Alternately lauded as a democratic success story and decried as a flawed democracy, Indonesia deserves serious consideration by anyone concerned with the global state of democracy. Yet, more than ten years after the collapse of the authoritarian Suharto regime, we still know little about how the key institutions of Indonesian democracy actually function. This book, written by leading democracy experts and scholars of Indonesia, presents a sorely needed study of the inner workings of Indonesia's political system, and its interactions with society. Combining careful case studies with an eye to the big picture, it is an indispensable guide to democratic Indonesia, its achievements, shortcomings and continuing challenges.

Community visioning and strategic planning programs have become increasingly important in recent years as local governments in rural areas have searched for innovative ways to revitalize their local economies or manage population growth. A panel of experts describes local government programs in ten states. They also evaluate the effectiveness in reaching the vision and objective set forth in these programs. The authors examine the main components of each program and offer insights into factors contributing to its success. Major attention is paid to the need for social capital, benchmarking, and continuing support following the initial efforts. The discussion in the book includes recommendations for starting a community strategic visioning exercise.

Fixing Broken Cities explores the planning, execution, and impact of urban repopulation and investment strategies that were launched in the wake of two crises: late twentieth-century economic disinvestment and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because past practices could no longer serve as a reliable guide to future outcomes in this uncertain environment, any new initiatives had to involve a significant level of risk-taking. Based on the author's experience as a policymaker and practitioner, this book provides detailed insights into the origins and outcomes of these high-risk strategies, along with an explanation of why they succeeded or failed. This new edition examines policy initiatives from a fresh perspective, based on an awareness that (1) real estate ventures are best evaluated over the long term, rather than shortly after the completion of construction activity; (2) policies that had guided the allocation of public-sector resources during past decades of urban disinvestment need to be reconsidered in light of the economic resurgence that many American cities are now experiencing; and (3) the places described in this book are representative of other municipalities, of all kinds, where the pandemic has led to a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between home and workplace. A key theme of the book is equitable development, the question of who should benefit from the allocation of scarce public capital, and what investment policies are most likely to support this principle over the long term. The author provides realistic guidance about pursuing the best opportunities for improvement in highly disadvantaged, resource-starved urban areas, with reference to several key issues that are pressing concerns for members of urban communities: enlivening downtown and neighborhood commercial areas, stabilizing and strengthening residential communities, eliminating industrial-age blight, and providing quality public education options. This new edition will be of great use to planning, housing and community development professionals, both regionally and nationally, as well as to students on Urban Politics and Planning courses.

There is a large and growing literature on Turkish politics in general, and the AKP in particular. However, local government and party organization, although very important topics, are strikingly understudied. This book compares local politics in two Central Anatolian cities, Konya and Eskisehir, ruled by different governmental parties, the AKP in Konya and the CHP in Eskisehir. It analyzes how national political parties adapt to local contexts ('culture of everyday politics') and how they seek to influence local culture ('politics of everyday culture'). By examining how municipal politics is practiced on a daily basis, it illuminates more fundamental aspects of Turkish politics such as political mobilization, establishing links between voters and politicians, various practices of decision-making and the role of civil society. All of this has been critical for the AKP's continuous electoral success since 2002. The findings are based on over 1.5 years of fieldwork in the two cities, as well as over 50 interviews with national and local political actors. The main fields of research are mayoral biographies, municipal practices, particularly with regard to welfare and service provision, the cooperation with other municipal actors as political parties or civil society organizations; urban planning activities and cultural policy. The study helps to comprehend more fundamental aspects of Turkish politics such as political mobilization, the establishing of links between voters, municipalities and parties as well as decision-making processes. Municipal Politics in Turkey fills a gap in existing literature by illuminating the fundamental aspects of Turkish politics, such as political mobilization, the establishing of links between voters, municipalities and parties as well as decision-making processes. It will be a valuable resource for students and scholars interested in Turkish Politics and political parties, municipal/local

Although difficult, complicated, and sometimes discouraging, collaboration is recognized as a viable approach for addressing uncertain, complex and wicked problems. Collaborations can attract resources, increase efficiency, and facilitate visions of mutual benefit that can ignite common desires of partners to work across and within sectors. An important question remains: How to enable successful collaboration? Inter-Organizational Collaboration by Design examines how these types of collaborations can overcome barriers to innovate and rejuvenate communities outlining the factors and antecedents that influence successful collaboration. The book proposes a theoretical perspective for collaborators to adopt design science (a solution finding approach utilizing end-user-centered research, prototyping, and collective creativity to strengthen individuals, teams, and organizations), the language of designers, and a design attitude as an empirically informed pathway for better managing the complexities inherent in collaboration. Through an integrated framework, evidence-based tools and strategies for building successful collaboration is articulated where successful collaboration performance facilitates innovation and rejuvenation. This volume will be essential reading for academics, researchers, leaders and managers in nonprofit, private, and government sectors interested in building better collaborations.

