How Do Japanese Citizens Participate Politically? Most Japanese citizens, perhaps with a bit of a chuckle, would answer that 'average' Japanese do not participate in politics. While political attitudes in other countries have fluctuated corresponding to social, political, and economic climates of the times; in Japan, a consistently negative view of politics has persisted since the late 1960s. Japanese citizens perceive their government much more critically than citizens of neighboring countries. While many Japanese citizens participate in specific political acts such as signing candidate support cards, attending political rallies, or directly contacting politicians, they largely do not view these activities as political participation. Kida examines why this is the case; whether there is a connection between negative views of politics and how Japanese people self-identify their political participation; how Japanese citizens attempt to exact change or influence policy; how the government engages citizens in political participation; and the relationship between citizens' attitudes towards government and levels of political participation. Kida explores political participation on the local level, to better understand the sources of political attitudes. While participation studies have been conducted in Japan, most are centered in large urban areas, focusing on either extreme forms of participation such as protests, or concentrated on single issue participation such as the environmental or women's movements. This book, in contrast, explores what every day 'regular' in the system political participation looks like in a small traditional Japanese city - using Oita, a small city in Kyushu, as a case study. It focuses especially on the role local institutions and politicians play in influencing the kinds of participation available and subsequently, the attitudes created about participation.

Creating civic will by engaging citizens on the toughest public problems helps break legislative and bureaucratic gridlock and restores trust in public institutions. This book shows you how to do it.
--The Honorable Federico Pena, U.S. Secretary of Transportation

The leaders who are most effective in addressing public issues are those who have the credibility to bring together the right people to create visions and solve problems. Drawing on their extensive research, as well as on the advice and guidance of the leading scholars and practitioners in the field, David Chrislip and Carl Larson show how elected officials and other civic leaders can generate the civic will to break through legislative and bureaucratic gridlock, deal with complex issues, and engage frustrated and angry citizens. They also describe how to design, initiate, and sustain a constructive, collaborative process. This groundbreaking book provides insight and answers to the major challenges facing communities today.

Are politics local? Why? Where? When? How do we measure local versus national politics? And what are the effects? This book provides answers to these questions, within an explicitly comparative framework, including both advanced and developing democracies. It does so by using a statistically-based and graphical account of party nationalization, providing methodology and data for legislative elections covering scores of parties across dozens of countries. The book divides party nationalization into two dimensions - static and dynamic - to capture different aspects of localism, both with important implications for representation. Static nationalization measures the consistency in a party's support across the country and thus shows whether parties are able to encompass local concerns into their platforms. Dynamic nationalization, in turn, measures the consistency among the districts in over-time change in electoral results, under the presumption that where districts differ in their electoral responses, local factors must drive politics. Each of the two dimensions, in sum, considers representation from the perspective of the mix of national versus local politics.

Democratization from Above seeks to explain why some national and state governments in the developing world introduce reforms to make local governance more democratic while others neglect or actively undermine democracy at local levels of government. The study challenges conventional wisdom that local democratization is implemented as a means of granting more autonomy to local actors. Instead, Anjali Thomas Bohlken argues that local democratization offers higher level government elites who lack control over party organizational networks an alternative means of increasing the effectiveness of local intermediaries on whom these elites rely to mobilize political support. The book starts with a focus on India and uses original data, and a combination of qualitative and quantitative evidence, to show support for the argument. The study then relies on an original cross-national dataset to show how the argument helps explain the variation in the implementation of local democratization reforms across the developing world.

Originally published in 1987, Cost-Benefit Analysis in Urban and Regional Planning, outlines the theory and practice of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in the context of urban and regional planning. The theory of CBA is developed with examples to illustrate the principles, it also deals with details of the applications and covers issues such as local health and social services provision, local economic development and regional policy evaluation, and planning in less developed countries - as well as the conventional land-use issues of physical planning.

Indonesia is Southeast Asia's largest economy and freest democracy yet vested interests and local politics serve as formidable obstacles to infrastructure reform. In this critical analysis of the politics inhibiting infrastructure investment, Jamie S. Davidson utilizes evidence from his research, press reports and rarely used consultancy studies to challenge mainstream explanations for low investment rates and the sluggish adoption of liberalizing reforms. He argues that obstacles have less to do with weak formal institutions and low fiscal capacities of the state than with entrenched, rent-seeking interests, misaligned central-local government relations, and state-society struggles over land. Using a political-sociological approach, Davidson demonstrates that 'getting the politics right' matters as much as getting the prices right or putting the proper institutional safeguards in place for infrastructure development. This innovative account and its conclusions will be of interest to students and scholars of Southeast Asia and policymakers of infrastructure investment and economic growth.

