Oliver Escobar
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 328239 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Oliver Escobar |
| PRENOMES | Oliver |
| SOBRENOME | Escobar |
| ASSINATURA | ESCOBAR O |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6628-9359 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 28 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 89 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 27 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2012 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
Making Light of Imprisonment
In previous papers, we have explored how songs written in prison, and the process of collaborative songwriting that produced them, served as devices for solving relational and personal problems that imprisonment poses. Here, drawing on data from the same project (Distant Voices: Coming Home), we explore and analyse how humour featured both in the songwriting process and in some of the songs, focussing on two songs written by women in prison. Our …
Democratic innovations in the UK
This article compares the historical trajectories of democratic innovations across space and time in the UK by analysing the development and impact of collaborative governance, participatory budgeting, referendums, and mini-publics. This is an interesting country for longer-term analysis. First, the UK has been considered an inhospitable environment for democratic innovation. Second, it has experienced asymmetrical decentralisation of legislative…
Democratic innovation for change
The world faces social, political, economic, and ecological crises, and there is doubt that democratic governance can cope. Democracies rely on a narrow set of institutions and processes anchored in dominant forms of political organisation and imagination. Power inequalities sustain the (re)production of current ills in democratic life. In this context, what does the field of democratic innovation offer to the task of sociopolitical reimagining a…
Democratic innovation beyond the deliberative paradigm? Introduction to the special issue
This Special Issue addresses mounting concerns about the dominance of an uncritical interpretation of deliberative democratic theory in the study and practice of democratic innovations. While deliberative democracy provides one of the normative undercurrents of the field, its reduction to procedural design and narrow focus on mini-publics risks constraining the democratic imagination and limiting transformative potential. We support a critical tu…
Participatory democracy and participatory research
While normative theories of participatory democracy and practical experiences of participatory research share a common democratic commitment, the two fields have emerged and to date exist in isolation from each other. This article bridges this divide and asks what participatory democracy and participatory research can learn from one another. It argues that participatory democracy can learn how to realize its own democratic ideals within its resea…
The Politics of Becoming
Hans Asenbaum's open-access book The Politics of Becoming: Anonymity and Democracy in the Digital Age takes on some of the biggest questions in feminist and radical democratic theory. It asks, how we should understand who we are, and what implications our answer to that question has for democracy
Facilitators as culture change workers
Practitioners who facilitate public participation in governance operate at the interface of three policy agendas: public service reform, social justice and democratic innovation. Scotland offers a paradigmatic site for studying this interface through the role of officials who work as facilitators of public participation. Reforms in the last two decades have generated new spaces for engaging citizens and communities while challenging official faci…
Mixed Methods
The areas of inquiry in deliberative democracy are multifaceted and often call for methodological approaches that can grapple with complexity. Deliberative studies cover diverse foci, from individuals, groups, collectives, and networks, to artefacts, practices, processes, systems, and cultures. This chapter argues that mixed methods research (MMR) is well suited to investigating deliberative democracy, while also noting the limitations of this ap…
Participation Requests
Democracies are under pressure and public administrations must evolve to accommodate new forms of public participation. Participation processes may reproduce or disrupt existing power inequalities. Through a multi-method empirical study of “Participation Requests,” a new legislative policy tool to open up public services in Scotland, this article addresses an empirical gap on governance-driven democratic innovations (DIs). We use Young’s distinct…
Working the urban assemblage
This article places those working for change in urban neighbourhoods at the centre of debates on urban transformation, directing attention to the importance of human agency in the work of assembling urban transformation. Drawing on cross-national qualitative fieldwork undertaken over 30 months shadowing 40 urban practitioners in neighbourhoods across four European cities – Amsterdam, Birmingham, Copenhagen and Glasgow – our research revealed the …
The Resilience of Pandemic Digital Deliberation
