Suchergebnisse

A collaborative cross-national study involving teams from eight countries has examined how local social service officials and local politicians seek discretionary influence over targeted national grants for local social services in education and health. It is found that local need and local political orientation have little bearing on local success in obtaining discretionary concessions over rules, allocation, and reporting of such funds. On the contrary, local actors are valued for their ability to circumvent national guidelines, often with the assistance of intermediate-level officials. Administrators are rewarded for their skills in exploiting national grants for local purposes and in interpreting complex rules to fit local preferences. Politicians tend to see themselves as troubleshooters, but generally prefer not to become involved in local social assistance problems. The results show that, despite efforts to cut back social spending, an important reservoir of professional and administrative talent exists at the local level which has probably helped preserve local social services during a period of cutbacks. In more prosperous times, these same persons will be poised to revive the surge of local social spending seen in the early 1970s and thereby extend the institutional intricacy of welfare states.

Local reform posed 3 dilemmas: how to avoid turning local government over to the extreme left or autogestion forces in the party; how to meet the economic demands of locally elected officials without losing fiscal and financial control; and how to enhance decision-making powers of elected officials at all 3 levels while also achieving managerial reforms. The pluralist response was a pragmatic blend of political, economic and budgetary concessions. (Abstract amended)

Review of four recent books in French on French economic planning during the period of economic success in the 1950s and 1960s. (CP)

The problem addressed is whether or not the Socialist reorganization under President Mitterrand of French local government constituted a Jacobin reform. The passage of the loi Defferre (the law on the rights and liberties of the communes, departments, and regions) through the National Assembly and the Senate is discussed. This law outlines the legal foundations of the new local political structure in France. It impinges on three major policy problems that involve local government, but which also have direct consequences for competitive national policies, namely, fiscal and tax policy, public investment policy, and planning. It is shown that what have often been interpreted as Jacobin tendencies in French government may be no different than the concentration of policy power in many areas of policymaking in all modern welfare states. The difference in France is that local government has such an influential role in many key economic activities of the State.