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Public Authorities (public + authority)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	38%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	29%
Law and Criminology	23%
3 Other Domains	10%

Distribution within Humanities and Social Sciences

General & Introductory Development Studies	44%
General & Introductory Political Science	21%

Selected Abstracts

Towards an ontology for electronic transaction services

INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS IN ACCOUNTING, FINANCE & MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2002
Nick Adams
In this paper we present an ontology for transaction services built upon an established ontology for corporate knowledge called the Enterprise Ontology. We introduce the SmartGov platform for the ,Smart' deployment of online services for Public Authorities (PAs) whose requirement of a model of PAs has motivated the ontology, and describe our approach to constructing it. After presenting the ontology we then relate it to the pilot application areas in which the SmartGov platform will be trialed and evaluated. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 4 2006
Christian Lund
ABSTRACT Public authority does not always fall within the exclusive realm of government institutions; in some contexts, institutional competition is intense and a range of ostensibly a-political situations become actively politicized. Africa has no shortage of institutions which attempt to exercise public authority: not only are multiple layers and branches of government institutions present and active to various degrees, but so-called traditional institutions bolstered by government recognition also vie for public authority, and new emerging institutions and organizations also enter the field. The practices of these institutions make concepts such as public authority, legitimacy, belonging, citizenship and territory highly relevant. This article proposes an analytical strategy for the understanding of public authority in such contexts. It draws on research from anthropologists, geographers, political scientists and social scientists working on Africa, in an attempt to explore a set of questions related to a variety of political practices and their institutional ramifications. [source]

Changes in the Westphalian Order: Territory, Public Authority, and Sovereignty

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 2 2000
James A. Caporaso
[source]

Private Higher Education and Diversity: An Exploratory Survey

HIGHER EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2001
Pedro Teixeira
In this preliminary review, the authors analyse the effects of privatisation on diversity in higher education (HE) systems by exploring the consequences of the establishment of HE Institutions by non-public organisations. The rising importance of privatisation in Europe (Western and transitional economies), Latin America, and Southeast Asia is analysed. Then follows detailed examinations of private-sector HE in countries representative of all these geographical areas to determine how far privatisation has stimulated diversity. The preliminary results indicate that in each case the private sub-sector has promoted limited and partial diversification. In general, though, the more recent private establishments, created to satisfy increasing demand for HE, have nonetheless focused predominately on teaching, have undertaken little, or no, research and appear to be of lower quality than the older institutions. The private sub-sector is characterised mostly by its low-risk behaviour, and a concentration on low-cost and/or safer initiatives. Public authorities must share at least a partial responsibility for some of the negative side effects of the development of private higher education. [source]

Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa

Delivering on the Potential of the New CAP

EUROCHOICES, Issue 2 2005
Mariann Fischer Boel
Recent discussions on the CAP have focused on the budget. However, in the public debate the policy itself is often still a caricature of the old CAP that existed until the early 1990s. The CAP has changed fundamentally over the past decade. The recent direction of the CAP , markets and rural development , was set by the European Council in Göteborg and Lisbon. Strong economic performance must go hand in hand with the sustainable use of natural resources. The key elements of the new CAP are a market policy where intervention is a safety net, income stabilisation is delivered through decoupled aids subject to cross-compliance, and a reinforced rural development policy that focuses on jobs, growth and sustainability. We must use the new CAP to unlock the potential for growth, jobs and innovation and put good ideas into practice. We need to work in partnership with farmers, foresters, the agrifood business, NGOs, the population of rural areas, the research community and of course public authorities. But to achieve all of this we need a stable budgetary environment, in which farmers and businesses can plan. In short, we need the resources to deliver on the potential of the new CAP. Les discussions sur la PAC, récemment, se sont focalisées sur le budget. En même temps, le contenu politique de la réforme, tel qu'il est vu dans le débat public, n'est rien d'autre que la caricature de l'ancienne PAC telle qu'elle existait avant les années 90. Or, au cours de la dernière décennie, la PAC a radicalement changé. Son nouveau cours , axé sur les marchés et le développement rural , a été défini lors des conseils européens de Göteborg et de Lisbonne. Les bonnes performances économiques doivent aller de concert avec l'utilisation durable des ressources naturelles. Une politique de marché, pour laquelle l'intervention n'est qu'un filet de sécurité, une stabilisation des revenus qui prend la forme d'aides découplées sous réserve d'application de normes, un développement rural renforcé, enfin, centré sur les emplois, la croissance et la durabilité, voilà les clés de la nouvelle PAC. Celle-ci doit être utilisée pour déchaîner les possibilités en matière de croissance d'emplois, d'innovation et de durabilité. Il faut pour cela s'appuyer sur les agriculteurs, les forestiers, les industries agroalimentaires, les organisations non gouvernementales, les populations des zones rurales, les chercheurs, et bien sûr les autorités publiques. Mais pour réaliser tout cela, il faut encore un environnement budgétaire stable, permettant aux agriculteurs et aux industriels de planifi er leurs actions. En d'autres termes, il faut des ressources pour que la nouvelle PAC tienne ses promesses. Die jüngsten Diskussionen über die GAP konzentrierten sich auf den Haushalt. In der öffentlichen Debatte ist die Politik selbst jedoch häufig noch ein Zerrbild der alten GAP, wie diese sich bis in die frühen 1990er Jahre darstellte. In den letzten zehn Jahren hat sich die GAP von Grund auf verändert. Die jüngste Richtung der GAP , Märkte und die Entwicklung des ländlichen Raums , wurde vom Europäischen Rat in Göteborg und Lissabon vorgegeben. Eine hohe wirtschaftliche Leistungsfähigkeit muss mit der nachhaltigen Nutzung der natürlichen Ressourcen Hand in Hand gehen. Die Schlüsselelemente der neuen GAP sind eine Marktpolitik, in der die Intervention als Sicherheitsnetz dient und eine Einkommensstabilisierung mittels entkoppelter Beihilfen erfolgt, für die Cross Compliance gilt; sowie eine gestärkte Politik zur Entwicklung des ländlichen Raums, welche sich auf Arbeitsplätze, Wachstum sowie Nachhaltigkeit konzentriert. Wir müssen die neue GAP dazu verwenden, das Potenzial für Wachstum, Arbeitsplätze und Innovationen frei zu setzen, und gute Ideen in die Tat umsetzen. Wir müssen partnerschaftlich mit den Landwirten, Förstern, Unternehmen der Agrar- und Ernährungswirtschaft, Nicht-Regierungsorganisationen (NRG), der Landbevölkerung, der Forschungsgemeinschaft und natürlich der öffentlichen Verwaltung zusammen arbeiten. Dafür benötigen wir jedoch eine stabile Haushaltssituation, die es den Landwirten und Unternehmen ermöglicht zu planen. Kurzum: Wir benötigen die Ressourcen, um das Potenzial der GAP auszuschöpfen. [source]

Decentralisation and Integration into the Community Administrations: A New Perspective on European Agencies

EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 4 2004
Edoardo Chiti
The purpose of this paper is to verify whether the various regulations by sector ought not to be regarded as variants of an emergent general model of joint exercise of certain Community functions. It is argued that such general model is still in the making, but it is in the process of becoming consolidated, notwithstanding the variety of approaches adopted by European legislators. Such a pattern is characterised by specific, differentiated organisational and procedural features. This conclusion is relevant in several different ways, the first of which is that it provides new conceptual tools for interpreting and explaining the process of administrative integration between supranational and national public authorities, in particular by specifying the taxonomy of the patterns through which a Community function can be carried out by two different authorities acting jointly. Second, the decentralised integration model should be considered as a sound and feasible option for the administrative evolution of the Community legal system. [source]

The General Provisions of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union

EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 4 2002
R. Alonso García
The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union provides the Union with a ,more evident' (as the European Council of Cologne asked for) framework of protection of the individuals before the public authorities within the European context, after more than thirty years (since the Stauder Case) of full confidence in the leading role played by the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Communities. This new normative catalogue of fundamental rights (included the so called ,aspirational fundamental rights') implies one more instrument of protection which has to find its own place with regard to the protection afforded by the national Constitutions and the international agreements on human rights, particularly the European Convention on Human Rights, which are already a privileged source of inspiration for Court of Justice of the European Communities. It is the main objective of the General Provisions of the Charter to clarify which is that place and the relationship with those other levels of protection as managed by their supreme interpreters (i.e., the Constitutional,or Supreme,Courts of the Member States of the Union and the European Court of Human Rights). [source]

Independent Movement or Government Subcontractor?

