The paradoxes of the ‘everyday’: scrutinising the local turn in peace building

With the advent of the local turn in the mid-2000s, critical approaches have attempted to rethink peace building from the bottom up, placing local agents at the centre of the debate, declaring the end of top-down governance and affirming the fragmented, complex and plural nature of the social milieu. While local turn approaches have become popular in peace-building theory, this article invites the reader to question and problematise the local turn’s use of the concept of ‘everyday’, in order to explore paradoxes and contradictions that indicate the need to think more deeply about the impact of the local turn’s project of critique.     

Balance Between Local Economic Development and Environmental Sustainability: A Multi-level Governance Perspective

This study seeks to explain why U.S. local governments utilize environmental sustainability to promote economic development. Economic development and environmental protection need not be competing objectives, but rather, environmental protection can enhance local economic competitiveness. Using data from the ICMA Economic Development Survey, this study tests an empirical model that includes state sustainability initiatives, participation in climate protection networks, and political attitudes toward economic development as predictors of local policy decisions. The findings reinforce a multi-level governance perspective on explaining the balance cities seek to achieve between environmental protection and economic growth.     

The unseen hands: Collaborative instrumental leadership in the British renegotiation case

The article contends that an important but overlooked explanation for the European Union's resilience in the past decade in the face of several existential crises has been the informal instrumental leadership roles played by EU institutional actors collaborating with each other. In this article, a theoretical framework is developed that can explain why EU governments, facing a crisis, would choose to informally delegate leadership tasks to a set of EU institutional actors. A three-part mechanism of collaborative instrumental leadership provided by institutions is devised that explains why governments informally delegate leadership tasks to EU institutions, and the effects of this informal delegation. The core of the article is a process-tracing case study that explores how collaborative instrumental leadership actually works. The case selected is the British renegotiation of their terms of membership in 2015–2016. While the case has become more-or-less forgotten because the shock ‘no’ vote in the June 2016 Brexit referendum made its terms moot, the deal included quite exceptional reform proposals in which the EU bent over backwards to accommodate the United Kingdom, perhaps even going beyond the bounds of the EU Treaties themselves in the issue of immigration. Given this, analysing how collaborative instrumental leadership supplied by institutions contributed to producing the ambitious deal can shed light on the processes whereby intractable problems in the EU have been solved in the past decade.     

A Pretext for Regression? The Gendered Institutional Response to COVID-19 in the Country of Football

This article considers the gendered institutional response to COVID-19 in Brazilian football. It is argued that the asymmetries of power which shaped policy are rooted in the historical marginalisation of women's sports in the country along with socially constructed notions of hegemonic masculinity. The COVID-19 pandemic has served to accentuate deeply embedded social and economic inequalities and may serve as a pretext for eroding precarious gains made in recent times.     

Quality challenger emergence under the top-two primary: Comparing one-party and two-party general election contests

Prior research finds that the emergence of a quality challenger is one of the most important factors predicting whether incumbents will be vulnerable. Reformers in California and Washington envisioned that the top-two primary reform would increase electoral competition by allowing for general election contests that feature two same-party candidates in safe districts. In this research note, I investigate the degree to which these expectations have been fulfilled by looking at the prevalence of quality challengers in U.S. House contests. I compare one-party and two-party general election contests, finding that incumbents are significantly more likely to face a quality challenger from the same party than from the opposite party, all else equal. In contrast, when both states used traditional primaries prior to reform, incumbents were no more likely to face a quality challenger in the primary election than in the general election. Findings reveal a key way in which the top-two primary may fulfill reformers’ expectations and complement our understanding of how electoral institutions condition challenger entry decisions.     

Back to the Future: The Pulling Apart of our Towns and Cities

Growing divisions between Britain’s towns and cities have created a dilemma for the Labour Party in seeking to represent very different parts of the country. There are some who argue that Labour must choose the global networked youth—who largely reside in cities—in order to maximise its electoral chances. This is an argument that defies electoral gravity and fails to address the root causes of the gulf between towns and cities. As jobs and investment have gone into cities, many towns have seen the local population age and local economies become unsustainable. In both towns and cities there is a clamour for power to move closer to home and for the renewal of democratic institutions, offering Labour the chance to win power and end the divisions that have come to characterise British politics.     

Coming out of the shadow? Studies of local governments in Central and Eastern Europe in European academic research

This article is an analysis of the changing role of research on local governments in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) within mainstream European studies. It refers to dependency theory (Wallerstein, Prebish) as applied to scientific research. It classifies CEE as being in the semi-periphery of academic research. The empirical analysis consists of two parts: (1) qualitative review of the most important of the comparative studies of European local governments. It includes a discussion on the role of local governments and researchers from CEE in these studies; (2) quantitative based on an analysis of articles published in international journals and citations for those articles in Scopus. The analysis covers 14 countries (all new member states who joined the EU from 2004 onwards, plus the Balkan countries: Albania, Macedonia, and Serbia).     

地方治理在中国的适用性及其限度——以宁波市海曙区政府购买居家养老政策为例

治理理论被引入中国以来,一方面被学术界寄予厚望,另一方面关于治理在中国的适用性又受到很多质疑.治理及地方治理是为了克服各种不可治理性而进行的国家(政府)与社会关系的调整过程和趋势.宁波市海曙区政府购买居家养老服务的政策过程表明,地方政府的职能转变需要管理创新.循于此,作为工具的地方治理就可能在中国出现并取得局部的良好效果,而且可能为地方治理机制的成长准备社会条件.但对地方治理机制的成长最有决定性的因素仍然在于政府,政府职能的转变可能会创造出对地方治理发展有利的条件.在中国未来治理机制形成和运行过程中,政府将是最有力的保障或最严重的障碍.而在地方,治理的发展空间是存在的.因此,应将地方治理作为政府职能转化过程中的管理创新思路,逐渐发展出针对地方公共事务的地方治理机制.     

环境行政许可的八个立法原则

在现代社会,许可证制度是防范环境风险最主要的法律制度。目前,学界对行政许可的一般立法原则(法律保留原则、便民效率原则、信赖保护原则、公开公平原则等)探讨甚多,而对环境行政许可具有自身特色的立法原则探讨较少。环境行政许可具有风险品性、科技背景、利益权衡、代际平衡、国际关联等五个特征,因此,环境行政许可的立法,除了须遵循行政许可的一般立法原则外,还须遵循预防、谨慎行事、合理开发利用、污染者负担、科技促进、公众参与、协同合作、国家环境资源主权与不损害国外环境等八个立法原则。这八个原则对具体制度的建构均有明确的要求,并在特定情况下使许可举证责任发生转移。     

Is China Headed for a Debt Crisis?

正AS local government debts pile up,there are concerns about the effects on the Chinese and world economy.To evaluate the risk posed by such debts,the State Council in 2011 and 2013 instructed the National Audit Off ice to comprehensively examine the debt status of regional government bodies.The two audits–one