Transoxania, Khurasan, and ?ukharistan - which comprise large parts of today's Central Asia - have long been an important frontier zone. In the late antique and early medieval periods, the region was both an eastern political boundary for Persian and Islamic empires and a cultural border separating communities of sedentary farmers from pastoral-nomads. Given its peripheral location, the history of the 'eastern frontier' in this period has often been shown through the lens of expanding empires. However, in this book, Robert Haug argues for a pre-modern Central Asia with a discrete identity, a region that is not just a transitory space or the far-flung corner of empires, but its own historical entity. From this locally specific perspective, the book takes the reader on a 900-year tour of the area, from Sasanian control, through the Umayyads and Abbasids, to the quasi-independent dynasties of the Tahirids and the Samanids. Drawing on an impressive array of literary, numismatic and archaeological sources, Haug reveals the unique and varied challenges the eastern frontier presented to imperial powers that strove to integrate the area into their greater systems. This is essential reading for all scholars working on early Islamic, Iranian and Central Asian history, as well as those with an interest in the dynamics of frontier regions.

Why do some ethno-national groups live peacefully with the states that govern them, whereas others develop into serious threats to state authority? Through a comparative historical analysis, this book compares the evolution of Kurdish mobilization in Turkey with the Berber mobilization in Morocco by looking at the different nation-building strategies of the respective states. Using a variety of sources, including archival documents, interviews, and memoirs, Senem Aslan emphasizes the varying levels of willingness and the varying capabilities of the Turkish and Moroccan states to intrude into their citizens' lives. She argues that complex interactions at the ground level - where states have demanded changes in everyday behavior, such as how to dress, what language to speak, what names to give children, and more mundane practices - account for the nature of emerging state-minority relations. By taking the local and informal interactions between state officials and citizens seriously, this study calls attention to the actual implementation of state policies and the often unintended consequences of these policies.

Today, regional parties in India win nearly as many votes as national parties. In Why Regional Parties?, Professor Adam Ziegfeld questions the conventional wisdom that regional parties in India are electorally successful because they harness popular grievances and benefit from strong regional identities. He draws on a wide range of quantitative and qualitative evidence from over eighteen months of field research to demonstrate that regional parties are, in actuality, successful because they represent expedient options for office-seeking politicians. By focusing on clientelism, coalition government, and state-level factional alignments, Ziegfeld explains why politicians in India find membership in a regional party appealing. He therefore accounts for the remarkable success of India's regional parties and, in doing so, outlines how party systems take root and evolve in democracies where patronage, vote buying, and machine politics are common.

Why have so many established political parties across Latin America collapsed in recent years? Party Brands in Crisis offers an explanation that highlights the effect of elite actions on voter behavior. During the 1980s and 1990s, political elites across the region implemented policies inconsistent with the traditional positions of their party, provoked internal party conflicts, and formed strange-bedfellow alliances with traditional rivals. These actions diluted party brands and eroded voter attachment. Without the assured support of a partisan base, parties became more susceptible to short-term retrospective voting, and voters without party attachments deserted incumbent parties when they performed poorly. Party Brands in Crisis offers the first general explanation of party breakdown in Latin America, reinforcing the interaction between elite behavior and mass attitudes.

Offers an in-depth exploration of current topics in local government, including resiliency, emergency management and terrorism, climate change, smart cities, social media, and infrastructure funding. Written by top academics in the field and specifically aimed at policy makers, managers and administrators, as well as students. Provides thorough case examples from the contributors’ own extensive backgrounds in public service and public-private partnerships to illustrate each chapter.

This comprehensive volume studies the vices and virtues of regionalisation in comparative perspective, including countries such as Belgium, Germany, Spain, and the UK, and discusses conditions that might facilitate or hamper responsiveness in regional democracies. It follows the entire chain of democratic responsiveness, starting from the translation of citizen preferences into voting behaviour, up to patterns of decision-making and policy implementation. Many European democracies have experienced considerable decentralisation over the past few decades. This book explores the key virtues which may accompany this trend, such as regional-level political authorities performing better in understanding and implementing citizens' preferences. It also examines how, on the other hand, decentralisation can come at a price, especially since the resulting multi-level structures may create several new obstacles to democratic representation, including information, responsibility and accountability problems. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal West European Politics.

What threatens the property rights of business owners? And what makes these rights secure? This book transcends the conventional diagnosis of the issue in modern developing countries by moving beyond expropriation by the state ruler or by petty bureaucratic corruption. It identifies 'agent predation' as a novel threat type, showing it to be particularly widespread and detrimental. The book also questions the orthodox prescription: institutionalized state commitment cannot secure property rights against agent predation. Instead, this volume argues that business actors can hold the predatory state agents accountable through firm-level alliances with foreign actors, labor, and local communities. Beyond securing ownership, such alliances promote rule of law in a rent-seeking society. Taking Russia and Ukraine between 2000 and 2012 as its empirical focus, the book advances these arguments by drawing on more than 150 qualitative interviews with business owners, policy makers, and bureaucrats, as well as an original large-N survey of firms.

