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Political Leadership (political + leadership)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	68%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	18%
3 Other Domains	14%

Distribution within Humanities and Social Sciences

General & Introductory Political Science	41%
International Relations	13%
9 Other Subdomains	46%

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]

George Washington, Presidential Term Limits, and the Problem of Reluctant Political Leadership

PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2001
BRUCE G. PEABODY
The widespread view of the relationship between George Washington and the American custom of limited presidential service is misconceived. Conventional popular and scholarly accounts of the "two-term tradition" confuse both Washington's position on presidential term limits and the historical contours of this custom. The American convention limiting the number of terms a president could serve emerged less from Washington's views about political service than from deep-seated anxieties about centralized governing power (and specifically executive power). These concerns, along with an enduring American ambivalence about public service (reflected in Washington's retirement), continue to shape the character of both our political life and public discourse. [source]

Working Under Monarchy: Political Leadership and Democracy in Nepal

ASIAN POLITICS AND POLICY, Issue 1 2009
Ina Acharya
The purpose of this study was to discover the prospects and challenges of democracy in Nepal. Mired with corruption and escalating conflict, Nepal is in its 16th year of democratic transition, with little hope for a fully functional, consolidated, liberal democracy. In trying to study the causes, the author hypothesizes that political leaders have made decisions that have had an adverse effect on democracy in Nepal. Empirical research has been conducted on landmark decisions made by political leaders to test the hypothesis. The author concludes that charismatic leaders, depending on their vision, statesmanship, and liberalism, choose to decide differently, and these decisions determine their mode of governance and its impact on democracy. [source]

Political leadership in Europe , an assessment of the impact of the 2004 EU Accession round on nursing in Europe

JOURNAL OF NURSING MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2004
BA Hons (OU), DN (Lond), Dipl., NDN Cert., Tom Keighley RN (G&Psych)
Background, The accession of 12 countries to the European Union necessitated mechanisms to be put in place to offer support to the professions to comply with Directives applying to their training. The author led missions to these countries on behalf of the European Union Commission. This paper reports on the issues arising from the accession process in terms of the political leadership of nursing in Central Europe. It places the current developments in historic and geo-political contexts. Key issues, The development of nurse leadership is central to the response of the profession to this. Challenges emerging from the history of the region, socio-cultural norms, and current political maturity are addressed. Conclusions, The need for nurses in both Western and Central Europe to work together is emphasized. The future challenges to be faced as further accession rounds occur are also identified. [source]

Wildfire Policy and Public Lands: Integrating Scientific Understanding with Social Concerns across Landscapes

CONSERVATION BIOLOGY, Issue 4 2004
MICHAEL P. DOMBECK
administración de bosques; fuego no controlado; política; Servicio Forestal Estados Unidos; tierras públicas Abstract:,Efforts to suppress wildfires have become increasingly problematic in recent years as costs have risen, threats to firefighter safety have escalated, and detrimental impacts to ecosystems have multiplied. Wildfires that escape initial suppression often expand into large, high-intensity summer blazes. Lost is the legacy of smaller fires that likely burned outside extreme weather and fuel conditions and resulted in less severe impacts. Despite the recognized need for modifications to existing policies and practices, resource agencies have been slow to respond. The spread of exotic species, climate change, and increasing human development in wildlands further complicates the issue. New policies are needed that integrate social and ecological needs across administrative boundaries and broad landscapes. These policies should promote a continuum of treatments with active management and reduction of fuel hazard in wildland-urban interface zones and reintroduction of fire in wildlands. Management goals should focus on restoration of the long-term ecological health of the land. Projects that reduce fuel loads but compromise the integrity of soil, water supplies, or watersheds will do more harm than good in the long run. Despite significant ecological concerns, learning to live with fire remains primarily a social issue that will require greater political leadership, agency innovation, public involvement, and community responsibility. Resumen:,En años recientes, los esfuerzos para suprimir los fuegos no controlados se han vuelto cada vez más problemáticos por el incremento de costos, el aumento de las amenazas a la seguridad de bomberos y se la multiplicio, de los impactos perjudiciales a los ecosistemas. Los incendios que escapan la supresión inicial a menudo se expanden a grandes conflagraciones estivales de alta intensidad. Se ha perdido el legado de fuegos menores que probablemente se llevaban a cabo en condiciones climáticas y de combustible extremas que tenían impactos menos severos. A pesar del reconocimiento de la necesidad de modificaciones a las políticas y prácticas actuales, las agencias han respondido lentamente. La expansión de especies exóticas, el cambio climático y el incremento del desarrollo humano en áreas silvestres complican el problema aún más. Se requieren políticas nuevas que integren necesidades sociales y ecológicas más allá de límites administrativos y en paisajes amplios. Estas políticas deben promover un continuo de tratamientos con gestión activa y reducción de riesgo de combustión en la interfase área silvestre-urbana y la reintroducción de fuego en áreas silvestres. Las metas de la gestión deben enfocar en la restauración de la salud ecológica a largo plazo. Los proyectos que reducen la carga de combustible pero que comprometen la integridad del suelo, las reservas de agua o cuencas hidrológicas no serán de mucha utilidad en el largo plazo. A pesar de preocupaciones ecológicas significativas, aprender a vivir con fuego seguirá siendo un aspecto social que requerirá de mayor liderazgo político, innovación de agencias, participación del público y responsabilidad comunitaria. [source]

