Socio-economic dynamics in slums and implications for sanitation sustainability in Kisumu,Kenya

Lack of sanitation facilities is a major challenge in slum areas, and this has implications on the health and well-being of residents. Sanitation in slums is complex due to slum living conditions, and a detailed understanding of dynamics in slums and how they impact sanitation is required. This study sought to understand the relationship between socio-economic dynamics, and sanitation provision and management in the slums of Kisumu, Kenya. The results indicate a mix of social, cultural, economic, tenancy, and relationship dynamics, all of which influence sanitation provision and management. The article calls for collaboration among various stakeholders and the use of local knowledge dissemination approaches.     

Violence in development: the logic of forced displacement on Colombia's Pacific coast

A progressive piece of legislation in 1993 granted collective land rights to Colombia's black communities living in the rural areas of the Pacific coast region. This measure aimed partly to support sustainable development strategies in the region through territorial empowering of local communities. Yet 14 years later, the escalation of the country's internal conflict into the Pacific region has created unprecedented levels of forced displacement among rural black communities. Once referred to as a ‘peace haven’, the Colombian Pacific coast is now characterised by new spaces of violence and terror, imposed by warring guerrilla and paramilitary groups, as well as the armed forces. This article examines the nature of the externally induced violence in the region and shows how specific economic interests, in particular in the African Palm sector, are colluding with illegal groups that are used to spread fear and terror among local residents, to make them comply with the requirements of these economic actors.     

Political decentralization and the strengthening of consensual,participatory local democracy in the Republic of Macedonia

This article examines whether decentralization in the Republic of Macedonia has contributed to widening effective political participation and strengthening democracy at the local level between 2005 and 2012. It begins by demonstrating the debate regarding political decentralization and its ability to mitigate ethnic conflict by facilitating the effective participation of national minorities in local institutions. An assessment of the largely consociational power-sharing mechanisms envisaged locally then determines whether decentralization has contributed to: improving the political representation of diverse groups in local decision-making processes; deepening local democracy by providing opportunities for residents to participate in local governance; and enhancing the transparency, accountability, and responsiveness of municipal governments. The opportunities Macedonian citizens have for participating directly in local decision-making processes are also evaluated. This article argues that whilst political decentralization has expanded the potential space available for citizens to participate in local governance, it has not guaranteed the participation of local communities, or that their participation is both equitable and effective. Advocates of decentralization have failed to sufficiently appreciate the extent to which the over-dominance of some political parties, which lack internal democracy, along with the pervasiveness of patronage-based politics, may undermine the reform's potential benefits.     

Left out but not backing down: exploring women’s voices against large-scale agro-plantations in Cameroon

This article examines the situation of women around agro-plantations which have taken over their farmlands in the South-West Region of Cameroon through large-scale land acquisitions, and how they have sought popular redress. Based on a survey and focus group discussion among affected women, the findings revealed that women are generally left out of large-scale land acquisition processes. They complained of displacement from their farms and traditional forest resources, which has negative effects on their livelihoods and lifestyles. Despite women’s constrained situation, they have risen collectively against marginalisation, failed promises, and injustices through protests and defiance, achieving some successes in their demands for recognition and compensation.     

Re-animating a radioactive landscape: informal life politics in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster

The earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident of 11 March 2011 posed massive and continuing social challenges to communities in the affected areas. People from wide areas around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant received vastly conflicting information about the levels of radiation released and about the likely health effects. They were left facing agonising decisions whether to remain and face possible (but uncertain) long-term health risks, or whether to move away, leaving behind homes, friends, jobs, schools and communities. Focusing on the case of the small farming community of Tōwa in Nihonmatsu City, this article examines self-help activities that have emerged in the affected areas in the wake of 3/11. The activities have included community monitoring of radiation levels and collaborative research with academic scientists to explore ways to reduce radioactive contamination in forests, farm soil and crops. The self-help activities of Tōwa residents can be seen as an example of “informal life politics” – that is, of the way in which grassroots groups respond to challenges to their livelihood or way of life by organising themselves and taking actions outside the sphere of formal governmental structures. It is argued here that the residents of Tōwa were able to respond rapidly to the challenges of the Fukushima disaster because they had already developed informal life politics practices in response to earlier challenges of local economic decline and depopulation. I also suggest that, in responding to the Fukushima disaster, the relationship between the people of Tōwa and their landscape has been profoundly changed, and that this change has implications not just for the community itself but also for the wider world.     

Is “good” resettlement policy unimplementable? Learning from advocacy in Cambodia

Accountability advocacy is an increasingly common approach to working with displaced communities. This article explores a resettlement scheme for an Asian Development Bank project in Cambodia in which advocacy interventions resulted in significant improvements in resettlement sites over the eight years of the project. Resettlement standards improved in some of the sites so much that they might now be called “islands of governance”, tightly ring-fenced from the otherwise limited support provided ordinarily to displaced or landless Cambodians. Given these extremes, the article considers whether “good” resettlement policy is implementable. It also argues that best practice resettlement principles, such as the requirement to minimise displacement – no matter how sensible or well-intended when designed at an international level – have the potential for negative unintended consequences in implementation. These impacts cannot necessarily be mitigated through formal monitoring, oversight, and technical assistance. Building on the knowledge already available, it identifies five considerations relevant to resettlement programmes as they continue to evolve.     

