Democracy in Britain: Retrospect and Prospect

The EU referendum has raised questions about the nature of democracy, which is not just majority rule. It is wrong to claim that direct democracy has now replaced representative democracy, as Parliament is required to answer all the questions that the referendum did not. The conduct of the referendum reflected the worst aspects of Britain's political culture of sterile adversarialism. Both left and right have shared assumptions about governing that have made it difficult to develop a culture of democratic citizenship. The political system still reflects its pre‐democratic origins (as in the survival of a House of Lords and the obsession with titles) and the role of money in politics represents a form of corruption. Institutional reforms depend for their success on the nurturing of a democratic culture, which is a task for many hands.     

Citizens’ Perceptions of Governance in Rural and Urban China

This article presents three main findings from a purposive stratified survey of urban and rural residents. First, Chinese citizens “disaggregate” the state with high levels of satisfaction for Central government that fall dramatically as government gets closer to the people. Satisfaction levels are noticeably lower for those in rural China. Second, attitudes about the way policy is implemented by local governments raise concerns. Irrespective of place of residence, respondents feel that when implementing policy local officials and governments are mainly concerned with their own interests, are more receptive to the views of their superiors rather than those of ordinary people, favor those with money, and are formalistic in implementing policy rather than dealing with actual problems. Third, the areas of work that citizens would really like government to concentrate on are job creation and providing basic guarantees to protect against the shocks of the transition to a market economy. Tony Saich is the Daewoo Professor of International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and Director of the Harvard University Asia Center. His recent research focuses on the development of social policy in China, particularly on the provision of public goods by local governments. His publications include Governance and Politics of China by Palgrave and edited volumes on Financial Sector Reform in China (with Yasheng Huang and Edward Steinfeld) and AIDS and Social Policy in China (with Joan Kaufman and Arthur Kleinman both by Harvard University Asia Center. He would like to thank Edward Cunningham for his great help in preparing this article. He also wants to thank Victor Yuan (Horizon Market Research Company) for his tremendous help in designing the survey and implementing it. In addition, I would like to thank Anita Chan, Martin King Whyte and two anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful comments on an earlier draft.     

Reviews

Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa by Brian Titley. McGill‐Queen's University Press, Québec (Canada) and Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, (UK), 1997. xii. plus 5pp. of illustrations (photographs and a map of the Central African Republic) plus 257pp. including notes, bibliography and index. £22.95 hardback.

The Making of a Periphery: Economic Development and Cultural Encounters in Southern Tanzania edited by Pekka Seppala and Bertha Koda. Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Uppsala (Sweden), 1998. 344 pp. including figures, tables, maps, notes, bibliography and index. Paperback.

Farewell to Farms: De‐agrarianization and Employment in Africa edited by D.F. Bryceson and V. Jamal. Ashgate Publishing Ltd., Aldershot, 1997. iv plus 265pp. including figures, tables, notes and index.

The World Bank and Nigeria: Cornucopia or Pandora's Box? by Rufai Ahmed Alkali. Kaduna, Baraka Press, 1997. 205pp. including selected references.

Sustaining the Future: Economic, Social and Environmental Change in Sub‐Saharan Africa edited by George Benneh, William B.Morgan and Juha I.Uitto. The United Nations University Press, Tokyo, New York and Paris, 1996.     

Agriculture in and beyond the Haitian catastrophe

Although the devastation from Haiti’s 2010 earthquake was concentrated in Port-au-Prince, it had deep agrarian roots. This paper situates Haiti’s urban poverty in the chronic exploitation of the country’s peasant classes as a basis for assessing the competing contemporary visions for agricultural development. We argue that the post-earthquake reconstruction has fortified a neoliberal development that is incompatible with the aspirations of the Haitian peasantry. Given the interrelated power of domestic elites and international donors, and the proliferation of disconnected development projects, we conclude that any prospect for pro-poor development hinges on the growth and collaboration of peasant movements.     

Applying a Dynamic Performance Management Framework to Wicked Issues: How Coproduction Helps to Transform Young People’s Services in Surrey County Council,UK

ABSTRACT

This article explores how a dynamic performance management (DPM) approach can give policy makers a more integrated, time-related understanding of how to address wicked problems successfully. The article highlights how an outcome-based approach to solving wicked policy problems has to balance three very contrasting objectives of stakeholders in the policy making process – improving service quality, improving quality of life outcomes and improving conformity to the principles of public governance. Simultaneous achievement of these three objectives may not be feasible, as they may form an interactive dynamic system. However the balancing act between them may be achieved by the use of DPM. Policy insights from this novel approach are illustrated through a case study of a highly successful co-production intervention to help young people with multiple disadvantages in Surrey, UK. The implications of DPM are that policy development needs to accept the important roles of emergent strategy and learning mechanisms, rather than attempting ‘blueprint’ strategic planning and control mechanisms. Some expectations about the results may indeed be justifiable in particular policy systems, as clustering of quality of life outcomes and outcomes in the achievement of governance principles is likely, because behaviours are strongly inter-related. However, this clustering can never be taken for granted but must be tested in each specific policy context. Undertaking simulations with the model and recalibrating it through time, as experience builds up, may allow learning in relation to overcoming barriers to achieving outcomes in the system.