Suchergebnisse

The effects of Australia's National Landcare Program (NLP) on the relationship between the Australian state & the national agricultural community are studied; in addition, the issue of whether current state projects are actually attempting to benefit the environment is addressed. A theoretical overview of contemporary notions of "legitimation" is presented; an additional overview of the establishment & evolution of the NLP is provided. Although farmers' voluntary participation in the NLP prevents the government's control of project activities, farmers are reliant upon support & knowledge from project officers. Despite participants' high regard for the NLP as a legitimate national project, it is maintained that the NLP is actually contributing to the reproduction of capitalist accumulation within the agricultural sector. The state's disregard of the NLP's social & ecological costs & the question of whether the NLP can preserve its current legitimate status are addressed. J. W. Parker

There is growing interest in the social sciences in the concept of social capital & the role it plays in facilitating collaborative & collective actions. Within political science, the work of Robert Putnam has dominated social capital research. This paper argues that the Putnam school approach is lacking in two main respects. First, the role played by public authorities in the creation of social capital is neglected. Second, the implications for governance cannot simply be read off from associational activity & "stocks" of social capital. The concept of the political opportunity structure is offered & adapted to develop a framework for social capital analysis. Original empirical material from Birmingham is drawn upon & compared to earlier studies of the city in order to support & illustrate the arguments of the paper. 3 Tables, 48 References. Adapted from the source document.

The apparent hegemony of the public-choice approach to metropolitan governance has been sharply challenged on a number of fronts during the 1990s with a series of new arguments for consolidation emphasizing the role of boundaries in defining interests & property rights so as to structure the distribution of political transactions costs within metropolitan areas. These new arguments have yet to be organized, however, into a coherent critique of the public-choice approach. This article provides such a statement. (1) The nature of individual decision making implicit within the new case for metropolitan consolidation is examined. (2) Its core institutional propositions on boundaries are discussed. (3) The key outcome hypotheses flowing from the new consolidationist case's assumptions about institutions & individual choice are evaluated in light of the public-choice case for jurisdictional fragmentation. 117 References. Adapted from the source document.