Development without Institutions: Ersatz Medicine and the Politics of Everyday Life in Rural North India

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2004
Sarah Pinto
In north India, unregulated medical practice is considered by many to be a sign of the failure of institutional rationality and "backward" quality of rural life. However, the work of self-made doctors can also be seen to engage key elements of institutional rationality as it is interwoven with the structure and ethos of development. This article explores what these practitioners and their work suggest about the imagination of institutions in rural India and the kinds of power this invokes. Through mimesis of key practices (namely, forms of talk and use of injections), self-made doctors tap into the authority of legitimate institutions to occupy lacunae in state health structures and redress (even as they reproduce) effects of privatization and repeated temporary health measures. At the same time, everyday elements of these practices demonstrate that institutional legitimacy can only be borrowed by those already in positions of authority (on the basis of caste status and political leadership), challenging ideals of equality that underlie health-related development efforts. [source]

Political characteristics, institutional procedures and fiscal performance: Panel data analyses of Norwegian local governments, 1991,1998

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2005
TERJE P. HAGEN
The political leadership is assumed to have an important role in keeping fiscal control and resisting the high-demanders' pressure for increased spending. Three factors of relevance for their success are investigated: political characteristics (political colour and political strength, the strength of relevant interest groups) and two institutional characteristics, committee structure and budgeting procedures. The analyses are based on panel data from up to 434 Norwegian municipalities in the period from 1991 to 1998. The results support the hypothesis that strong political leadership improves fiscal performance. The effect of interest groups is to a high degree community-specific. However, an increased share of elderly reduces fiscal surplus. Differences in budgetary procedures do not seem to affect fiscal performance. A strong committee structure seems, on the other hand, to result in better fiscal performance than a weaker one. [source]

New Regulatory Approaches in ,Greening' EU Policies

EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 1 2002
Andrea Lenschow
European environmental policy has been long characterised by traditional regulatory policy approaches. In recent years, however, the EU has begun experimenting with new forms of governance. In particular, the task of environmental policy integration (EPI) into sectoral policies has invited more flexible and participatory regulatory forms, emphasising at the same time the role of procedural guidance. This article traces the history of the EPI principle and links its effectiveness to specific governance characteristics. It argues that effective EPI is dependent on a combination of political leadership and public participation. While both terms appear in the EU's vocabulary on sustainable development and new governance, the EU is only slowly finding the appropriate forms to put them into practice. Coming from a tradition of governance by political élites, EU policy-makers are still relying too naïvely on the mobilisation capabilities of societal groups and on the power of ,good ideas'. [source]

