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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Local government > Local government policies
This unique collection combines historical accounts with current socio-political analysis to present an agenda for social-spacial justice for the people of the Eastern Cape. The title explores economics, the environment, development and service delivery, and includes a series of case studies. The contributors' areas of expertise range from political science, social policy, economics, geography, anthropology, biology and education. The Fate of the Eastern Cape not only provides a biography of the post-1994 region, but also makes an important contribution to debates about future policy prescriptions to tackle the wider questions about the future of provinces in South Africa.
Kenneth Gardens is Durban’s largest low-income municipal housing estate. Initially built for `poor whites’, Kenneth Gardens today is arguably one of the most socially diverse living spaces in the city. While the estate is significant in terms of its size, history and social make-up, very little has been written about it. This book provides a history of Kenneth Gardens through the oral history stories of its residents. It is a rich tapestry of narratives as told by people who resided in Kenneth Gardens during apartheid, those that moved into the estate when the Group Areas Act began to be defunct, as well as stories from residents who have more recently moved into the estate. Although this book is about Kenneth Gardens itself, it is also about the history of social housing, identity formation and change, urban planning, and state regulation. Many of the story tellers reveal intimate moments of struggle in their lives. But what emerges more strongly than vulnerability and hardship is embedded resilience and adaptability. Through the narratives we come to understand how a subsidised rental apartment becomes home, and how relative strangers can form a neighbourhood based on shared circumstances, proximity and an urban planning design that fosters familiarity and belonging. The narratives are accompanied by a unique photo essay created by acclaimed photographer Cedric Nunn. The authors invite readers to dwell in the everyday lives and memories of the people of Kenneth Gardens, and in so doing unravel the complexities of social housing, local government, regulation, urban identity politics and human agency.
The COVID-19 pandemic is the first time that many of the UK population, including its national politicians, have become aware of the practical dimensions of devolution to its four nations through the delivery of support to those affected by the virus. Part of the COVID Collection, this topical book explores how the public perception of the decentralized governments has changed during the pandemic and uses case studies to discuss the actions taken by central government to undermine the devolution settlement. Assessing the role of local government in supporting communities despite cuts from central government, it makes a vital contribution to the debate on the future options for the UK within the context of Brexit and what follows.
A number of societal risks pose serious challenges to families'
well-being, many of which cut across divisions of class and race.
These challenges include: changes in the labor market and economy;
the increasing participation of mothers in the labor force; the
changing nature of family structure and the composition of
households; and the increase in the number of immigrant families.
Key institutions in the lives of families, including places of
employment and schools, can play a significant role in fostering
families' capacity to adapt to the potential challenges they face.
"Resilience Across Contexts: Family, Work, Culture, and Community"
presents papers--written by leading scholars in varied disciplines
including economics, developmental and educational psychology,
education, and sociology--discussing factors that influence
resilience development. The authors' research focuses on emerging
issues that have significant implications for policy and practice
in such areas as employment and new technologies; maternal
employment and family development; family structure and family
life; immigration, migration, acculturation, and education of
children and youth; and social and human services delivery. The
book's overall goal is to take stock of what is known from research
and practice on some of the challenges facing children and families
for policy development and improvement of practices.
Before the interstates, Main Street America was the small town's commercial spine and served as the linchpin for community social solidarity. Yet, during the past three decades, a series of economic downturns has left many of the great small cities barely viable. American Hometown Renewal is the first book to combine administrative, budgetary, and economic analysis to examine the economic and fiscal plight currently facing America's small towns. Featuring a blend of theory, applications, and case studies, it provides a comprehensive, single-source textbook covering the key issues facing small town officials in today's uncertain economy. Written by a former public manager, university professor, and consultant to numerous small towns in the Heartland, this book demonstrates the ways in which contemporary small towns throughout the nation are facing economic challenges brought about by the financial shocks that began in 2008. Each chapter explores a theme related to small town revival and provides a related tool or technique to enable small town officials to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. Encouraging local small town officials to look at the economic orbit of communities in a similar manner as a town's budget or a family's personal wealth, examining its specific competitive advantages in terms of relative assets to those of competing communities, this book provides the reader with step-by-step instructions on how to conduct an asset inventory and apply key asset tools to devise a strategy for overcoming the challenges and constraints imposed upon spatially-fixed communities. American Hometown Renewal is an essential primer for students studying city management, economic community development, and city planning, and will be a trusted handbook for city managers, geographers, city planners, urban or rural sociologists, political scientists, and regional microeconomists.