Combining scholarly literature with elected experience at the local governmental level, Barry E. Truchil addresses the inner workings and politics of local government in small town and suburban settings in The Politics of Local Government. This book explores issues involving development and implementation of budgets, regulation, and control of development (including conversion of open space to housing and business buildings), as well as the initiation of progressive changes such as the use of green energy and control of corruption. Given the limited available research in this area, this book fills a void for scholars in the field, undergraduate and graduate students as well as those interested in the politics of local government.

Local Tax Policy: A Primer provides the definitive discussion of how local governments raise revenue. The fourth edition addresses the fundamental influences on local tax and revenue policy including interjurisdictional competition, the politics of anti-taxation, and the relationships with state and federal governments. The primary sources of revenue are discussed from a policy perspective noting the pros and cons of the property tax, local sales and income taxes, and nontax revenue such as intergovernmental aid and user fees.

This book examines the factors which contribute to local green development in China and employs political ecology to analyze the relationship between power and the environment. Specifically, it looks at which actors control access to resources and are therefore able to promote environmental progress. Following the reform and opening-up of China in the 1970s, entrepreneurs and local officials profited economically and politically and formed close relationships, known as guanxi in China. As a result, they have also been criticized as those responsible for the associated ecological damage. This book does not contest this association, but instead argues that the current literature places too much emphasis on their negative influence and the positive influence of their environmental work has been neglected. Building on three case studies where local green development is being pursued, Shanghai Pudong New Area, Baoding, and Wuning, this book shows how local officials and entrepreneurs can also be the crusaders of a greener environment at the local level in China. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese studies, with a particular interest in environmental policy and politics, business and society, as well as those interested in sustainable development more broadly.

This is a critical examination of the impact of sustained large-scale austerity cuts on local government communications in the UK. Budget constraints have left public sector media teams without the resources for robust citizen-facing communications. The "nose for news" has been downgraded and local journalists, once the champions of public interest coverage, are a force much diminished. The book asks, what is lost to local democracy as a result? And what does it mean when no one is holding the country's public spenders to account? The authors present extensive interviews with communications professionals working across different council authorities. These offer important insights into the challenges currently being faced by communicators within local public services. The book also includes in-depth case studies on the Grenfell Tower disaster, the Rotherham child-grooming scandal and the Sheffield tree-felling controversy. These events all raise serious questions about the scrutiny and accountability of local authorities and the important role the media can and does play. Local Democracy, Journalism and Public Relations provides new empirical data on, and the real-world views of, working communications teams in local government today. For students and researchers interested in local journalism and public relations, the book illuminates the current relationship between these professions, local democracy and political accountability.

This is a critical examination of the impact of sustained large-scale austerity cuts on local government communications in the UK. Budget constraints have left public sector media teams without the resources for robust citizen-facing communications. The "nose for news" has been downgraded and local journalists, once the champions of public interest coverage, are a force much diminished. The book asks, what is lost to local democracy as a result? And what does it mean when no one is holding the country's public spenders to account? The authors present extensive interviews with communications professionals working across different council authorities. These offer important insights into the challenges currently being faced by communicators within local public services. The book also includes in-depth case studies on the Grenfell Tower disaster, the Rotherham child-grooming scandal and the Sheffield tree-felling controversy. These events all raise serious questions about the scrutiny and accountability of local authorities and the important role the media can and does play. Local Democracy, Journalism and Public Relations provides new empirical data on, and the real-world views of, working communications teams in local government today. For students and researchers interested in local journalism and public relations, the book illuminates the current relationship between these professions, local democracy and political accountability.

The demand on local government to do more with less by improving operations, increasing productivity, and making better and more informed decisions increases constantly. On a departmental level Geographic Information Systems are helping meet this demand but the majority of local government organizations do not take the time to understand the GIS needs and opportunities of each and every department. This book: Discusses how towns, cities and counties and their specific departments should actually use GIS Explains the best ways to use GIS tools through many specific case studies and step by step instructions Emphasises local government needs first before offering solutions Gives readers a practical and understandable way of thinking about managing and making GIS successful This book is the guide that details best GIS applications and practices for the 34 departments in local government that can, and should, use GIS technology. It explains in details how, why, and what each department should implement, a clear and understandable explanation of departmental GIS.

