Scrutiny and the Political Party Group in UK Local Government: New Models of Behaviour

The introduction, via the Local Government Act 2000, of political executives held to account by influential overview and scrutiny committees challenges fundamentally the traditional operations of the party group system. This paper uses evidence from a variety of sources (including the experience of Parliamentary select committees) to explore how councillors are managing the tensions between party group loyalty and the expectation surrounding the operation of scrutiny. Four models of party group behaviour are identified with the group acting as partner, arbitrator, filter and Leviathan respectively. These typologies are then used (together with research evidence) to interpret the circumstances in which effective scrutiny may be aided or hindered by party group dynamics. Three alternative scenarios, which illustrate the impact of different political dynamics on the effectiveness of scrutiny, are identified and explored. It is concluded that the success of the overview and scrutiny experiment is by no means assured and faced with the intransigent nature of most party group behaviour, the future of effective scrutiny hangs in the balance.     

The Theory of Differential Oppression: A Developmental-ecological Explanation of Adolescent Problem Behavior

The developmental-ecological perspective provides a means for understanding how the oppression of children occurs within multiple social contexts that interrelate to produce harmful outcomes for children. Because children lack power due to their age, size, and lack of resources, they are easy targets for adult oppression. Children are exposed to different levels and types of oppression that vary depending on their age, level of development, socioeconomic class, race, and the beliefs and perceptions of their parents. According to the theory of differential oppression, oppression leads to adaptive reactions by children: passive acceptance, exercise of illegitimate coercive power, manipulation of one's peers, and retaliation. Reducing the oppressive acts of adults and alleviating the damaging circumstances that characterize the social environment of children is critical to reducing the prevalence of juvenile delinquency and other problem behaviors. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Utilization-Focused Evaluation

Governments, in both developed and less‐developed nations, promote rural tourism as an instrument of socioeconomic development. Tourism scholars highlight the use of evaluation as a tool in managing the development of tourism. Despite this, few evaluation studies appear to form an integral part of tourism development practice. Nevertheless, systematic evaluation is becoming a more common constituent of tourism policy and planning. However, the importance of evaluation lies not only in its technical correctness, but also in how the evaluation results are used. The emphasis on the use of evaluation findings in the utilization‐focused evaluation approach suggested by this article is congruent with this contention.     

The planning and management of integrated rural development in Drylands: Early lessons from Kenya's arid and semi-arid lands programmes

In Kenya a new generation of area-based, multisectoral rural development programmes has been started, targetted on the country's extensive arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL). By mid 1983, six such programmes were operational, each supported by a foreign donor and implemented by the Government of Kenya. Six years after the detailed planning of the first programme began, the record looks patchy. District level planning and co-ordination hold promise, and some programme activities are going well. However, problems of slow and cumbersome planning and mobilization, a lack of community involvement in planning, too few technical successes, and remote prospects for institutionalizing the programmes if and when expatriate support is withdrawn are apparent. Behind these problems lie a number of basic obstacles, including the structure and orientation of the government's lack of support for the drylands among politicians, and the technical difficulties of raising dryland production. Faced with these obstacles, the ASAL programmes look set to run into continuing problems. Overcoming them will depend on both the success of recent government moves to deconcentrate, and patient support from both the government and the donors. Historically the prospects for such support are poor.     

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.