—Titling of Indigenous common-property lands in eastern Nicaragua is a necessary base for forest management. Titling alone will not be sufficient to assure sustainable practices, and the success of demarcation programmes rests on processes of negotiation leading up to tenure decisions; nevertheless, a review of decades of history in Indigenous territories suggests that key problems in forest re...

Background Evidence-informed deliberative processes (EDPs) were recently introduced to guide health technology assessment (HTA) agencies to improve their processes towards more legitimate decision-making. The EDP framework provides guidance that covers the HTA process, ie, contextual factors, installation of an appraisal committee, selecting health technologies and criteria, assessment, a...

Secondary use of health data applies personal health information (PHI) for uses outside of direct health care delivery. It includes such activities as analysis, research, quality and safety measurement, public health, payment, provider certification or accreditation, marketing, and other business applications, including strictly commercial activities. Secondary use of health data can enhance he...

Humans are a coalitional, parochial species. Yet, extreme actions of solidarity are sometimes taken for distant or unrelated groups. What motivates people to become solidary with groups to which they do not belong originally? Here, we demonstrate that such distant solidarity can occur when the perceived treatment of an out-group clashes with one's political beliefs (e.g., for Leftists, oppressi...

The need for sustainable practices in the food supply chain, particularly in the area of energy reduction, is becoming acute. The food industry currently has to contend with multiple competing pressures alongside the new challenges of sustainable production. We applied Institutional Theory to explore the role of supermarkets in the development of legitimate sustainable practices across the dair...

Classical bourgeois political theory articulated the political revolution that established possessive individualism as the basis of legitimate government and the foundation of civil society. In this respect, it inaugurated the systematic investigation of the objective rules governing subjective human existence. The work of Thomas Hobbes and of John Locke, like classical political economy and mo...

Drawing upon material from two case-studies in Germany and Austria, we analyse the political and cultural regimes into which design and participation are embedded. Three arenas for participation are distinguished: Designing work-designing systems; Designing organisational frameworks for action; Designing the industrial relations context. Our case analysis focuses on the evolving network of acto...

Roe v. Wade was heralded as an end to unequal access to abortion care in the United States. However, today, despite being common and safe, abortion is performed only selectively in hospitals and private practices. Drawing on 61 interviews with obstetrician-gynecologists in these settings, we examine how they determine which abortions to perform. We find that they distinguish between more and le...

The paper considers the nature of the state understood as the political unity articulated on the basis of a collective identity which provides the state with its capacity to make decisions. The foremost decision of the state to protect and defend this identity is the source of its authority to enforce laws. Collective identity thus represents an object of special interest, unlike both ‘‘politic...

Scholars have recognized that contentious political action typically draws on relatively stable scripts for the enactment of claims making. But if such repertoires of political practice are generally reproduced over time, why and how do new modes of practice emerge? Employing a pragmatist perspective on social action, this article argues that change in political repertoires can be usefully unde...