Quality deliberation is essential for societies to address the challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic effectively and legitimately. Critics of deliberative and participatory democracy are highly skeptical that most citizens can engage with such complex issues in good circumstances and these are far from ideal circumstances. The need for rapid action and decision-making is a challenge for inclusivity and quality of deliberation. Addition…
Deliberative Quality and Expertise
When addressing socio-scientific wicked problems, there is a need to negotiate across and through multiple modes of evidence, particularly technical expertise and local knowledge. Democratic innovations, such as deliberative citizens’ juries, have been proposed as a means of managing these tensions and as a way of creating representative, fairer decision making. But there are questions around participatory processes, the utilization of expertise,…
Equality in Community Engagement
In Scotland, innovative designs for community engagement have been developed by national and local governments, public authorities, and civil society organisations, leading to a wealth of literature and research. This evidence review of 79 articles and reports, explores the intersection between community engagement and inequality in Scotland. We find that the ways in which equality must be supported within community processes are often overlooked…
Community Control in the Housing Commons
We advance theorizing on the governance of the commons through a configurative comparative analysis (CCA) of community control in the housing commons. We focus our analysis on community land trusts (CLTs), which are increasingly recognised as a potential governance mechanism for collective access to housing provision for low-income communities. Through systematic comparative analysis of CLTs in the US and UK, we extend the existing evidence base …
Between radical aspirations and pragmatic challenges
Participatory forms of governance are increasingly institutionalised in democracies around the world. Yet, we know little about how public officials work to embed participatory governance. This article draws on a decade of mixed methods research with practitioners at the frontlines of democratic innovation. Scotland is undergoing democratic renewal through the interplay between state and civil society around three agendas: public service reform, …
Public understandings of potential policy responses to health inequalities
Public value governance meets social commons
Scottish public service reform is one example of an emerging international vision for state-convened public value governance. Scottish Government focus on community empowerment has legitimised discussions of community-led approaches and offers cautious policy support for community anchor organisations. In this context, community studies scholars and community sector continue to reflect critically on complex relations between state and community, …
Health inequalities, fundamental causes and power
Reducing health inequalities remains a challenge for policy makers across the world. Beginning from Lewin's famous dictum that 'there is nothing as practical as a good theory', this paper begins from an appreciative discussion of 'fundamental cause theory', emphasizing the elegance of its theoretical encapsulation of the challenge, the relevance of its critical focus for action, and its potential to support the practical mobilisation of knowledge…
Mediating Punishment? Prisoners’ Songs as Relational ‘Problem-Solving’ Devices
In this article we share some findings from the Distant Voices – Coming Home project. It is a partnership between the Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh and the West of Scotland, and the Glasgow-based arts charity Vox Liminis. Distant Voices aims to explore and practice re/integration after punishment through creative collaborations (primarily songwriting) and action-research. The project is complex and interdisciplinary, blurring boundaries betw…
Handbook of Democratic Innovation and Governance
This chapter situates democratic innovation within broader processes of institutional change in public administration and develops the argument that they have vulnerable potential to act as a democratising force, through purposive institutional design. However, democratic innovations are a complement, rather than a substitute, for existing institutions, with which they interact in complex ways. The chapter focuses on the mechanisms through which …
Defining and typologising democratic innovations
This chapter is based on a scoping review, which finds that there is little agreement about what should be classified as ‘democratic innovations’ and a general lack of clarity and precision in the use of the term, which is causing concept stretching and hindering understanding and analysis. This is in part due to the limitations of the existing definitions and typologies. To overcome this, a morphological analysis is conducted to develop a set of…
Handbook of Democratic Innovation and Governance
Reintegration, Hospitality and Hostility
Distant Voices is an ongoing, interdisciplinary collaborative action research project, drawing on criminology, community development, politics, practice-led research and songwriting to explore crime, punishment and reintegration through creative conversations that aim to challenge and unsettle understandings of and approaches to rehabilitation and reintegration. In this paper, we discuss some of the thinking behind the project and we reflect on o…