Problem Representation and Conflict Dynamics in the Middle East and Northern Ireland

FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 3 2005
Donald A. Sylvan
In an effort to explain conflictual and cooperative actions in the Middle East and Northern Ireland at a time (1995,1999) when international structural factors were relatively constant, this article focuses on cognitive factors. Specifically, statements of leaders representing multiple actors in the Israeli,Palestinian and Northern Ireland relationship are examined. Texts from these leaders serve as data for the independent variable, problem representation. Hypotheses argue that the existence and centrality of actor problem representations can help explain behavior, in a manner that adds to more widely used scholarly explanations. More specifically, the article explores the relationship among leaders' "problem representations" and conflict between the entities they lead. Problem representation is measured in three dimensions using Foreign Broadcast Information Service (World News Connection) texts: (1) centrality of enemy image, (2) how inclusive/exclusive the leader is in describing the in-group and principal outgroup, and (3) the key definition of the problem (coded in terms of three strategies: justice, governance, or threat). Conflict, the dependent variable, is measured in terms of KEDS-TABARI event data on deeds (not words) in the Israeli,Palestinian and Northern Ireland conflicts. Strikingly, the analysis finds that Israeli actions are strongly related to prior and current Palestinian leaders' problem representations, much more than they are to Israeli leaders' problem representations. Similarly, Palestinian actions are found to have a clear relationship with prior and current Israeli leaders' problem representations, much more than they are with Palestinian leaders' problem representations. These results are particularly strong when the problem representation is one of the overall political leadership on the "other" side. Additionally, in-group and out-group inclusivity are the most significant predictors of actions. For Northern Ireland, the same two themes prevail, although not as strongly: there is a clear statistical relationship between each side's problem representations and the other side's actions, stronger in fact than the relationship between their own side's representations and actions. Also, in-group and out-group inclusivity produce a strong statistical relationship with conflict and cooperation. Finally, results are compared with a "tit-for-tat" hypothesis, and found to embellish that hypothesis. [source]

Senior Civil Servants and Bureaucratic Change in Belgium

GOVERNANCE, Issue 3 2003
Guido Dierickx
The Belgian civil service used to be a Weberian bureaucracy, with a strict division of labor between civil servants and politicians, administrative careers based on both seniority and partisan patronage, and a technocratic culture coupled with a high level of alienation from both politics and politicians. Administrative reform came in the wake of the constitutional reform that transformed unitary Belgium into a federal state with several governments, each with a civil service of its own. The fiscal crisis prompted them to look favorably on the promises of New Public Management (NPM). The new Flemish government was first to take advantage of this opportunity, as it had the financial resources, the tendency to refer to Anglo-Saxon and Dutch examples, and the right political and administrative leadership. The staying power of these as yet precarious reforms depends on the continuity of political leadership, the establishment of an administrative culture matching the institutional innovations, and resistance to the endemic temptation to use them for partisan purposes. [source]

,Beyond Left and Right': The New Partisan Politics of Welfare

GOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2000
Fiona Ross
The ,new politics of the welfare state,' the term coined by Pierson (1996) to differentiate between the popular politics of welfare expansion and the unpopular politics of retrenchment, emphasizes a number of factors that distinguish countries' capacities to pursue contentious measures and avoid electoral blame. Policy structures, vested interests, and institutions play a prominent role in accounting for cross-national differences in leaders' abilities to diffuse responsibility for divisive initiatives. One important omission from the ,new politics' literature, however, is a discussion of partisan politics. ,Old' conceptualizations of the political right and left are implicitly taken as constants despite radical changes in the governing agenda of many leftist parties over the last decade. Responding to this oversight, Castles (1998) has recently probed the role of parties with respect to aggregate government expenditures, only to concludethat parties do not matter under ,conditions of constraint.' This article contends that parties are relevant to the ,new politics' and that, under specified institutional conditions, their impact is counterintuitive. In some notable cases the left has had more effect inbruising the welfare state than the right. One explanation for these cross-cutting tendencies is that parties not only provide a principal source of political agency, they also serve as strategies, thereby conditioning opportunities for political leadership. By extension, they need to be situatedwithin the ,new politics' constellation of blame-avoidance instruments. [source]

