Digital Communication between Local Authorities and Citizens in Denmark

Today options for digital communication exist in all Danish municipalities. But are local councils aware of the democratic potentials of the new forms of political communication? This article focuses on the democratic dimensions of web design. To what extent do the websites improve access to information on public affairs and stimulate participation of citizens in local politics? To answer these questions, a screening of all 275 Danish municipal websites was carried out on two dimensions: information/transparency and contact/dialogue. The findings show great variation between best and worst practice in terms of democracy. Furthermore, the findings show that size and income per inhabitant explain some of the variation, whereas the political colour of the party in office has no significance.     

The Financial Crisis of the Local Authorities in Israel: A Resource-Based Analysis

The financial crisis affecting many of the local authorities in Israel has a significant influence on their ability to supply municipal services of an appropriate amount and quality. So far, studies have been addressed to the financial crisis from a political approach by discussing aspects such as the problematic interrelation between central and local governments together with resource allocation. In this paper we investigate the financial crisis of many local authorities in Israel from a strategic point of view. However, this is by no means to argue that other approaches such as institutional and political ones are not important. Rather, the paper investigates whether the financial crisis affecting many Israeli local authorities is a result of their own strategies and practices.
Specifically, we have used the resource-based approach to explore the nature of their joint crises and the potential strategic responses that the local authorities should adopt in order to move into a more favourable state. In particular, we examine three resource-based systems: customer-oriented, organizational culture, and human resources, as the strategic roots of this crisis. We also examine the way they could produce a sustainable competitive advantage and could lead local authorities from the present position to a better one. The article recommends that the heads of local authorities should move to a resource-based strategy in order to perform both more efficiently and effectively.     

Production Efficiency and Beyond: Local Determinants in Russian Privatisation

This article analyses factors influencing rural households’ decisions to remain in collectives or separate from them during Russia’s post-socialist privatisation period in the 1990s. It argues that although decisions to remain in or separate from a collective were influenced by a number of factors, the dominant one was the households’ abilities to cope with independent production. These abilities were predetermined by the extent to which production was intensified in each collective. In Siberia less labour and capital intensive husbandry based on native herding that is well - adapted to the local environment, offered better chances of establishing viable economies, and thus greater incentives to split from a collective.     

Fiscal Distress in Local Authorities in Israel: the Convened Committee as a Method and a Solution

This study addresses fiscal distress in local authorities in Israel and around the world, and provides an in-depth analysis of the city of Bnei Brak from 1994 to 2003. When the city of Bnei Brak grappled unsuccessfully with fiscal distress, the Ministry of the Interior appointed a Convened Committee (CC; Va'adah Kruah) to handle the crisis. This study explores the methods and solution used by the government to extricate the authority from bankruptcy, while examining the sources and repercussions of this decision. The findings show that the CC solution was borne of necessity, due to the gravity of the financial crisis and the fact that the government had no other way of bailing out the city. However, the situation in Bnei Brak did not improve even after the CC was appointed, which challenges the very efficacy of the solution. This forms the basis for a discussion of the complexities of resolving the fiscal distress of localities in Israel.     

Young Married Women in the Russian Countryside: Women's Networks,Communication and Power

This essay explores the experiences of recently married young women living in rural Russia in the village of Karsun in the Ul’yanovsk Oblast’. It analyses the connections between women in rural communities looking at social networks and the power relations inherent within them. The ways in which forms of power among and between women (as well as between women and men) impact on young women's agency are critically appraised through an analysis of what this essay terms forms of ‘women's power’. The essay also shows how women's discussions of their experiences reflect the problems that the perceived physical and emotional absences of men present for younger married women and their attempts to develop forms of autonomy.     

Resources,Rights and Communities: Extractive Mega-Projects and Local People in the Russian Arctic

Industry in the twenty-first century advances to ever-remoter regions, seen as ‘periphery’ from the point of view of headquarters and capital cities, while for local people these areas are the core of their world. This article investigates the encounter between communities, regulatory authorities and industry in the Russian Arctic. Using cases from Sakha (Yakutiya), we analyse how communities organise for coexistence of traditional livelihoods with big industrial projects in what we call state-led resource development. Our analysis shows the surprising room for agency that development agendas in a centralised state nonetheless leave for local people so far.     

The Role of Organisational Culture in the Merger of English Local Authorities into a Single Unitary Authority

Cornwall Council is a new ‘unitary’ local authority which was created following the merger of six district councils and one county council on 1 April 2009. A questionnaire survey based on specific ‘dimensions’ of organisational culture was circulated to staff prior to the merger date. Overall, the results indicated a generally congruent culture characterised by a strong team spirit and commitment to the workplace. A number of differences were observed between the cultural orientations of the seven councils, but there was only weak evidence of differences between tiers of management or professional groupings. The study suggests that the new organisation will have to find ways of ‘unfreezing’ staff from their established ways of thinking and working before changes can be properly embedded. It is recommended that the organisational change process shifts from a top-down ‘planned’ approach to a more ‘emergent’ approach to facilitate learning and organisational development.     

