Gauging the Effects of Social Accountability on Services,Governance, and Citizen Empowerment

Engaging citizens in holding public officials and service providers accountable, referred to as social accountability, is a popular remedy for public sector performance weaknesses, figuring prominently in many international donor‐funded projects and leading to widespread replication. However, the contextual factors that influence the successful transfer of social accountability are debated. Demand‐side factors (civil society and citizens) are overemphasized in much of the literature. Yet supply‐side factors (state structures and processes) and the nature of state–society relations are also important. This article examines four projects in developing countries to explore how these contextual factors influenced social accountability aims and outcomes. The salience of supply factors in enabling social accountability for service delivery and government performance stands out, particularly the degree of decentralization and the availability of space for citizen engagement. The capacity and motivation of citizens to occupy the available space, aggregate and voice their concerns, and participate with state actors in assessing service delivery performance and problems are critical.     

Localism in Practice: Investigating Citizen Participation and Good Governance in Local Government Standards of Conduct

This article examines how, against a background of localism endorsed by the 2010 coalition government in the United Kingdom, a key component of local integrity and governance was fundamentally altered. The Localism Act 2011 abolished the English local integrity framework, which relied on the participation of local citizens in the policy making and implementation of local government standards of conduct. The article utilizes Henrik Bang's concepts of “expert citizen” and “everyday maker” to explore citizen participation in local standards committees. Using a case study approach, the article demonstrates how standards committees shaped processes and practices in the local governance of integrity. The authors argue that standards committees were crucial in promoting local participation and enhancing good governance.     

民主工具的开发与执政能力的提升——解读温岭“民主恳谈会”的一种新视角

学术界在研究温岭的"民主恳谈会"时都使用了民主的定语.总体上可以把此前的研究概括为三种视角:民主的治理视角、民主的参与视角和民主的制度视角.试图提出一种民主的工具视角来概括"民主恳谈会"的长时段发展,并且通过对民主工具的各种比较,从理论和经验两个层面上阐发"民主恳谈会"的发展机理及其理论与实践意义.提出,现有三种视角所概括的"民主恳谈"的时空范围都非常有限,都没有讨论到选举与民主的内在关系.一种新的民主工具视角既可以在更大的时空范围之内观察"民主恳谈"活动的发展,又可以在一种新的视角下提炼民主化道路的差异.在这种新的视角下,民主是由包括选举在内的一系列工具的复杂组合;在不同的时空背景下,各种工具的开发顺序在一定程度上决定着特定国家在特定发展阶段上的民主化路径与方式.作为一种民主工具的"民主恳谈"活动,虽然是基层党务官员为了提高执政能力而使用的一种工具,但是这种工具的开发也有利于在特定时空范围内激发出其他的民主工具.     

Adaptive Governance Policy for Societal Resilience and Community Empowerment

This paper reviews current thinking on flexible policy-making and participatory methods to empower communities to handle the challenges of climate change and other global shocks. Adaptive Governance for Resilience--designed to effectively increase societal resilience to external shocks while facilitating wellbeing and reducing both poverty and environmental degradation--is an innovative approach which teams cutting-edge policy-making with community empowerment. Using a 9-step methodology of the Adaptive Governance Cycle, resilience in communities can be strengthened as the communities are themselves empowered to increase wellbeing, address poverty alleviation, and strengthen environment protection. The approach facilitates governments to partner with local communities to calibrate the coordinated mix of flexible, adaptive policies to facilitate community resilience through participatory action. The author sees expanded use of Adaptive Governance as an approach for maintaining good governance and building social capital in the face of external and internal pressures and uncertainties which may become more widespread in the future.     

Philosophy,Social Hope and Democratic Criticism: Critical Theory for a Global Age

Abstract

The attempt to connect philosophy and social hope has been one of the key distinguishing features of critical theory as a tradition of enquiry. This connection has been questioned forcefully from the perspective of a post-philosophical pragmatism, as articulated by Rorty. In this article I consider two strategies that have been adopted by critical theorists in seeking to reject Rorty's suggestion that we should abandon the attempt to ground social hope in philosophical reason. We consider argumentative strategies of the philosophical anthropologist and of the rational proceduralist. Once the exchanges between Rorty and these two strands of critical theory have been reconstructed and assessed, an alternative perspective emerges. It is argued that philosophical reasoning best helps to sustain social hope in a rapidly changing world when we consider it in terms of the practice of democratic criticism.     

Local Governance Arrangements and Democratic Outcomes (with Some Evidence from the Italian Case)

This article carries a broad definition of public–private concertation as a flexible form of governance that is able to overcome the distinction between network governance and participatory governance. It creates a unified framework relying on a process‐related democratic approach in order to properly assess these practices in their democratic outcomes. This allows the article to fully depict how local governance arrangements affect local democracy, both positively and negatively. Drawing on four exemplary cases of urban policies developed in the Province of Milan, it highlights two variables that give account of the democratic implication of these practices: the role of the political leadership and the inclusive strategy that they adopt. Moreover, it underlines four additional factors that help more democratic outcomes: presence of cognitive justification, quality of participation, active opposition, and an outward communication.     

新型治理:韩国民主进程中的市民组织

近些年来,在以发展型国家著称的韩国,公民参与政策过程的影响不断增强.本文分析了韩国民主巩固进程中市民组织的政治化问题.论文通过分析市民组织在政策过程中的三个政治活动案例,揭示了韩国市民组织的组织特征和政治功能,最后还对韩国市民组织的特征与日本市民组织的特征进行了比较,并对韩国政治中市民组织在新型治理中的作用及其前景进行了评价.     