This book presents the key interactions in local government and public enterprise, drawing together the challenges for local governance in the practice of public entrepreneurship and its response to collaboration, place and place making. Specifically, this book includes the impact of local partnerships and public entrepreneurs in local policy implementation. It is written by established authors bringing together their experience and practice of local partnerships and public entrepreneurship in place-based strategies, and will be of value to local government, new forms of enterprise partnerships, wider agencies and public entrepreneurship scholars as well as policymakers responsible for implementation of place-based regeneration. This text will be of key interest to students, scholars and practitioners in public administration, business administration, local government, entrepreneurship, public sector management and more broadly to those with interests in public policy, business and management, political science, economics, urban studies and geography.

The expectations of citizens in delivery of services by government institutions have increased over the last decade. Although, governments all over the world are involved in transforming methodologies and processes to satisfy their stakeholders, still there are problems which are causing distress and waste of valuable resources. ""Integrating E-Business Models for Government Solutions: Citizen-Centric Service Oriented Methodologies and Processes"" provides a unique collection of essential tools and alternative e-business strategies that can be incorporated into e-government solutions. The goal is to help in evolving effective methodologies and processes and consequently provide cost effective and citizen-centric services. Useful to scholars, researchers, and academic institutions, this book will enable readers to examine current issues and promote research initiatives to improve service delivery in e-government.

This book provides a vantage point of comparison, of the actual reality of decentralisation in India with Gandhi's vision of decentralised democracy, or what he referred to as Gram Swaraj. It looks at the historical evolution of panchayats from ancient times to India's independence, and critically discusses the developments after. It examines the functioning of the present Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) and the performances of urban local bodies. The basic thrust of this work is the need for constitutional reforms meant to strengthen and deepen democracy. The book will be useful to those in political studies, policy studies, public administration and development studies.

First published in 1997, this volume presents the results of in-depth research into the application of the UK homelessness legislation in relation to community care, the Children Act 1989, violence to women, and racial harassment. This is supplemented with a consideration of policies and practices in 15 local authority homelessness departments. It is argued that government created the nation of a successful, or "appropriate" applicant, but this could not be translated into actual practice as the original legislation did not facilitate it. In fact, in the mid-1990s, government became more concerned with notions of inappropriateness, stereotyping those using the homelessness legislation and creating modern "folk devils". This was the background to the 1996 changes to the homelessness legislation which have created the notion of the "inappropriate" applicant. It is argued that the new legislation is more concerned with denial, deterrence and privatization. The new legislation has also detrimentally affected the application of the homelessness legislation in each of the areas discussed.

This book is about why and how central and local governments clash over important national policy decisions. Its empirical focus is on the local politics of Japan which has significantly shaped, and been shaped by, larger developments in national politics. The book argues that since the 1990s, changes in the national political arena, fiscal and administrative decentralization, as well as broader socio-economic developments have led to a decoupling of once closely integrated national and local party systems in Japan. Such decoupling has led to a breakdown of symbiotic relations between the centre and regions. In its place are increasing strains between national and local governments leading to greater intra-party conflict, inter-governmental conflicts, and more chief executives with agendas and resources increasingly autonomous of the national ruling party. Although being a book primarily focused on the Japanese case, the study seeks to contribute to a broader understanding of how local partisans shape national policy-making. The book theorizes and investigates how the degree of state centralization, vertical integration for party organizations, and partisan congruence in different levels of government affect inter-governmental relations. Japan's experience is compared with Germany, Canada, and the UK to explore sources of multi-level policy conflict.

This book, first published in 2005, explores the location and dynamics of power within the state, focusing on a recent wave of decentralizing reforms that have swept across both developed and developing countries in recent years. Variation in the timing of reform across countries only vaguely relates to the genesis of an international consensus pushed by big lenders and development banks or the reemergence of democracy in decentralizing countries. The book develops a theory linking decentralization's adoption to the electoral concerns of political parties: decentralization represents a desirable strategy for parties whose support at subnational levels appears more secure than their prospects in national elections. It examines this argument against experiences in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela and speculates on how recent political changes may affect decentralization's shape and extent in coming years.

The twin categories of the state and nature collectively embody some of the most fundamental reference points around which our lives and thinking are organized. Despite their combined significance, however, the complex relationships that exist between modern states and nature remain under-theorized and are relatively unexplored. Through a detailed study of different sites, moments, and framing strategies The Nature of the State challenges the ways in which geographers and social scientists approach the study of state-nature relations. The authors analyse different instances of state-nature interaction from all over the world, considering the geo-politics of resource conflicts, the operation of natural history museums, the organizational practices of environmental departments and ministries, the regulation of genetic science, and contemporary forms of state intervention within issues of climate change. Introducing original research into the different institutional, spatial, and temporal strategies used by states to frame the natural world this book provides a critical overview of the latest political and ecological theories and addresses a wide range of pressing socio-environmental debates.

