to the concept of the house. In each chapter one film or video is examined in relation to the architectural project(s) it discusses, specifically with regards to the intentions of the architect. Rosler, Margreiter and Keiller show three ways of reflecting upon the way we think about late modernist housing, a type of housing that was extremely ambitious in attempting to change the way we think about shelter and social communities, and is, at least stylistically, still of great influence to the architectural projects that are built today. All three artists have a distinct political awareness that appears in the way they discuss architecture. Consisting of structures that consolidate ideology, architecture is fascinating for the profound influence it has on our everyday life. I argue that the return of modernist utopias in the collective cultural imagination shows a need for a cautiously hopeful attitude towards a future that moves beyond the so-called end of history. These three artists look towards futures that were suggested in the recent past, futures that have been long since dismissed, and try to find elements that may be salvaged from their way of looking towards structural social change that might be of use for us today in combating the effects of neo-liberal influence on everyday life. Because of its contingent, disembodied and fragmented nature, film proves to be the ideal medium for investigation and can be seen as creating its own version of radically subjective utopia in each case study.Show less
