Re-Engaging Citizens and Councils: The Importance of the Councillor to Enhanced Citizen Involvement

This article results from a number of research projects exploring councillor attitudes towards citizen participation and the role of the party group in local democracy. It considers how the cornerstone of the local government modernisation agenda – reengaging citizens and communities with the councils that represent them – rests on councillors' responses to an increased participatory element in local representative democracy. Citizens wishing to influence local political decision-making have a number of methods available to them. It is not whether citizens see these tools as effective methods of influencing their councillors that matters; rather that councillors, as holders of power, view them as providing citizens with a clear and legitimate ability to influence the political processes and are thus willing to be influenced by their use. The article shows that the councillors political affiliation is an indicator of attitudes towards citizen participation in local political decision-making.     

Councillors in Context: The Impact of Place upon Elected Representatives

Abstract

The time investment in council duties and the roles adopted by local councillors in Britain have been studied extensively but rarely has research incorporated information about the type of area represented. This article combines individual-level survey responses from councillors with aggregate-level data that describe characteristics of the wards that elect each councillor. The survey data report each councillor’s social and political characteristics, the average hours per week performing council duties and the range and frequency of activities undertaken. The ward-level data include a measure of relative social deprivation, electoral competitiveness and other features. The analysis shows that councillors representing relatively deprived areas spend more time on council activities than do councillors representing more affluent areas. The activities that councillors pursue, especially whether they are proactive or reactive towards constituents, relate to the ward context. Women and people that are retired from work also invest relatively more time in their work as councillors. These findings establish that assessments of what councillors do and the roles that they might adopt should take account of the types of ward being represented.     

Public Housing Residence and College Performance: Evidence From the Nation's Largest Urban Public University

Despite clear implications for human capital accumulation, there has been little research on the postsecondary educational experiences of students living in public housing. While there is significant and growing research exploring outcomes for public housing tenants, even in the education sphere, little of this work focuses on postsecondary outcomes and what role, if any, public housing plays in human capital accumulation. Our case study, New York City, is home to both the nation's largest urban public university system and the largest public housing authority. In this work, we use matching techniques to identify and describe the residential characteristics of students at the City University of New York. We explore how students who live in public housing developments differ from their peers in terms of characteristics associated with success in college, including demographics, neighborhood poverty, and high school preparation. We use regression techniques to test the relation between public housing residence, neighborhood income, and two indicators of early college performance: successful completion of credits attempted and one-year retention. In a naive model (including only residence and high school characteristics), public housing residence is negatively associated with our outcomes of interest, but less so when we control for other factors, including neighborhood income. Specifically, for students pursuing an associate's degree, we find a negative relation between public housing residence and credit completion and a less pronounced negative relation with retention. We find no significant relation between public housing residence and either baccalaureate outcome.     

Re-Stating the problem of regulation and re-regulating the local state

In recent years a substantial body of literature has grown up around the application of the theorectical insights of regulation theory to the evolution of patterns of local governance and the structures of the local state (Geddes 1988: Goodwin, Duncan and Halford 1993; Painter 1991: Peck and Tickell 1992: Stocker 1989 inter alia). These new patterns of local governance are characteristically seen to be associated with the replacement of the formallly accountable, democracitcally elected structures of local government with a plethora of unaccountable and non-elected agencies involving public-private sector ‘part-nership’, Within this literature the emergence of new patterns of local governance is accounted for in terms of a response to the crisis of Fordism. In this article it is argued that regulation theory's principal analytical strength lies in its analysis of the internal contradictions and dynamics of modes of regulation, but that it has thus far failed to develop an adequate explanation of the transition between modes. As a consequence, existing accounts of the emergence of new modes of local governance couched in terms of the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism (or after-Fjordism) have tended to fail to reveal the complex mechanisms and processes linking global economic dynamics and the transformation of the structures of the national and local state. By interrogating the concept of ‘crisis’ in regulation theory and by considering the processing of the failures of Foprdism through the state at national and local level as a condition of any response to crisis, it is hoped to begin to develop a theory of the transition between modes of regulation. Such a theory, as it is hoped to demonstrate, might provide the basis for a more nuanced understanding of the complex process and mechanism resulting in the transformation of political and economic structures at the local level.     

Human Rights, Free Movement, and the Right to Leave in International Law

This article starts from a rights-based premise: freedom ofmovement is an established human right recognised in a rangeof international instruments. The right to leave one's own countryis one aspect of this general concern with free movement. Thisarticle addresses the status of this right under internationallaw, a right that is enshrined in several different internationalinstruments and has attracted considerable attention. This articleexplores how the Human Rights Committee, the only United Nationshuman rights treaty body that has examined the right to leavein significant detail, has interpreted this right in light ofstate practice. This article considers whether internationallaw requires, or allows, states to prevent their nationals fromleaving their own states by unauthorized or irregular meansand whether such prevention could be construed as a violationof the right to leave. This article also examines whether statescan legitimately prosecute migrants when they leave their ownstates with documents that they know to be fraudulent. The legitimacyof exit visas and regulations related to holders of state secretsis also explored. Finally, this article presents some thoughtson the continuing significance of the right to leave.     

