Suchergebnisse

Industrialisering en verstedelijking maakten de steden in Nederland en elders in Europa vanaf het einde van de negentiende eeuw tot de machinekamer waar nieuwe sociale, economische en ruimtelijke verhoudingen vorm kregen. Wonen, werken, handeldrijven, verplaatsen en recreëren in de stad werden mogelijk gemaakt door de stedelijke overheid. Daarmee werd stadsbestuur onderwerp van wetenschappelijke en staatkundige discussies. In deze studie worden de aard en context van deze discussies gedurende de eerste decennia van de twintigste eeuw geanalyseerd in relatie tot de veranderende stedelijke bestu

Amalgamation of various Belgian municipalities has not led to an increase of administrative power or authority. However, distance between the citizen & the administration has increased: geographically, creating problems in outlying residential zones regarding intramunicipal service provision; socially, in terms of the increase of the influence of & importance attached to the municipal executive body; & organizationally, in terms of the expansion of the tasks of the administrators. The political policy structures have also been profoundly changed: the national parties have gained in influence; political instability has increased; the operation of local policy organs has changed; & the municipal councils have acquired a more intellectually oriented professional composition. 13 Tables. Modified HA.

A report of a policy evaluation of the personnel situation in Belgium's amalgamated municipalities, investigating the degree to which amalgamation has achieved its objectives & which instruments have contributed to that achievement. It appears that the number of personnel in local administration grew more than in regional ones, particularly in public welfare agencies. This growth is probably due more to social evolution than to the amalgamation operation. The fact that large municipalities have relatively more personnel than small ones is not due to increase of the population. The diachronic study of the % of total expenditures for personnel shows that they have decreased, which could indicate a scale effect. However, there is insufficient information to ascribe this change to amalgamation. It is concluded that amalgamation as a policy measure has not brought many changes in policy implementation, which is explained by the lack of a strategy for change. It does not suffice merely to pass a law to bring about fundamental change. 11 Tables, 1 Figure, 1 Appendix. Modified HA.

An analysis by all (7) Flemish universities of the 2006 Belgium municipal council elections, using the Mediargus database containing articles from all Flemish newspapers (no journals included). Elections for which Belgium counties had unprecedented authority to organize their local government & local elections, & which were marked by arguments within local political parties, belated legislative changes & belated campaigning. Figures. Adapted from the source document.

We analyze the relation between (horizontal) fairness in the local property tax and municipal tax policy in the 308 Flemish municipalities in 2012. The local property tax is levied on the property's assessed rental value, and its unfairness is a by-product of the slow reassessment procedure - such that properties of identical value are being taxed (very) differently. Using data for housing sales, we create an indicator for the unfairness of the local property tax. We find clear evidence that this unfairness affects political decision-making: municipalities in which property taxation is more unfair tend to rely systematically less on this tax as a source of municipal revenue. Instead these local governments tend to generate revenue through local income taxation. Adapted from the source document.

Studies of second-order elections using aggregate data have predominantly focused on examining the extent to which European parliament elections and regional elections are dominated by the national, first-order arena, and paid scarce attention to the analysis of municipal elections. In addition the study of second-order elections is dominated by looking at the impact of first-order factors whilst ignoring the impact of arena-specific factors. This article addresses these shortcomings by analyzing the impact of national and local factors on the performance of national parties in the Dutch municipal elections of 2010. Our analysis shows that there are significant effects of local factors. Most parties lose votes when having been in local government and in some cases as well when having in addition lost an alderman as a result of a political crisis. Parties also lose vote share as a result of the entrance of new national and local parties in a local election, with the effect of new national entrants being larger than that of new local entrants. Our analysis corroborates earlier findings that point to a dominance of national factors, while at the same time showing that it is vital to include local, arena specific factors in order to get to a better estimation of the second-orderness of non-national elections. We discuss our results with respect to the recurring debate about the nationalisation of the Dutch municipal elections. Adapted from the source document.

An important element in the debate on the hollowed State is the extent to which the subsidiary idea caused a decrease in dominance of the central State & led to a multifaceted process of decentralisation. A case in point is the recent regionalisation of the competency to organise local government in Belgium. Based on Page & Goldsmith's three dimensions in intergovernmental relations between central & local government (functions, discretion & access), we test the discourse of the reform of the local government in Flanders to its practice. It is argued that the principles of a subsidiary founded municipal autonomy, a growing fiscal & functional discretion & a personal disentanglement of local & central decision-makers was inspired by northern European models of government relations. These, however, are only partially being confirmed by the praxis of the reforms, as the main principles of the existing southern European models persist. Adapted from the source document.

We analyze the presence of a cost of ruling and/or incumbency advantage in the municipal elections in Flanders of 1988, 1994 & 2000. The empirical work concentrates on vote share evolutions of the three main parties: CD&V, Sp.a & VLD. We find evidence that being in power leads to an incumbency advantage, especially for those parties who provide the mayor. The results indicate that this electoral advantage is not uniform among parties (the socialist party appears to benefit more) and, importantly, the incumbency advantage seems to dampen over successive elections. From the perspective of the local politicians, it is important to keep in mind that this incumbency advantage at the local level was insufficient to compensate for the general trend of the major parties to lose votes at all levels of government. Indeed, even in the 1988 elections -- where a clear local incumbency (mayor) advantage could be identified for each of the three parties -- it was the case that government parties on average lost votes. Tables. Adapted from the source document.

In a time of social liquefaction and a network approach to governance citizens and their organizations are increasingly expected to contribute to the revitalization of society. Civil society organizations are valued and used by governments for contributing to a diverse range of public issues. Sports is one of those domains in which voluntary organizations are expected to contribute to society. A range of governments increasingly use voluntary sport clubs (VSCs) as partners for contributing to public issues, like counteracting overweight among youth, improve social integration of immigrants, improving social cohesion in neighbourhoods and activating the elderly. In this dissertation this process is conceptualized as instrumentalization. In this dissertation the construction of the instrumental role of voluntary sport clubs in municipal sport policy and the way in which two VSCs in the Dutch municipality of Utrecht enact this instrumental role are studied in depth. The dissertation has three aims. First, it aims to describe and understand the process of instrumentalization of VSCs, showing tensions between instrumentalization by government and the relative autonomous position of VSCs. Second, the dissertation aims to conceptualize instrumentalization as such. The concept is used in a range of academic subdisciplines, but has not yet been extensively conceptualized. Therefore, this dissertation provides a foundational contribution for further use of this concept. Third, the dissertation aims to contribute to the ongoing development of a more on agency oriented institutional approach, by combining two recent streams in this theory. It belongs to a very select number of studies that combine the institutional logics approach and the institutional work approach. The dissertation answers the follow research question: How do voluntary sport clubs enact the instrumentalization by governments and what does that mean for the dominant institutional logic(s) in voluntary sport clubs? The design of the study was inspired by ...