Hungary

European Journal of Political Research -     

Literatur

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

UNANTICIPATED CONSEQUENCES OF A.I.D. PROJECTS: LESSONS FROM IMPACT ASSESSMENT FOR PROJECT PLANNING

We examine lJ.S. Agency for International Development project designs as described in pre-project design documents arid compare them using document review protocols to project outcomes as described in project impact evaluation reports for 40 projects. From this we draw three major conclusions concerning project designs: (1)most are unrealistic – estimated outputs greatly exceed actual outputs at the same time that considerable cost overruns occur, (2) they do not adequately assess the feasibility of the implementation, maintenance, and use of the project and its outputs, and (3) they do not adequately assess potential negative impacts. In light of these shortcomings we offer several recommendations for consideration and testing.     

The curious case of Ahmed Necmeddin Bey: a look into the sociopolitical climate in Aintab on the eve of 1915

Ahmed Necmeddin Bey was the kaimakam (district governor) of Aintab in late July 1908. One day, however, Ahmed Necmeddin Bey was beaten by a group of Turks and Armenians in Aintab; his clothes torn, he was dismissed from his post and finally expelled him from the city. But what was the reason for this incident? Within the first year of the declaration of the Constitution, it was the most important event that occurred in the city. This particular incident calls for careful examination, for this significant event reflects how the Second Constitutional era and the new regime were perceived by Muslims and Armenians in Aintab on a local level. Additionally, it offers us some useful clues regarding how the Union and Progress Party as a political organization and its policies were received on a local scale. By studying this case, it is also possible to see a clear example of how ordinary Ottoman citizens reacted towards the revival of the Constitution.     

Occupations,mediations, subjectifications: fabricating politics

The revolutions and protests that have spread across the globe since 2008 have been seen as a watershed moment. In this article we examine the relationships between urban space and politics that have emerged across these events. We draw upon the political philosophy of Jacques Rancière to provide a framework to understand some events of this period as political moments and, in addition, attempt to build upon Rancière's work to trace out the geographical dimensions of politics. The paper concludes with a consideration of the counter-revolutionary projects enacted by current social orders.     

Do Municipal Mergers Improve Fiscal Outcomes?

Improved fiscal management is a frequent justification for promoting boundary consolidations. However, whether or not this is actually the case is rarely placed under rigorous empirical scrutiny. Hence, this article investigates if fiscal outcomes are improved when municipalities are merged. The basic argument is that the conceptualisation of fiscal management in political science is often too narrow as it focuses on the budget and pays hardly any attention to balances in the final accounts and debts – elements of management which are central to policy making. On this background, the causal relationship between municipal mergers and fiscal outcomes is analysed. Measured on the balance between revenues and expenses, liquid assets and debts, municipal mergers improve the fiscal outcomes of the municipalities in a five‐year perspective, although the pre‐reform effects tend to be negative. For liquidity and debt, however, the improvement only entails re‐establishing the levels prior to the reform. The testing ground is the recent mergers of Danish municipalities, which, it is argued, constitute a quasi‐experiment. This forms the basis of a Difference‐in‐Difference design, allowing the alleviation of endogeneity problems and enabling causal inference. The analysis is based on administrative data from the Danish municipalities in the period 2003–11.     

Size,Democracy, and the Economic Costs of Running the Political System

The search for the optimal size of political systems is one of the most enduring in political thought. Given the validity of arguments for and against small units, one might expect variation in rearrangements of unit sizes. However, the reform trend is uniform: units, often at the local level, are amalgamated to harvest scale effects. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the argument on economies of scale in the economic costs of running political systems. Our testing ground is a recent Danish reform. It allows us to avoid endogeneity problems often facing researchers of size reforms. The reform was directed by the central government and constitutes an exogenous shock to 239 municipalities, whereas 32 municipalities were left untouched. We thus have a quasi‐experiment with pre‐ and posttreatment observations for both an experiment and a control group. Our findings show that scale effects, measured as administrative costs per inhabitant, are considerable.