Suchergebnisse

This article is an examination of failures in implementing intergovernmental programs. The programs were failures in the sense that actions to implement programs were delayed far beyond the expected dates of completion. Two such failures in cities implementing two different programs (wastewater management and Section 8 housing programs) are contrasted with one instance of success (in Section 8 housing). If a Sharkansky's discussion of political and policy routines is found to be a useful explanation of the different results. When local government routines must be broken to comply with the goals and objectives of federal programs, local actors will do all they can to resist the federal program. This finding demonstrates the importance of varying local political environments in explaining varying patterns of implementation of federal programs.

Too frequently policy makers in Washington or Moscow see local or regional issues in southern Africa solely through their own, often distorted, lenses. And seen exclusively in ideological, or alternatively East-West or Cold War terms, they view their interests as inherently antagonistic. The old African maxim popular among non-aligned leaders in the early 1960's is apropos: "When the bull elephants fight, the grass gets trampled." Yet, unlike two elephants contesting clashing claims to territory of or sexual supremacy, southern Africa is not the territory of either of the super powers. Nor does Angola belong to other regional powers, notably South Africa. Although such states may have "interests" there. Angola is not their's to shape.

Armed conflict between indigenous organizations on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua and the Sandinista national army; land questions; conference paper.

Experience since the late 1970s in Britain has shown the limitations of regarding central -local government relations as a bargaining relationship between interdependent actors, as found in the United States of America, France, and West Germany. The actions of the present Conservative Government highlight the weakness of British local government. This weakness can be attributed to a process of development, involving globalisation and professionalisation, common to many Western nations, but which in Britain has led to a marginalisation of local political elites.

'Local policy makers for the most part act as if their localities were self contained. They perceive their environment as bounded though not of course as impermeable. It is for them a field of vision, expectation and action.' (Young and Kramer, 1978).

The 'assumptive worlds' of local government strategic actors have been noted and recognised but rarely studied. Young has argued that the roots of these tactics to manage the interorganisational environment and the complementary local policy nexus are located in the local policy makers' understanding of their local worlds and multiple realities (Young, 1977). This paper is an attempt to investigate particular aspects of the 'assumptive worlds' of Treasurers and their organisational relationships with politicians and Chief Officers. Empirical data taken from relatively unstructured interviews with Treasurers in a variety of local authorities will be selectively used to illustrate the multi faceted realities of such officers and the relationship this has to the emerging policy process. The language or languages of Treasurers are both pragmatic and symbolic — both levels will be noted.
Dunleavy is one of the very few political scientists to comment on the socialisation and role politics of Treasurers.

The dynamism of US federalism has been the object of considerable scrutiny among scholars in recent years as federal aid to states and localities increased dramatically. Among the various forms of aid that emerged over the past decade were block grants designed to give greater autonomy to local decisionmakers. However, it is possible to undermine that process goal by aggressive federal administration of the funds. In this paper, the question posed is: 'whose policy preferences—national or community—have the greater effect'? Data from the field network evaluation study of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program by the Brookings Institution for the period 1974–1980 are used to examine local decisionmaking during the Ford and Carter administrations. Analysis of the decisionmaking process indicates the domination of local, as opposed to national, actors over the content of local CDBG programs. Findings concerning program choices and beneficiaries show the exercise of considerable local autonomy, at the same time that localities are responding to the preferences of the national government. The paper is concluded with a discussion of the future of community development processes and programs, given the preference of the Reagan Administration for greater local flexibility.

AbstractLocal developmental activities involve the participation of a multiplicity of functionaries, bodies and agencies. This demands both intra‐authority and inter‐authority co‐ordination if programme formulation and implementation are to be effective. This paper reviews the performance of the Divisional Administration system operationalized in the former East Central State of Nigeria up to 1976, from the viewpoint of interjurisdictional co‐ordination. The paper identifies factors like lack of specific local development programmes, poor information flow and a de‐emphasis of the human factor in the organizational setting as being responsible for the ineffectiveness of the Divisional Administration system to co‐ordinate the activities of the different participating actors in local development. It is suggested that, in addition to the setting up of structures for decision‐making networks like committees, attention should equally be paid to the process that would energize and sustain the structures if problems of co‐ordination are to be obviated.

A particular weakness of traditional analysis of coalitions is its treatment of political parties as unitary actors, largely unaffected by less formal determinants of coalitional behavior, & each making rational calculations about the utility of coalition formation. The alternative is a new multidimensional perspective of coalitional behavior. An exploratory assessment is made of the relevance & usefulness of this multidimensional reorientation of coalition theory with regard to local politics (ie, the municipal-council arena), based on a general analysis of the local-level coalitional behavior of political parties in Flanders, Belgium, during the 1982 elections. The most important elements of both the formal & multidimensional approaches are briefly summarized. A provisional evaluation is made of what & how the multidimensional alternative could contribute to a better understanding of local-level coalition politics. 8 Tables, 7 References. HA

