Organising Strategic Spatial Planning: Experiences from Italian Cities

Strategic urban and regional planning, which emerged in Europe in the 1980s, has become an instrument to establish sustainable development of previously successful industrial areas today affected by the crisis caused mostly by the globalisation of the 1990s. Strategic urban planning concerns organisational land use which in turn regulates resource protection, sustainable development, regeneration and infrastructural investments and multilevel governance. Careful planning is imperative to reach goals such as enhancing local competitiveness and life quality. These dimensions represent the two focal points of the majority of city planning strategies. Their implementation depends not only on planning effectiveness, but also on the organisation and the management of the implementation process by the planning agency or the equivalent local promoter. This paper looks at the experience of Italian cities, in order to derive implications for theory and for future planning processes. More specifically, it analyses the extent to which Italian cities follow similar or divergent paths at the stage of the design process; the Italian case study is then compared with the guidelines proposed by the planning literature and with other European cities.     

Closing the Massachusetts public training schools

One successful effort at policy termination—the closing of the Massachusetts public training schools—is examined. The analysis includes: how the tactics of survival which maintain most governmental organizations and most public policies were neutralized; how the barriers to implementation of the termination policy were overcome; how the new replacement policy—the privately operated, community-based, group-homes policy—was consolidated; and a preliminary evaluation of the termination tactics and the new policy.I am most grateful to all the people who were willing to be interviewed for this study. Many current and former employees of the Department of Youth Services and many observers inside and outside of the Massachusetts state government were very generous with their time. All quotations in this paper for which no reference is given come from these interviews. A longer, more detailed version of this study has been published as a Working Paper by the Institute of Policy Sciences and Public Affairs, Duke University.     

Political Conflict over Time

We study a model of electoral competition in which politicians must decide whether to initiate the provision of some public good and, afterward, how much of the public good to supply. The model illuminates how a project's implementation affects elections and, conversely, how electoral considerations influence decisions about implementation. Under well-defined conditions, politicians will either implement projects that they do not like or delay projects that, absent electoral concerns, they would support. The model further reveals how the perceived benefits of holding office can impede the production of public goods about which there is broad consensus. And depending on facts about the program's structure and the electoral landscape, a policy's implementation can either mitigate or exacerbate political conflict.     

Contested Urbanism: Struggles about Representations

Iconic architecture plays a crucial role in cities' interurban competition. This is also the case with Copenhagen which has used iconic architecture as part of its boosterism to gain investment, to increase tourism and to attract the creative class. This battle over the symbolic representation of city dynamism, architectural identity and market competitiveness is expressed in discourses and visual signs in space—be it cyberspace, on location, in newspapers or debates. The articulation of representations and meaning can produce conflicts which show the voids, ruptures, and rational generatives at play. This article will exemplify how actors' use of a specific spatial dispositif of visibility and legibility may be intertwined with particular discourses on community, architectural heritage and identity of place. Two cases are chosen, the first concerns resistance towards high-rise buildings and the second concerns a current debate about the development of a ‘metropol-zone’. Both cases concern Copenhagen. The signifying dispositifs (content, argument, rationality) in each case will be identified and the paper will emphasise how certain dispositifs of the visible and the arguable become strategically intertwined through symbolic, visual and virtual representations of the wrongs of current urban planning.     

A complete general theory of planning is impossible

The essay defines the domain of planning theory and proposes two criteria—brevity and neutrality — for a prime table displaying the basic propositions of a complete general theory. I argue—on sociological rather than on formal epistemological grounds—that these two criteria cannot be met simultaneously. Even the most aggressive development of the policy sciences is not likely, therefore, to culminate in a complete general theory of planning.     