This title was first published in 2001. Planning today has to deal with a completely different world from the one in which many of the basic ways of thought of the profession were founded. Many traditional planning approaches often seem less relevant when attention is increasingly being focused on sustainable development, deregulation and competitiveness in a global world. Focusing on the changes that are taking place in the realm of planning practice and spatial planning across Europe, this text examines the driving forces for institutional change. It brings together a team of leading planning academics with experience of planning practice and policies, from the UK, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Italy and Norway. Throughout the 12 chapters of the book, they examine and compare new approaches to planning across Europe at local, metropolitan, regional, national and international levels.
Winner of The Alexander Nove Prize 2018 The nomads of Central Asia were already well accustomed to life under the power of a distant capital when the Bolsheviks fomented revolution on the streets of Petrograd. Yet after the fall of the Tsar, the nature, ambition and potency of that power would change dramatically, ultimately resulting in the near eradication of Central Asian nomadism. Based on extensive primary source work in Almaty, Bishkek and Moscow, Nomads and Soviet Rule charts the development of this volatile and brutal relationship and challenges the often repeated view that events followed a linear path of gradually escalating violence. Rather than the sedentarisation campaign being an inevitability born of deep-rooted Marxist hatred of the nomadic lifestyle, Thomas demonstrates the Soviet state's treatment of nomads to be far more complex and pragmatic. He shows how Soviet policy was informed by both an anti-colonial spirit and an imperialist impulse, by nationalism as well as communism, and above all by a lethal self-confidence in the Communist Party's ability to transform the lives of nomads and harness the agricultural potential of their landscape. This is the first book to look closely at the period between the revolution and the collectivisation drive, and offers fresh insight into a little-known aspect of early Soviet history. In doing so, the book offers a path to refining conceptions of the broader history and dynamics of the Soviet project in this key period.
First published in 1976, Industrial Location and Planning in the United Kingdom investigates in detail the nature of the changes taking place in the location of manufacturing industry since the 1950s and the reasons for them, including the effects of government regional policy and of factors such as market accessibility, labour availability and cost, transport facilities and personal residential preferences by industrialists and workers. The book brings together a wide range of published and unpublished material in discussing and evaluating explanations for regional and local manufacturing growth or decline. Government regional policy and planning is singled out for special attention, in terms of the impact of Development Area grants, of local planning controls, and of the town programmes. Manufacturing movement to new locations and the implications of government regional policies for industrial efficiency are examined in detail, together with the reasons for locational change in key but controversial industries such as steel, motor vehicles and electronics. This book will be of interest to students of urban planning, manufacturing, and development as well as city planners.
In an attempt to strengthen the legitimacy of European Union (EU) policy-making, the 2009 Lisbon Treaty strengthened the principle of parliamentary control in EU affairs. This pertains to parliaments at all levels ranging from the regional to the supranational level. This book analyses the potential of regional parliaments - the parliaments closest to the citizens - to engage in EU affairs and to fill the perceived legitimacy gap. Eight member states have a total of 73 regional parliaments with legislative powers, and there are further trends towards decentralization in Europe. On its quest to understand the role that regional parliaments can plan in the EU multi-level parliamentary system, the book addresses key questions: What are the formal powers and functions of regional parliaments in EU policy-making? How do they use their powers in practice? How active are they in EU politics, and what do they try to achieve? What factors can explain their degree of (in-)activity? The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of The Journal of Legislative Studies.
In Environmental Federalism, Luke Fowler helps to refocus much-needed attention on the role of state governments in environmental policy creation and implementation in the United States. While the national government receives most of the attention when it comes to environmental policy, state governments play a vital role in protecting our natural resources. Legacy problems, like air, water, and land pollution, present one set of challenges for environmental federalism, but new problems emerging as a result of climate change further test the bounds of federal institutions. Examining patterns of pollution and case studies from the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, Fowler explores two questions: has environmental federalism worked in managing legacy environmental problems, and can it work to manage climate change? In order to answer these questions, Fowler extends James Lester's typology using political incentives and administrative capacities to identify four types of states (progressive, delayers, strugglers, and regressives) and assesses how they are linked to the success of federal environmental programs and conf licts in intergovernmental relations. He then considers what lessons we can learn from these programs and whether those lessons can help us better understand climate policy and multi-level institutions for environmental governance. This timely read will be a valuable contribution to students, researchers, and scholars of political science, public policy, public administration, and environmental studies.