In one of the only accounts of Latino legislative behavior, Stella M. Rouse examines how well the growing Latino population translates their increased presence into legislative influence. Latinos in the Legislative Process explores Latino representation by considering the role of ethnicity throughout the legislative process - from bill sponsorship, to committee deliberations, to floor votes - in seven state legislatures. Rouse first identifies issues that are priorities for Latinos and tells us whether a Latino political agenda exists. She then provides a theoretical framework for ethnicity in legislative behavior and outcomes. Rouse demonstrates that ethnicity is a complex dynamic that plays a variable role in the legislative process. Thus, Latino representation cannot be viewed monolithically.

This book presents the changing roles of urban governments and how local governments struggle to gain administrative, fiscal, and political power to combat current urban challenges in Kazakhstan. Focusing on the cities and regions selected by the national government of Kazakhstan to be the drivers of national economic development, the author analyses the impact of decentralization on the role of local governments. The book examines the practical experiences of city and regional governments with an emphasis on urban planning, public investment in national projects, and management of urban transport. Due to the complexity and irregular distribution of political reforms at different levels of local government in Kazakhstan, three separate studies are presented, each looking at a specific aspect of decentralization reform and local government function related to physical urban development and distribution of public investment. The author argues that, if the national government of Kazakhstan wants to concentrate economic resources in urban agglomerations, it is not enough to assume that local governments are ready to play the role of efficient planners and managers of urban development. A useful analysis illustrating cities and urban conglomerations as engines of growth in economic development, this book will be of interest to academics studying Central Asian Studies, in particular political and economic development, Development Studies, and Urban Studies.

The level of government responsible for implementing policies affects intent, services provided, and ultimate outcomes. The decision about where to locate such responsibility is the federal design dilemma faced by Congress. Taking a new approach to this delegation and decentralization, The Federal Design Dilemma focuses on individual members of Congress. Not only are these legislators elected by constituents from their states, they also consider the outcomes that will result from state-level versus national executive branch implementation of policies. Here, Pamela J. Clouser McCann documents congressional intergovernmental delegation between 1973 and 2010, and how individual legislators voted on decentralization and centralization choices. Clouser McCann traces the path of the Affordable Care Act from legislative proposals in each chamber to its final enactment, focusing on how legislators wrestled with their own intergovernmental context and the federal design of health insurance reform in the face of political challenges.

Contemporary practices of international peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction are often unsatisfactory. There is now a growing awareness of the significance of local governments and local communitites as an intergrated part of peacebuilding in order to improve quality and enhance precision of interventions. In spite of this, 'the local' is rarely a key factor in peacebuilding, hence 'everyday peace' is hardly achieved. The aim of this volume is threefold: firstly it illuminates the substantial reasons for working with a more localised approach in politically volatile contexts. Secondly it consolidates a growing debate on the significance of the local in these contexts. Thirdly, it problematizes the often too swiftly used concept, 'the local', and critically discuss to what extent it is at all feasible to integrate this into macro-oriented and securitized contexts. This is a unique volume, tackling the 'local turn' of peacebuilding in a comprehensive and critical way. This book was published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

This comprehensive volume is the first systematic effort to explore the ways in which recognised states and international organisations interact with secessionist 'de facto states', while maintaining the position that they are not regarded as independent sovereign actors in the international system. It is generally accepted by policy makers and scholars that some interaction with de facto states is vital, if only to promote a resolution of the underlying conflict that led to their decision to break away, and yet this policy of 'engagement without recognition' is not without complications and controversy. This book analyses the range of issues and problems that such interaction inevitably raises. The authors highlight fundamental questions of sovereignty, conflict management and resolution, settlement processes, foreign policy and statehood. This book will be of interest to policy makers, students and researchers of international relations. It was originally published as a special issue of the journal Ethnopolitics.