A tale of two policies: The politics of climate forecasting and drought relief in Ceará, Brazil

This paper evaluates the use of climate-based information in drought mitigation in Ceará, Northeast Brazil. It examines two policies – a seed-distribution program (Hora de Plantar) and the Emergency Drought-Relief Program – that use climate information produced by FUNCEME (Cearás Foundation for Meteorological and Hydrological Resources) to implement drought planning. It argues that, in politically charged policy-making environments, the use of climate forecast information may go beyond its problem-solving function to influence broader issues of accountability and democratization. In Cearás politically charged environment, technocrats rely on scientific information about climate to insulate policy-making from both political meddling and public accountability. However, insulation afforded by the use of climate information has played different roles in the policy areas examined in this study. While in drought emergency-relief planning the use of climate information critically contributed to the democratization of policy implementation, in agricultural planning, it worked towards further insulating decision-making from public accountability and client participation. Thus, the use of climate information is context-dependent, that is, the distribution of costs and benefits associated with information use in policymaking depends on the social, political, and cultural context in which information producers and users work. Moreover, climate information can be used in ways – positive or negative – significantly different from the use that information producers intended.     

Institutional features of congressional decisions: The fight to prohibit smoking on airlines

A pervasive theme of the congressional politics literature is that the committee system is fundamental in determining the policy status quo. Such an assertion hinges crucially upon committees controlling their jurisdictions; congressional delegation is undermined if a committee can assert authority over any issue domain at any time. Yet, representatives may possess an incentive to support a policy proposal that would change the status quo, even if it entails disregarding procedures. Indeed, standard conceptualizations of how members of Congress make their voting choices assume that only the benefits and costs associated with a policy matter, and they do not consider institutional factors such as whether a bill emerged from the correct committee.This analysis examines whether representatives will sacrifice policy interests to preserve institutional features of the legislature. The effort in 1987 to curb smoking on airplanes — which became embroiled in a difficult-to-resolve jurisdictional dispute — serves as a vehicle to analyze how sensitive members are to such features. The results demonstrate that a sizable number put aside their [generally moderate] policy preferences and voted against limits on smoking for institutional reasons. These findings have important implications both for specifying the determinants of policy change and for understanding institutional stability.     

Dynamic latent trait models: An application to Latin American banking crises

Dynamic latent trait models combine information from a variety of manifest variables, possibly measured on different scales, that are presumed to be indicators of an unobserved latent phenomenon, while allowing appropriate consideration of the longitudinal character of time series. I use a Bayesian dynamic latent trait model of banking sector financial accounts measured at the country/quarter level to build an indicator of banking system robustness in Latin America. As a methodological innovation, I extend dynamic latent trait models to take into account country-specific effects of bank regulatory regimes through hierarchical modeling of factor loadings. I suggest how these models can be applied to other types of phenomena—for example to combine existing political regime indicators to build a more informative measure of democracy.     

Campaigning and split-ticket voting in new electoral systems: the first MMP elections in New Zealand, Scotland and Wales

New electoral systems create learning problems for parties and electors: the parties have to learn how to focus their campaigns and the electors how best to use their votes. This was the case in three countries in the late 1990s where MMP was used for the first time rather than first-past-the-post: New Zealand in 1996 and Scotland and Wales in 1999. MMP involves each elector voting twice — for a candidate in a single-member constituency contest and for a party in a regional/national list contest. Survey and (in New Zealand) official data show that substantial proportions of the three electorates voted a split ticket — the candidate they supported was from a different party to that they voted for in the list contest. (Approximately one-in-five did this in Scotland and Wales and two-in-five in New Zealand.) We argue that split-ticket voting will be influenced by the amount of information received by electors regarding the candidates for the constituency seats. Using the amount of campaign expenditure by each candidate as a measure of the volume of information provided, we find strong supporting evidence for this responsive voter model in each of the three countries.     

Factors influencing state progress in the implementation of Public Law 99-457, Part H

Policy implementation has been an infrequently studied process although it has become increasingly evident that the implementation processes of policy development, policy approval, and policy application can shape and delay prospective implementation of legislation. The current study analyzes the implementation of P.L. 99–457 (Part H) the Education for the Handicapped Amendments of 1986. This law provides the states with planning money from the federal government to design a comprehensive interagency, multidisciplinary program of services for children with handicapping conditions and their families. Ratings were taken from key administrators and citizens knowledgeable about the law on state progress in implementing the fourteen requirements of the law and also on proposed influential conditions that might affect that implementation. Additional demographic information was obtained for the fifty states. The factor that seemed to be most influential in a subset of 35 states was the prior presence in the state of systems for interagency planning and development. Neither prior history of early childhood services, available resources, wealth of the state, or geographic region appeared to have a significant influence on policy development. There was some indication that different factors might become influential in the next phase of implementation, policy approval. It appears that progress in state policy development may be linked to the special requirements of the legislation itself and to prior availability of institutional structures that make mandated collaborative efforts more possible.     

