Revitalizing Local Government Performance Management: Further Dissecting the Role of Socioeconomic Status and Social Mobilization Policy

ABSTRACT

This article examines how socio-economic status and social mobilisation are linked to local government performance management in Nepal. As part of local government reform, Nepal adopted a social mobilisation policy in selected local governments to empower communities for their effective participation. Our results show that socio-economic status and social mobilisation have a significant relationship with performance management. Female literacy, for example, is strongly and significantly associated with performance management, while area has a significant positive relationship but population has only a weak positive relationship. In contrast, poverty has a significant negative correlation. More importantly, mobilisation has a significant, though modest, positive association with performance management particularly in participatory planning and budgeting, fiscal discipline, and administrative management. This indicates that improving the socio-economic status of citizens and their mobilisation for empowered collective action can be one important strategy to improve the performance capacity of local government.     

Political engagement and participation of Thai citizens: the rural–urban disparity

The nature of citizen participation and engagement in public life in Thailand has changed dramatically over the last decade. This article focuses on explaining the changing pictures of political engagement – political interest, knowledge, and efficacy – among rural and urban Thai citizens since the House of Representatives election in 2001. The major attempt made in this article also to explain how these changes affect patterns of political activism (i.e. in voting, political contacting, and protesting activities), particularly between the rural and urban Thai voters. Relying on three latest survey data taken from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, the article suggests that the factors facilitating greater political participation are relatively different between rural and urban residents, and such differences cannot simply be explained as a result of a deeper engagement in the patron–client relationship of the rural than of the urban. Indeed, those differentiations depend on several factors and vary according to different kinds of political activity.     

Do populist values or civic values drive support for referendums in Europe?

Representative democracy gives voters the right to influence who governs but its influence on policy making is only indirect. Free and fair referendums give voters the right to decide a policy directly. Elected representatives usually oppose referendums as redundant at best and as undermining their authority at worst. Democratic theorists tend to take electing representatives as normal and as normatively superior. The nominal association of popular decision making and populism has strengthened this negative view. Public opinion surveys show substantial support for holding referendums on important issues. Two major theories offer contrasting explanations for popular support for referendums; they reflect populist values or a commitment to the civic value of participation. This innovative paper tests an integrated model of both theories by the empirical analysis of a 17-country European survey. There is substantial support for all three civic hypotheses: referendum endorsement is positively influenced by attitudes towards participation, democratic ideals and whether elected representatives are perceived as responsive. By contrast, there is no support for populist hypotheses that the socioeconomically weak and excluded favour referendums and minimal support for the effect of extreme ideologies. The conclusion shows that most criticisms of referendums also apply to policy making by elected representatives. While referendums have limits on their use, there is a democratic argument for holding such ballots on major issues to see whether or not a majority of voters endorse the choice of their nominal representatives.     

论法治秩序中的“公民美德”

讨论法律与发展的中国经验,不能忽视中国智识群体的“中国经验”,不能忽视他们对中国法治的“问题域”的关注和深入讨论。讲法治秩序,讲宪政安排,讲人的权利保障,需要具有某种能力并有力量去要求并维持政府权力限制之“德性”的公民。提倡以“公民参与”为导向的“公民美德”,显示了公民对有权者施加某种形式的限制的意愿及能力的重要性,对于中国法治秩序形成的先决条件和重要环节而言,是一个极其重要的可能的资源。     

互联网对当代大学生政治参与的影响

互联网的发展对大学生的政治参与产生了积极的影响,它激发了大学生政治参与的兴趣,拓宽了大学生政治参与的渠道,培育了大学生的参政精神。但是,由于缺乏必要的法律规范和制度保障,大学生通过互联网进行政治参与遇到一些问题。因此,必须坚持以马克思主义为指导,加强大学生网络道德教育,加强网络法制建设,为大学生政治参与营造一个健康、有序的网络环境。     

新公共管理模式对公民参与的促进作用

新公共管理的实践扩大了公民参与的空间,提升了公民的参与能力,使公民社会日渐成熟。为进一步推进我国服务型政府的构建,应拓宽公民参与的制度性空间,以公民积极有序地参与促进政府治理模式的转变。     

我国妇女参政议政的历史变迁刍议

妇女解放是人类社会进步的重要尺度,而妇女参政议政则是妇女解放的高级形式。改革开放给妇女参政议政提供机遇和挑战的同时也为妇女参政议政开创了崭新局面,取得了令人瞩目的成就。新时期科学发展观的提出,进一步强调了妇女参政议政的时代诉求,我们必须按照科学发展观的要求进一步提升妇女参政议政的水平,让妇女真正起到"半边天"的作用。     

Testing the Reciprocal Effects of Campaign Participation

Questions persist regarding the robustness of cross-sectional estimates of effects of variables that are themselves endogenous to the participation process. On one hand, the consequences of working on a campaign have interesting implications for democratic society. Less benign, however, is the possibility that failure to control for reciprocal processes leads to biased estimates of the causes of campaign participation. I use a panel of Democratic and Republican contributors interviewed following each of the past three presidential elections (1996, 2000, and 2004) to explore the relationships between campaign participation and three variables typically parameterized as predictors of participation: receiving a contact, ideological extremism, and strength of party identification. The effect of strength of party identification on campaign participation proves robust; however, I find that nearly all of the associations between contacts and participation and ideological extremism and participation appear to extend from, not into, participation and past participation.

Does Workplace Experience Enhance Political Participation? A Critical Test of a Venerable Hypothesis

Several schools of thought claim that citizens can develop their democratic skills at the workplace. Here I focus on the hypothesis put forward by Carole Pateman and by Sidney Verba and colleagues that state that by practicing civic skills and democratic decision-making at the workplace, citizens become more active in politics. I test the hypothesis with a nationally representative panel survey of the Swedish population. My findings contradict previous empirical research as no impact on political participation was discovered. I argue that the effects may have been overestimated in prior studies because the tests were based on cross-sectional data: insufficient care was taken with a number of significant methodological problems. The study points to the importance of using panel models when investigating the causes of political participation.

Close But Not Close Enough

The authors comment on an earlier aritice in Society by Eugene Goodheart and offer a novel hypothesis about the origins of religion.