Making Citizen Participation Work: The Challenging Search for New Forms of Local Democracy in The Netherlands

Governance theory shows that governments no longer operate as actors that take unilateral decisions but instead have to share power and influence with various other actors. There is also a large body of literature that shows a growing discontent with (local) democracy. These two trends lead various local governments to either reaffirm representative democracy, or to introduce elements of direct participatory democracy. In practice the combination of the two – representative and direct participatory democracy – can be problematic. This paper describes the experiences of Hoogeveen, a medium-sized municipality in the Netherlands with a far-reaching programme of direct participatory democracy. In Hoogeveen, local residents can decide on yearly budgets for their neighbourhood and become involved in the long-term planning of its development. The Hoogeveen case shows that direct participatory and representative democracy can be balanced with the help of (1) connecting arrangements, (2) professional connectors and (3) steady political support.     

Language Policy in the Ukrainian Media: Authorities,Producers and Consumers

This article deals with language policy in one crucial domain, the media. It treats language policy as the interaction between actions or inactions of the authorities, producers and consumers contributing to change or continuity of existing practices. It is argued that the main long-term contribution of all three actors, despite some notable changes, is the maintenance of the status quo characterised by the coexistence of Ukrainian and Russian with the predominance of the latter language. In particular, consumers mostly maintained their accustomed language preferences, although they did not resort to any protest actions when those preferences were disregarded.     

Contemporary Russian nationalisms: the state,nationalist movements,and the shared space in between

For several years, various nationalist groups and the Russian state have been competing over nationalism as a political concept and for popular support to nationalist claims. This paper analyzes the relationship between the state and anti-government, ethnocentric nationalistic groups that gather annually in an event called “the Russian March.” Emphasis is on the change in that relationship that happened in 2014, when the state added efforts to channel and mobilize the nationalists to its previous repressive and controlling measures. The article conceptualizes the competition over the nationalist argument in contemporary Russia as a case of dissentful and consentful contention in hybrid regimes, and shows how the dissentful nationalists have been forced to make way for the more consentful ones. Until recently, the room for maneuver for the radical nationalists was relatively wide. The events in Ukraine, however, divided the nationalists, and since 2014 radical nationalists have faced increased state repression. At the same time, pro-government nationalist actors have strengthened, and new players have appeared in the field. These developments tell us not only about the Kremlin’s diminished tolerance for dissentful contention, but also about the importance of the nationalist argument in Russian politics today.     

The Role of Land Certification in Reducing Gaps in Productivity between Male- and Female-Owned Farms in Rural Ethiopia

This paper analyses the impact of a low-cost land certification programme on the productivity of female-headed households. The hypotheses tested in the paper emphasise on the interaction between the constraints that female-headed households face in terms of insecure land tenure, lack of productive resources and suboptimal land market participation, on the one hand, and the tenure security benefits of certification on the other. Our findings show that land certification has a positive effect on land market participation and productivity. Our analysis also suggests higher marginal effects of certification on female-headed households’ productivity, compared to the male ones.     

Local Fiscal Stress in California: Out of Local Control and Driving Toward Growth

Abstract

Many regions of the United States have experienced rapid growth in recent decades with California being the best example of this growth. The dangers of such growth have been evident since the 1970s and yet, neither the state nor local governments have been very successful in implementing growth control policies. Why it is that government has been unable to rein in the growth has been the focus of much research in recent decades. There are essentially two schools of thought with regard to this question. One is that pro‐growth forces—essentially landowners, business elites, and elected officials—actively promote growth because it provides them personally with benefits. The other view, advocated most by Paul Peterson back in the early 1980s, is that elected officials do support and adopt pro‐growth policies, but not by choice. Cities, Peterson argued, are constrained by the economic situation around them and they must do what they can to raise revenues and reduce, or hold steady, expenditures. This research examines a region of southern California that has experienced tremendous growth despite the fact that surveys of resident attitudes within the region indicates that in general, residents favor growth control. This research contributes to an understanding of the driving forces behind the pro‐growth policies of local governments by considering how fiscal constraints placed on local governments by the state may limit the policy options of local elected officials, as Peterson predicted. This study finds that there is evidence to indicate that the revenue‐raising options available to cities may be contributing to pro‐growth policies. And this could help explain why elected officials continue to support growth within their cities despite the fact that residents express negative views toward growth.     

Bridging the gap between town and gown: Local government expertise and the role of the university

This paper challenges the claim of the public administration community that universities are playing an important role in transferring public sector technology to local governments. We provide data from the Lower Mississippi Delta to show that graduate programs in public management and planning are not filling the severe expertise gap facing nonrnetropolitan counties and municipalities. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations on how universities can better fulfill their promise of technology transfer.     

Public Administrative Science in Germany: Problems and Prospects of a Composite Discipline

German administrative science is composed of different disciplines which combine to form a multi- rather than an interdisciplinary science. Its roots can be traced back to the integrated policy-science ( Policey-Wissenschaft ) of the eighteenth century, which went through a process of differentiation during the nineteenth century. In German universities today, teaching and research is divided into different departments, a main problem being the disproportionate nature of this multidisciplinary structure. In German administrative science, a legalistic approach still predominates, although, in the 1960s and 1970s, political scientists played an important role in empirical research and theoretical discussions. Looking ahead, however, there is now an excellent chance that with the rise of the governance approach this asymmetric multidisciplinarity can be turned into a more balanced administrative science, even if it will remain a composite discipline.