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2003
Strategic Responses of Voluntary Organizations to Institutional Processes
The purpose of this paper is to identify factors that can explain differing responses of voluntary organizations to the pressure of homogenization that follows from interaction with public authorities. The paper is theoretically based on institutional organization theory and resource dependence theory, and empirically on research on voluntary organizations in the social sector. It is asserted that the following factors may explain voluntary organizations' ability to maintain autonomous in relation to public organizations: the characteristics of the organizational field, the focal organization's relations to the dominating organization in the field, organization characteristics and intra,organizational processes and strategies. [source]

The Politics of Violent Opposition in Collapsing States

GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 2 2005
William Reno
In violent conflicts in places like Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone, economic interests have crowded out ideologically articulate mass-based social movements for reform or revolutionary change to a degree that was not apparent during earlier anti-colonial struggles. Some scholars offer a ,looting model' of rebellion that explains the predations of politicians and warlords but it is not clear why people who receive few benefits from this , or even suffer great harm from them , fail to support ideologues instead, or why self-interested violent entrepreneurs do not offer political programmes to attract more followers. Yet some groups defy this ,looting model'. Explaining why armed groups vary so greatly in their behaviour provides a means to address important questions: is it possible to construct public authorities out of collapsed states in the twenty-first century, or do local predations and global conditions preclude indigenous state-building in these places? Why do social movements for reform there seem so ineffective? What conditions have to be present for them to succeed? This article considers the nature of rebellion in failing states, focusing on Nigeria to find clues to explain variations in the organization of armed groups. [source]

Career success after stigmatizing organizational events

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2007
Monika Hamori
This article examines the effect of six types of stigmatizing organizational events on employees' career moves to another employer: criticism of the organization in the media; resignation of key individuals from the organization; downsizing; a drop in net income; lawsuits launched by the Securities and Exchange Commission, competitors, or customers; and lawsuits launched by employees. Stigmatizing events that signal the decline of corporate performance are the most devastating for professional career success. Outsiders, on the other hand, are less sensitive to an organization's involvement in lawsuits launched by public authorities or employees. Stigmatizing events affect the career success of every professional in the organization, irrespective of his or her hierarchical level. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]

The EMF uncertainty problem related to mobile phones: where do consumers place their trust?

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSUMER STUDIES, Issue 2 2010
Lisbet Berg
Abstract This paper addresses the uncertainty problem, i.e. cases characterized by lack of knowledge or scientific uncertainty. In such situations, it can be hard for consumers to ,voice' or practise consumer power. One field characterized by the uncertainty problem is electromagnetic radiation. An explicit goal of this study has been to articulate Norwegian consumers' practices, attitudes and beliefs regarding electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones to public authorities and consumer policy makers. The study was based on 1000 telephone interviews collected in 2008. Today, experts disagree on the potential health effects of radiation from electromagnetic fields (EMF), as well as standards for safe limits of exposure to mobile phones, base stations and wireless telecommunication systems. In addition, complicated technology and extremely rapid product development and diffusion leave consumers' security considerations to their own beliefs and trust. Whether or not electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones constitutes a health hazard will not be addressed in this paper. Rather, it will focus on how consumers react to this situation of uncertainty. The material reveals four main ways in which consumers can solve what we have named the EMF uncertainty problem: the confident and comfortable way, the sceptical and cautious way, the responsible and good citizen way, and finally, the neglecting way. The paper also discusses the precautionary principle related to EMF. Who should be precautionary: the public authorities, the mobile phone industry or the consumers themselves? We believe that a consistent governmental precautionary policy in combination with consumers taking their own precautionary measures is a viable solution. In this way, all consumers would be addressed and aided when navigating this field of uncertainty. [source]