The Professionalization of Public Participation
Five Ways to Make a Difference
This article responds to and develops the fragmented literature exploring intermediation in public administration and urban governance. It uses Q‐methodology to provide a systematic comparative empirical analysis of practitioners who are perceived as making a difference in urban neighborhoods. Through this analysis, an original set of five profiles of practitioners—enduring, struggling, facilitating, organizing, and trailblazing—is identified and…
Health inequalities, fundamental causes and power
Reducing health inequalities remains a challenge for policy makers across the world. Beginning from Lewin's famous dictum that 'there is nothing as practical as a good theory', this paper begins from an appreciative discussion of 'fundamental cause theory', emphasizing the elegance of its theoretical encapsulation of the challenge, the relevance of its critical focus for action, and its potential to support the practical mobilisation of knowledge…
Between radical aspirations and pragmatic challenges
Participatory forms of governance are increasingly institutionalised in democracies around the world. Yet, we know little about how public officials work to embed participatory governance. This article draws on a decade of mixed methods research with practitioners at the frontlines of democratic innovation. Scotland is undergoing democratic renewal through the interplay between state and civil society around three agendas: public service reform, …
Scripting Deliberative Policy-Making
Public engagers are officials tasked with facilitating collaborative performances in the theatres of deliberation that increasingly populate local governance. In Scotland, they work to involve citizens, communities and organizations in deliberative policy-making. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork, this paper shows how these policy workers deploy their own field of specialist knowledge during the scripting of participatory processes. …
Working the urban assemblage
This article places those working for change in urban neighbourhoods at the centre of debates on urban transformation, directing attention to the importance of human agency in the work of assembling urban transformation. Drawing on cross-national qualitative fieldwork undertaken over 30 months shadowing 40 urban practitioners in neighbourhoods across four European cities – Amsterdam, Birmingham, Copenhagen and Glasgow – our research revealed the …
Public understandings of potential policy responses to health inequalities
Democratic innovation for change
The world faces social, political, economic, and ecological crises, and there is doubt that democratic governance can cope. Democracies rely on a narrow set of institutions and processes anchored in dominant forms of political organisation and imagination. Power inequalities sustain the (re)production of current ills in democratic life. In this context, what does the field of democratic innovation offer to the task of sociopolitical reimagining a…
Facilitators as culture change workers
Practitioners who facilitate public participation in governance operate at the interface of three policy agendas: public service reform, social justice and democratic innovation. Scotland offers a paradigmatic site for studying this interface through the role of officials who work as facilitators of public participation. Reforms in the last two decades have generated new spaces for engaging citizens and communities while challenging official faci…
Participation Requests
Democracies are under pressure and public administrations must evolve to accommodate new forms of public participation. Participation processes may reproduce or disrupt existing power inequalities. Through a multi-method empirical study of “Participation Requests,” a new legislative policy tool to open up public services in Scotland, this article addresses an empirical gap on governance-driven democratic innovations (DIs). We use Young’s distinct…
Participatory democracy and participatory research
While normative theories of participatory democracy and practical experiences of participatory research share a common democratic commitment, the two fields have emerged and to date exist in isolation from each other. This article bridges this divide and asks what participatory democracy and participatory research can learn from one another. It argues that participatory democracy can learn how to realize its own democratic ideals within its resea…
Community Control in the Housing Commons
We advance theorizing on the governance of the commons through a configurative comparative analysis (CCA) of community control in the housing commons. We focus our analysis on community land trusts (CLTs), which are increasingly recognised as a potential governance mechanism for collective access to housing provision for low-income communities. Through systematic comparative analysis of CLTs in the US and UK, we extend the existing evidence base …
Public value governance meets social commons
Scottish public service reform is one example of an emerging international vision for state-convened public value governance. Scottish Government focus on community empowerment has legitimised discussions of community-led approaches and offers cautious policy support for community anchor organisations. In this context, community studies scholars and community sector continue to reflect critically on complex relations between state and community, …