Governing in the Media Age: The Impact of the Mass Media on Executive Leadership in Contemporary Democracies1

GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 1 2008
Ludger Helms
The effects of old and new media on governing and executive leadership have remained curiously under-studied. In the available literature, assessments prevail that consider the media to have developed a strongly power-enhancing effect on incumbent chief executives. A careful reconsideration of mass media effects on the conditions and manifestations of political leadership by presidents and prime ministers in different contemporary democracies suggests that the media more often function as effective constraints on leaders and leadership. Overall, the constraining effects of the traditional media have been more substantial than those generated by the new media. While there are obvious cross-national trends in the development of government,mass media relations, important differences between countries persist, which can be explained to some considerable extent by the different institutional features of contemporary democracies. [source]

Structural Traps, Politics and Monetary Policy

INTERNATIONAL FINANCE, Issue 1 2004
Robert H. Dugger
Structural conditions pose a challenge to monetary policy, as the example of Japan shows. In this paper we develop the concept of structural trap, where the interplay of long-term economic development incentives, politics, and demographics results in economies being unable to efficiently reallocate capital from low- to high-return uses. The resulting macroeconomic picture looks like a liquidity trap , low GDP growth and deflation despite extreme monetary easing. But the optimal policy responses are very different and mistaking them could lead to perverse results. The key difference between a liquidity trap and a structural one is the role of politics. We show how, in the Japanese case, longstanding economic incentives and protections and demographic trends have resulted in a political leadership that resists capital reallocation from older protected low-return sectors to higher-return newer ones. If the Japanese case is instructive, in a structural trap, extremely loose monetary policy perpetuates deflation and low GDP growth, because unproductive but politically important firms are allowed to survive and capital reallocation is prevented. By preventing the needed reduction in excess capacity, a structural trap condemns reflationary policies to failure by making the creation of credible inflation expectations impossible. Faced with a structural trap, an independent central bank with a price stability mandate should adopt a monetary policy stance consistent with restructuring. If political resistance is high, monetary policy decision makers will need to keep nominal rates high enough to ensure that capital reallocation takes place at an acceptable pace. [source]

From ,Great' Leaders to Building Networks: The Emergence of a New Urban Leadership in Southern Europe?

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2004
William Genieys
This article reviews the changes that have taken place in local government leadership in France and Spain. It has been argued that political leadership in local government in Southern Europe is characterized by major political leaders who are able to obtain resources from central government through their political connections. However, both French and Spanish local governments have evolved while developing new forms of leadership that are more connected to territory, its people and local issues than to the respective administrative capitals. The article argues that the development of new policies at the local level, the opening of new avenues of citizen participation and the introduction of new methods of public management have changed the relationship between elected representatives and the people. Institutional innovations at the supra-municipal level have also created a space between regions and municipalities for local leaders to develop their capacity as project leaders and network creators. Cet article examine les changements survenus au niveau de l'autorité gouvernementale locale en France et en Espagne. L'autorité politique dans un gouvernement local du sud de l'Europe se caractérise, assure-t-on, par de grands leaders politiques capables d'obtenir des ressources du gouvernement central grâce à leurs relations. Pourtant, les gouvernements locaux français et espagnols ont évolué tout en élaborant des formes originales de leadership, plus proches du territoire, de sa population et des affaires locales que les capitales administratives concernées. La conception de politiques publiques novatrices au plan local, l'ouverture d'autres accès à la participation des citadins et l'introduction de nouvelles méthodes de gestion publique ont modifié le rapport entre représentants élus et population. De plus, des innovations institutionnelles au niveau supra-municipal ont généré un espace entre régions et municipalités permettant aux leaders locaux de développer leurs aptitudes en tant que chefs de projet et créateurs de réseaux. [source]

Leadership Style, Regime Type, and Foreign Policy Crisis Behavior: A Contingent Monadic Peace?

