Worker ownership,participation and control: Toward a theoretical model

The administration of the employee-owned or worker cooperative firm must provide for two conceptually separable functions: organizational governance and the management of work. Three theoretical models tend to shape the thinking of those who design the organization: authoritarian, bargaining, and town meeting or community democracy.We review the experience of self-management in Yugoslavia, the Israeli kibbutzim, Mondragon cooperative system, and employee ownership in the United States. We conclude that the model best designed to favor the growth of employee ownership in the United States will be one that combines certain features of all three theoretical models noted above.     

Women in the driving seat: Eastern European immigrant women's citizenship,participation and educational inclusion in Portugal

This paper is a case study of Eastern European immigrant women's social inclusion in Portugal through civic participation. An analysis of interviews conducted with women leaders and members of two ethnic associations provides a unique insight into their migrant pathways as highly educated women and the ways in which these women are constructing their citizenship in new contexts in Northern Portugal. These women's accounts of their immigrant experience embrace both the public realm, in using their own education and their children's as a means of integration but also spill over into ‘non-public’ familial relationships at home in contradictory ways. These include the sometimes traditional, gender-defined division of labour within the associations and at home and the new ways that they negotiate their relative autonomies to escape forms of violence and subordination that they face as women and immigrants.     

Irregular migration and democracy: the case for inclusion

This article examines the democratic status of irregular immigrants from the vantage point of different models of democratic inclusion. The argument developed is that irregular immigrants are in fact members of the democratic state by virtue of being subjected to the legally binding norms in the territory of the state. The extension of the vote and other political rights to irregular immigrants nevertheless remains problematic due to their ‘illegal’ status. Because this status follows from the restrictive border policies implemented by most contemporary states, it shows that the ideal of democratic inclusion is scarcely reconcilable with a policy of restrictive cross-border movement. The conclusion defended in the article is that the interest in keeping borders restricted reduces the prospects for democratic inclusion in contemporary states.     

The quest for inclusion and citizenship in Ghana: challenges and prospects

Ghana's tortuous journey to democracy received a major boost in the year 2006 with the enactments of two human-rights-related pieces of legislation. In this article the author contends, on the one hand, that the recent enactments of an amendment to the law on representation of the people and the persons with disability law in Ghana constituted a noteworthy landmark in the search for inclusive citizenship. On the other hand, the relation between society and the political authority during the processes of the enactments highlighted characteristics of a post-colonial African state. The author explores the antagonisms that surrounded the enactments of these laws. The article concludes that although the Ghanaian experience represents a new wave of re-thinking of rights in Africa, it also underscores the deep-seated issues of contestation and negotiations that unavoidably accompany the expansion of democracy and extension of rights to the excluded and the marginalized.     

Community participation and local government capacity in Vietnam: Conditions for coproduction

With Public Administration Reform in Vietnam comes more local government responsibility for policy making. Building on the results of a multiple case study research on housing and infrastructure upgrading projects in four cities of Vietnam, it has been confirmed that the community participation and local government capacity in urban housing and infrastructure upgrading projects are positively related. The level of community participation in urban housing and infrastructure upgrading projects is influenced by local government capacity, and in turn, it has effects on the outcomes. There are some important aspects for the enhancement of the level of community participation. These are effective leadership, the financial resources aspect, and communication/information exchange. Moreover, based on the patterns of community participation in urban upgrading projects, it has been found that participation is strongly supported by government actors in these four cases, and a process of coproduction between the local government and the affected communities has taken place.     

