Participatory Governance: Hope or Danger for Democracy? A Case Study of Local Agenda 21

Participatory governance is a concept that is receiving increasing prominence. However, more empirical research is needed to clarify whether participatory governance is beneficial or detrimental to democracy. The local level is a dynamic field for participatory experiments and, therefore, particularly rewarding for researchers interested in scrutinizing the impacts of participatory governance empirically. In this article, Local Agenda 21 serves as an example to discuss both hypotheses. The study, conducted predominantly in Germany, shows that neither the supporters nor the sceptics of participatory governance are completely right. The findings about Local Agenda 21 demonstrate that this form of participatory governance can improve civic skills and social capital, but has little impact on input-legitimacy and is barely effective, i.e. reaches the goal of enforcing sustainable development only to a limited degree.     

Participatory Democracy or Pseudo-Participation? Local Government Reform in Ireland

Since 1996 local government in the Republic of Ireland has undergone extensive reform. One of the central aims of this reform is the enhancement of local and participatory democracy through generating new forms of participation by communities in local authority decision-making processes, and through strengthening the decision-making role of city and county councillors. Drawing on comparisons with current British local government reforms and on key community governance frameworks, this paper questions the validity of this aim, given the ‘top-down’ nature of the reforms, the ongoing weakness of Irish local government vis-à-vis central government, and the increasingly contractual and consumerist approach of the state towards the voluntary and community sector. It argues that the reforms consolidate Irish local government as a system of local administration rather than local democracy, and that they may threaten the development of participatory democracy, rather than facilitate it.     

Roadworks Ahead? Addressing Fraud,Corruption and Conflict of Interest in English Local Government

The current localism agenda, and other legislative and organisational changes, will impact on English local government’s capacity and commitment to address fraud, corruption and conflict of interest from both investigative and preventative perspectives. These have been issues for local government since the nineteenth century onwards, often brought to prominence during specific scandals or periods of extensive change. This article summarises the reforms in terms of a ‘low road’ of a control environment and of a ‘high road’ of an ethical governance framework, and their perceived interrelationship, up to the introduction of the Localism agenda. It discusses how far the current changes may change the emphasis between roads in returning to an amended control environment, particularly in terms of the publication of the Fighting Fraud Locally strategy. It concludes with concerns less about the various initiatives promoted by the strategy than the implications of whether councils have the capacity or commitment to continue along the high road of ethical governance.     

Subsidiary,supporter or challenger? Local‐national relations in Japan

The impact of governance attributes on frequently overlooked attitudes of local councillors towards local governance reform agendas is assessed, based on the MAELG survey of approximately 11,000 councillors in 15 European countries and Israel. Eighteen policy statements are grouped into six reform agendas, followed by analyses of their explanatory factors. Europe's north–south divide is found meaningful for the understanding of variations in attitudes towards reform, being most profound in notions of democracy, participation and devolution. Southern Europe, including post-communist Europe, shows clear support for new democratic mechanisms, whereas northern European councillors reveal more reserved, perhaps weary, attitudes towards reforms. Councillors may provide the ‘correct’ statements in the south, because less has been reformed there so far, knowing that change would anyway be difficult. Substantial variations between different northern sub-groups could be linked to the memory of non-democratic regimes in Germany and Austria and to the influence of existing systems, deeply embedded in local political cultures. Nevertheless, the impact of present institutional practices is far from universal. Councillors in liberal regimes are not pro-privatisation, and cautious attitudes towards reform are shared by northern decentralised and centralised countries.     

Modernisation or Backward Step? Women Councillors and New Decision-Making Structures in Local Government

Following the 1997 general election New Labour took power with a commitment to ‘modernising’ government, including local government. This modernisation was based upon a variety of approaches including the introduction of new decision-making structures, improving local democracy, improving local financial accountability, creating a new ethical framework for councillors and council employees and improving local services. It is with the first two of these and their potential impact upon women councillors that this article is concerned. It analyses past evidence on women's participation in local government in the UK and examines the impact of the new political structures on progression to senior posts in local government.     

Portfolio Allocation or Policy Horizons? Determinants of Coalition Formation in Danish Local Government

It is widely assumed that policy considerations are important when parties form government coalitions. But if this is so, and if coalitions are negotiated in multi-dimensional policy spaces with no majority parties, then a rapid turn-over of coalitions should be observed, cf. the chaos theorem. However, we rarely witness this. Here we analyse two of the most prominent theories that address this puzzle: Laver and Shepsle's portfolio allocation model; and Warwick's policy horizon hypothesis. We do not analyse the ‘usual suspects’ (i.e. national government formations in Europe), but present a new empirical testing ground: Danish local governments. We rely on Laver and Shepsle's Winset programme to identify ‘strong parties’ in the portfolio allocation model but develop a new measure of Warwick's policy horizons that better deals with problems of multi-dimensionality. In a conditional logit analysis of survey data from 3000 local councillors, we find support for the policy horizons model, but not for the portfolio allocation model.     

