Globally, Invasive Alien Species (IAS) are considered to be one of the major threats to native biodiversity, with the World Conservation Union (IUCN) citing their impacts as 'immense, insidious, and usually irreversible'. It is estimated that 11% of the c. 12,000 alien species in Europe are invasive, causing environmental, economic and social damage; and it is reasonable to expect that the rate of biological invasions into Europe will increase in the coming years. In order to assess the current position regarding IAS in Europe and to determine the issues that were deemed to be most important or critical regarding these damaging species, the international Freshwater Invasives - Networking for Strategy (FINS) conference was convened in Ireland in April 2013. Delegates from throughout Europe and invited speakers from around the world were brought together for the conference. These comprised academics, applied scientists, policy makers, politicians, practitioners and representative stakeholder groups. A horizon scanning and issue prioritization approach was used by in excess of 100 expert delegates in a workshop setting to elucidate the Top 20 IAS issues in Europe. These issues do not focus solely on freshwater habitats and taxa but relate also to marine and terrestrial situations. The Top 20 issues that resulted represent a tool for IAS management and should also be used to support policy makers as they prepare European IAS legislation.
Abstract This paper presents a qualitative study that aims to investigate whether and how local politicians use perform ance info rmation to evaluate top managers' performance. The main goal is to contribute to knowledge on perform ance manag ement in the political sphere. Based on semi-structured interviews, findings show that the organizational climate determines the willingness to use information. There is an internal culture embedded in public agencies, like municipalities, that lead politicians to be more or less concerned about the use of performance information. In this paper we find that politicians have a greater orientation towards the 'implicit' and the 'operations-conscious' styles rather than to the 'output-constrained' and the 'outcome-conscious' styles. In general, politicians failed to implement a culture focused on the use of performance information. The institutional approach helps us to identify political responses to institutional pressures and understand the reasons for a reduced use in the Portuguese context.
For reform to succeed, the range of effective interests with a voice at the table must extend beyond those of the political class—made up of top politicians and civil servants with remarkable staying power….
The changing European context has generated a greater interest in learning from each others' political and managerial practices. In central and eastern Europe this is a matter of urgency as new government systems are established. In western Europe there are opportunities to compare the responses of different structures and traditions of government with common issues: the redefinition of the state's role in economic development and welfare; calls for new forms and levels of political participation and control; assertions of localism; demands for more responsible and accessible service provision; and efficiency in the face of fiscal constraint. This opportunity to learn has particular pertinence in the British case where, after 25 years of periodic reform, local government is once again due to undergo radical transformation in its structure and procedures. This book takes up the question of the form of the political executive. This is not simply a matter of internal management but relates to the central question of the balance between command structures and local accountability. How do different executive systems (committees, cabinets, boards, mayors, city managers) affect the efficiency of administration and the effectiveness of democracy? John Stewart considers the principles on which the British collective executive, combined with the legislature, is based. He identifies the implications of alternative executive systems and reminds us that change can be brought about by building rather than scrapping existing practices. The following three articles show how that evolutionary approach has been adopted in countries whose executive systems have, at least partly, shared the British collective approach. Baldersheim analyses Oslo's experiments in shifting from an aldermanic to a cabinet system, changing not only the model of political organization but also its relationship with the administration. The executive may now further evolve into a ministerial model, consolidating political over official control of the administration. Montin's account of reforms in the relationship between politics and administration in Sweden describes a vigorous debate which will be familiar to readers in Britain and elsewhere. Since 1945 there have been the classical shifts from top-down managerialist reforms, to a concern with political participation and decentralization, to a new managerialism combined with an assertion of the merits of privatization and user control. What is distinct from Britain in the Swedish case is the extent to which the experiments in new forms of management and contracting are locally inspired rather than centrally imposed. Grunow describes the movement in North Rhine-Westphalia from the 'British model' to a strong executive leadership; current reforms propose a new mayoral model. He identifies the implications for majority and minority parties, for officers, and for the influence of external interests. This leads him to consider whether reform processes in East Germany are repeating old mistakes. Rolla then examines the relationship between the political and the executive structure in Italian local government. Lastly we return to the British case and Crawford's analysis of the British central government's resistance to the signing of the European Charter of Local Self-Government. In particular he questions the government's objection to local 'general competence' and greater financial freedom.