Reintegration, Hospitality and Hostility
Distant Voices is an ongoing, interdisciplinary collaborative action research project, drawing on criminology, community development, politics, practice-led research and songwriting to explore crime, punishment and reintegration through creative conversations that aim to challenge and unsettle understandings of and approaches to rehabilitation and reintegration. In this paper, we discuss some of the thinking behind the project and we reflect on o…
Public Engagers and the Political Craft of Participatory Policy Making
Commentary
Scripting Deliberative Policy-Making
Public engagers are officials tasked with facilitating collaborative performances in the theatres of deliberation that increasingly populate local governance. In Scotland, they work to involve citizens, communities and organizations in deliberative policy-making. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork, this paper shows how these policy workers deploy their own field of specialist knowledge during the scripting of participatory processes. …
Five Ways to Make a Difference
This article responds to and develops the fragmented literature exploring intermediation in public administration and urban governance. It uses Q‐methodology to provide a systematic comparative empirical analysis of practitioners who are perceived as making a difference in urban neighborhoods. Through this analysis, an original set of five profiles of practitioners—enduring, struggling, facilitating, organizing, and trailblazing—is identified and…
The Professionalization of Public Participation
Handbook of Democratic Innovation and Governance
This chapter situates democratic innovation within broader processes of institutional change in public administration and develops the argument that they have vulnerable potential to act as a democratising force, through purposive institutional design. However, democratic innovations are a complement, rather than a substitute, for existing institutions, with which they interact in complex ways. The chapter focuses on the mechanisms through which …
Defining and typologising democratic innovations
This chapter is based on a scoping review, which finds that there is little agreement about what should be classified as ‘democratic innovations’ and a general lack of clarity and precision in the use of the term, which is causing concept stretching and hindering understanding and analysis. This is in part due to the limitations of the existing definitions and typologies. To overcome this, a morphological analysis is conducted to develop a set of…
Handbook of Democratic Innovation and Governance
Reintegration, Hospitality and Hostility
Distant Voices is an ongoing, interdisciplinary collaborative action research project, drawing on criminology, community development, politics, practice-led research and songwriting to explore crime, punishment and reintegration through creative conversations that aim to challenge and unsettle understandings of and approaches to rehabilitation and reintegration. In this paper, we discuss some of the thinking behind the project and we reflect on o…
Mediating Punishment? Prisoners’ Songs as Relational ‘Problem-Solving’ Devices
In this article we share some findings from the Distant Voices – Coming Home project. It is a partnership between the Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh and the West of Scotland, and the Glasgow-based arts charity Vox Liminis. Distant Voices aims to explore and practice re/integration after punishment through creative collaborations (primarily songwriting) and action-research. The project is complex and interdisciplinary, blurring boundaries betw…
The Resilience of Pandemic Digital Deliberation
Quality deliberation is essential for societies to address the challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic effectively and legitimately. Critics of deliberative and participatory democracy are highly skeptical that most citizens can engage with such complex issues in good circumstances and these are far from ideal circumstances. The need for rapid action and decision-making is a challenge for inclusivity and quality of deliberation. Addition…
Deliberative Quality and Expertise
When addressing socio-scientific wicked problems, there is a need to negotiate across and through multiple modes of evidence, particularly technical expertise and local knowledge. Democratic innovations, such as deliberative citizens’ juries, have been proposed as a means of managing these tensions and as a way of creating representative, fairer decision making. But there are questions around participatory processes, the utilization of expertise,…
Equality in Community Engagement
In Scotland, innovative designs for community engagement have been developed by national and local governments, public authorities, and civil society organisations, leading to a wealth of literature and research. This evidence review of 79 articles and reports, explores the intersection between community engagement and inequality in Scotland. We find that the ways in which equality must be supported within community processes are often overlooked…
Community Control in the Housing Commons
