Suchergebnisse

Control over the production, the circulation and the use of statistical knowledge is inextricably linked to bureaucratic forms of domination. The historiography of the building of the modern State insists on the tight relationship between the capacity to collect and utilise statistical knowledge and the consolidation of bureaucratic domination. The creation of statistical categories symbolically unifies territories, social groups and practices. Similarly, the European Union has invested heavily in harmonising statistical categories, thereby providing institutions and actors with uniform descriptive languages. However, unlike statistical constructs of the Nation States of the 18th and 19th Centuries, European statistical categories are generated in a context of pre-existing statistical categories structuring public policies and social practice and institutions. The article will be empirically based on the emergence of EU disability policy which managed to carve out a new arena for policy discussion and coordination form the 1990s on. Although this policy does not imply a transfer of sovereignty, the statistical unification of this social group at the European level and the structuring of interest groups and expert groups can be interpreted as an exercise of rescaling which has transformed the definition of disability as a policy problem and operated a shift in resources and legitimacies among stakeholders. Despite the successful creation of a unified statistical category, the article will look into some reasons for the limited use of disability statistics in policy making, but then show how alliances put in place by the Commission with interest groups and expert circles institutionalised a new European sector for policy discussion.

Deteriorating urban neighbourhoods often seem to defy government intervention efforts. Neighbourhood distress rarely tops local political agendas, and local governments find it difficult to muster the resources required to significantly improve distressed neighbourhoods. The few resources that exist are often spread thinly across large areas, making impacts difficult to see. This research looks at two initiatives that aimed to overcome these challenges. Both Toronto, Ontario, and Phoenix, Arizona, targeted regeneration efforts to a few neighbourhoods. Both initiatives have had some success, but have also faced implementation and sustainability challenges. We find that strong local administrative sectors, coupled with political change, present opportunities to redistribute resources to neighbourhoods in need, but that the broader structure and financing of local government significantly limits the scope of redistributive efforts that can be realized.

The article focuses on the European Parliament and the development of the European Political Cooperation (EPC), the first attempt to harmonize EC member states' national foreign policies into a single European framework. Being an intergovernmental policy, developing outside of the Treaties, the European Parliament had no official role in the development of the EPC. Yet, it challenged member states' monopoly over foreign relations through some autonomous initiatives and forced them to accept small increase in the Parliament's powers of scrutiny over the EPC. Once the European Council accepted the introduction of direct elections, the European Parliament could legitimately claim a greater role on the development of the EPC: being the only elective institution it could assure a democratic oversight over the EPC. By assuring a (limited) role to the European Parliament, the EPC remained an intergovernmental field of actions, although it now contemplated some supranational features.

The debate on causes and consequences of social capital has recently been complemented by an investigation into factors that erode it. Various scholars concluded that diversity, and racial heterogeneity in particular, is damaging for the sense of community, interpersonal trust and formal and informal interactions. However, most of this research does not adequately account for the negative effect of a community's low socio-economic status on neighbourhood interactions and attitudes. This article is to date the first empirical examination of the impact of racial context on various dimensions of social capital in British neighbourhoods. Findings show that low neighbourhood status is the key element undermining all dimensions of social capital, while the eroding effect of racial diversity is limited.

Abstract: This paper presents the findings of a recently completed evaluation of two Neighbourhood Watch schemes in London. The main research method was based on crime and public attitude surveys of the two Neighbourhood Watch areas before the schemes were implemented and again one year after their implementation. Similar surveys were conducted in a displacement and a control area as a comparison. The results showed that crime increased slightly in the scheme areas and remained constant or fell in the displacement and control areas. More favourable results were shown in changes in public attitudes and behaviour. The paper concludes that the lack of a more substantial success was most likely due to implementation failure and the weak design of Neighbourhood Watch in the Metropolitan Police District (MPD).

Although the European Union has no formal authority in the area of spatial policy, in sectoral policies can have a clear spatial impact. In this sense it conducts a de facto - and usually uncoordinated - form of spatial policy. An informal policy document produced six years ago sought to remedy this by offering an embryonic form of European spatial policy: the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP). So far, no follow-up has been produced. Is this because the current document is sufficient for addressing Europe's spatial issues or because interest in this endeavor has waned? Or are we simply in a period of transition towards a new ESDP? This brief review deals with those dilemmas, from a specific point of view of the observers, both curious and worried. ; Iako Evropska unija nema formalna ovlašćenja u oblasti prostorne politike značajan uticaj na prostor realno ostvaruje recenzijom sektorskih politika koje, iako međusobno slabo koordinirane -predstavljaju jedan oblik prostorne politike. Jedan neformalni dokument prezentovan pre šest godina poremetio je takvo stanje stvari, predstavljajući svojevrsni embrion evropske politike prostornog razvoja: Perspektive prostornog razvoja evropskog kontinenta (ESDP). Novi dokument te vrste za sada nije urađen, iako se Unija u međuvremenu proširila. Da li je to zbog toga što su Perspektive toliko dobre da su dovoljne da pokriju širok spektar prostornih tema ili je jednostavno interes za izradu novog dokumenta umanjen? Ili se prosto nalazimo u periodu tranzicije između dva dokumenta? Ova sažeta rasprava se bavi rečenim pitanjima, sa specifične pozicije znatiželjnih, ali istovremeno i zabrinutih posmatrača.