The Nocturnal Council in Plato's Laws

Serious problems are encountered in integrating the nocturnal council, described in Book XII of the Laws , into the institutional structure presented in Plato's earlier Books. These difficulties are addressed by Glenn Morrow in Plato's Cretan City , and most authorities have accepted Morrow's 'informal view'. This article contends that an alternative account, the 'institutional view', accords more closely with the evidence.     

Piecemeal Reform in Plato's Laws

Karl Popper has called Plato a dangerous Utopian who offers an unworldly blueprint for society. I argue that, in making this criticism, Popper offers an incomplete reading of Plato's political thought, overlooking the more worldly and modest blueprint of the Laws. In addition, I show that a better understanding of the relationship between the Republic and the Lans - between Plato's philosophical ideal and politically best possible state - demonstrates the necessity of considering Plato's Laws in any discussion of implementation. In fact, a more complete reading of Plato is required by the very criteria Popper employs in advancing his critique. When the political programme of Plato's Laws is viewed in light of Popper's famous distinction between piecemeal social engineering and Utopian social engineering, the problems of applying these characterizations to Plato become apparent.     

Duverger's Laws: Between social and institutional determinism

Abstract. The purpose of this article is to relocate Duverger's Laws within the debate about the effects of electoral systems on the number of parties. Although Duverger's theory has always been seen as the best example of a purely institutionalist approach to the issue, it is possible to argue that this is only true if one overemphasises the meaning of the laws without considering Duverger's justification and explanations for them. However, if one takes into consideration not only the laws, but also Duverger's theories about the effects of electoral systems on the number of parties as a whole, one can argue that his theses do not have a purely institutionalist character and can therefore coexist with theories that try to take into account variables other than electoral rules.     

Ethics by Design: The Impact of Form of Government on Municipal Corruption

While trust in government at all levels is at an all‐time low, actual corruption at the municipal level has been declining. One factor often credited with this decline is the introduction of the council‐manager form of government. One of the key reasons the council‐manager form was created in the early 1900s was to act as an antidote to the corruption prevalent in the big‐city machine politics of the era. Despite this, no one has tested whether the council‐manager form has in fact influenced the decline in corruption rates. This article uses a rare events logit model to analyze corruption convictions in municipalities between 1990 and 2010 to determine which factors, including form of government, affect the probability that a corrupt act will occur. The findings indicate that municipalities with the council‐manager form are 57 percent less likely to have corruption convictions than municipalities with the mayor‐council form.     

The Path for Top Management Teams to Achieve High-Performing Council Organisations

This article examines what management practices top management teams should pursue to achieve high-performing council organisations. It reports on the findings of a study into the practices of top management teams at three high-performing and three low-performing Melbourne councils. The study makes two important findings. First, there is no one path for top management teams to achieve a high-performance council. Second, the capacity of top management teams to work effectively with the elected members is the only factor that distinguishes high-performing from low-performing councils. The only features all high-performing and all low-performing councils do well in are financial monitoring and nurturing teamwork within business/operating units. But these are insufficient by themselves to provide success, and may simply be regarded as the basics of management practice.     

The Lost Treasure of Arendt's Council System

Abstract

Hannah Arendt's On Revolution offers a critique of modern representative democracy combined with a manifesto-like treatise on council systems as they have arisen over the course of revolutions and uprisings. However, Arendt's contribution to democratic theory has been obscured by her commentators who argue that her reflections on democracy are either an aberration in her work or easily reconcilable within a liberal democratic framework. This paper seeks to provide a comprehensive outline of Arendt's writing on the council system and a clarification of her work outside the milieu of the post-Cold War return to Arendt. Her analyses bring to light a political system that guarantees civil and political rights while allowing all willing citizens direct participation in government. Framing her discussion within the language of the current renewed interest in constituent power, her council system could be described as a blending together of constituent power and constitutional form. Arendt resists the complete dominance and superiority of either element and argues that the foundation of a free state requires nothing less than the stabilization and persistence of constituent power within an open and fluid institution that would resist either the bureaucratization of politics or its dispersal into a revolutionary flux. Although one may conclude that her institutional suggestions are far from flawless, her political principles allow a conceptualization of democracy in more substantial ways than current liberal political philosophy.     

