Community‐based environmental management in Vietnam: the challenge of sharing power in a politically guided society

The article presents the challenges of introducing a ‘shared‐power’ community‐based management approach in the socialist society of Vietnam. The Portland State University (PSU)'s Oregon Environmental Management Alliance partnered with Vietnamese organisations in a shared‐power pilot project aimed at strengthening stakeholder participation in environmental improvements in two communities along the Tan Hoa‐Lo Gom (THLG) canal in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). The Oregon Solutions model, a community‐based environmental management (CBEM) approach, was adapted for the shared‐power project. This article analyses three core ingredients of the shared‐power CBEM approach: multiple stakeholder structure, dispersed authority arrangements and diverse policy instruments. Critical reflections are offered on the meaning and appropriateness of these shared‐power ingredients when they are reinvented in Vietnam's politically guided governance system. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Patterns of political instability: Affiliation patterns of politicians and voters in post-communist Estonia,Latvia, and Lithuania

In contrast to established party systems, the transformation of post-communist party systems is not only shaped by shifts in electoral preferences, but also by the changing organizational loyalties of politicians. Post-communist politicians pursue a wide range of organizational strategies such as party fusions, fissions, start-ups, and interparty switching. By focusing on the interaction between these organizational strategies and voters’ electoral preferences, we argue that the seeming instability of post-communist party systems actually reveals distinct patterns of political change. The article develops an analytical framework, which incorporates politician-driven interparty mobility and voter-induced electoral change. It uses this framework to show that the apparently inchoate party systems of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania actually follow definable modes of transformation. Marcus Kreuzer is assistant professor of political science at Villanova University. His work focuses on how electoral and legislative institutions shape the organizational and electioneering practices of parties in interwar Europe and post-communist democracies. He also is studying the origins of liberal democracy in nineteenth century Europe. He is author ofInstitutions and Innovation—Voters, Politicians and Interest Groups in the Consolidation of Democracy: France and Germany, 1870–1939 (2001). Vello Pettai is lecturer in political science at the University of Tartu, Estonia. He specializes in comparative ethnopolitics and party politics. He has published previously inNations and Nationalism, Post-Soviet Affairs, East European Politics and Society, andJournal of Democracy. We would like to thank for Artis Pabriks and Darius Zeruolis for sharing their knowledge of Latvian and Lithuanian party politics as well as John T. Ishiyama, Scott Desposato, and two anonymous SCID reviewers for commenting on an earlier draft. Funding for this research came from an Estonian Science Foundation grant, nr. 4904. We gratefully acknowledge their support.     

Improving the Implementation and Effectiveness of Out‐of‐School‐Time Tutoring

School districts are spending millions on tutoring outside regular school day hours for economically and academically disadvantaged students in need of extra academic assistance. Under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), parents of children in persistently low‐performing schools were allowed to choose their child's tutoring provider, and together with school districts, they were also primarily responsible for holding providers in the private market accountable for performance. We present results from a multisite, mixed‐method longitudinal study of the impact of out‐of‐school time (OST) tutoring on student reading and mathematics achievement that link provider attributes and policy and program administration variables to tutoring program effectiveness. We find that many students are not getting enough hours of high‐quality, differentiated instruction to produce significant gains in their learning, in part because of high hourly rates charged by providers for tutoring. We identify strategies and policy levers that school districts can use to improve OST tutoring policy design and launch improved programs as waivers from NCLB are granted.     

A tale of firsts: the 2019 Austrian snap election

Abstract

The 2019 Austrian snap election, held on 29 September 2019, was preceded by a series of scandals. Most prominent among them was the so-called ‘Ibizagate’ involving the former Vice-Chancellor and FPÖ party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache. The scandal eventually led to the collapse of the ÖVP-FPÖ coalition in May 2019 and the formation of a caretaker government. The election day in September brought a clear victory for the ÖVP with an increase of almost six percentage points, compared to its vote share in the 2017 election. The second big winner was the Green party which scored the best result in the party history with 13.9 per cent of the vote. Amid scandals, the FPÖ saw its support fall to only 16.2 per cent; the election also resulted in an all-time low for the SPÖ achieving only 21.2 per cent. The article presents the background, the election campaign and the results of the 2019 Austrian election, discussing the wide range of ‘firsts’ that characterized them, including the formation of the first ÖVP-Green coalition government in Austria.     

Policies,Technology and Markets: Legal Implications of Their Mathematical Infrastructures

Law and Critique - The paper discusses legal implications of the expansion of practical uses of mathematics in social life. Taking as a starting point the omnipresence of mathematical...     

Climate-smart agriculture: what is it good for?

Leading international organisations presently argue that a transition to ‘climate-smart agriculture’ (CSA) is an obligatory task to ensure food supply for an anticipated nine billion people by 2050. Despite the rubric’s newfound importance, the conceptual underpinnings of CSA are often left unclear. Focusing on the World Bank’s framework, this paper critically interrogates the principles and concepts that underpin CSA. It argues that while CSA provides greater policy space for more holistic approaches to agriculture, it nonetheless operates within an apolitical framework that is narrowly focused on technical fixes at the level of production. This depoliticised approach to the global food system tends to validate existing policy agendas and minimise questions concerning power, inequality and access. By highlighting four strong tensions that permeate the CSA framework, the paper extols the need to greatly widen the scope of debate. To this end, it proposes an alternative ‘climate-wise’ framework to foreground the inherently political dimensions of food and agriculture in an era of climatic change.