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Local Democracy (local + democracy)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences60%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting40%

Selected Abstracts

Local Democracy and Political Leadership: Drawing a Map

POLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 2 2006
Michael Haus
Different concepts of local democracy imply different tasks, functions and reform strategies for local political leadership. This article draws a map of local democracy that entails four non-exclusive components: representative democracy, user democracy, network democracy and participatory democracy. After reflecting on the nature of local democracy in governance and the functions of political leadership generally, the article considers in turn the bases of constructing the common good within each form of democracy. Special attention is given to the role of political leadership within these forms. [source]

Impacts of Demographics on Citizen's Access to Information: An Empirical Study of District Dera Ismail Khan, North Western Frontier Province, Pakistan

ASIAN SOCIAL WORK AND POLICY REVIEW, Issue 2 2008
Najeebullah Khan
The impact of demographic dimensions on local government behavior is well identified, analyzed and documented at the global level. Likewise, several studies are available on developing countries, but empirical evidence on the conditions of Pakistan is lacking. This study is an effort to unearth empirical evidence on access to information in the local government system exemplifying data from the district Dera Ismail Khan (DIK), North Western Frontier Province (NWFP). Most global hypotheses for developing countries are accepted in this study but the statistics on local data are far more different in terms of the value and weight of variables, relationships and impacts on the research concepts. The most dominant concept in the impact of access to information on the local government system is "education for all." Mass education is a leading concept in making or breaking the role of people participation in the success or failure of local democracies. Data show that illiteracy is causing many problems, including the mass population's unawareness of their interests and duties at the public level, thereby giving the ruling elite a free hand in exploiting public resources for self-interest, at the cost of the public good. [source]

Local Democracy and Political Leadership: Drawing a Map

POLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 2 2006
Michael Haus
Different concepts of local democracy imply different tasks, functions and reform strategies for local political leadership. This article draws a map of local democracy that entails four non-exclusive components: representative democracy, user democracy, network democracy and participatory democracy. After reflecting on the nature of local democracy in governance and the functions of political leadership generally, the article considers in turn the bases of constructing the common good within each form of democracy. Special attention is given to the role of political leadership within these forms. [source]

Path Dependency and the Reform of English Local Government

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 1 2005
Francesca Gains
This paper uses the concept of path dependency to examine the changes to the political management structures of English local government. We note how the possible experience of decreasing returns among some local authority actors combined with the powerful intervention of politicians within New Labour at the national level led to a significant break from past policy and the imposition of measures to establish a separate executive that was claimed as a radical step forward for local democracy. Using survey data from the Evaluating Local Governance research team (http://www.elgnce.org.uk), we explore the establishment of a separate political executive in all major local authorities and map out the style of decision-making that is emerging. We find that some established institutional patterns reasserted themselves in the process of implementation, but that increasing returns are not as great as some theorists of path dependency would suggest and they may be a force for system change as well as for stability. [source]

How Has Rural Tax Reform Affected Farmers and Local Governance in China?

CHINA AND WORLD ECONOMY, Issue 3 2007
Ran Tao
H57; H71; P32 Abstract Using nationally representative data, the present paper examines the impact of China's ongoing rural tax reform on farmers. The difficulties in further local governance restructuring are also discussed. It is argued that the issues associated with rural taxation and local governance in China result from inherent tension between an increasingly liberalized economic system and a still centralized political system. Although rural tax reform has helped to reduce farmers' tax burdens in the short term, the establishment of an effective local governance regime requires coordinated reforms to downsize local bureaucracy by providing social security for laid-off cadres, to strengthen local accountability by granting higher local formal tax autonomy, and to promote meaningful participation by expanding local democracy. [source]