The Modern Slaves: Specialized Knowledge and Democratic Governance

This article examines widely held assumptions among scientific elites positing that there is an increasing discrepancy between those with specialized knowledge and laypersons, that governmental policy is increasingly shaped by scientific research and its practitioners, and that these trends pose a threat to representative democracy. This article asserts that modern liberal democratic societies are characterized by enabling structural changes that have expanded the forms of and means for citizen action, and simplified civil society’s access to specialized knowledge.     

公民媒体的构建与使用:传播赋权与公民行动——以台湾PeoPo公民新闻平台为例

以台湾PeoPo公民新闻平台及公民记者为例,从参与式传播与斌权的视角,通过深度访谈、参与式观察和网络文本阅读探讨公民新闻实践如何促进公民行动.研究发现,公民媒体、公民记者和社会组织之间的互动对于公民行动的形成不可或缺.公民媒体斌权是一个参与式传播过程,会民行动的意识与能力借此得到了解放、培育、集结与持续,有助于达成社区行动和资源动员,且在社会层面上构建另类公共空间.并指出大陆公民新闻现象为一种公民媒体缺席的奋民传播,并进一步探讨了公民媒体对于中国大陆网络意见表达,及其与公民社会的互动等问题.     

近年来中国公民政治参与状况研究述评

随着中国政治文明建设的深入展开,公民政治参与问题为越来越多的学者所关注。中国公民政治参与的状况及其原因是学者们探讨的热点问题之一。本文试从研究的概况及特点、研究的内容及主要观点、研究中尚存在的问题及前景等三个方面,对1997年以来关于中国公民政治参与状况研究的主要成果进行述评。     

治理结构多元化：地方政府机构改革的新思路

通过对当代中国地方政府机构改革的一些典型个案进行分析,发现其陷入困境的深层次原因在于强调国家统一管理而导致的地方治理结构单一化。当代中国的地方治理结构单一化是历史遗传和传统体制的产物,与转轨时期纵向政府间关系中存在的压力型体制也有着内在的关联。随着改革的深入,地方治理结构单一化的弊端逐渐显现出来。但是,从美国和英国等西方发达国家的实践来看,地方治理结构多元化与国家的统一管理并不矛盾。因此,在已有的地方政府机构改革的思路基础上,实现地方治理结构多元化应该成为继续推进当代中国地方政府机构改革的新思路。     

The Limits of Partnership: An Exit-Action Strategy for Local Democratic Inclusion

The challenge of enhancing the 'democratic anchorage' of partnerships has become a central concern in policy studies. Radical reform proposals designed to level the deliberative playing field include community veto powers and the appointment of neutral arbiters. Welcome as they would be, however, it is questionable whether such reforms would overcome power asymmetries in the partnership arena. A study of the local politics of social inclusion in two UK cities, Dundee and Hull, suggests that managerialism, driven by national governments, is eroding the prospects for partnership democratisation. But more significantly for the reformist agenda, public managers and community activists think in incompatible frames about the role of partnerships and in ways that are not understood by the other party. Non-communication undermines the prospects for an equitable democratic consensus. Insights from Bourdieu suggest that even in environments more favourable to equitable democratic discourse than those in Dundee and Hull, subtle manifestations of power in culture, discourse and bearing would undermine the potential for a Habermasian consensus between radically unequal actors. In a radical departure from the network governance paradigm, it is therefore argued that empowerment may depend less on enhanced network democracy than on strong independent community organisation capable of acting separately and coercively against governing institutions and elites – an exit-action strategy. These preliminary conclusions point to a substantial research agenda on the politics of the state–civil society nexus.     

Local Governance Versus Centralization: Connecticut Wetlands Governance as a Model

Scholars disagree whether local decision making is inherently more democratic and sustainable than centralized governance structures. While some maintain it is, due to the incorporation of local knowledge, citizen decision makers' closeness to the issues, and the benefits of participatory democracy, others find it as susceptible to issues of corruption and poor implementation as any other scale. We argue that with wetlands, a natural resource with critical local benefits, it is imperative to incorporate local governance, using the U.S. state of Connecticut as an example. Despite the American policy of No Net Loss, the local benefits of wetland resources cannot be aggregated on a national scale. Each local ecosystem needs wetland resources to ensure local ecological benefits such as flood control and pollution remission, as well as the substantial economic benefits of recreation. We illustrate the benefits of local control of wetlands with data from the American state of Connecticut, which consistently surpasses the federal wetland goal of No Net Loss due, we argue, to the governance structure of town‐level wetlands commissions. A national policy such as No Net Loss, where wetlands are saved or created in designated areas and destroyed in others, is insufficient when it ignores critical benefits for localities. The Connecticut system using local volunteers and unpaid appointees is a successful method for governing common‐pool wetland systems. In the case of Connecticut, we find that local decision making is not a “trap,” but instead an effective model of sustainable, democratic local governance.     

政社联动：住宅小区业主协商自治的演进逻辑

业主协商自治是基于业主物业私有及共有的边界划分与全面自治而衍生的一种全新的协商民主治理形式,它是由物业公司代管与业委会监督的模式直接转变为业主自主治理,打破了以往基层民主中行政干预式的群众自治模式,但是它面临长期以来没有社区协商传统和习惯、业主协商治理经验和技术欠缺、业主物业自主的法律和政策环境缺乏、相关配套社会制度保障欠缺等问题,其压力、挑战都是对我国基层民主发展的重大考验。因此,应深入研究业主协商自治的概念范畴,不同业主协商自治形式的优劣和创新发现以及加大政府在业主协商自治中的正确引导作用,创新政社联动机制,从而推动我国基层民主治理模式的顺利转型。