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2005
Jonathan W. Keller
While a substantial body of theory suggests that democracies should behave peacefully toward all states (monadically), most empirical evidence indicates they are only pacific in their relations with fellow democracies (dyadically). A new theoretical synthesis suggests that the missing link between democratic constraints and pacific monadic behavior is leaders' perceptions of, and responses to, these constraints. Research on political leadership indicates that, contrary to conventional wisdom, leaders respond in systematically different ways to domestic constraints: "constraint respecters" internalize constraints in their environments, while "constraint challengers" view such constraints as obstacles to be surmounted. An analysis of 154 foreign policy crises provides strong support for this contingent monadic thesis: democracies led by constraint respecters stand out as extraordinarily pacific in their crisis responses, while democracies led by constraint challengers and autocracies led by both types of leaders are demonstrably more aggressive. [source]

Aftershocks: Postwar Leadership Survival, Rivalry, and Regime Dynamics

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2004
Michael Colaresi
Under what conditions are leaders replaced after a war? Past research has reported that the outcome of the war and regime type affect postwar leadership tenure. Yet, this does not exhaust the conditions that could potentially influence political survival. In this article, I reexamine the links between regime type and leadership replacement after a war. I show that past research has failed to account for the dynamics of political leadership, and in the process has misrepresented the evidence supporting previous theories. I then show, using event history techniques, that both internal and external factors can alter leadership trajectories after a war. Specifically, war outcomes significantly affect the job security of a leader outside of international rivalry, but have less of an effect within rivalry. Additionally, relaxing various assumptions concerning the relationship between leadership survival and regime type leads to a richer understanding of the process of postwar leadership turnover. Finally, several propositions concerning the interaction between regime type and the costs of war are not supported in this analysis. [source]

The Politics of Hostage Rescue: Is Violence a Route to Political Success?

JOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2001
Joseph Scanlon
Over the years, law enforcement agencies have acquired extensive experience with hostage incidents, and most Western countries have officers trained in all aspects of hostage resolution. There are also articles and manuals outlining how to deal with the media coverage of hostage takings (Scanlon, 1989). However, because hostage rescue efforts can provide dramatic visuals that attract enormous audiences, the media have steadily intensified their coverage of such incidents. Today, a group of previously obscure persons can suddenly dominate the media agenda by successfully resisting an armed assault or by seizing hostages and calling themselves terrorists. After defining a hostage incident and looking at the strategy for dealing with such incidents, this article examines the implications of two fatal incidents: the stand-off involving religious fanatics at Waco, Texas; and the Air France hijacking that started in Algiers and ended in Marseille, France. Both became number one on the Western media agenda, and both became political crises involving the head of state; one threatening a president's credibility, the other enhancing a president's status. Together they suggest that the escalating media coverage of such incidents raises questions not only about the effectiveness of current response strategies, but also about political leadership. This article discusses a number of strategies that have been tried or suggested. It also debates whether involvement has a positive or negative effect on political leaders. It concludes that, from the evidence available, a successful hostage rescue can yield political rewards. [source]

Battling "Unhealthy Relations": Soviet Youth Sexuality as a Political Problem

JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 4 2008
ANN LIVSCHIZ
This paper explores the way Soviet party and education officials dealt with female youth sexuality, in an effort to get it under control in order to ensure that Soviet girls grew up to be productive members of Soviet society. Many of the policies enacted by the regime reflected profound social conservatism of the majority of the top political leadership of the country and their great fear of youth, and particularly female, sexuality, as a force that could not be overcome, controlled or fully harnessed for the service of the state. [source]

Political leadership in Europe , an assessment of the impact of the 2004 EU Accession round on nursing in Europe

Fungibility: Florida Seminole Casino Dividends and the Fiscal Politics of Indigeneity