Community not the Councillors: A Study of Commitment of Australian Senior Council Officers Working under a Politicised Employment Relationship

Council officers as public managers are expected to work for the community. Yet, it has been argued that council officers working under a politicised employment relationship are likely to be more committed to the elected councillors than to the community. This proposition has been examined through a survey of senior council officers across Australia and the results are presented in this article. This study develops an analytical approach which combines for the first time the multi-focus and the multiple bases of managerial commitment approaches, applies this to the case of Australian local government managers and finds that although most senior council officers perceive that their employment is politicised they remain committed to the community. Based upon these findings, it is argued that a conceptual framework utilising a combined multi-focus and multiple bases approach is more appropriate to the study of commitment of local government managers and to managers in the public sector in general than the use of either approach alone.     

Scrutiny in English Local Government and the Role of Councillors

Overview and Scrutiny Committees were introduced in England and Wales in the Local Government Act 2000 that ended the role the full council and its committees as the locus of decision‐making for most local authorities. Overview and scrutiny committees composed of councillors not on small decision‐making executives were tasked with holding these to account. The performance of scrutiny committees is variable. Generally they work best where they concentrate on reviews of policy and practice, with recommendations following from well‐researched reports. The paper reviews the difficulties which arise when scrutiny committees endeavour to hold powerful executives to account, and suggests that to strengthen this new legislation is required, in particular to institutionalise scrutiny committees as agencies of the full council, the representative body for the area, comparable to the way in which the select committees at Westminster are the agencies of the Parliament.     

Federal Judicial Remedial Power: The Yonkers Case

The United States District Court in 1985 determined that Yonkers,New York intentionally segregated public housing and publicschools by locating nearly all of its public and subsidizedhousing in one section of the city. Although the city initiatedactions to promote school integration in compliance with a courtorder, the city council refused to implement the housing remedyorder. Failure of the council to implement a consent order in1988 led to the U.S. District Court holding the city and fourcouncil members in contempt of court and imposing fines. Thedesegregation decision was upheld by the U.S. Circuit Courtof Appeals and by the U.S. Supreme Court. The court of appealsupheld the contempt rulings against the city and the four councilmembers, and the Supreme Court granted the council members'petition for issuance of a writ of certiorari. The council membersraised procedural objections, charged the district court withabuse of discretion, maintained that the remedial ordinancecould not be adopted by the specified date without violatingthe state's notice and hearing requirements, and claimed legislativeimmunity and protection under the First Amendment. The SupremeCourt in 1990 held that the district court's contempt sanctionswere "an abuse of discretion" and that the district court shouldhave limited its contempt sanctions to the city of Yonkers andnot to the councilmen. The Court did not address the questionof whether local legislators possess legislative immunity.     

What Influences City Council Adoption and Support for Reinventing Government? Environmental or Institutional Factors?

What influences the degree to which city councils support reinventing government (REGO)? Controlling for environmental factors that are likely to shape council policy adoption as well as the tenure of the chief administrator, the findings of this study underscore that the type of representation system is most consistently related to opposition to REGO. In addition, the economic health of the city and the tenure of the chief administrator are positively associated with council support. Overall, institutional factors affect council policy adoption more than either environmental factors or an administrator's seniority, at least in this policy area.     

State legislation on smoking and health: A comparison of two policies

The two principal smoking-related state legislative activities stand in sharp contrast to one another. Cigarette excise taxation diffused among the states well before the connection between smoking and illness became a public issue, yet more recent tax increases appear to reflect a response to the national anti-smoking campaign. The growing disparity in cigarette prices between tobacco and other states has created a lucrative market in bootlegged cigarettes and has thereby brought new taxation to a virtual standstill for six years. Laws restricting smoking in public places represent a phenomenon of the 1970's clearly bearing the imprint of the anti-smoking campaign. From 1972 through 1978, the number of states with such laws in effect grew from 5 to 36, and the restrictiveness of the laws also increased. The dramatic correlation between diffusion of the laws and decreases in cigarette consumption rates seems best interpreted as each of these reflecting changes in social attitudes toward smoking.     

The Adoption and Abandonment of Council‐Manager Government

What accounts for patterns of city adoption and abandonment of council‐manager government? Despite dozens of empirical studies, we lack a systematic understanding of these forces over time because previous work has relied on cross‐sectional designs or analysis of change over short periods. This article begins to fill this lacuna by constructing a historical data set spanning 75 years for the 191 largest cities with either mayor‐council or council‐manager governments in 1930. Event history analysis is applied to isolate adoption and abandonment trends and to provide new evidence revealing the forces that have shaped the trajectory of institutional change in U.S. cities. This analysis reveals that social context factors—in particular, economic conditions—generate both adoptions and abandonments.     