Assessing international aid for local governance in the Western Balkans

This article investigates the impact of international efforts to cultivate effective and authoritative local governing institutions in the Western Balkans, a prime testing ground for democratization aid to post-war states. It explores three hypotheses, each of which argues that a particular approach of international actors toward domestic officials best improves the quality of local governance. The study's gathering of interview and survey data from field-based actors enables it to evaluate local government reforms' impact on domestic communities. This investigation arrives at three findings. First, in the view of Western Balkan peoples, local governance reforms do not produce benefits when they are either imposed or ignored by international authorities. Secondly, reforms produce benefits for local communities when they are designed to meet domestic concerns. More specifically, reforms valued by local communities are designed in ways that respond to domestic, rather than international, concepts of good local governance that emphasize socioeconomic aspects and produce tangible benefits. Well designed reforms also include significant aid targeting local governance that is coupled with the promise of a larger political settlement that is attractive to powerful domestic elites and contingent on clearly articulated local governance reforms. Thirdly, such aid best characterises European Union efforts only in Macedonia.     

Civic Activism Continued Through Other Means: Terror-Violence in the South of Thailand

This article explores the relationship between civil society and terror-violence. It argues that terrorism should be understood as “civic activism continued through other means.” This allows us to distinguish it from state-terror. The article then explores the theme with data drawn from the political situation in the south of Thailand focusing on some recent events in which local Thai Malay-Muslims have protested against military presence. The paper also provides a brief history of the development of belligerent separatist groups in the area showing that they emerged after dissatisfaction with 20th century Thai civil-societal possibilities.     

Bargaining over local public good provision in nested social dilemmas: A comparative study of variation from South India

In rural India, decentralized government schemes and assembly constituency development programs represent major channels through which local public good provision is realized. This polycentric governance structure confronts local leaders with a distributional conflict, which is nested in a social dilemma situation. Based on a controlled case study approach, we investigate the provision of small-scale infrastructure in three South Indian communities. Apart from roads and drinking water facilities that directly appeal to the residents of a community, local leaders bargain over infrastructure contracts, which serve as patronage resources in interactions with politicians from higher government levels. A comparative game-theoretic analysis of the results suggests that coordination through political party identities has translated into alternative bargaining strategies and hence varying distributional outcomes regarding contracts and local public goods in the communities under review. The study concludes with recommendations for polycentric institutional design.     

Decentralisation and local governance in Mozambique: the challenges of promoting bottom-up dynamics from the top down

Since the conclusion of the peace accords in 1992, Mozambique has undergone several changes in the field of governance and institution-building. One key aspect of such reforms, strongly promoted by donors in peace-building contexts, has been the agenda of decentralisation and local governance, which has entailed political devolution in selected municipalities, and deconcentration and the creation of local councils in the rural districts. This article examines this agenda and its implementation focusing on two domains. First, it discusses the different interests that have shaped the political decisions taken on this agenda at the national level. Second, it examines the case of the local councils in the district of Angoche, critically debating the extent to which they epitomise the increase of local representativeness and, thus, whether or not they enhance bottom-up dynamics of governance. I argue that the limited effectiveness of such reforms in Mozambique reflect the inherent contradiction between the strong top-down dynamics that shape this process and the bottom-up effects that it aims to promote.     

Presence to Press: How Campaigns EarnLocal Media

Today’s campaigns have ample resources with which to influence the media, while plummeting revenue, readership, and reporting staffs make local newspapers more vulnerable than ever. This imbalance raises an important question: if a campaign invests more resources in an area, can it earn positive media coverage? In this article, I propose a strategic relationship between campaigns and local media. Newspapers offer campaigns credibility and exposure, while campaigns offer local newspapers easy-to-report stories that will appeal to their readers. Campaign messages are more impactful when communicated through the local press, so campaigns will try to influence local news coverage (when they have the resources to do so) by establishing a local presence. When newspapers are vulnerable, they should be more likely to accept campaign prompting and provide campaigns with positive earned media. I employ an original data set of newspaper content and campaign investment from the 2004 and 2008 elections. I utilize a within-state matched-pairs design of newspapers from the state of Florida and a detailed content analysis of stories from 21 randomly selected days from each election cycle. I find that regional campaign presence generates positive earned media, but only in smaller newspapers. This article contributes to the fields of campaign and media effects by demonstrating how campaigns’ calculated decisions influence the construction of local political news. It is the first study to describe the connection between the voter contact and campaigns’ earned local media strategy.     

Urban governance and service delivery in Nigeria

This article examines the inadequate delivery of social services by city governments in Nigeria. It identifies three problems: lack of transparency and accountability in governance; under-qualified staff and administration; and the tenuous relationship (an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ dichotomy) between the urban residents and local governments. It can no longer be argued that lack of funds is the key constraint.     

