Prospects for Local Collaboration into an Uncertain Future: Learning from Practice within Labour's Partnership Paradigm

Achieving effective local collaboration, a strong theme of the previous Labour government, may actually become more important given Coalition government policies emphasising decentralisation and encouraging alternative providers of public services. Therefore, it remains essential to learn from experiences of collaboration especially as, despite significant research, few studies explicitly identify guidance for improving this practice that is of specific relevance to local policy actors. In order to do so, a decentred and ethnographic approach was adopted to examine collaboration in a case study of a Sport and Physical Activity Alliance in Casetown, a medium-sized city in the south of England. Findings from this case study reinforced those found in other studies that pointed to the constraints of targets imposed by the Labour government, ingrained approaches to public administration and lack of open acknowledgement of power differentials impeding the development of effective collaboration. Drawing on the suggestions of those involved in the alliance, an alternative vision of collaboration is advocated, focused on shared learning and bottom-up implementation within more fluid and open structures in which there would be greater scope for the exercise of agency on behalf of those individuals and organisations involved. As during the period of the Labour government, aspects of current wider policy agendas may impede as well as support the development of this alternative vision of collaboration. Nevertheless, it is argued that reflexive local actors may collectively be able to address the contextual challenges that exist in order to develop more effective forms and practices of collaboration.     

Housing and Council Tax Benefits Administration in England: A Long-Term Perspective on the Performance of the Local Government Delivery System

The Coalition government announced, in 2010, that between 2013 and the end of 2017 all existing claims to income-based welfare allowances, including housing benefit, would gradually move to the Universal Credit (DWP 2010). This article evaluates the performance of the Council Tax and Housing Benefits Administration Services under the current system for the delivery of these benefits since they were transferred fully to local authorities in 1993 up until December 2011. During this period the performance of local government has been influenced by four successive national delivery regimes, namely: Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT); Best Value; Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) and Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA). An earlier article (Murphy, P., Greenhalgh, K. and Jones, M., 2011. Comprehensive performance assessment and public services improvement in England – a case study of the benefits administration service in local government. Local Government Studies, 37 (6), pp. 579–599) examined the CPA period in detail and found a significant improvement in performance across all types of authorities in all parts of the country during this period. The current article complements this earlier analysis and provides a longer-term perspective on the performance of the benefits service between 1993 and December 2011. The findings of this article show that under CCT the performance of the system was poor, there were wide variations in individual local authority performance, with many acknowledged inadequacies in the system and unacceptably high levels of fraud. However, towards the end of CCT and in the subsequent Best Value period the antecedents of some of the tools and techniques subsequently used to drive improvement in the CPA era were either put in place or were being developed. The Best Value period itself did not show significant improvements in performance and it was not until many of the initiatives were refined, developed and applied within the CPA framework that sustained and significant improvements became evident. This overall improvement generally continued under the CAA although the previous trend of consistent reductions in the variation between authorities’ performance had changed between 2009–2010 and 2011–2012. It is too early to judge whether these latest trends will be maintained under the Coalition government’s localism regime.     

BETWEEN STATE AND SERVICE INDUSTRY: GROUP AND COLLECTIVE WEDDINGS IN COMMUNIST SHANGHAI, 1949–1956

Abstract

Group weddings have commonly been associated with Republican China under Guomindang rule. Wedding ceremonies involving multiple couples, however, continued to be held in the People’s Republic of China throughout the 1950s and after. During the early 1950s, Shanghai’s commercial group wedding agencies marketed their services to local couples, and district governments organized what they termed “collective weddings,” hoping that couples would be more amenable to state marriage registration if they could participate in a ceremony. In 1956, the municipal government considered instituting a unified collective ceremony across Shanghai. By examining meeting minutes, letter exchanges, and records of internal government and business discussions, this article explores entrepreneurial and governmental attempts to standardize Shanghai’s group and collective weddings. Although commercial group weddings and state collective ceremonies served different purposes, their proponents faced similar organizational difficulties in the search for a standardized, economical wedding ceremony befitting “New China.”     

Health,Poverty and Service Use Among Older West Indian Women in Greater Hartford

SUMMARY

This study brings to light the phenomenon of aging in the West Indian migrant community in the United States. It presents the results of a cross-sectional exploratory survey of 107 community-dwelling West Indian women aged 55 years and over living in the Greater Hartford region of Connecticut. The data analysis reveals positive self-reports of health and few limiting or disabling conditions. However, there is substantial income inequality, a negative relationship between age group and income and limited use of services among those women most likely to require them. The findings suggest that some of the qualities which contributed to West Indians becoming the “Black success model” in the U.S. may be counterproductive for successful aging. A community-based strategy for addressing these issues is outlined.     

