Supporting Effective Citizenship in Local Government: Engaging,Educating and Empowering Local Citizens

Civic-republican theories suggest that an active citizenry is associated with community cohesion, better political institutions and inclusive democratic decision making. The influence of these arguments on the UK Labour government has led policy makers to focus attention on strategies to promote citizenship at a local level. In particular, English local authorities are expected to provide ‘support for citizenship’ as part of their wider duty to promote ‘effective community engagement’. The ways in which they can do this are various, ranging from the simple provision of information to direct support for community networks and groups. This article reports the findings of an extensive study of English councils' efforts to engage, educate and empower local citizens. The paper concludes that although local authorities have made significant progress in recent years in widening the structures for communicating with, and engaging citizens, there remains considerable scope for improving activities that address the learning implications of effective citizenship.     

Electronic Local Government and the Modernisation Agenda: Progress and Prospects for Public Service Improvement

The wider use of new information and communications technologies (ICTs) is central to the current drive to promote public service improvement in the UK. This paper describes the policy context within which 'e-government' is being developed by local authorities in the UK and evaluates the strategies developed by a sample of local councils against the key components of an ideal model of the electronic local government organisation. It suggests that many authorities have made significant progress in providing information 'on-line'. However, additional funding and staff development, combined with more fundamental changes to internal business processes and inter-organisational working, are needed if councils are to harness the full potential of new ICTs to transform their transactions with service users and citizens.     

Evaluating Public Management Reform: Designing a'Joined Up' Approach to Researching the Local Government Modernisation Agenda

This article examines the major programme of research on the'Local Government Modernisation Agenda' which is currently being funded by the UK's Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. It argues that this heralds a new approach to government-funded research which seeks to address some of the weakness of previous evaluations. In particular it involves longer-term studies than have been conducted in the past and an attempt to achieve a much greater degree of collaboration between research teams. It is also trying to ensure effective application of the learning derived from evaluations. This new approach raises a number of practical and methodological problems, including in particular the need for effective data sharing among research teams and with other agencies. If this can be achieved there is though a real prospect that the research will provide useful insights that help to inform current and future policy and practice at both national and local levels.     

The hung authorities ‐1993 onwards

Overview and scrutiny committees were intended to provide a counterbalance to executive decision-making. This paper presents an 'audit' of local government scrutiny based upon research conducted over the last five years. Three key findings emerge from the review of evidence to date: the research findings are remarkably consistent over time and between authors; all research concludes that, in general, overview and scrutiny is still struggling; although a mixed picture emerges when examining progress on individual roles for scrutiny. Indeed, research indicates that scrutiny is - in some authorities - making a valuable contribution in terms of policy review but is still failing to hold the executive to account effectively. The relationship between scrutiny and performance management remains underdeveloped, whilst external scrutiny constitutes a marginal activity for most authorities. The paper concludes that such findings reflect the importance of local political and organisational factors which dictate the boundaries and shape of overview and scrutiny: representing a triumph of local context over government-prescribed structural and constitutional change.     

Ma Ying-jeou's re-election: implications for Taiwan and East Asia

Abstract

Ma Ying-jeou's re-election means that there will not be a leadership change in Taiwan, but it still has significant implications. It forces the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to work out a succession for itself and confront the political reality that it must now persuade voters in Taiwan that it can manage relations with mainland China effectively in order to win the presidency again. It also requires Ma to define clearly the limits of his mainland policy in order to minimize Beijing's expectations of his second term, as no president of Taiwan can agree to move towards political integration without a popular mandate. On its part, Beijing has taken on board the significance of Taiwan's electoral cycle for managing cross-Strait ties and will put pressure on Ma to move forward over political integration and thus reduce the scope for a future DPP administration to reverse course. This notwithstanding, Beijing's Taiwan policy will ultimately be determined more by the result of the leadership succession in mainland China itself in the autumn of 2012. For USA and East Asia, Ma's re-election is a positive development as it minimizes the risk of a confrontation or a crisis across the Taiwan Strait. But it will not remove the main problems they have with China that are Taiwan related. For USA, arms sales to Taiwan will still be needed and will remain a source of tension with Beijing. For Southeast Asia, stability across the Taiwan Strait implies that Beijing can devote more attention and resources to the South China Sea territorial disputes and that it is likely to behave in a more assertive way.     

Correspondence

This article surveys the problems facing the existence of intellectuals in the twenty-first century by reflecting on the historical and conceptual conditions that have enabled them to flourish in the past but less so in recent times. The first part considers several strands of contemporary philosophical and social thought that, despite their progressive veneer, have served to undermine the legitimacy of the intellectual's role. This delegitimation is largely traceable to a scepticism about the existence of ideas that are simultaneously normative and manipulable. The second part deals with the rise of anti-intellectualism in philosophy and psychology in the twentieth century, focusing especially on the debates surrounding ‘psychologism’. The third part examines what remains the most attractive expression of anti-intellectualism, namely, invisible-hand thinking and its late nineteenth-century transformation through the influence of statistics, evolution and epidemiology. In the conclusion, the main strands of the argument are drawn together in a sketch of an overall account of the rise and fall of the intellectual in the modern era. Finally, I provide one strategy for stemming the current tide of anti-intellectualism by reinterpreting the currently popular concept of ‘heuristics’.     

Too Many People and Too Few Livestock in West Africa? An Evaluation of Sandford's Thesis

We examine whether Stephen Sandford's (2006 Sandford, S. 2006b. “Too many people, too few livestock: the crisis affecting pastoralists in the Greater Horn of Africa”. Accessed at: http://www.future-agricultures.org/pdf%20files/Sandford_thesis.pdf [Google Scholar]b) ‘too many people, too few livestock’ thesis for the Greater Horn of Africa applies to West Africa. In a comparative study of seven pastoral systems across West Africa we found that pastoralists have generally successfully adapted to pressures on grazing resources. We describe three adaptive strategies: 1) integration and intensification in the Sudanian zone; 2) movement to the Sub-Humid zone; and 3) extensification in the Sahelian zone. We end by proposing four interrelated factors that account for the differences in pastoral systems between West Africa and the Greater Horn of Africa.     

The making of a public in a political campaign: A participant observation study

Abstract

The author served as a press assistant in the 1978 gubernatorial campaign of Ohio Lieutenant Governor Richard F. Celeste. This article examines the evolution of campaign strategy in the 1978 Democratic primary. Faced with token opposition, Celeste used the primary to introduce policies and establish themes for his general election campaign against incumbent James E. Rhodes. This study focuses on the Celeste campaign's efforts to identify and reach a particular constituency within the Ohio electorate. The “making of a public,” influenced by demographics and the results of opinion surveys, became a tentative, reactive process. The candidate's public identity and strategy were negotiated during the course of the primary campaign. Pressed by events and criticism from the press, the candidate eventually deemphasized the specifics of issues as he sought to redefine himself for a public of voters.