Pension sponsorship and participation: trends and policy issues

Employment sector and employer size account for substantial variation in workers' participation in employer-sponsored retirement plans. Other things being equal, employees in the public sector--that is, federal, state, and local governments--are much more likely to be offered a retirement plan than workers in the private sector. Within the private sector, workers in firms with 100 or more employees are significantly more likely than workers in smaller firms to have the opportunity to participate in a retirement plan. This situation has prompted Congress to seek ways of reducing small businesses' obstacles to pension coverage. For example, Congress has authorized retirement plans that have fewer reporting requirements and less stringent contribution rules than those imposed on larger employers. Evaluating the effect of these laws on pension coverage is complicated by the many other variables that affect an employer's decision to sponsor a retirement plan and a worker's decision to participate in it. Nevertheless, data collected in national surveys of employers and households can be used to establish a baseline against which future changes in retirement plan sponsorship and participation can be measured. Recent surveys of employers and households reveal that: During the 1990s, participation in retirement plans rose among workers in firms with fewer than 100 employees but remained steady among workers in larger firms. The 1990s saw a substantial shift from defined benefit retirement plans to defined contribution plans. Despite increases in participation, workers in firms with fewer than 100 employees are only about half as likely as those in larger firms to participate in an employer-sponsored retirement plan. In both the public and private sectors, part-year or part-time workers are much less likely than year-round, full-time workers to be offered an opportunity to participate in an employer-sponsored retirement plan.     

Managing dissonance: Bureaucratic justice and public procurement

This article puts forward an analytical framework for understanding administrative justice. It does so by reading a leading approach, Jerry Mashaw's administrative justice models, in conjunction with the pragmatic sociology of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, and their orders of worth framework. This provides an enhanced framework, which, while remaining consistent with Mashaw, offers additional insights and is particularly suitable for analyzing decisionmaking environments in the modern contracting state. The article illustrates the workings of the new framework by looking at a controversy under UK and EU law concerning the inclusion of labor objectives in public procurement. The discussion reveals a decisionmaking environment characterized by system dissonance. Actors must navigate different sets of tensions and tradeoffs between competing normative and ethical visions for procurement decisionmaking.     

Managing the NATO alliance: Congress and burdensharing

The Congress has been an active partner in the transatlantic alliance from the negotiation of the North Atlantic Treaty to the present day. Congressional perpectives have been substantially influenced by the desire to limit the U.S. share of the NATO burden. In recent years, U.S.—European differences over East—West relations, Third World security requirements, and other issues have intensified the burdensharng debate. Now some members of Congress are once again using the threat of unilateral U.S. troop withdrawals from Europe—the main source of congressional influence on the alliance—to pressure the Europeans to increase their defense efforts. Whether the recent focus on burdensharing will recede or grow in the next few years will depend on how the administration and the allies respond to the congressional pressure. In any case, Congress is likely to continue to insist on its due share of management rights in the NATO relationship.     

Managing Pluralism: The European Case

This article begins by clarifying the meanings attributed to pluralism; it then places the European case in a global context. The body of the article looks at the management of religious pluralism in Europe in terms of commonality and difference. At one and the same time, Europe is becoming increasingly secular and religiously plural—both trends are important if we are to understand the issues at stake. A close examination of four individual cases (Britain, France, the Netherlands and Greece) reveals, however, that it is important not to jump to conclusions regarding outcomes. Each country must be considered on its own terms. The final section introduces a rather different feature: the European Court of Human Rights, noting its place in the management of religious pluralism. A growing jurisprudence emanating from the Court is becoming increasingly influential.     

Managing development policy in Botswana: Implementing reforms for rapid change

In recent years, Botswana's international reputation as a nation with sound development management has been slightly tarnished and the country's government has become increasingly concerned about the declining performance of its development management machinery. This concern of the government has been translated into a series of reform measures designed to bring about rapid change. This article discusses and analyses those reform measures and their potential impact on the development management process in Botswana. It was determined that the reform measures were, for the most part, carefully crafted and are being purposefully implemented, showing the nation, once again, to be one with good governance.     

Political participation and procedural utility: An empirical study

Abstract.  Democracy can be characterized by policy outcomes as well as governmental processes. In this article, it is argued that people have preferences about both aspects and that they derive utility from the processes involved in decision making over and above the utility gained from outcomes. The authors study political participation possibilities as an important source of procedural utility. To distinguish between outcome and process utility, they take advantage of the fact that nationals can participate in political decision making, while foreigners are excluded and thus cannot enjoy the respective procedural utility. Utility is assumed to be measurable by individually reported subjective well-being. As an additional indicator for procedural utility, reported belief in political influence is analyzed.