Less than two years after winning the 2013 elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his intention to dissolve his government, paving the way for general elections. While the initial impression was that the upcoming elections were "pointless" and "unnecessary", the campaign gradually turned into a passionate and dramatic political competition, which reflected - and reenergized - the ideological, social, ethnic and cultural divides of Israeli society. This book describes and analyses a great variety of political, sociological and cultural dimensions of the 2015 elections for the 20th Knesset. Covering issues such as voters' behaviour, coalition formation, figures of leadership, political identities, political communication and persuasion, this rich collection of essays offers a unique and comprehensive perspective on Israeli political culture in general, and on the Israeli society in the midst of the 2015 elections in particular. It also offers theoretical insight to anyone interested in parliamentary politics and party systems in general. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Israel Affairs.

Attaining the benefits of (especially fiscal) decentralization in government remains an enduring challenge, in part because the re-arrangement of public functions across levels of government has often been carried out poorly. This book aims to provide a firmer conceptual basis for the re-arrangement of public functions across levels of government. In doing so, it offers practical advice for policy makers from developing and emerging countries and development cooperation practitioners engaged in such activity. Combining a theoretical approach for inter-governmental functional assignment with an in-depth analysis of real-life country cases where functional assignment (FA) has been supported in the context of international development cooperation, it underscores the common technical and political challenges of FA, and also demonstrates the need to expect and support country made and context-specific solutions to FA processes and results. Examples are drawn from a number of developing/transition countries from the Asia-Pacific region, Africa and the OECD, which outline and suggest advisory approaches, tools, principles and good practices and approaches. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students, policy-makers and practitioners in public policy, decentralization, local governance studies, public administration and development administration/studies.

In today's world, citizenship is increasingly defined in normative terms. Political belonging comes to be equated with specific norms, values and appropriate behaviour, with distinctions made between virtuous, desirable citizens and deviant, undesirable ones. In this book, we analyze the formulation, implementation, and contestation of such normative framings of citizenship, which we term 'citizenship agendas'. Some of these agendas are part and parcel of the working of the nation-state. Other citizenship agendas, however, are produced beyond the nation-state. The chapters in this book study various sites where the meaning of 'the good citizen' is framed and negotiated in different ways by state and non-state actors. We explore how multiple normative framings of citizenship may coexist in apparent harmony, or merge, or clash. The different chapters in this book engage with citizenship agendas in a range of contexts, from security policies and social housing in Dutch cities to state-like but extralegal organizations in Jamaica and Guatemala, and from the regulation of the Muslim call to prayer in the US Midwest to post-conflict reconstruction in Lebanon. This book was previously published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.

When Michael Bloomberg handed over the city to Bill de Blasio, New York and the country were experiencing record levels of income inequality. De Blasio was the first progressive elected to City Hall in twenty years. Invoking Fiorello La Guardia's name, he pledged to improve the lives of those marginalized by poverty and prejudice. Unlike La Guardia, de Blasio did not have allies in Washington like President Franklin D. Roosevelt who could effectively support his progressive agenda. As de Blasio approached the end of his first term, the situation worsened, with Donald Trump in the White House and a Republican-controlled Congress determined to further reduce social programs that help the needy. As a result, de Blasio's mayoralty is an illuminating case study of what mayors can and cannot do on their own to address economic and social inequality. As the Democratic Party attempts to reassemble a viable political coalition that cuts across boundaries of race, class and gender, de Blasio's efforts to redefine priorities in America's largest city is instructive. Joseph P. Viteritti's The Pragmatist is the first in-depth look at de Blasioboth the man himself and his policies in crucial areas such as housing, homelessness, education, and criminal justice. It is a test case for the viability of progressivism itself. Along the way, Viteritti introduces the reader to every NYC mayor since La Guardia. He covers progressives who breathed life into the "soul of the city" before the devastating fiscal crisis of 1975 put it on the brink of bankruptcy, and those post-fiscal crisis chief executives who served during times of limiting austerity. This engaging story of the rise, fall, and rebirth of progressivism in America's major urban center demonstrates that the road to progress has been a longand continuingjourney.

The events of recent history affirm the urgent need for a satisfactory definition of the conditions under which a minority within a state has the legal right to secede. Although the concept of sovereignty has been progressively weakened, it still presents the major theoretical difficulty in this area. There is currently no source of international law that would give a legal body like a court the authority to recognize the division of an oppressive or illegitimate state into separate legal entities. This book accordingly argues for a global system of justice based on a domestic model of compulsory law. It considers some of the technical, procedural and evidentiary issues that would arise in instituting such a regime, and develops the conceptual framework essential for the provision of legal remedies for gross violations of our fundamental human rights.