Agricultural service delivery: strengthening private crop protection service in southern Ethiopia

As one element of agricultural service delivery, in Ethiopia crop protection service has generally only involved the private sector on a small scale. This article outlines a case study where private crop protection service (PCPS) was strengthened from 2006 to 2010 in Halaba Special District, southern Ethiopia. The study used questionnaires, analysis, service comparison, ranking, and indicator-based assessments. The study shows that PCPS in 2007/08 crop seasons served 1,104 households on 1,707?ha of land in 19 Kebeles, contributing US$327,752 in total. Assessment indicators values were better for PCPS than the informal crop protection service. Piloting PCPS strengthening is recommended to improve crop protection service and reduce crop loss in Ethiopia.     

The mechanics of democracy promotion tools: bridging the knowledge-to-practice gap

By drawing upon the literature that diagnoses the gap between academics and practitioners, this article categorises and describes the traditional democracy promotion tools developed by international governmental and non-governmental organisations to bridge the gap between knowledge and practice. Further, it examines the utility of ICTs in promoting and upholding democratic change. The findings inform considerations and specific recommendations offered to the tool developers on how to converge traditional and new democracy promotion tools. These are intended to assist in focusing tool design and development efforts, and promoting standardisation and innovation.     

提高军校“思想道德修养与法律基础”课教学实效性的思考

在新的形势下,如何上好"基础"课,不断增强教育教学的针对性、实效性和吸引力、感染力,使"基础"课成为军校学员真心喜爱、终身受益的优秀课程。从如何培养学员学习兴趣入手,在提高学员学习能力的同时,注重发挥社会主义荣辱观在构建军校学员理想人格中的作用。     

公安机关软实力建设下警察徒手防卫与控制能力的培养

警察队伍战斗力既包括硬实力,也包括软实力。警察徒手防卫与控制能力是公安机关软实力重要的表现部分,加强警察徒手防卫与控制能力的培养,可提升公安机关软实力,警察徒手防卫与控制能力的培养着重体现在体能、意识、技术技能、战术行动等方面,可通过在职培训、公安院校教育、个人锻炼等路径来提高。     

Westminster constitutions in the South Pacific: A “policy transfer” approach

Constitutional crises in Fiji and Solomon Islands and donor concerns about “good governance” raise older questions about the appropriateness of introduced constitutions to local conditions. This article analyses the process of transfer of “Westminster” constitutions in island states of the Pacific. It considers the factors that facilitated or constrained transfer into and within the region. It also considers cases where alternatives to Westminster were considered but rejected by the local leaders. The article concludes that Westminster has been spread by replication, almost irrespective of underlying social and political conditions.     

Trading culture for development: assessing perceptions among rural agropastoral peoples in Tanzania

Development in rural parts of Africa is strongly desired by local people. Other views expressed by local people towards outside development initiatives vary considerably. Some perceptions are negative, as development recipients view development as a destructive agent of change in the local culture. Despite the negative effects associated with development, this study documented a unanimous desire among a stratified random sample of 418 respondents for more development interventions. Two villages in south-central Tanzania were selected based upon their adjacent proximity to Ruaha National Park. Findings suggest that a capability framework is useful for exploring local perceptions to outside development assistance.     

Indonesia’s maritime connectivity development: domestic and international challenges

This study considers the political aspects of the Joko Widodo government’s megaproject to build an integrated marine logistic system known as the tol laut. Expanding the existing literature which gives details about the contextual obstacles faced by and the prospects for the Indonesian government to pursue its infrastructure ambitions, the study argues that notwithstanding the relevance of the tol laut for advancing the Indonesian economy, it is inevitably entangled with dynamic internal and external environments which can unfavourably distort the construction processes. This is the way of understanding the political economy of Indonesia’s development issues which allows for the juxtaposition of domestic political and international relations factors as its framework of analysis. The discussion is divided into four sections. Section one explains the conceptual and methodological foundation of the study. Section two outlines the importance of the tol laut to Indonesian national economic development. Section three looks at how the current domestic political settings pose structural hurdles to Widodo’s tol laut, and section four observes the effect of international relations of powerful regional actors and Jakarta’s diplomatic capacity to the on-going tol laut. The concluding section summarizes the findings of the study.     

Women’s empowerment in rural Honduras and its determinants: insights from coffee communities in Ocotepeque and Copan

This article quantifies the level of women’s empowerment in western Honduran coffee-producing households through the construction of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index, and highlights the determinants of each empowerment indicator and their interactions. Women in the study region suffer from a lack of control over use of income and access to productive resources. Since control and ownership of assets are positively correlated with input in productive decisions and control over the use of income in this study region, it is suggested that “low-hanging fruit” to improve empowerment would be to invest in interventions that strengthen asset control and distribution.     

Building the capacity builders: lessons from a multi-country training programme for local consultants

Local consultants are an implicit, but overlooked, part of many capacity development strategies. It takes a trustworthy consultant to facilitate genuine change in a civil society organisation. This practical note identifies the learning from a local consultant formation programme (“Consultants for Change” – C4C) implemented in five countries in 2016–17. The note highlights six factors critical to C4C’s apparent success: recruitment; focus of the learning; design of the process; assignments between modules; mentoring support; and the human/financial resources. These same factors may be relevant and applicable to other capacity development programmes.     

国外经验对我国地方政府增强公共服务能力的启示

公共服务是我国政府的一项重要职能。20世纪60年代的公共服务分权化改革,要求地方政府要在公共服务中发挥更大更重要的作用。当前我国地方政府的公共服务水平与公共服务分权化的时代要求、与党中央提出的“构建服务型政府”的战略要求相比,还有较大差距。借鉴国外先进国家和地区的成功经验,能为我国地方政府增强公共服务能力提供一些有益的启示。