We study how social interaction and friendship shape students' political opinions in a natural experiment at Sciences Po, the cradle of top French politicians. We exploit arbitrary assignments of students into short-term integration groups before their scholar cursus, and use the pairwise indicator of same-group membership as instrumental variable for friendship. After six months, friendship causes a reduction of differences in opinions by one third of the standard deviation of opinion gap. The evidence is consistent with a homophily-enforced mechanism, by which friendship causes initially politically-similar students to join political associations together, which reinforces their political similarity, without exercising an effect on initially politically-dissimilar pairs. Friendship affects opinion gaps by reducing divergence, therefore polarization and extremism, without forcing individuals' views to converge. Network characteristics also matter to the friendship effect.
We study how social interaction and friendship shape students' political opinions in a natural experiment at Sciences Po, the cradle of top French politicians. We exploit arbitrary assignments of students into short-term integration groups before their scholar cursus, and use the pairwise indicator of same-group membership as instrumental variable for friendship. After six months, friendship causes a reduction of differences in opinions by one third of the standard deviation of opinion gap. The evidence is consistent with a homophily-enforced mechanism, by which friendship causes initially politically-similar students to join political associations together, which reinforces their political similarity, without exercising an effect on initially politically-dissimilar pairs. Friendship affects opinion gaps by reducing divergence, therefore polarization and extremism, without forcing individuals' views to converge. Network characteristics also matter to the friendship effect.
We study how social interaction and friendship shape students' political opinions in a natural experiment at Sciences Po, the cradle of top French politicians. We exploit arbitrary assignments of students into short-term integration groups before their scholar cursus, and use the pairwise indicator of same-group membership as instrumental variable for friendship. After six months, friendship causes a reduction of differences in opinions by one third of the standard deviation of opinion gap. The evidence is consistent with a homophily-enforced mechanism, by which friendship causes initially politically-similar students to join political associations together, which reinforces their political similarity, without exercising an effect on initially politically-dissimilar pairs. Friendship affects opinion gaps by reducing divergence, therefore polarization and extremism, without forcing individuals' views to converge. Network characteristics also matter to the friendship effect.
Arnold Schwarzenegger's election as governor of California in the 2003 recall campaign is rife with cruel ironies. An immigrant himself, he beat the grandson of Mexican immigrants, Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, by playing the race card, and managed to dodge allegations of his praise for Hitler as a strong leader. While the pundits say that the California recall was about angry voters lashing back at faithless, self-dealing politicians, more lurks beneath the surface. In California, racial and ethnic minorities now comprise a majority of the population, and the recall election brought barely concealed and seething schisms to the surface. Californians, like Americans elsewhere, are intensely divided over immigration and react in very different ways to the increasing political muscle of immigrants of color. The authors articulate, in the form of a top ten list, the ongoing unraveling of race relations in California.
This second edition offers an insightful and provocative look at the inside world of political marketing in Canada—and what this means about the state of our democracy in the twenty-first century—from a leading political commentator. Inside the political backrooms of Ottawa, the Mad Men of Canadian politics are planning their next consumer friendly pitch. Where once politics was seen as a public service, increasingly it's seen as a business, and citizens are the customers. But its unadvertised products are voter apathy and gutless public policy. Susan Delacourt takes readers into the world of Canada's top political marketers, from the 1950s to the present, explaining how parties slice and dice their platforms for different audiences and how they manage the media. The current system divides the country into "niche" markets and abandons the hard political work of knitting together broad consensus or national vision. Little wonder then, that most Canadians have checked out of the political process: less than two per cent of the population belongs to a political party and fewer than half of voters under the age of thirty showed up at the ballot box in the last few federal elections. Provocative, incisive, entertaining and refreshingly non-partisan, Shopping for Votes offers a new narrative for understanding political culture in Canada
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Comunicação apresentada na 4th Annual ICPA - International Conference on Public Administration "Building bridges to the future: leadership and collaboration in public administration", na Universidade de Minnesota nos Estados Unidos, de 24 a 26 de setembro de 2008 ; Bureaucracy is nowadays often considered a synonymous of inefficiency, ineffectiveness, impersonality, stiffness, uselessness, wastefulness and even corruption. Nevertheless, it is true that bureaucracy is an essential structure for the implementation of public policies. Authors like Mozzicafreddo, Peters, Aberbach, Chevalier, and others, consider that relations between public officials (permanently appointed) and politicians (elected for a limited time) are formally "crystal", but in practice, reality has proven to be more complex. Top public officials are in a hybrid place some elsewhere between political and administrative spheres, which reanimates the long-lasting discussion on how senior civil servants should be selected. This paper intends to contribute to a more clarified discussion on how top officials hybrid management models can, or not, be a good practice, taking into consideration different case studies on administrative culture.