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 2 2009
Jessica R. Cattelino
ABSTRACT In this article, I examine Florida Seminoles' governmental distributions of tribal-gaming revenues that take the form of per capita dividends. Dividends reveal the political and cultural stakes of money's fungibility,its ability to substitute for itself. From tribal policy debates over children's dividends to the legitimization of political leadership through monetary redistribution, Seminoles selectively exploit the fungibility of money to break or make ties with one another and with non-Seminoles. They do so in ways that reinforce indigenous political authority and autonomy, and they thereby challenge structural expectations in U.S. public culture and policy that would oppose indigenous distinctiveness to the embrace of money. [Keywords: money, tribal gaming, American Indians, Florida Seminoles] [source]

Constraint Respecters, Constraint Challengers, and Crisis Decision Making in Democracies: A Case Study Analysis of Kennedy versus Reagan

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 6 2005
Jonathan W. Keller
Models linking domestic political constraints (audience costs, pressures for the diversionary use of force, democratic norms and institutions) to foreign policy behavior generally assume that leaders simply recognize and submit to constraints in their domestic environments,a strong structural argument. In contrast, research on political leadership and decision making suggests that leaders vary systematically in their orientations toward constraints: "constraint respecters" tend to internalize potential constraints, while "constraint challengers" are more likely to view them as obstacles to be overcome. This article develops an integrative theoretical framework that explicitly incorporates these insights and applies them to the domain of crisis decision making. After identifying leaders' expected orientations toward constraints via at-a-distance methods, the plausibility of hypotheses derived from this framework is examined through case studies that explore the decision-making processes employed by President Kennedy (a "constraint respecter") and President Reagan (a "constraint challenger") during international crises. The results suggest that there is important variation in how leaders perceive and respond to domestic constraints, and that leadership style is one,though not the only,important source of this variation. [source]

Local Democracy and Political Leadership: Drawing a Map

The Limits of External Empowerment: EMU, Technocracy and Reform of the Greek Pension System

POLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 3 2001
Kevin Featherstone
This paper seeks to explain an aborted attempt at reform of the Greek pension system, following a series of previous failures. It applies the framework of rational choice institutionalism in order to examine the strategy and setting of the relevant actors. The pension system had become a huge fiscal burden on the state, threatening Greece's position in the European Union. Moreover, its gross inequalities of provision and bureaucratic inefficiency were symptoms of the embedded clientelism and ,disjointed corporatism' that stood in the way of the government's self-proclaimed ,modernization' programme. In the event, though EMU entry requirements empowered the reform momentum, a combination of the strategic weakness of key actors and the entrenched opposition of sectoral interests dissipated the initiative. The failure suggests the relevance of the wider social setting to reform: in particular, the weakness of the technocratic community and the relative absence of a supportive ,advocacy coalition', beyond the dominance of the ,party state'. Faced with criticism, the political leadership sought to protect their electoral position and postponed pressing decisions. The case study raises important questions about the scope for such reform in Greece and the future stability of the ,Euro-zone'. [source]

Australian Democracy and Priveleged Parliamentary Speech

POLITICS, Issue 2 2001
Lisa Hill
This article responds to recent cases of parliamentary speech which reflect the ascendancy of a totalising ,mainstream' approach to public discourse and a political leadership that may, at times, be overly attentive to the majority-rule dimension of democracy. These developments spark a more general discussion of the phenomenology of privileged parliamentary speech, the role of speech freedoms in liberal democratic orders and the duties of parliamentary representatives within them. I make two general conclusions. First, the ways in which we normally argue and think about free speech will not generally apply to the speech of parliamentarians because their speech rights cannot be universalised. Secondly, even if parliamentary speech could be treated as standard speech there would be no legitimate defence (from a liberal democratic point of view) for a strictly populist approach to its use since this could undermine the deliberative function of parliament and lead to the violation of other important liberal democratic principles. [source]

