Decentralized planning in Kenya

In 1983 the Government of Kenya embarked on an accelerated programme of decentralization known as ‘District Focus’. This exercise in devolution is aimed at promoting more effective and efficient use of scarce domestic resources through efforts to strengthen planning capacity at the district level, improve horizontal integration among operating ministry field agents, and expand authority to district heads of operating ministries for managing financial and procurement aspects of local project implementation. Given the importance of this initiative to the economic growth of Kenya and the current search for administrative reforms that could help accelerate rural development in Africa, District Focus merits close attention by development experts. This article reviews the historical background, content, and implementation progress of District Focus.     

Localism in environmental policy: New insights from an old case

Determining the appropriate balance between local and national interests is an enduring issue in public and environmental policy. Study of this issue, however, has been impeded by the theory of agency capture. This paper demonstrates the limitations of capture theory with respect to localism and provides a new perspective on the issue by revisiting the case of the U.S. Division of Grazing, a common example in the literature of a captured agency. Until now, the over-extension of capture theory to this case has obscured the division's extensive efforts to balance local and federal influence over range policy and prevent domination by large private interests. At the center of this struggle was a prominent legal dispute over local control involving Colorado sheepherder Joseph Livingston. As a detailed debate over political representation and the merits of localism, the Livingston case holds important lessons for modern community-based conservation efforts seeking similar policy goals.     

全球化及其对公共管理中领导资格的影响

全球化促进了公共管理的有效性和行政机构的国际化 ,同时对公共管理中的领导资格产生了影响。因此 ,领导者要不断学习新知识和新技能 ,接受新的挑战。领导模式应该灵活多变 ,领导者的培训也不应该千篇一律 ,领导者应该在行动中学习。     

Political Parties,Australia and the U.S. Alliance: 1976-2016

ABSTRACT

What causes variation in the foreign policies of U.S. allies regarding their desired U.S. military role in their region and their troop commitments to U.S. military interventions? This paper addresses this question through documenting and explaining the sources of variation in Australia’s foreign policies regarding these issues over four decades. Treating the two major political parties in Australia and their respective leaders who self-select into them as endogenous, the paper argues that Australian foreign policy, whilst always supportive of the U.S. alliance, has systematically varied. This variation has correlated with the political party in power while the late Cold War and post-Cold War balances of power remained constant. While the Labor party has only been willing to send combat troops to large U.S. military interventions when the latter have a supporting United Nations Security Council Resolution, the conservative Liberal party has been willing to military intervene without this multilateral support. The Labor party, unlike the Liberal party, has also frequently proposed the formation and consolidation of multilateral regional institutions. These preferences render the U.S. to have been necessary for the Labor Party but sufficient for the Liberal party. Future Sino-U.S. armed conflict would provide a harder test of these hypotheses.