Abstract. What constitutes the starting point of this analysis is the limitations of traditional coalition theories. A particular weakness of the traditional approach is its treatment of political parties as unitary actors, largely unaffected by less formal determinants of coalitional behaviour, and each making rational calculations about the utility of coalition formation.The alternative is a new multidimensional perspective of coalitional behaviour, based on a number of components. The aim of the article is a first and exploratory assessment of the relevance and usefulness of this multidimensional reorientation of coalition theory with regard to local politics (i.e. the municipal‐council arena).This assessment is based on a general analysis of the coalitional behaviour of political parties in Belgium (the Flemish part of the country) at the local level. The most important elements of both the formal and the multi‐dimensional approaches for a study of local‐coalition phenomena in Flanders are briefly summarized. It is along these lines that the results of the municipal‐council elections in 1982 are discussed. Finally, a provisional evaluation is made of what and how the multi‐dimensional alternative could contribute to a better understanding of coalition politics at the local level.

Comparing two examples of local protest—one a failure and the other a success–this paper shows the importance of the interaction between local groups and national social movements in predicting the outcomes of struggles pitting communitites against established industries. A critical difference between the unsuccessful attempt of Santa Barbara activists to prevent the resumption of oil drilling after the 1969 spill, on the one hand, and the successful efforts of TMI residents to block the restart of the reactor adjacent to the one damaged in the 1979 nuclear accident, on the other, is the maturity of the national environmental movement. Focusing primarily on the relatively successful TMI protest, the paper emphasizes the importance of the national antinuclear movement's resources in forcing resourseful actors (individual and organizational) into adversarial positions vis-à-vis the offending utility.

To understand the complex developments in the Caribbean Basin and the U.S. response to them, one needs an image, an interpretive framework. A review of the current literature suggests two clear and coherent images: the security thesis, best articulated by the Reagan administration, views the crisis in the region as orchestrated by the Soviet Union, and the U.S. as playing a beneficial role historically and currently; and the neodependency antithesis, more prevalent in the literature, views the U.S. as the major historical and contemporary problem for the region. Scholars, questioning assumptions that underlie the two theses, have contributed insights on the impact of local actors and middle powers on U.S. policy. A new "interactive perspective" is constructed from these insights; it differs from both the other images in viewing the region as composed of actors, not passive objects. Though U.S. power is disproportionate, local actors have other means of leverage, which makes their actions crucial in understanding the patterns and possibilities of U.S. policy.

At the beginning of the nineteen eighties the observers of Italian local government system were divided between those who, looking at the unexpected social and economic development of the peripheral areas, labelled the situation as 'neolocalism' and those who, emphasizing the total dependence of the municipalities on the central government grants, spoke of 'neocentralism'. The difficulty in assessing the centralized or decentralized nature of the Italian system—it is suggested in this paper—depends on the inadequacy of such concepts to cope with the complexities of contemporary political systems. From a reconstruction of the local finance reforms, which is able to show the possible objectives of such a policy, the outcomes of its implementation, as well as the actors of the process, their rationales, and their interactions, it is concluded that the intergovernmental relations have not been altered in favor of the central power and that the traditional fragmentation of the Italian political administrative system has been strenghtened. Conceptualizing intergovernmental relations as policies gives a much more realistic and promising way to depict the issue than does the simplistic zero-sum assumption implied in the traditional centralization-decentralization debate.

In recent years the chief emphasis of Soviet legislation on urban administration has been to expand the rights and responsibilities of city governments in planning and co-ordinating economic activities within their territory. Very little has been done, however, to enhance the power of city Soviets so that they might actually carry out these new responsibilities. The same problems that historically have plagued local Soviets continue to undermine their capabilities. Chief among these problems are the following:1. Insufficient powervis-à-visthe ministries; in most decisions concerning enterprises subordinate to all-union (Moscow-based) or republic-level ministries, the local soviet has little influence. With the exception of Khrushchev's short-livedsovnarkhozreform, which dismantled most of the central ministries and attempted to expand the power of regional authorities over economic decision-making, the branch principle of management has been dominant ever since the beginning of Stalin's industrialization drive. The most powerful actors are the ministries located in Moscow or in the republic capitals. A large percentage of the money invested in the construction of housing, cultural facilities and the urban infrastructure is not part of the budget of the local soviet. Instead, such facilities are financed out of funds that the ministries allocate to enterprises for these purposes. In the mid-1970s, ministries paid for and supervised the construction of 70 per cent of housing and 65 per cent of new kindergartens and nurseries. The result is that facilities are built according to the interests of the ministries rather than in response to more general, local needs.

Societies and regions affected by political turmoil are subject to intrusions by states which, either directly through surrogates, or in association with local anti-status-quo groups, seek to capitalize on internal vulnerabilities. Seldom do conflicts remain isolated from the external milieu, even if fundamental causes of political turmoil are local or domestic in character. In effect, protracted conflicts, such as those sweeping Central America since the late 1970s, offer opportunities for interventionist powers to project themselves into regions where, historically, a less aggressive posture was taken. With little doubt, the view that local actors can best determine the outcome of conflict situations, such as the one in Central America, is naive and fundamentally inaccurate, no more than a pious expression of neoisolationist sentiments directly at odds with reality.