Politics,Violence and Drugs in Kingston,Jamaica

The involvement of gangs, guns and ganja (marijuana) in Jamaica has, since independence in 1962, largely been confined to the capital, Kingston, and more specifically to the downtown, impoverished sections of the city known locally as the ghetto. This paper examines the characteristics of the ghetto; the context that it provides for political patronage among Kingston's most marginalised citizens; the evolution of certain downtown constituencies into garrison communities; and the separation between politics and drug violence that has marked the last twenty years, as Colombian cocaine has displaced locally‐produced ganja as the key drug to be consumed and traded.     

“It is not my intention to be a killjoy…”: Objecting to a Licence Application—The Complainers

This paper explores the constructed nature of legal complaints through the adoption of a socio-linguistic model with an emphasis upon pragmatics and elements of conversation analysis. When making a legal complaint, we posit that there is a conflict between effective communication and the uptake of politeness strategies. Furthermore, how complaints are ??worked up?? in situ is a product of the arena in which such complaints are made. Through a textual analysis of the methods of complaining adopted by those who make representations to the licensing authority, for the purposes of objecting to a licence application, we show the tension between making oneself clear and being polite, and how complaints in different settings take different forms. We conclude by exploring the implications of our findings for legal processes??is it reasonable, for instance, to talk of ??consistency?? in testimony if each complaint is worked up in situ??and for pragmatic theory more generally, i.e the applicability of Brown and Levinson??s politeness model for legal processes.     

Book reviews

Adelman, Jeremy (1999), Republic of Capital: Buenos Aires and the Legal Transformation of the Atlantic World .
Walker, Charles F. (1999), Smoldering Ashes: Cuzco and the Creation of Republican Peru, 1780–1840 .
Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher (1999), Empire and Antislavery: Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, 1833+1874 .
Lauria-Santiago, Aldo (1999), An Agrarian Republic: Commercial Agriculture and the Politics of Peasant Communities in El Salvador, 1823–1914 .
Austin-Broos Diane J. (1997), Jamaica Genesis: Religion and The Politics of Moral Orders .
V. Montecinos (Ed.) (1998), Economists, Politics and the State: Chile 1958–1994, vol. viii .
A. Hira (ed.) (1998); Ideas and Economic Policy in Latin America: Regional, National and Organizational Case Studies .
Cullather, Nick (1999), Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account Of Its Operations in Guatemala 1952+1954 .
Wilson Samuel (ed.) (1999), The Indigenous People of the Caribbean .
Gary H. Gossen (1999), Telling Maya Tales. Tzotzil Identities in Modern Mexico .
Lievesley, Geraldine, Democracy in Latin America: Mobilisation, Power and the search for a New Politics .
Gould Jeffrey (1998), To Die in This Way. Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje, 1880–1965 .
Torres, Carlos Alberto and Puiggrós, Adriana (1998), Latin American Education. Comparative Perspectives .
Archetti, Edwardo (1999), Masculinities, Football, Polo and the Tango in Argentina .
Outtes Joel (ed.) (1997), O Recife: gênese do urbanismo, 1927+1943 .     

偏好与理性选择：保守主义人士也能接受的规制——行为经济学与“非对称父爱主义”的案例

非对称父爱主义的规制目的是帮助那些有限理性的人们避免犯成本过高的错误,同时仅对理性的人们加以很小的成本甚至不加以成本。结合了认知心理学与经济学的行为经济学表明,有时候即便有健康心智的人们在某些特定的、可预见的情形下也可能不会为他们长远的自身利益行事,很多非对称父爱主义的规制就是基于这种考虑而产生的。这些规制体现在缺省规则、对信息的提供或重组、冷却期、对消费者选择的限制等方面。非对称父爱主义并不必定是严厉的,它可能会引导产生比现有政策更温和的规则。而且新技术为将这种规制作为一种新的对规制选择的成本收益评估标准提供了新的可能性,因而值得被认真对待。     

The challenge of public sector reform in EC accession countries: reflections from the Baltics,especially Latvia

This article considers some of the key issues in reforming the public sector in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Drawing on the experience of donor funded projects, some conclusions are drawn about the process of public sector reform with particular reference to Latvia. In particular, it is argued that the process will take time but strategic choices need to be made in the absence of obvious demands from within the country. Several constraints are noted which together constitute formidable barriers to progress. However, the results of work to date provide some optimism for pilot approaches to strategic budgeting in reformist ministries. A simple checklist is used as a yardstick for progress in the main areas of public administration reform. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.