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Perceived lesser quality of gubernatorial candidates except for the front runner explains why voting in Louisiana's contest for its top job likely will decline markedly this cycle.
The latest statewide figures for registration by party and race are Democrats at 38.7 percent, Republicans at 33.8 percent, and others at 28.5 percent, with whites comprising 62.8 percent, blacks 31.2 percent, and others 6 percent. This contrasts with 2019 figures at the same time of year of 42.4 percent Democrats, 31 percent Republicans, and 27.6 other/no parties, and whites being 63.5 percent, blacks 31.3 percent, and others 5.2 percent. Reflecting the population drain throughout the two terms of Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards, only 8,000 more voters were registered now than four years ago.
However, early in-person voting was down considerably compared to 2019, after years of increasing proportions. It was off by nearly a fifth, or 66,000. Louisiana has had early no-excuse voting since 2008, and throughout this period analysts have grappled with understanding year-over-year changes in numbers and proportions in terms of whether these would predict eventual turnout and whether any party benefitted. It has been assumed that a learning curve existed for voters which caused largely a substitution effect; i.e., almost all early voters would have voted on election day, but increases from similar election to election were confounded by the learning curve of more voters realizing they could vote and then taking advantage of voting early. But dropping off in early voting, and considerably, unmistakably denotes a lack of enthusiasm compared to the previous similar election, as it seems unlikely that those intending to vote would delay deliberately their vote choice.
Compared to 2019, when Democrats were 43.8 percent, Republicans 41.5 percent and others 14.7 percent, and whites made up 72 percent, blacks 25.4 percent, and others 2.6 percent, of early voters, in 2023 Democrats had only 40.1 percent with Republicans at 44.6 percent and others/none at 15.3 percent with whites having 71 percent, blacks 26.1 percent, and others 2.9 percent. In raw numbers, Democrats fell nearly 30,000, less than the white decline of 33,000 while Republicans dropped just 5,000 and blacks only 7,000.
If assuming the exact same forces at work this upcoming governor's election as with its 2019 counterpart, back then early in-person voting accounted for 11.5 percent of the electorate which eventually cast over 1.343 million votes or 45.9 percent of the electorate, then this year with that early voting comprising 9.2 percent translates to only 36.7 percent turnout and just 1.091 million cast. By contrast, 2015 saw turnout of 39.2 percent, and 2011 of 32.8 percent.
This overview points to two factors explaining the potential 20 percent drop in turnout. First and foremost, Democrats have a pair of weak main candidates from which to choose. Former cabinet member Shawn Wilson is the most leftist major candidate ever to run, even more than Edwards, which repels traditional liberal populists that were the party's backbone for a century. And their alternative, independent trial lawyer Hunter Lundy who is a social conservative but who backs classic leftist redistributionist politics, comes across as too raw and simple.
Neither candidate excites the base beyond activists, something that manifests clearest in the statistics as a big drop in white Democrats voting early. Even blacks, who tend to be more socially conservative as a whole than in most states especially outside of the large metropolitan areas, aren't excited about Wilson, the first major black gubernatorial candidate in the state's history not competing against a major white Democrat.