Since the reform and opening-up policy was implemented in China, consultations have been increasingly carried out during the policy-making process. This often involves experts, many of whom are based in think-tanks or similar institutions. The degree of access to the policy-making process varies, and consequently some experts influence the policy-making process significantly and others not. This book explores how experts in China engage with the policy-making process and the circumstances, which affect how far they are able to influence policy-making.
Carrie Manning's illuminating book examines how policies to limit taxation at state and local levels in the U.S. have direct and lasting consequences for equity, accountability, and ultimately for democracy. Tax structures embed, and reproduce, an implicit social contract between government and citizens, creating path-dependent outcomes that produce unintended consequences that are rarely traced back to state and local revenue models. This book combines historical American political development with the study of state formation. It provides a clear-eyed investigation into the past, present, and future of the social contract between America's local governments and citizens.
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic affected all parts of the country, it did not do so equally. Northern England was hit the hardest, exposing more than ever the extent of regional inequalities in health and wealth. Using original data analysis from a wide range of sources, this book demonstrates how COVID-19 has impacted the country unequally in terms of mortality, mental health and the economy. The book provides a striking empirical overview of the impact of the pandemic on regional inequalities and explores why the North fared worse. It sets out what needs to be learnt from the pandemic to prevent regional inequality growing and to reduce inequalities in health and wealth in the future.
Local Governance in England and France addresses issues at the cutting edge of comparative politics and public policy. The book is based on extensive research and interviews, over 300 in total, with local decision makers in two pairs of cities in England and France: Lille and Leeds; Rennes and Southampton. No other Anglo-French comparative project has ever gone into such depth - based on actual case studies - making this book an invaluable resource for students and professionals alike. The book poses key questions about the changing role of the state, the difficulties of policy coordination in a fragmented institutional context, and about the relationship between governance, networks as well as political and democratic accountability. It will be of great interest to the professional research community, and practitioners in Britain, France and beyond, as well as to students of comparative politics, European public policy, British / French politics, European studies, public management and local government studies.
This book explores how far the concept of fragmented authoritarianism remains valid as the key concept for understanding how the Chinese political process works. It contrasts fragmented authoritarianism, which places bureaucratic bargaining at the centre of policy-making, arguing that the goals and interests of the implementing agencies have to be incorporated into a policy if implementation is to be secured, with other characterisations of China's political process. Individual chapters consider fragmented authoritarianism at work in a range of key policy areas, including energy issues, climate change and environmental management, financial reform, and civil-military relations. The book also explores policy making at the national, provincial, city and local levels; debates how far the model of fragmented authoritarianism is valid in its current form or whether modifications are needed; and discusses whether the system of policy making and implementation is overcomplicated, unwieldy and ineffective or whether it is constructive in enabling widespread consultation and scope for imagination, flexibility and variation.
This book adopts a holistic, integrated and pragmatic approach to exploring the myths, concepts, policies, key conditions and tools for enhancing creative knowledge cities, as well as expounding potentially negative impacts of knowledge based city policies. The authors provide a critical reflection on the reality of city concepts including university-city alignment for campus planning, labour market conditions, social capital and proximity, triple helix based transformation, and learning by city governments. Original examples from both the EU and US are complemented by detailed case studies of cities including Rotterdam, Vienna and Munich. The book also examines the reality of knowledge cities in emerging economies such as Brazil and China, with a focus on institutional transferability. Key conditions addressed include soft infrastructure, knowledge spillovers among firms and the connectivity of cities via transport networks to allow the creation of new hubs of knowledge-based services. Addressing new policy tools and developments in governance, this book will prove a fascinating read for academics, researchers and students with an interest in urban policy and planning, urban spatial economics, regional economics and urban sociology. In addition, practitioners within city and regional governments and agencies will find this book an invaluable reference tool. Contributors: V. Araujo, A. Caragliu, Y. Chen, M. de Jong, H. de Jonge, J. de Vries, C. Del Bo, A. den Heijer, J. Edelenbos, K. Erdos, A.M. Fernandez-Maldonado, M. Fromhold-Eisebith, R. Garcia, D.-S. Lee, S. Luthi, P. Nijkamp, B. O hUallachain, R. Rocco, A. Romein, V. Scholten, D.P. Soetanto, M. Taheri, A. Thierstein, J.J. Trip, M. Trippl, M. van der Land, M. van Geenhuizen, A. Varga
Debates about multi-level governance have led to a profound restructuring of regional and local government. The second level of local government is under review in most European countries, with the aim to strengthen the institutional capacity of municipalities or to develop appropriate institutional structures for governing fragmented urban areas. This book provides a thematic and cross-national analysis of the key actors in local government that form the crucial components of effective and democratic policy making. Focussing on the second tier of local government, it examines new empirical data on councillors from this level of government in 15 European countries and integrates important variables such as party politics, notions of democracy, finance, multi-level settings. Divided into five parts, it addresses: Attitudes of county/provincial councillors towards administrative and territorial reforms; Their role perceptions and role behaviour; Their political orientation; Actor constellations and governance arrangements; Political socialization and recruitment, professionalization and career patterns of county/provincial councillors. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of local government, urban studies, regional studies, political science, sociology and geography.