PERFORMING AUTHORITY: DISCURSIVE POLITICS AFTER THE ASSASSINATION OF THEO VAN GOGH

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 1 2008
MAARTEN HAJER
In November 2004, the assassination of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam by an Islamic extremist shocked The Netherlands. Critics of multiculturalism quickly linked the murder to the perceived failure of ,soft' integration policies and questioned the authority and legitimacy of Amsterdam's political leadership. This article studies the response of political leaders to those challenges from a performative perspective. Analysing governance as performance illuminates the importance of actively enacting political leadership in non-parliamentary settings such as talk shows, mosques and other religious meeting places, and improvised mass meetings in times of crisis. The authors distinguish different discursive means of performing authority, make suggestions for dealing with crisis events in ethnically and culturally diverse cities and draw some lessons from this approach as well as for methods of studying public administration. [source]

Rethinking local political leadership

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 4 2002
Steve Leach
The changing nature of local political leadership in Britain over the past 25 years has received scant attention from political scientists. This article argues that changes in the roles and functions of local authorities have had a marked impact on the nature of local political leadership. Three phases (operational, transitional and collaborative) are identified and leadership roles are related to changes in the political context of local government. The fundamental tasks of leadership have not changed but what has changed is the balance or relative emphasis between them and the way they have been interpreted. While elected local authorities cannot ignore the implications of the changed external agenda , notably the advent of new forms of executive leadership , the way they respond still bears the mark of the local political culture. [source]

Dealing with sectoral corruption in Bangladesh: Developing citizen involvement

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 2 2009
Colin Knox
Abstract Bangladesh has had a troubled political history since gaining independence in 1971 and is also beleaguered by poverty and natural environmental disasters. In particular however, corruption is blighting its prospects for economic growth, undermining the rule of law and damaging the legitimacy of the political process. This article adopts a sectoral approach to the study of corruption by examining people's experiences of using health and education services in Bangladesh through a large scale quantitative survey. It also presents case study research which assesses the impact of anti-corruption work by Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) in the areas of health and education. The article concludes that: the poorest in Bangladesh are most penalised by corruption; there are significant benefits for health and education service users resulting from TIB's interventions and there is a need for committed political leadership if ongoing efforts to tackle corruption are to be effective and sustainable. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Interests, Institutions, and the Reliability of International Commitments

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2009
Brett Ashley Leeds
One feature associated with democratic governance is frequent leadership turnover. While the ease of replacing leaders improves accountability, it may impede the ability of democracies to make credible long-term international commitments. Using newly collected data that identify cases in which leaders who derive their support from different domestic interests come to power, we evaluate the effects of changes in domestic political leadership on one important aspect of foreign policy,decisions to maintain military alliances. An analysis covering bilateral alliances between 1919 and 2001 reveals that changes in societal supporting coalitions in nondemocratic states are associated with decisions to abrogate alliances prior to their scheduled end dates, but changes in societal supporting coalitions in democracies have no effect on the probability of premature alliance termination. We conclude that international cooperation is sensitive to changes in core supporting coalitions, but that this effect is moderated by democratic political institutions. [source]

Forging Collective Capacity for Urban Redevelopment: "Power To,""Power Over," or Both?

CITY & COMMUNITY, Issue 1 2006
Richard Gendron
This paper explores the dynamic of cooperation between economic and political elites in a public-private partnership that was created to guide the redevelopment of downtown Santa Cruz, California, following the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. While the public-private partnership was instrumental in the success of post-earthquake reconstruction of the central business district, the consensus and cooperation between progressive political leaders and local business elites in this "partnership" were often more apparent than real. This occurred not only because of the longstanding tensions between the local pro-growth coalition and progressive political leadership of the city but also because the public-private partnership became a mechanism for potential regime transformation. Thus, the "collective capacity" needed to proceed with post-earthquake redevelopment of the central business district was "forged" in two senses: It was created to effect necessary redevelopment, but it was also counterfeit. Political elites sought to limit both the scope and the duration of the partnership to check the increasing power of economic elites in the aftermath of the earthquake. Although regime theory acknowledges the relationship between "power over" and "power to," I argue that its emphasis on the latter overlooks critical sources of conflict in the creation and implementation of local urban development policy. Consequently, I further argue that an analysis of both conceptions of power is necessary to understand not only how local development policies are enacted but "who benefits" from them. [source]