The other is the dominance of GOP Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry, endorsed by most conservative politicians and organizations and the Republican Party, and well-funded far above other GOP alternatives. This has created the impression that he's already won entry into the runoff, if not the race itself, which discourages casual voters not interested much in outcomes of other offices and in particular Republicans not enthusiastic about him but who see no viable alternative from within the party. Even some casual voters who like Landry figure he has it in the bag and they won't need to show up for him to win.
This makes 2023 much like 2011, when the popular GOP incumbent Gov. Bobby Jindal so dominated the field that no quality candidate would run against him. Then, some Republicans stayed home thinking a general election victory was a sure thing (they were right) and Democrats without a real candidate skipped that one (a number of Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and state legislative contests had much higher turnouts, since these were seen as more competitive).
If Landry doesn't win outright in the general election – possible, but not probable – and thereby faces Wilson in the runoff, look for a noticeable decline in that contest as well. Like it or not, competitiveness matters in making people care about elections.
In: International review for the sociology of sport: irss ; a quarterly edited on behalf of the International Sociology of Sport Association (ISSA), Band 52, Heft 3, S. 263-278
During his playing days, the Brazilian striker Romário was one of the most famous footballers in the world. He played for three of Brazil's top clubs in Rio de Janeiro, as well as Barcelona and PSV Eindhoven. He won the World Cup and scored over one-thousand goals throughout his career. After this successful career, Romário entered politics, first as a deputy in the city of Rio and later as a senator in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Romário's electoral success is not simply down to his footballing ability, nor the popularity of the sport in Brazil. Sports stardom, celebrity and celebrity politicians are also engaging with complex cultural processes. He has traded on his footballing stardom, but he also connects with his electorate through specific policy campaigns that resonate particularly well with his Brazilian voters. More importantly, he uses football and his footballer career as a metaphor for the wider problems facing Brazilian society. Drawing on literature from Sports Stardom, Celebrity and Celebrity Politicians, this paper charts the political career of Romário within the socio-political context of Brazil and argues that celebrity politicians still need to engage with their audiences regardless of their previous careers.
New knowledge about malnutrition in elder care related to ethical responsibility was illuminated by persons holding top positions. Malnutrition was stressed as an important dimension of the elder care quality. Governing at a distance meant having trust in the staff, on the one hand, and discomfort and distrust when confronted with reports of malnutrition, on the other. Distrust was directed at caregivers, because despite the fact that education had been provided, problems reappeared. Discomfort was felt when confronted with examples of poor nutritional care and indicates that the participants experienced failure in their ethical responsibility because the quality of nutritional care was at risk.
The monograph provides knowledge on the complex nature of both external and internal determinants influencing foreign policies of East Asian countries. Through a range of case studies on Japan, China, Taiwan and North Korea, the authors analyze international relations in East Asia as a mosaic of intertwining processes of globalization and regionalization, interests of global and regional powers, local social and economic conditions, national institutional arrangements, and even personal factors. They argue that sometimes a sudden change of one small element in this mosaic suffices to influence the whole system. Instead of providing a simplified interpretation of the analyzed processes, the monograph tries to illustrate them in their entire complexity. ; The decision–making process in Japan has been characterized by extensive powers possessed by the bureaucrats who often overshadowed their political superiors. Foreign policy making was not an exception. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) boasted strong control over Japan's diplomacy. While the role of civil servants was theoretically limited to the implementation of the decisions made by politicians, in reality the administrative staff used a range of informal sources of power to act as arbiters of state matters. Only after the entry into force of Hashimoto's administrative reform in 2001 did top–level decision makers gain new institutional tools that helped them to conduct an independent foreign policy on a more regular basis. Without denying this conventional wisdom, I argue that the politicians could occasionally play a significant role in Japan's diplomacy even before implementation of institutional changes at the beginning of the 21st century. Under special circumstances, prime ministers, chief cabinet secretaries and foreign ministers were able to exert a considerable influence on the course of foreign policy, sometimes even changing its direction. Up to the 1990s the most influential figures in the government had enough authority to overcome the domination of the bureaucrats and impose their own will on MOFA. ; This article is a result of research conducted as a part of a project financed by the Polish National Science Centre based on decision No. DEC– 2013/11/B/HS5/04005.
