An integrated Toolkit for institutional development

An integrated Toolkit for institutional development is presented. It is intended to be used by the non-profits themselves to address current shortcomings in the field of institutional development of non-profit organizations, including: inadequate measures of institutional capacity, difficulty diagnosing priority areas within an organization for improvement; lack of simple mechanisms to improve understanding by non-profit staff of the interrelated components of their organization; and inadequate mechanisms to compare institutional development across organizations. The Toolkit emphasizes participation, use of management systems, and the independence of the organization. The Toolkit provides both an analytic (table) and visual (graphic) presentation of results. The system is now fully automated. Utilization of the Toolkit can address many of the shortcomings listed above as well as help provide a useful way to develop consensus and unite energies among the board, staff, beneficiaries, and donors.     

Institutional development in World Bank projects: Analytical approaches and intervention designs

This article examines a random sample of World Bank projects in order to identify the methods of institutional analysis (IA) and resulting institutional development (ID) strategies employed. The findings confirm impressionistic data which indicate that IA in World Bank projects is highly standardized, and concentrates on factors internal to the organization at the expense of external environmental factors, particularly as these are reflected in the needs of stakeholders and customers. ID is an integral part of most Bank projects, and the trend is shown to be towards increasing attention to ID. The nature of ID in World Bank projects reflects the inward orientation of IA, with strong emphasis given to training and development as a standard solution. It is concluded that IA and ID which are broader in scope will improve project design and impact.     

Sustainable development goals and media framing: an analysis of road safety governance in Bangladeshi newspapers

Policy Sciences - This paper seeks to explore how Bangladeshi newspapers frame road safety governance. It investigates the prevalence of five news frames—responsibility, conflict, human...     

Sustainable local democracy

To identify what is needed to sustain local democracy we need a model of democratic government and an idea of the kind of social and economic context that is supportive of democracy. Local democracy requires a combination of a liberal democratic model of local government and the prerequisites of democratic stability: economic development, equality, political culture and the development of civil society. However, a number of factors, non-local as well as local, may undermine local government and local democracy, especially centralization, economic decisions, external conflicts, dependency on civil servants, the dilution of elected representation, formalistic participation, skewed representation, class conflict and official attitudes. However, democratic local government can contribute to economic development, the reduction of inequality, a democratic political culture and the development of civil society, thereby strengthening local democracy.     

论实现政府决策的“可持续”

政府决策反映政府的执政水平和能力,搞好政府决策意义重大.政府决策的"可持续"适应市场经济深入发展和建立高效政府的客观要求,具有提高政府决策权威、防止主观臆断、降低政府成本、树立良好工作作风等积极的现实意义.实现政府决策的"可持续"就是要建立和健全情报系统、决断系统、监督系统,完善决策机制和环境,保证政府决策的科学化、民主化、规范化.     

The planning and management of integrated rural development in Drylands: Early lessons from Kenya's arid and semi-arid lands programmes

In Kenya a new generation of area-based, multisectoral rural development programmes has been started, targetted on the country's extensive arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL). By mid 1983, six such programmes were operational, each supported by a foreign donor and implemented by the Government of Kenya. Six years after the detailed planning of the first programme began, the record looks patchy. District level planning and co-ordination hold promise, and some programme activities are going well. However, problems of slow and cumbersome planning and mobilization, a lack of community involvement in planning, too few technical successes, and remote prospects for institutionalizing the programmes if and when expatriate support is withdrawn are apparent. Behind these problems lie a number of basic obstacles, including the structure and orientation of the government's lack of support for the drylands among politicians, and the technical difficulties of raising dryland production. Faced with these obstacles, the ASAL programmes look set to run into continuing problems. Overcoming them will depend on both the success of recent government moves to deconcentrate, and patient support from both the government and the donors. Historically the prospects for such support are poor.     

浅谈农业可持续发展问题

一、农业可持续发展是可持续发展战略的重要内容1 农业可持续发展的概念和实质“农业可持续发展”这一概念是从可持续发展概念中引伸出来的 ,目前比较一致的理解是 :农业可持续发展是一种建立在生态、经济、社会效益基础上的农业发展模式。它运用现代农业科学技术改造低效益的传统农业 ,建立高投入、高效益、高品质的现代化农业体系 ,满足国民经济和社会发展对农产品日益增长的需求 ;科学合理、综合有效地利用农村社会、经济和自然资源 ,提高资源的利用效率 ,促进资源再生产的良性循环 ;结合自然资源条件 ,通过生物多样化 ,创建和谐的生态系…     