This book discusses the fundamental issues regarding the effect of real estate regulation on housing, urban development, and considerations of justice and efficiency. Bringing together the contributions of prominent scholars representing diverse methodologies and academic disciplines, this book offers new perspectives on core topics such as the effectiveness of land use regulation in terms of housing availability, enhanced equality, and sustainable development; and different modes of regulation and their mutual influences. The book's eleven chapters are divided into five parts which address different aspects of real estate regulation, combining theoretical analysis with a close observation of diverse case studies, from North America and Europe to China, the Middle East, and developing economies. Part I offers cutting-edge analysis on how to measure, model, and understand the impact of zoning and other modes of real estate regulation, from economic and normative theoretical viewpoints. Part II complements Part I by providing historical observations and empirical knowledge on the actual contribution of zoning and historical conservation regulation to cities' shape. Part III considers the outcomes of business and industrial land development policies. Part IV studies urban land development regulation and allows to compare between two relevant case studies-one from Germany, and the other from Poland. Finally, Part V concerns standardization in the real estate market by analyzing the justification and outcomes of such attempts, particularly in the mortgages market. Providing an interface between theory and practice, the book will appeal to a broad audience, consisting of scholars, policy-makers, practitioners, and students, interested in an interdisciplinary overlook on real estate regulation.

While some academic attention has been paid to the impact of new digital technologies on African media in the colonial languages of English, French and Portuguese, there is a dearth of research into African language digital communication. This book analyses the online presence of African language media. The chapters in the book focus on the speed, structure, content, navigation and interactivity, operations and performance, and audience of the online media. They also pay particular attention to how social media such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp have been appropriated by African language media. Using a wide range of case studies, the contributors assess the challenges of adopting digital technologies by the media, and how the technologies have impacted journalistic practice and media operations.

Examining the ability of the African language press to adopt new technologies, this book will be of interest to scholars of media, journalism, communication, social media and culture in Africa.

Table of Contents



Introduction: Not to be left behind: African languages, media and the digital sphere 1. Access, Skills, African Perspectives and ‘Development’? in Africa: Local Knowledge in Local Languages 2. Alaroye, Isolezwe and the adoption of digital technologies 3. Okun Radio Online as an Impetus for Maintaining the Dialects and Cultural Heritage of Okun-Yoruba People 4. Grassroots Media and Social Media Adaptation: Case Study of Urhobo Today 5. Breaking Protocol: Indigenous Language Usage Practices in Online Readers’ Comments in Zimbabwe 6. Perceptions of and motivations for accessing Swahili Online newspapers among students at the University of Dar es Salaam 7. Use of Indigenous Languages for Social Media Communication: The Nigerian Experience 8. Politics of language, ethnicity, and identity in Zimbabwean ethnolinguistic online communities 9. ‘Digital Chieftaincy’: Social Media, Register and Community Policing in Kenya 10. New Technologies, Indigenous Language Media Practice and Management for Development in Nigeria 11. Issues and challenges of adopting digital technologies by African language media: The YoruÌbaì example 12. African language online journalism in Malawi: Challenges and Prospects

Today, regional parties in India win nearly as many votes as national parties. In Why Regional Parties?, Professor Adam Ziegfeld questions the conventional wisdom that regional parties in India are electorally successful because they harness popular grievances and benefit from strong regional identities. He draws on a wide range of quantitative and qualitative evidence from over eighteen months of field research to demonstrate that regional parties are, in actuality, successful because they represent expedient options for office-seeking politicians. By focusing on clientelism, coalition government, and state-level factional alignments, Ziegfeld explains why politicians in India find membership in a regional party appealing. He therefore accounts for the remarkable success of India's regional parties and, in doing so, outlines how party systems take root and evolve in democracies where patronage, vote buying, and machine politics are common.

The impact of legacies and memories on social movements has been paid only limited attention in what is now a sizeable literature. While there is a growing interest in memory, there is little systematic theory or comparative research on the long-lasting institutional consequences of important events-or how they are remembered by future generations. In Legacies and Memories in Movements, Donatella della Porta and her collaborators examine the concepts of historical legacy and memory, suggesting ways to apply them in analyses of the long-term effects of movements, movement participation, and movement strategies and tactics. In particular, they explore a critical juncture, rich with consequences for social movements: the transition to democracy. Through a comparative-historical study of social movements in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, the authors tease out the complex and varied ways different modes of transition can produce new types and uses of memories for social movements. To do so, they analyze how moments of transition create institutional change that impacts future movements and consider how past protests enhance and constrain social movements today. Focusing on the reverberation of events and how past events serve as guides for the future, Legacies and Memories in Movements brings together the literature on collective memory and social movements for the first time.

Democratization from Above seeks to explain why some national and state governments in the developing world introduce reforms to make local governance more democratic while others neglect or actively undermine democracy at local levels of government. The study challenges conventional wisdom that local democratization is implemented as a means of granting more autonomy to local actors. Instead, Anjali Thomas Bohlken argues that local democratization offers higher level government elites who lack control over party organizational networks an alternative means of increasing the effectiveness of local intermediaries on whom these elites rely to mobilize political support. The book starts with a focus on India and uses original data, and a combination of qualitative and quantitative evidence, to show support for the argument. The study then relies on an original cross-national dataset to show how the argument helps explain the variation in the implementation of local democratization reforms across the developing world.