略论传统中国严格执法的阻抗因素

法制是传统中国政治的重要组成部分，但严格执法却做得不够，甚至不大讲究。问题在于：传统中国是君主专制国家，奉行人治、礼治而非法治，其间阻抗严格执法的因素很多。主要表现为：法自君出，而君权无限，君、臣常漠视成法；德主刑辅，礼法冲突时，则屈法伸礼；法律虚无，狱吏位卑，舞文弄法、出入人罪；立法技术上的一些问题也使成法难守易破。这些因素共同作用，严格执法不仅难，而且无法克服。这使法律缺乏应有的威信与尊严，其消极影响是现代法治建设应当着力避免的。     

Can impact assessments tame legislative drift? Event history analysis of modifications of laws across Europe

Laws should endure and change only if assumed benefits don't materialize over time. Yet frequent modifications of laws shortly after their enactment distort this compromise between stability and change. While, Impact Assessments (IAs) are designed to improve the quality of legislation, we know little about IAs' impact on legal stability post-enactment. We fill this gap by analysing whether the ex-ante application of IAs influences the incidence and frequency of legal modifications. The analysis is based on a complete dataset of more than 2500 laws in France, Hungary, Italy, and the UK between 2006 and 2012. We apply a comparative event history analysis to account for both first and subsequent modifications. We find across-the-board that IAs are associated with legal stability. IAs are predicted to have the largest effect when political power changes both in terms of seat shares and party ideology, suggesting that IAs can, to some degree, tame legislative drift.     

刘少奇对反腐倡廉建设科学化的初步探索

刘少奇尽管没有提出“反腐倡廉建设科学化”的概念，但事实上遵循客观规律对反腐倡廉建设科学化进行过重要的理论探索。基于腐败是行为人私利之心放纵扭曲的主观因素与权力运行规范失效的客观因素交相作用的结果，刘少奇认为反腐败应着眼于对人的思想改造和对权力外在制约的协调统一。这为新形势下加强反腐倡廉建设提供了方法论指导。     

What Have We Learned about the Performance of Council‐Manager Government? A Review and Synthesis of the Research

The 100th anniversary of the International City/County Management Association provides an excellent point to review and assess research on the performance of the council‐manager form of government. The development of the council‐manager form arguably has been the most important innovation in American local government over the last century, yet its impact on the performance of municipal governments is not well understood. This article reviews and assesses the empirical evidence for 10 propositions that council‐manager governments perform better than mayor‐council governments. This evidence indicates that although progress has been made on demonstrating differences in representation and functionality, the proposition that council‐manager governments are better managed than mayor‐council governments has yet to be seriously engaged in this literature. Filling this critical gap requires progress in two areas: the development of theory to explain why council‐manager governments are better‐managed organizations and the production of evidence assessing the major propositions of this theory.     

Is Biggest Best? A Comparative Analysis of the Financial Viability of the Brisbane City Council

Structural reform through forced mergers has been a dominant feature of Australian local government for decades. Advocates of compulsory consolidation contend that larger municipalities perform better across a wide range of attributes, including financial sustainability. Although empirical scholars of local government have invested considerable effort into investigating these claims, no one has yet examined the performance of Brisbane City Council against other local authorities, despite the fact that it is by far the largest council in Australia. This paper seeks to remedy this neglect by comparing Brisbane with Sydney City Council, an average of six southeast Queensland councils and an average of 10 metropolitan New South Wales councils against four measures of financial performance over the period 2008–2011.     

Perceptions of council member–department head interactions in local government

In this article, we use data collected from municipal council members and department heads in Michigan municipalities with over 10 000 residents to determine how, and why, they view the quality of their interactions with one another. Building theories of small group dynamics and political control of bureaucracy, we test several hypotheses and conclude that council members and department heads hold divergent views of their interactions with one another and that their views are determined by government form and community characteristics. We conclude with simple steps that local government officials and administrators can take to improve their small group dynamics and governing performance. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Did Max Weber's Agony and Ecstasy Influence His Scholarship?

When exploring the intellectual history of a discipline, one cannot help but wonder about the “real” person behind the scholarship. To what extent do personal life experiences influence a scholar's theories, conceptualizations, and expectations? Max Weber, the German scholar whose intellectual curiosity was, at least partially, inspired by strong personal anxieties, became one of the most influential social scientists of the twentieth century. His own intellectual and personal obsessions, along with the efforts of his wife and colleagues to present his work to a larger audience, had much to do with who he was, as well as the body of scholarship that he created.