Decentralized Recruitment and Selection in Thailand: Friend or Foe to Local Public Administration?

This article draws attention to the advantages and disadvantages derived from decentralized recruitment and selection for a form of local public administrative unit, the municipality. This was examined within the context of Thailand, a unitary transitional country where bureaucratization and centralization had been the norms in its public administrative system for centuries. It argues that local fiscal management and reformed local government structure would not be successful when executed by incompetent local civil servants. To summarize, recruitment and selection function as a “vacuum” and “filter” that organizations employ to obtain proficient and skilled human resources for their organizations. In Thailand at the local level, it appears that discussions of recruitment and selection functions barely disguise the inept procedures that occur in reality. These are grounded in actions looking towards recentralization, local-cronyism, and nepotism that have traditionally rooted and underpinned the Thai local administration in the area of personnel administration.     

Empowerment or Encumbrance? Exercising the STV Option for Local Authority Elections in New Zealand

The introduction of proportional representation into New Zealand parliamentary elections in 1996 increased the momentum for introducing proportional representation into local elections. Legislation passed in 2001 provides local choice regarding the electoral system for triennial local authority elections from 2004. In this article we review the way local authorities responded to the opportunity to choose between the current first-past-the-post (FPP) system and single transferable voting (STV). We examine the communication and consultation carried out by local authorities and discuss the degree to which the exercise of the STV option reflects the principles of the Act and contributes to the goal of empowering communities.     

Performance-Related Payments in Local Governments: Do They Improve Performance or Only Increase Salary?

Personnel policies in public sector organizations are fundamental to improving public services, since they have an impact on both individual and organizational performance. Within the broad area of Human Resources Management (HRM), Performance-Related Pay Systems (PRPSs) are widely considered one of the cornerstones of public sector managerial reforms. Monetary incentives should be paid for performance achievements of single employees and/or teams, according to a defined set of objectives. While the role and appropriateness of PRPSs in the public sector have been widely discussed in the literature, in some countries monetary incentives have been used as a tool to increase individual salaries, without considering them as a motivating instrument in a wider HRM system. A small number of studies have been conducted to understand the limitations of this form of incentives and to investigate whether it can be replaced by different and more effective incentives in order to avoid the de-motivating effect caused by money, as recognized in the literature. This study tries to fill this gap investigating, through twenty-five interviews to informed respondents the effectiveness of existing PRPSs at Local government level in Italy both in terms of performance and motivation and the possibility to substitute monetary with non-monetary incentives. The findings suggest that the limitations of monetary incentives have been widely recognized, but it is still difficult to replace them with different and more effective alternatives.     

Directly Elected Mayors: A Tonic for Local Governance or Old Wine in New Bottles?

The introduction of directly elected mayors into the landscape of English local politics has the potential to change the dynamics of local political leadership and the relationship between citizens and local government. The paper explores whether the conditions exist locally for such potential to be realised. It focuses on the reaction to the mayoral experiment of both mayors and the councillors that sit on mayoral authorities, as it is the reactions of the latter, as well as the actions of the former, that indicate the success or failure of mayoral governance. The paper also assesses the way in which political parties and party groups have accommodated the mayoral experiment and changed or maintained patterns of political behaviour and organisation.     

Local Political Decision-Making: A Case of Rationality or Appropriateness?

The party and trustee principles are two representational styles used to describe how politicians make decisions. Swedish politicians have historically relied more on the party principle than the trustee principle. This article studies the decision-making practices of local Swedish politicians by exploring to what extent they rely on these principles when making decisions on two issues that diverge in political dignity: tax level and organisational change in the municipal administration. The study draws on new institutional theory, in which theories from rational choice and sociological institutionalism were used for modelling and performing a large study. The results indicate that, although Swedish politicians still rely on the party principle when making decisions, there is a significant difference as to what extent they do so in regard to the two policy issues. The trustee principle is more frequently used when deciding on organisational change than on tax levels. This result is valid for all Swedish parties, except for a relatively new political party at the extreme right of the ideological spectrum. Future research of the two decision-making principles in relation to other policy issues, as well as research that delves deeper into the deviant results of the different political parties, is encouraged.     