Characteristics of individuals with integrated pensions

Employer pensions that integrate benefits with Social Security have been the focus of relatively little research. Since changes in Social Security benefit levels and other program characteristics can affect the benefit levels and other features of integrated pension plans, it is important to know who is covered by these plans. This article examines the characteristics of workers covered by integrated pension plans, compared to those with nonintegrated plans and those with no pension coverage. Integrated pension plans are those that explicitly adjust their benefit structure to help compensate for the employer's contributions to the Social Security program. There are two basic integration methods used by defined benefit (DB) plans. The offset method causes a reduction in employer pension benefits by up to half of the Social Security retirement benefit; the excess rate method is characterized by an accrual rate that is lower for earnings below the Social Security taxable maximum than above it. Defined contribution (DC) pension plans can be integrated along the lines of the excess rate method. To date, research on integrated pensions has focused on plan characteristics, as reported to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) through its Employee Benefits Survey (EBS). This research has examined the prevalence of integration among full-time, private sector workers by industry, firm size, and broad occupational categories. However, because the EBS provides virtually no data on worker characteristics, analyses of the effects of pension integration on retirement benefits have used hypothetical workers, varying according to assumed levels of earnings and job tenure. This kind of analysis is not particularly helpful in examining the potential effects of changes in the Social Security program on workers' pension benefits. However, data on pension integration at the individual level are available, most recently from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally representative survey of individuals aged 51-61 in 1992. This dataset provides the basis for the analysis presented here. The following are some of the major findings from this analysis. The incidence of pension integration in the HRS sample is 32 percent of all workers with a pension (14 percent of all workers). The HRS can also identify integrated DC plans, a statistic that is not available from BLS data. The rate of integration for workers with only DC plans is 8 percent. After controlling for other variables, several socio-demographic characteristics are significantly related to the incidence of integration. The probability of having an integrated pension is 4.6 percentage points less for men compared to women. Non-Hispanic blacks are 6.4 percentage points less likely than non-Hispanic whites to have integrated pensions. Union members are 14 percentage points less likely to have integrated pensions, while workers with less than a graduate level education are at least 15 percentage points more likely to have a pension that is integrated. Some earnings and pension characteristics are also significantly correlated with pension integration. Earnings are positively related, with the probability of having an integrated pension increasing by 2 percentage points for an increase of $1,000 in annual pay. An even larger effect comes from earning at or above the Social Security taxable maximum. Workers at or above this income level are 10 percentage points more likely to have an integrated plan, but for those with more than one plan the probability of pension integration goes up by 13 percentage points.     

环境正义与可持续性公共治理

环境正义在本质上是关于环境利益与环境责任的公平分配问题。它在种际、国际、代际以及区域间、群体间表现为不同的形态。环境正义事关人与自然的和谐、事关社会秩序的稳定、事关人类的永续发展。可持续性公共治理是区别于运动式治理的一种新的公共管理典范。通过可持续性公共治理来实现和维护环境正义,人类中心主义思想的超越、多元环境治理主体的整合、环境利益的分配与协调、环境责任的划分与追究、环境信息的公开与共享、环境决策的开放与规范、环境事务的参与和监督、环境政策的伦理审查等十分重要。     

实现经济可持续发展的思考

胡锦涛总书记强调,坚持以人为本,全面、协调、可持续的发展观,是我们以邓小平理论和“三个代表”重要思想为指导,从新世纪新阶段党和国家事业发展全局出发提出的重大战略思想,也是发展中国特色社会主义必须坚持和贯彻的重大战略思想。其中全面发展,就是以经济建设为中心,全面推进经济、政治、文化建设,实现经济发展和社会全面进步。协调发展,就是要统筹城乡发展、统筹区域发展、统筹经济社会发展、统筹人与自然和谐发展、统筹国内发展和对外开放,推进生产力和生产关系、经济基础和上层建筑相协调,推进经济、政治、文化建设的各个环节、各个方面相协调。可持续发展,就是要促进人与自然的和谐,实现经济发展和人口、资源、环境相协调‘;坚持走生产发展、生活富裕、生态良好的文明发展道路,保证一代接一代地永续发展。     

论社会稳定的“可持续发展“

保持社会稳定是我们长远的目标,是改革和发展的基本前提,是国家政权稳固、民族强盛、社会和谐的重要标志,是人民生活殷实的现实表现.实现社会稳定可持续发展有一个庞大的内容系统和条件系统,必须以保证经济可持续发展为根本,以建设和谐社会为目标,以整合社会资源力量为手段,以构筑社会安全网为条件,以建立公正合理的分配结构和利益调节机制为措施.     

Market-oriented approaches to capacity building in Africa

Following a brief review of recent criticism of technical cooperation as an instrument for capacity building in sub-Saharan Africa, this article examines current strategies for addressing the professional staff retention problem within African governments, and for making the market for technical cooperation more effective by allowing greater substitution of national experts for expatriate experts in project design and implementation. In order to strengthen and effectively use scarce local expertise, while avoiding its diversion to donor-financed projects, the article proposes capacity-building strategies aimed at the development of national or regional markets for development analysis and management expertise in sub-Saharan Africa.     

New approaches to Central American organised crime

The adoption of new security policies integrating civilian and military approaches to tackle transnational criminal groups is symptomatic of the limitations of local police forces, as well as the drawbacks of relying too heavily on military interventions.