Assumptions within Policy: A Case Study of Information Communications and Technology Policy

The deeply embedded nature of dominant assumptions creates an accepted language and way of thinking about ICT, leaving little space for alternative perspectives and ideologies. Policy directions link information technology, the information economy, innovation, competition and global markets. Innovation and information and communications technology constructs a particular application of innovation and directs funding accordingly. Given that policy is about how we categorise, about naming and naming shapes action, the question is what lenses do policy makers use to make choices in their synthesis of social, political and economic life? Using the Australian Information Communications and Technology (ICT) policy as a case study, this article will argue that policy reflects the economic, social and political ideologies of the decision makers. Despite opportunities for input into policy multiple perspectives are limited. Specifically the article looks at claims around consultation, the assumption that the information economy will benefit all Australians, the development of framework conditions for the information economy and the role of government.     

数字竞赛与双重博弈:对易地扶贫搬迁政策执行偏差的一种解释

基层政策执行会出现偏差已经成为学界的共识,但是对于此问题的分析机制并不明晰,多数研究均是从单一视角予以阐释。通过深入考察易地搬迁中“拆旧复垦”政策的具体执行过程,从自上而下与自下而上相互融合视角入手,讨论“拆旧复垦”政策如何在不同利益主体的互构下发生了转变,为何完美的指标数据与文字背后却发现政策执行陷入模糊或搁置状态。从案例解构结果来看,在发展导向的逻辑下,基层政府通过主动加码寻求搬迁规模最大化以谋求在“数字竞赛”中胜出;在压力型体制的上下博弈中,基层政府采取拼凑应对的模糊执行策略以有效应对自上而下的政绩考核;在不完全信息状态的混合博弈中,政策受众在理性计算之下与基层政府形成了“合谋的沉默”。文章的贡献在于,对基层政策执行偏差的解释没有囿于讨论科层结构的弊端,而是从政策设计本身以及不同利益主体互构的视角出发解读其内在逻辑。     

Lessons for the Study of Policy Implementation: Project Renewal in Israel

This article attempts to clarify some of the issues in the debate over the study of policy implementation, in particular the disagreements between proponents of the top-down versus bottom-up approaches. It proposes use of a modified top-down perspective which bridges the assumed dichotomy between policy formulation, enactment, and an implementation process and addresses many of the concerns of the bottom-up research strategy. This new perspective portrays implementation as part of a single ongoing process in which policy is formulated, enacted and continually readjusted and adapted before and after implementation at the local level. The article is based on an analysis of the findings of a case study of the implementation of Israel's Project Renewal, a comprehensive community renewal and development program – a hybrid resembling the American Urban Renewal, Model Cities and the War on Poverty programs. Rather than evaluate the success of this Israeli program, the intent here is to ask what the research findings teach about the study of policy implementation.     

论党内法规实施后评估程序之构建

党内法规实施后评估程序是党内法规实施后评估的程序依据所在,但党内法规实施后评估程序尚缺乏明确的规范依据,尚未实现规范化、制度化。为此,我们应借鉴立法后评估程序,并结合党内法规实施后评估的自身特点,以合规性原则、民主参与原则、公开原则、科学性原则为指引,具体构建党内法规实施后评估程序,包括评估对象、评估主体、评估方案的选择和确定,评估工作启动时间的科学界定,评估信息的搜集与研判,评估报告的形成、公布以及运用等环节,为党内法规实施后评估工作的开展提供程序保障。     

Registrants,Voters, and Turnout Variability Across Neighborhoods

Although political participation has received wide-ranging scholarly attention, little is known for certain about the effects of social and political context on turnout. A scattered set of analyses—well-known by both political scientists and campaign consultants—suggests that ones neighborhood has a relatively minor impact on the decision to vote. These analyses, however, typically rely upon data from a single location. Drawing on official lists of registered voters from sixteen major counties across seven states (including Florida) from the 2000 presidential election, we use geographic/mapping information and hierarchical models to obtain a more accurate picture of how neighborhood characteristics affect participation, especially among partisans. Our research shows that neighborhoods influence voting by interacting with partisan affiliation to dampen turnout among voters we might otherwise expect to participate. Most notably, we find Republican partisans in enemy territory tend to vote less than expected, even after accounting for socioeconomic status. Our findings have implications for campaign strategy, and lead us to suggest that campaign targeting efforts could be improved by an integration of aggregate- and individual-level information about voters.     