Originally published in 1973. At that time, imbalance in the economic performance of regions had become of increasing concern to politicians and economists in many European counties. British policy was of particular interest: not only because the changes of the 1960s made it more comprehensive than in most other countries; but as some sort of regional policy had been in operation for more than thirty years, many lessons could be learned from its evolution. This book provides a comprehensive study of this aspect of British policy. It starts by outlining the nature of the British regional problem, the case for a policy and the contribution of economic theory to the understanding of the regional question. In later Parts the development of British policy up to 1967 is described along with its impact on the performance of individual regions and different measures are evaluated with a view to increasing the effectiveness of policy. The final chapter outlines the regional policy of the European Economic Community and shows what effect membership would have on British policy.
Originally published in 1995. A comprehensive survey of housing policy throughout Europe, anchored in a thorough analysis of the UK, this book is a text for students of housing at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The book considers housing tenure types and looks at standards of living, housing stock, housing allowances and subsidies and European funds. There are separate chapters for France, Germany, Spain, The Netherlands and Sweden. The later chapters focus on Britain and look more in depth at population issues and economics and address regional policy.
Following the financial crisis and subsequent impacts of economic slowdown and austerity, the emergence of new local governance models and innovation is a very timely issue. The same goes for identifying new types of funding schemes and fiscal models prompted by austerity with the reduction in financial resources for local governments. This book offers a broad perspective on some of the organizational and financial problems faced by cities and local governments across Europe and analyses the reactions and reforms implemented to address current economic and public finance conditions. The geographical coverage of the case studies, multidisciplinary background of the contributing authors and focus on a multiplicity of issues and challenges that confront local governments, not just financial issues as is often the case, means this book is relevant to a wide readership. The book is written for post-graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and researchers in the multidisciplinary field of local government studies (Public Administration, Geography, Political Science, Law, Economy and Sociology), as well as practitioners working in local government institutions.
Despite substantial economic growth, India has one of the highest undernutrition rates in the world; it is home to almost 40 per cent of the world's stunted children. This volume assesses the status and causes of undernutrition in the country, and examines the effectiveness of policies designed to address undernutrition. The essays tackle wide-ranging themes and challenging issues including nutrition; water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH); maternal, neonatal and child health; Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS); Public Distribution System (PDS); crop procurement; and National Food Security Act 2013. With contributions from leading academic researchers, policymakers, as well as civil society representatives, this volume will be indispensable to scholars, teachers and students of public policy, development economics, development sociology, and Indian economy. It will also be useful to government institutions, think tanks and NGOs.
The accession of Croatia to the EU marked the end of a long and arduous period of transition. Croatia had to meet significantly higher criteria than previous states with suspicion and concerns among existing members about further enlargement increasing. Meanwhile initially strong public support in Croatia declined as inconsistencies in EU policy, entry criteria and problems caused by the economic crisis all combined with fears about the loss of national identity and the ability to realize national interests. The successful Croatian accession to the EU in 2013 shows that, despite concerns on both sides, the EU continues to have meaning and significance and that membership remains highly desirable. Through nine mutually interrelated chapters the contributors speak not only about the political and social situation in Croatia, but also prospects for the European Union itself.
The past 30 years have seen the weakening of the central state by processes of devolution, Europeanisation and globalisation, which have led to dramatic clashes between nation states and local authorities. Why do some cities feel the need to sidestep the state in their decision-making? And how can they do so? Bridging political geography and politics, this book gives a new perspective on the central state’s weakening authority and the parallel rise of cities as political actors. The author considers the tensions between central states and European cities, giving a new perspective to students and researchers in urban studies, geography and political science. |
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