东城区餐饮服务业管理现状及对策分析

通过对辖区内餐饮服务业态现状分析,针对性地进行对策研究,推动辖区内餐饮服务业的依法监管和规范发展。结合工作实际,分析餐饮服务业态分布、管理现状和存在问题,提出意见和建议。加强卫生监督中的关键环节控制,强化从业人员培训,进一步推行量化分级管理,加大处罚力度。充分发挥行业自律、社区自治与卫生监督执法相结合的作用,细化政策环境与监管职责,进一步探讨综合执法与卫生监督双赢模式建立。     

Geographical access to treatment for sex offenders under community supervision in Kentucky

Abstract

As sex offenders are probated or paroled into the community, sex offender treatment and monitoring is often a condition of their release. In Kentucky, sex offenders are required to participate in community-based treatment for two years or more. However, some sex offenders are disadvantaged in accessing mandated treatment. This is a result of decisions concerning the placement of treatment programmes, the sex offenders' preference to return to communities where they can rely on family and other indigenous support networks, and some statutes (e.g. sex offender registration and residency restriction laws). This study utilises spatial methodologies, including an origin–destination (OD) matrix, to determine the time, in minutes, that sex offenders travel to sex offender treatment providers and non-spatial ordinary least squares (OLS) regression techniques to determine the association between family, neighbourhood and community characteristics on sex offenders’ travel time to treatment. Findings suggest that there is substantial disadvantage in treatment access, measured by travel time, for sex offenders who live in impoverished rural communities.     

Local Conflicts and International Compromises: The Sustainable Use of Vicuña in Argentina

The vicuña Vicugna vicugna is a wild South American camelid with a fiber so highly valued that the species was hunted almost to extinction. Strict conservation regulations and international treaties have been successful in causing vicuña populations to recover to a level where it is now possible to develop “sustainable use” programs. In Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Argentina, vicuña management plans have been developed, with differing biological and socioeconomic implications. The major issue is whether vicuña are managed in the wild or in captivity. The aim of this paper is to examine the forces that have, in recent years, shaped policies concerning vicuña management, and especially the underlying conflict between economic growth and conservation. The analysis draws largely on primary data from Argentina and a report written by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service concerning the reclassification of vicuña from endangered to threatened. This report is important both directly (because FWS is the key advisory body to the U.S. government and the United States is a major potential market for the fiber), and indirectly, because the views of the United States and its advisers will in turn have a major influence on other actors.     

Sustainable use of wildlife: The role of private contracts as a conservation tool

Abstract

This paper focuses on the ability of local communities to make effective use of private legal tools as a means of assuring sustainable wildlife use. Using recent legal developments in Kenya as a case study, the paper examines a series of contracts entered into between local communities in the Samburu District and tour operators wishing to bring wildlife “photo safaris”; onto Samburu lands. These contracts, typically referred to as “Eco‐tourism contracts,”; are designed simply to allow tour operators to lead tour groups through community property without trespass. The authors argue that to achieve their true potential, these contracts must be treated, in essence, as “wildlife easements,”; or “eco‐easements,”; that can become publicly‐recorded mutual conservation commitments, and as such must incorporate conservation principles with a focus on environmental impact and wildlife management. Moreover, these contracts must be linked both conceptually and financially to the communities’ governance structure and to its broader conservation efforts.     

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REFORM IN POST‐CONFLICT SOCIETIES: LESSONS FROM ACEH,INDONESIA

Post‐conflict reconstruction programs increasingly include components designed to strengthen the performance of the public service and to support public sector reform. Although there is a growing body of literature on the relationship between public administration, and peace and development, there have been few case studies of donor efforts to strengthen public administration as part of post‐conflict reconstruction. This study examines efforts to strengthen the civil service in Aceh, Indonesia, following the province's first post‐conflict elections in 2006. It examines the impact of a donor‐funded program designed to assist Aceh's first post‐conflict administration (2007–2012) to reform its personnel management practices. The case study sheds light on weaknesses in current donor approaches to public administration reform in post‐conflict situations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Daring,Substance Use and Involvement in Violence Among School Children

Abstract

This study explores whether the association between substance use and involvement in youth violence is a unique association resulting from the properties of the drugs, or whether it is part of a larger behavioral cluster. The sample was composed of 1,571 10th grade students from the Israeli secular and religious state school systems, including both Jewish and Arab schools. The results indicate that the strongest predictor for unplanned violent activities such as physical fights is alcohol use, suggesting that this chemical substance may lower the threshold of unplanned violence. However, daring was found to be the strongest predictor for planned violent activities such as bullying and weapon carrying, suggesting that the behavioral pattern is the most influential. Thus future research and intervention programs would perhaps benefit from differentiating between planned and unplanned violence.