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The Province of Gelderland has long boasted a large number of country houses and landed estates, which over time coalesced into estate landscapes around the historical capitals of the Duchy of Guelders quarters of Nijmegen, Arnhem and Zutphen. Rapidly increasing urbanization from the end of the nineteenth century onwards threatened the coherence and accessibility of these landscapes. Gelderland's largest cities, Arnhem and Nijmegen, watched in dismay as many country houses and landed estates fell victim to subdivision and development. In response they started to buy up portions of that estate landscape to ensure that they would remain available to city dwellers. In addition, the 'safety net' provided by newly established nature and landscape organizations, in particular Natuurmonumenten and Geldersch Landschap & Kasteelen, also contributed to preservation and permanent accessibility by offering landed families the opportunity to keep their estate intact, albeit no longer under their ownership. Similar motives – the need to preserve attractive, accessible walking areas for the increasingly urbanized society – underpinned the government's introduction of the Nature Conservation Act in 1928. The Act was invoked more frequently in Gelderland than in any other province. It promoted the opening up of private properties as well as the preservation of the cultural value of the kind of 'natural beauty' to be found on landed estates. After the Second World War, in addition to resorting to the Nature Conservation Act, the owners of country houses and landed estates could avail themselves of an increasing variety of grants aimed at preserving (publicly accessible) nature, landscape and heritage, although the emphasis was firmly on nature. Estate landscapes like the Veluwezoom and the County of Zutphen were eventually safeguarded by a patchwork of different government regulations. In the twenty-first century, government policy shifted towards providing financial support for both public and private contributions to ...

This article examines whether mayors' social capital increases local governments' performance. Putnam suggests that politicians' social networks with residents may deteriorate political transparency and thus decrease performance. However, no direct relationships have been clarified. So, we focus on the Philippines as a case and conduct a survey on national representative 300 cities and municipalities in 2011. We find that (1) by distributions, among three indexes of performance as dependent variables, valuing fundamentals of governance have the highest scores. Social governance and administrative governance follow. Among mayors' networks as independent variables, mayors meet residents most, and local politicians, provincial politicians, and the central government officers follow. (2) By regression analyses, meeting residents promotes social governance, while meeting central government officers increases administrative governance. Multi-level analyses support these results. Therefore, mayors' social capital increases local governments' performance. Yet different social capital promotes different performance.

Government; Sociology - In Het minderhedenbeleid voorbij stellen de auteurs de vraag of specifiek minderhedenbeleid noodzakelijk is. Wat zijn de voordelen en nadelen van dit specifieke beleid ten opzichte van generiek beleid, en wat zijn de consequenties van afschaffing of van een andere invulling? Dit jaarboek is de opvolger van het Het minderhedenbeleid voorbij en geeft informatie over recente beleidsontwikkelingen op het terrein van minderheden, migratie en diversiteit. Het bestaat uit twee gedeelten. In het eerste theoretische deel wordt de 'zin en onzin' van specifiek minderhedenbeleid benaderd vanuit verschillende disciplines en in vergelijkend perspectief gezet. Deel twee laat zien hoe het minderhedenbeleid in de praktijk wordt gebracht. Aan de hand van de beleidsvelden arbeid, veiligheid, gezondheidszorg, onderwijs, jeugdzorg en lokaal overheidsbeleid laten de auteurs zien hoe generiek beleid - of de overgang naar generiek beleid - wordt vormgeven en hoe dit op lokaal niveau uitpakt.

The abolition of the political institutions of the Belgian provinces, as provided in the government declaration of 7 June 1977, puts into question the usefulness of these institutions. Light is thrown on policies at the provincial level, now & in the near past, by means of a brief functional & financial analysis. Juridical & institutional limitations have a restraining influence on the functioning of the provinces. A task analysis shows that provinces are primarily concerned with traditional tasks (eg, education traffic), & that they have also concerned themselves with modern social welfare tasks (eg, culture & community organization). Belgian provinces have very limited means. As a result, their current expenditures do not exceed 3% of all current public expenditures. This shows the relatively small importance of the provinces in the total government structure. 10 Tables. Modified HA.

Since the 1980s, arguments for a multicultural Japan have gained considerable currency against an entrenched myth of national homogeneity. Working Skin enters this conversation with an ethnography of Japan's "Buraku" people. Touted as Japan's largest minority, the Buraku are stigmatized because of associations with labor considered unclean, such as leather and meat production. That labor, however, is vanishing from Japan: Liberalized markets have sent these jobs overseas, and changes in family and residential record-keeping have made it harder to track connections to these industries

'De onbeholpen samenleving' is het resultaat van een gedegen onderzoek door een hoogleraar en een onderzoeker naar de ontevredenheid van Nederlanders over de samenleving en het functioneren van die samenleving. Zij kijken naar de gevolgen van delegitimering, globalisering en individualisering, maar vooral naar het participeren van de burger. De knowhow die een burger zou moeten bezitten om volop mee te kunnen doen, te kunnen inspreken in onze maatschappij, maar ook het vermogen om te kunnen leven met conflicten. Daarmee zoekt het boek de oorzaken duidelijk in kleinere sociale verbanden, niet i