A planning-centred approach to project evaluation: Women in mainstream development projects

This article describes the process and outcomes of a “planning-centred” approach to three development projects in the Caribbean. A planning-centred approach to research involves the collaboration of planners and researchers in evaluation research, special attention to the dissemination and use of information and the promotion of contact between planners, sector specialists and recipients of development plans. The planning-centred approach to research is also conducive to understanding the role of gender in distributive processes. The paper describes the methodology of this form of project evaluation, alternative evaluation procedures and selected evaluation guidelines used by the agencies involved in the three Caribbean projects. The outcomes of a planning-centred approach are assessed. In the Caribbean projects the approach resulted in the better use of research information, better communication among planners, officials and project participants, greater sensitivity to women's participation in development and improved consciousness of the significance of gender for redistribute development programmes.     

Can public information programs affect risk perceptions?

This article provides the first controlled evaluation of how different information materials explaining the risks from radon influenced people's perceptions of these risks. Using a panel study, it was possible to observe how stated risk perceptions responded to information about indoor radon concentrations and brochures explaining the radon readings. The findings indicate that risk communication policies can be effective in modifying risk perceptions. Moreover, they have three specific implications for radon policy: (1) Public officials should not adopt strategies that provide minimal risk information to the public as a means of avoiding undue alarm, for this can have the reverse effect; (2) measures of the effectiveness of risk communication will depend on how education and behavior change are defined; (3) categorical guidelines about risk without quantitative information can lead people to treat the levels as thresholds, creating an artificial discontinuity in their responses to small changes in risk perceptions.     

Relations between central and local governments in Turkey: An historical perspective

As organizers of urban development in the modem sense, municipalities go back to the mid-19th century in Turkey. The main theme of this article is an analysis of the trends over roughly 150 years. Three main headings are used within this framework: (a) the political and administrative level; (b) the level of financial policies; (c) historical development of the relationship between the central and local governments with respect to the legal and institutional framework of urban planning. This relationship is fundamentally paternalistic and authoritarian. The study investigates the authenticity of the currently pronounced liberal policies and the subsequent implementation mechanisms devised by the present administration over the past 8 years. Although a change of government seems imminent, most of the policies implemented are considered to be irreversible. Emphasis is given to an assessment of the claim that liberal governments have introduced positive changes in this structural mechanism, rather than a normative evaluation of this structural relationship.     

Public evaluations of the presidential nomination process

The evaluation of presidential nomination reforms has been the topic of elite discussion and debate, with little attention paid to popular evaluations. Public attitudes toward a number of reforms to the presidential nomination process were evaluated through survey data collected in 1988. The evaluations included campaign costs, debates, the influence of consultants, and the role of the media. The analysis suggests that there is a relatively high level of popular satisfaction with these dimensions of the current system. Popular concern about the nomination process is focused in two areas—the roles of money and the media. There is a strong suggestion that the movement toward regionalization of the calendar was responsive to partisan concerns in different regions of the country.     

Planning for Brexit: the Case of the 1975 Referendum

Both during and since the 2016 referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union, concerns were raised as to the absence of contingency planning within Whitehall. This situation was in direct contrast with 1975, when extensive planning took place for the possibility of a vote to leave the European Community. However, there has been little in the way of detailed analysis of the contingency planning undertaken in 1975. Using archival evidence of the Wilson government's preparations, this article highlights the complex challenge that withdrawal would have posed for the UK in 1975, the tensions that existed between the political imperative for a swift withdrawal, in the event of a leave vote, and the civil service's concerns as to whether such a withdrawal was deliverable. Finally, it shows how dependent the UK's position would have been on the approach taken by the other members of the EC.