Local Governance ‘in Swedish’? Globalisation,Local Welfare Government and Beyond

In this article local governance in the Swedish context is discussed. A case study of a Swedish city is framed in its historical, national and international context. By locating the redevelopment of an old harbour within a historical context, new insights are brought into the understanding of local governance. Cities are indeed nested. Deteriorating public finances, the deregulation of the economy (nationally and globally), the changed status of the welfare state, the restructuring of industry and the neo-liberal wave all taken together form a formidable challenge. A radical questioning of the values, principles and forms of the Swedish welfare state has tangible impacts on local governance. It is concluded that Swedish municipal actors face the dual challenge of acting efficiently (being sensitive to the needs and demands of local elites), while keeping democratic legitimacy (being sensitive to the needs and demands of all citizens).     

Do Beliefs About Herbicide Quality Correspond with Actual Quality in Local Markets? Evidence from Uganda

Adoption of modern agricultural inputs in Africa remains low, restraining agricultural productivity and poverty reduction. Low quality agricultural inputs may in part explain low adoption rates, but only if farmers are aware that some inputs are low quality. We report the results of laboratory tests of the quality of glyphosate herbicide in Uganda and investigate whether farmers’ beliefs about the prevalence of counterfeiting and adulteration are consistent with the prevalence of low quality in their local market. We find that the average bottle in our sample is missing 15 per cent of the active ingredient and 31 per cent of samples contain less than 75 per cent of the ingredient advertised. Farmers believe 41 per cent of herbicide is counterfeit or adulterated. Beliefs are significantly correlated with quality at the local market level, but beliefs remain inaccurate, adjusting for only a fraction of actual differences in quality. Price is also significantly correlated with quality in local markets, but prices also adjust for only a fraction of quality differences. Although, like fertiliser and hybrid maize seed, herbicide in Uganda is low quality, herbicide use is substantially higher.     

Friends or Foes? Nonstate Public Goods Providers and Local State Authorities in Nondemocratic and Transitional Systems

Ordinary citizens often welcome nonstate provision of public goods and social welfare, but government officials, particularly in nondemocratic and transitional systems, may view nonstate actors as political competitors. Drawing on a combination of qualitative and quantitative data from rural China, this paper finds that some kinds of nonstate participation in public goods and social welfare provision can actually make local officials more optimistic about their ability to implement state policies and elicit citizen compliance. Local officials often believe that coproduction of public goods and services with community groups in particular, often with community actors taking the lead, can build trust and social capital that can spill over into increased citizen compliance with state demands, a central element of state capacity. Simply increasing levels of public goods provision, however, is not associated positively with optimistic perceptions of local state authority and capacity. Moreover, other forms of nonstate participation such as coproduction between private businesses and local officials or substitutive provision by nonstate actors have less potential for building trust between officials and citizens and are not seen by officials as beneficial for increasing citizen compliance.     

Local Expenditure Interaction in Italian Municipalities: Do Local Council Partnerships Make a Difference?

This paper investigates interdependence among local councils in Italy in their public spending and distinguishes between possible sources of this interdependence. We find significant positive interaction among neighbouring local councils in regard to both spending at the level of total expenditure and spending on different sub-categories. Attempts to identify the source of this horizontal interaction seem to reject the yardstick competition hypothesis. Addressing the role that local council partnerships may play in internalising fiscal externalities, we suggest that expenditure interaction may be driven by spill-over.     

Losers’ Consent or Non-Voter Consent? Satisfaction with Democracy in East Asia

In recent times non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Bangladesh have witnessed massive growth in size, budget and scale of operations. They enjoy growing support from international donors and operate outside the direct control of the government. Their handling of the massive funds aside, increasing involvement of NGOs in economic, social and at times political spheres has given rise to widespread concerns about their accountability including their relationships with the government, donors and the community. This article examines and analyses various dimensions of NGO accountability in Bangladesh. Drawing on evidence from the Grameen Bank and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC)—two of Bangladesh's largest and the most successful NGOs—the paper argues that NGO accountability in Bangladesh has been more rhetorical than real. It shows that while formal accountability measures are in place, they suffer from a range of inadequacies and shortcomings. Consequently NGO accountability has remained weak and ineffective in relation to major agents such as the government, donors and the clients. The article further shows that some of the recent developments, such as the proliferation of NGO operations, government organisation (GO)–NGO collaboration and the growing involvement of NGOs in commercial activities, have imposed further limitations on their accountability to key stakeholders.     

Leaving,Staying or Coming Back? Migration Decisions During the Northern Mali Conflict

This paper uses a unique dataset to analyse the migration dynamics of refugees, returnees and, internally displaced people from the Northern Mali conflict. Individuals were interviewed monthly using mobile phones. Our results cast light on the characteristics of these three groups before and after displacement. In addition, we test how employment and security were related to migration status, as well as the willingness to go back home. Individuals who were employed while displaced were less willing to go back to the North, while those who owned a gun were more likely to plan to go back. Additional indicators of personal safety played a lesser role.