Empowering Leadership and Municipal Service Delivery: A Case Study of a Metropolitan Municipality in South Africa

Since municipal service delivery is a challenge facing many municipalities in South Africa, this paper reports on a study conducted among a convenience sample of managers and employees from the Revenue and Customer Relations Management department of a major metropolitan municipality in South Africa, to address the aforementioned problem. The findings reveal that empowering leadership is strongly correlated with employee work effort, performance and improved service delivery. On the practitioners’ side, the important mediating role of employee work effort and employee performance in the “empowering leadership–improved service delivery” relationship in South Africa’s public sector is also highlighted.     

An exploratory case study focusing on the creation,and development of a new political brand: The case of Aam Aadmi Party

In the backdrop of India's rising prominence in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), understanding of its political environment, electoral competition, and constituent parties with their political ideologies contesting to form government attracts immense interest from the researchers in political science, political marketing, and public policy. Although literatures in political marketing are more than two decades mostly carried out in developed democratic systems like the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, India as a posttransition democracy received relatively less attention. The article has been conceptualized in the context of 2014 Indian general elections Lok Sabha 2014 as an attempt to study application of political marketing principles in a cross‐cultural democracy. The author has probed the emergence of new political party Aam Aadmi Party riding on the success of Janlokpal (civil society movement), the marketing approach used by Aam Aadmi Party, essentially positioning and branding strategies, during the national elections and party institutionalization. Research strategy followed secondary research of published data for examining the new party creation from a marketing perspective.     

Manhunt Presidency: Obama,race, and the Third World

Abstract

President Obama’s commitment to a creedal narrative of American exceptionalism and his understanding of the Third World as a space of ontological deficit together made for a presidency that could neither mitigate the structural racism of the United States nor deflect a racist foreign policy premised on an unending war against terror. By examining the murders of two American teenagers – Trayvon Martin and Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki – this essay argues that the very self-fashioning narratives that propelled Obama to the presidency of the United States rendered him incapable of effecting any substantive changes in the racism than animates its domestic and foreign policies.     

A note on the nyāya fallacy sādhyasama and petitio principii

Journal of Indian Philosophy -     

A view on commercialisation in Indian agriculture and the development of capitalism

This is an attempt to investigate the reasons for the muted formation and development of capitalist relations in Indian agriculture, even while commercialisation in output markets has advanced considerably. Analysing the qualitatively differing character of exchange involvement, resting on the class basis of a differentiated peasantry, we have noted the differential dynamics that commercialisation entails for different classes and its overall, macroeconomic consequences. We argue that the desperate dependence on land as the basis for survival, with no alternative permanent means of livelihood, perpetuates the perverse exchange relations and retards productive accumulation. Most employment‐generating schemes sponsored by the state turn out to be ameliorative, providing only an intermittent supplementary source of income. This, along with the weak pull of a tardy industrial growth, only stabilises the petty‐holders. It is the preponderance or otherwise of petty‐holders, who are in no position to undertake productive accumulation themselves but could provide the ground for diversion of surplus into unproductive uses, that shapes the accumulation process.     

Aid curse with Chinese characteristics? Chinese development flows and economic reforms

Public Choice - The emergence of China as a major development partner requires a reassessment of traditional donor–recipient dynamics. In addition to adopting new rhetoric like...     

Stewardship of health security: The challenges of applying the One Health approach

Experience with the control of epidemics, notably the 2004 outbreaks of avian influenza, has demonstrated that a “One Health approach,” that recognizes that human, animal, and environmental health are interdependent, is the most effective way of dealing with threats from emerging infectious diseases (EID). However, introducing and applying a One Health approach is challenging for many countries. One of the key challenges relates to stewardship. The evolution of the strategies and policies used to introduce and adopt the One Health approach in the detection and response to EID over the period 2005 to 2017 is described at global level and in country case studies of Thailand and Indonesia. Both countries experienced significant outbreaks of H5N1 avian influenza from 2004 and have sought to adopt the One Health approach in their response strategies. The challenges for stewardship of health systems in introducing a One Health approach are described, and key lessons identified in regard to national level agency coordination, engagement of the broader civil society outside government, and developing a reliable, credible, and impartial decision‐making process. The concept of stewardship provides valuable insights for policymakers on how to incorporate a One Health approach into their EID response systems.