Suchergebnisse

Elected local government is now but one part of a complex mosaic of organisations concerned with community governance. Local authorities 'share the turf' with a wide range of agencies (eg. health authorities, police authorities, Primary Care Groups, TECs, the employment service, action zones, partnerships), none of which is directly elected. In the same way that this journal has changed dramatically over the last ten years under Barry O'Toole's editorial regime so has the world of local government. This article charts the advent of local governance and examines some of the accompanying tensions. Has the development of a system of governance given rise to a 'democratic deficit' ? Has greater public participation resulted in more democracy? What challenges are posed by the emergence of directly elected mayors and cabinets at local level? Does the advent of greater audit and inspection powers by central government further threaten local democracy? Partnerships with both the private and with voluntary sectors are here to stay. In this context a major challenge for elected local government is to further enhance its leadership role in shaping the social, political and economic development of local communities.

The term rogue statehas become part of the common language of American foreign policy, and the assumptions made by policy makers about the international conduct of these actors—that they represent aggressive threats to international peace and security—have become entrenched at the center of U.S. foreign and defense policies. The central assumption of rogue state aggressiveness, however, has not been empirically tested. This project fills that gap. The authors first identify those states that, since 1980, have consistently been described as rogues by policy makers, as well as other states that evince the objective characteristics said to qualify a state for rogue status. Whenthe authors examine these states'interstate conflict behavior as a group, they find that they are no more likely to become involved in militarized interstate disputes, no more likely to initiate militarized action, and no more likely to use force first than nonrogue states.

Based on 1983-87 data, chiefly. Voting patterns, local party competition, relationship between national and local voting.

This paper examines the preconceived notion of a causal link between the presence of borders and conflicts. To investigate whether there is such a link, this paper proposes a twofold reflection articulated around: (1) a quantitative analysis of the causes of conflict since 1945, based on COW and COSIMO databases. This attempts to weight the importance of the border as primary and secondary factors in conflicts compared to other causes (e.g. natural resources, recognition denial, geopolitical interests). (2) a mixed method approach to critical discourse analysis, facilitated by QDA Miner software. This will investigate, identify and retrieve the ideas, emotions and narratives of "liberal" or "conservative" decision-makers in the US, Canada, Russia, Turkey, France and Germany when it comes to describing the need, or not, for a border. A comparative view of how the two sides understand the concept of borders is also given.