The role of local government in rural communities: culture-based development strategies

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses local development and various governance strategies that local governments can use to engage actors in rural communities and resources from a broader environment to achieve desired socio-economic outcomes. We ask: How can local governance vary in rural communities? How can governance arrangements lead to contrasting socio-economic outcomes? Our conceptual framework combines a typology of local governance roles with socio-economic outcomes associated with neo-endogenous development theory. We explore culture-based development projects from three rural communities. We find that local governance strategies vary between relatively similar rural communities and that they represent compromises in terms of socio-economic outcomes. Local government in rural communities can act strategically through use of local networks. Local governance here is best understood as an emergent quality of the local context, history, institutions, culture, and, power relations. Therefore, governance strategies in rural contexts should be based on careful reflection on potential roles, trade-offs and desirable outcomes.     

Community involvement: a function of local government innovation

This paper discusses the implications of community involvement for the delivery of public services. It discusses exemplary case studies of community involvement in government, and provides an in-depth discussion of community participation in the affairs of the Engineering Traffic Division in San Diego, California. It finds a positive relationship between community involvement, and responsiveness, customer satisfaction, efficiency and effectiveness.     

Occupational stress among professional local government managers: introspections and a prognosis

The area of stress research is broad and not well understood. Little is known about the ways in which workers cope with job related stress .This article explores this element of stress related behavior for local government managers. Among the most important findings are that local managers perceive their stress levels to be equal to or greater than many other professions often associated with high demand. It appears that local managers see other professional managers as facing increased levels of stress over the past decade. Managers also see their stress levels as equal to or greater than that of previous occupations or occupations they might wish to hold in th future. While age and length of experience appear to have little association with percieved levels of stress, increased education does appear to reduce such perceptions.     

Educating local government managers: a national survey of MPA programs

This article reports the findings of a national survey of masters degree programs in public administration. The goal of this study was to assess the effectiveness of efforts to educate local government managers. The findings suggest that programs with an overall focus on local government management or a specialized concentration are distinctly different from generalist programs. Furthermore, they indicate that internship programs may suffer from some serious shortcomings and that they may not offer an effective content supplement for generalist programs.     

The Audit Commission: guiding, steering and regulating local government

How does the non‐executant state ensure that its agents are fulfilling their obligations to deliver nationally determined policies? In the case of elected local government in England and Wales, this function is carried out by the Audit Commission (AC) for Local Authorities and the Health Service for England and Wales. Since being established in 1983, it is the means by which local authorities are held to account by central government, both for its own purposes and on behalf of other interested stakeholders. Although the primary function of the AC is to ensure that local authorities are fulfilling their obligations, it does so by using different methods. By acting as a regulator, an independent expert, an opinion former and a mediator, the AC steers local authorities to ensure that they are compliant with the regulatory regime and are implementing legislation properly.     

Walking the fiscal tightrope: local government budgeting and fiscal stress

This paper discusses the components of local government budget processes and their relationship to fiscal stress. While many cities and counties are suffering from stressful fiscal situations, leading in some cases to bankruptcy filings or other severe measures, their budgets have to be balanced, unlike the federal government and some state governments. Using survey data from a large number of jurisdictions, this paper shows how local governments have developed budget processes which respond to these changing fiscal situations. Governments use computers, collect and analyze many different types of information, and use budgetary information for other management purposes in order to improve productivity. Budget processes are providing good information to local government decision makers which is helping them respond constructively to the fiscal crises of the 1990s.     

Migrants,refugees and foreign policy: prevention and intervention strategies

The authors discuss policy development options to deal with migrants and refugees to developed countries. "Our principal argument--perhaps to state the obvious--is that international migration and refugee movements are foreign policy, not simply domestic, issues. Nevertheless, citizens and policy makers are all too often unaware that if they want to secure their borders against unwanted population flows, this cannot be done simply by unilateral decisions to regulate entry." The focus is on Germany and the United States.     

Grassroots democracy and local government in Northern Syria: the case of democratic confederalism

This paper provides a case study regarding an innovative model of grass-roots democracy, called democratic confederalism, which is currently being implemented in Northern Syria. The difference between democratic confederalism and previous experiments with grass-roots democracy is that its evolutionary pattern aims to include heterogeneous local communities living in the same territories, with the objective of becoming an administrative model for the whole Syrian country, without shattering its national constitution. In fact, the evolution of the political and administrative system and the introduction of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria were specifically aimed at including all ethnicities and not focusing on the Kurdish population only. Following a literature review aimed at defining the theoretical background of democratic confederalism, the case study is presented. Data collection occurred through semi-structured interviews and informal talks with key stakeholders in the Kurdish movement; the findings and main implications of the model are described and analysed.     

Management,markets and democracy: Australian local government reform in the 1990s

Australian local government has been subjected to extensive reform during the 1990s. This article considers the three main dimensions of the reforms — changes to management structures, the introduction of competition policy, and municipal consolidation. It reviews the evidence available about the nature of outcomes and examines the impact of the reforms on governance values. It is argued that, so far, economic considerations have been balanced by a commitment to community particpation. Recent political developments, however, may yet prove to be an emerging threat.     

上海社区青少年工作与预防和减少犯罪工作体系建设

在积极探索预防青少年违法犯罪的体制、机制建设过程中,上海运用社会工作的理念和方法,从2003年开始,构建包括关爱社区青少年在内的预防和减少犯罪工作体系,在政府层面成立市社区青少年事务办公室的同时,注册成立阳光社区青少年事务中心,采用政府购买服务的方式,组织专业社会工作者队伍,承担政府委托的社区青少年的教育服务工作。在青少年工作方面探索统一有序、覆盖面广、富有实效的大综治格局,实践促进青少年健康成长、维护青少年合法权益、预防青少年违法犯罪的良好社会效果。