Participatory Budgeting in Midwestern States: Democratic Connection or Citizen Disconnection?

What participation mechanisms connect citizens and city officials? Do they produce valued outcomes? Surveys of elected officials suggest that microlevel mechanisms such as direct citizen contact are more valuable in meeting participation goals than are mechanisms focusing on macrolevel concerns. However, there is a disconnect between perceptions about value and the use of mechanisms. State‐level participation requirements and a city manager have little effect on the value of a mechanism. These findings raise some questions: why are microlevel participation mechanisms favored, why do some mechanisms have value even though respondents have little experience with them, and why is there a misalignment between participatory goals and the mechanisms used?     

European Community politics and electoral representation: Evidence from the 1989 European Elections Study

Abstract: In spite of the fact that the European elections were, in most countries, not fought over the issue of Community building and European integration, this article shows that only a few parties take positions towards the Community which are clearly out of line with the average position of their voters. The parties involved are the orthodox-Protestant combination in the Netherlands, the Workers Party in Ireland, the Italian MSI, and the greens in Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Luxembourg. The discrepancies between these parties'positions and the attitudes of their electorates - in combination with their generally successful electoral performance - underscores what is known from other analyses: Parties do not acquire votes on the basis of European issue concerns, but on the basis of national political concerns. The result of the European elections may still, however, be considered as an ex post facto , endorsement and legitimation of parties'policies towards European integration.     

Tuvalu and You: The Monarch,the United Kingdom and the Realms

The government plans to amend the royal succession rules by making primogeniture gender blind and ending marriage to a Roman Catholic spouse as a disqualification for succession. Achieving these goals means that the UK is dependent on the agreement of the fifteen Commonwealth countries—the ‘realms’—that also have the Queen as head of state. The article questions whether these proposals go far enough when leaving intact other religious discriminatory rules hostile to Catholics and all others who cannot be in communion with the Church of England. It is maintained that a political disinclination to address and, as necessary, challenge the real as opposed to the formal position of the Church of England vitiates the government's approach. Moreover, it is asked whether the policy process itself should not become more open and democratic both within the UK and between the realms.     

China Observes Day of Mourning as Relief Work for Mudslides Continues

Mudslides buried and flooded hundreds of homes on Sunday,August 8,in Zhouqu,the Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of northwest Gansu Province     

Letters of Intent: Election Campaigning and Orchestrated Public Debate in Local Newspapers' Letters to the Editor

Drawing on the findings of an extensive study of local and regional newspaper reporting of the 2001 UK general election, this article contests the widely held view that readers' letters' pages provide a public forum for discussion and debate initiated by readers. The article argues that during election campaigns, local parties may become highly influential in shaping the contents of letters pages as part of their broader media based campaigning strategy. For their part, editors select letters not simply according to their newsworthiness but to reflect the identity of the newspaper, to meet the perceived preferences of readers, as well as the more prosaic requirements of availability of space and editorial imperatives concerning balance. A fivefold typology of readers' letters is constructed and illustrated by reference to newspaper discussions of, among other matters, British membership of Europe and issues around taxation.     

Aftercare Reality and Reform

Aftercare is widely acknowledged to be a weak link in the juvenile justice continuum. This report describes Pennsylvania's recent efforts to envision and articulate a comprehensive aftercare system, to assess current local variations in aftercare practice in light of that vision, and to bring about the state‐ and county‐level reforms that will make comprehensive aftercare a reality statewide.     

Getting out the vote: Social structure and the mobilization of partisanship in the 1989 European elections

Abstract: Why do European elections look more like national elections in retrospect than in prospect? One possibility is that during the run-up to a European election party leaders appeal for the votes of their 'normal' supporters, and their success in these appeals gives rise to the 'normal' outcome of the campaign. To test this hypothesis two definitions of 'normal supporters' are evaluated and the outcome is to discredit the use of party identification as a means of identifying supporters. Instead, social structure is employed to identify the groups that might respond to party appeals, and the basic finding of the article is that supporters defined in this fashion do increase their support for appropriate parties during the run-up to a European election, as though they were responding to appeals of the hypothesized kind.