Nonviolent Interference in Civic Life During Civil War: Rebel Service Provision and Postwar Norms of Interpersonal Trustworthiness in Sri Lanka

While previous studies focus most of their attention on the impact of civil-war violence on postwar norms of interpersonal trustworthiness, they overlook the importance of political actors' nonviolent interference in civic life during such conflicts. This paper investigates the relationship between wartime provision of public services and postwar trustworthiness norms among civilians. Using original survey data collected from Sri Lanka, empirical analysis suggests that postwar norms of interpersonal trustworthiness tend to weaken if individuals experienced higher amounts of service provision by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. To build their own apparatus to provide efficient services, the rebels deeply intervened in and altered local institutions. Such transformation of local institutions dissolves existing social groups and associations that previously tied residents together. Efforts of post-civil-war community development would be ill equipped if these institutions were treated as nonexistent. Postwar development programs need to provide new, effective local institutions to replace those established in wartime.     

Is social change fundable? NGOs and theories and practices of social change

Northern NGOs have come under critical scrutiny since the 1990s, often with negative conclusions as organisations which had supported radical social change in the 1970s and 1980s have since turned themselves into a professionalised and bureaucratic aid sector. The article focuses on the Northern NGOs that purport to fund progressive social change and which encourage beneficiaries to question market and political power, and on the NGOs to which they channel funds in Latin America. After examining various types of critique, the article asks whether it is not only dangerous in practice to fund social change but also misguided in principle, or whether there remain ways to use resources to enhance the capacity of local change agents to make the choices that they deem appropriate. It concludes that much depends on the theory and practice of social change that underpin the resource transfer, particularly in relation to the transformation of power (as opposed to ‘empowerment’), to social activism, and to the robustness of efforts within NGOs to resist or modify bureaucratic imperatives from back-donors.     

The Sino-Mongolian Security Cooperation

The security situation in western China has been attracting the concern of neighboring countries.Transnational ethnic groups,Kazakhs and Mongolians,are located in western Mongolia and western China.Although Mongolia has not yet witnessed any acts of terrorism and even though the Mongolian-China border is peaceful,the two countries need to be alert to terrorist attacks,given the growing cross-border trade,direct exchanges between local governments,and communications between border residents.The two countries should therefore take note of the changes in the security situation when they cooperate with each other.     

试论十月革命前西伯利亚信用合作化运动

1861年农奴制改革后在西伯利亚地区出现了信用合作社，在十月革命前大约半个世纪时间里西伯利亚信用合作社得到很大的发展，出现了大量信用合作社联盟。西伯利亚合作社及其联盟为西伯利亚地区经济发展做出了一定贡献：为这里的居民提供了低利息贷款，为西伯利亚的农民提供农具等生产资料和日常生活用品，帮助居民销售商品。     

Sino-Mongolian Security Cooperation

The security situation in western China has been attracting the concern of neighboring countries. Transnational ethnic groups, Kazakhs and Mongolians, are located in western Mongolia and western China. Although Mongolia has not yet witnessed any acts of terrorism and even though the Mongolian-China border is peaceful, the two countries need to be alert to terrorist attacks, given the growing cross-border trade, direct exchanges between local governments, and communications between border residents. The two countries should therefore take note of the changes in the security situation when they cooperate with each other.     

On the Road to Affirmation: Facilitating Urban Resilience in the Americas

This article explores how international policy elites rationalise intervention by trying to go beyond the neoliberal critique of universalist knowledge and top-down governance. In the enabling neoliberal policy projects of the 2000s, international policymakers were banned from imposing substantive policy solutions from above, but were considered (uniquely) capable of putting in place the facilitating framework through which local actors could produce context sensitive policy responses. The reason is that, although neoliberal policy rejected simplistic universalist notions of the subject, market and the state, it continued to operate through a range of reductionist assumptions, concepts and categories, such as bounded rationality, the rational design of incentives and a core set of liberal normative aspirations. In contrast, the resilience discourse seems to be set on overcoming the remaining analytical reductionism of neo-liberal policy frameworks. What are the implications for international policy engagement in the Global South of this much more radical critique? How do international policymakers think about facilitating local agency if the knowledge premises which made them an agential self in international relations disappear? The paper investigates these questions with reference to the evolution of crime-related US security interventions in the Americas, recurring especially on the Merida Initiative.     

The German community in 19<Superscript>th</Superscript> century Hong Kong

This article examines the development of the German community in Hong Kong between the 1840s and the outbreak of the First World War. It pays particular attention to the question of how the Germans, as a minority group in the crown colony, attempted to strike a good balance between integration and segregation, cultural assimilation and dissimilation, national identity and marginalization. Through investigating their social life, missionary activities and economic activities in Hong Kong, it shows that they, on the one hand, cooperated closely with the British who were in charge of key political and economic affairs, and on the other hand worked with the local Chinese on different social stratums. Although the unification of Germany in 1870 strengthened the sense of nationhood among German people in Hong Kong, they strove to strengthen the German cultural and economic network that already existed in and around the colony, without sacrificing their business and social interests which were interwoven with those of the British and the local Chinese. It is this strategy that enabled them to survive in Hong Kong until 1914.