We advance theorizing on the governance of the commons through a configurative comparative analysis (CCA) of community control in the housing commons. We focus our analysis on community land trusts (CLTs), which are increasingly recognised as a potential governance mechanism for collective access to housing provision for low-income communities. Through systematic comparative analysis of CLTs in the US and UK, we extend the existing evidence base …
Between radical aspirations and pragmatic challenges
Participatory forms of governance are increasingly institutionalised in democracies around the world. Yet, we know little about how public officials work to embed participatory governance. This article draws on a decade of mixed methods research with practitioners at the frontlines of democratic innovation. Scotland is undergoing democratic renewal through the interplay between state and civil society around three agendas: public service reform, …
Public understandings of potential policy responses to health inequalities
Public value governance meets social commons
Scottish public service reform is one example of an emerging international vision for state-convened public value governance. Scottish Government focus on community empowerment has legitimised discussions of community-led approaches and offers cautious policy support for community anchor organisations. In this context, community studies scholars and community sector continue to reflect critically on complex relations between state and community, …
Health inequalities, fundamental causes and power
Reducing health inequalities remains a challenge for policy makers across the world. Beginning from Lewin's famous dictum that 'there is nothing as practical as a good theory', this paper begins from an appreciative discussion of 'fundamental cause theory', emphasizing the elegance of its theoretical encapsulation of the challenge, the relevance of its critical focus for action, and its potential to support the practical mobilisation of knowledge…
Mixed Methods
The areas of inquiry in deliberative democracy are multifaceted and often call for methodological approaches that can grapple with complexity. Deliberative studies cover diverse foci, from individuals, groups, collectives, and networks, to artefacts, practices, processes, systems, and cultures. This chapter argues that mixed methods research (MMR) is well suited to investigating deliberative democracy, while also noting the limitations of this ap…
Participation Requests
Democracies are under pressure and public administrations must evolve to accommodate new forms of public participation. Participation processes may reproduce or disrupt existing power inequalities. Through a multi-method empirical study of “Participation Requests,” a new legislative policy tool to open up public services in Scotland, this article addresses an empirical gap on governance-driven democratic innovations (DIs). We use Young’s distinct…
Working the urban assemblage
This article places those working for change in urban neighbourhoods at the centre of debates on urban transformation, directing attention to the importance of human agency in the work of assembling urban transformation. Drawing on cross-national qualitative fieldwork undertaken over 30 months shadowing 40 urban practitioners in neighbourhoods across four European cities – Amsterdam, Birmingham, Copenhagen and Glasgow – our research revealed the …
The Politics of Becoming
Hans Asenbaum's open-access book The Politics of Becoming: Anonymity and Democracy in the Digital Age takes on some of the biggest questions in feminist and radical democratic theory. It asks, how we should understand who we are, and what implications our answer to that question has for democracy
Facilitators as culture change workers
Practitioners who facilitate public participation in governance operate at the interface of three policy agendas: public service reform, social justice and democratic innovation. Scotland offers a paradigmatic site for studying this interface through the role of officials who work as facilitators of public participation. Reforms in the last two decades have generated new spaces for engaging citizens and communities while challenging official faci…
Democratic innovation for change
The world faces social, political, economic, and ecological crises, and there is doubt that democratic governance can cope. Democracies rely on a narrow set of institutions and processes anchored in dominant forms of political organisation and imagination. Power inequalities sustain the (re)production of current ills in democratic life. In this context, what does the field of democratic innovation offer to the task of sociopolitical reimagining a…
Democratic innovation beyond the deliberative paradigm? Introduction to the special issue
This Special Issue addresses mounting concerns about the dominance of an uncritical interpretation of deliberative democratic theory in the study and practice of democratic innovations. While deliberative democracy provides one of the normative undercurrents of the field, its reduction to procedural design and narrow focus on mini-publics risks constraining the democratic imagination and limiting transformative potential. We support a critical tu…
Political science (22 obras) · Sociology (20 obras) · Law (17 obras) · Politics (16 obras) · Democracy (13 obras) · Public relations (12 obras) · Law (11 obras) · Citizen journalism (8 obras) · Corporate governance (8 obras) · Economics (8 obras)