Urban sustainability and governance: issues for the twenty-first century

INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL, Issue 193-194 2008
Françoise Lieberherr-Gardiol
The notion of urban sustainability that emerged at the end of the 1980s falls within the scope of sustainable development, a concept that arose in reaction to the model of technological and economic growth that triumphed after World War II. It comes into play as an attempt to link and put into perspective economic effectiveness, social equity and ecological balance. The sustainability approach focuses on how urban societies organise their space, their way of life and transportation, their technologies of production and consumption, as well as their governance and dynamics. Applied to cities, sustainable development can be defined in terms of concrete objectives: efforts to combat wasted energy, space and natural resources, and to reduce pollution, the problems of sanitation and the degradation of the environment. To the extent that governance is established and maintained with regard to the decision-making powers of public authorities faced with demands by divergent but equally legitimate interest groups, the responsibilities of citizens and the involvement of private stakeholders, sustainable innovations will succeed. The International Platform on Sustainable Urban Development, put in place by S-DEV Geneva 05, makes it possible to illustrate the problem by presenting the priority issues in sustainability, along with experiments undertaken by cities that were invited to present their innovations in renewable energy, soft mobility, green planning, systematic recycling, appropriate sanitation, urban agriculture and participatory governance. [source]

Impact of cost containment measures on medical liability

JOURNAL OF EVALUATION IN CLINICAL PRACTICE, Issue 6 2006
S. Callens PhD
Abstract Rationale, Owing to the growing health care expenditure and the need to improve efficiency, public authorities have since the 1980s changed their policy with respect to health care. Financial pressures encouraged them to investigate methods to control health care costs. One recent method is the enactment of cost containment measures based on clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) that provide financial or administrative sanctions. Aims and objectives, This article describes the legal value of CPGs, the evolution towards cost containment measures based on CPGs, and finally the legal value of these new cost containment measures. It questions whether these measures may have an impact on the medical liability rules and it wants to open the debate on the legal value of these measures based vis-à-vis the professional autonomy of the physician and patients' rights on quality care. Methods, The research for this article is based on a comparative analysis of the legal literature and jurisprudence of a number of legal systems. Results and Conclusions, The article concludes that, as a result of the rising costs, it becomes increasingly difficult for a physician to balance his duty to take care on the one hand and his duty to control costs on the other. Maintaining a high standard of care towards patients becomes difficult. Consequently, one wonders whether the law should then allow the standard of care to be adjusted according to the available means. Until now, courts in a fault based system have not been willing to accept such an adjustment of the standard of care, but it might well be possible that this attitude will change in case of no-fault compensation systems. [source]

SUCCESSFUL AND UNSUCCESSFUL PARTICIPATORY ARRANGEMENTS: WHY IS THERE A PARTICIPATORY MOVEMENT AT THE LOCAL LEVEL?

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 3 2010
LAURENCE BHERER
ABSTRACT:,The objective of this article is to explore some of the reasons for the growing number of participatory arrangements at the local level. An approach in terms of governance allows us to examine the underlying patterns of logic that induce public authorities to develop new policy tools such as participatory arrangements. Our study focuses on a medium-sized French city, Bordeaux, where eight types of relatively weak participatory arrangements have been implemented since 1995. The article shows that the French government and European Union have fostered this type of arrangement through a complex series of public programs and policies with the aim of rebuilding their political legitimacy by encouraging participation at the municipal level. This approach is relevant to understanding the origin of the reforms affecting local governments over the past decade. [source]

Public authority liability in negligence: the continued search for coherence

LEGAL STUDIES, Issue 2 2006
Stephen Bailey
The liability of public authorities in negligence continues to be a problematic area of the law. Some of the difficulties have been caused by the adoption by the courts of unnecessary and unworkable tests, in addition to the ordinary principles of the law of negligence. This is normally done to restrict liability, as with the policy,operational dichotomy, and the propositions that no liability can arise in respect of an act that ,falls within the ambit of a statutory discretion' or where the matter is non-justiciable. Sometimes the intention seems to be to extend liability, as with the suggestion that, generally, a duty of care may arise where there is an irrational failure to exercise a statutory power. Recent cases have helpfully continued the process of removing these special rules, leaving matters to be dealt with by the ordinary principles of negligence. Those principles enable proper account to be taken of the particular functions and responsibilities of public authorities. However, the cases remain difficult and the outcomes can still give rise to debate and disagreement. Insofar as there is a good case for extending the range of situations in which compensation is available in respect of the careless or unlawful acts of public authorities, it would be better to develop ex gratia schemes and the provision of remedies through ombudsmen than to extend the law of tort. [source]

Improving public information about large hydroelectric dams: Case studies in France and West Africa

NATURAL RESOURCES FORUM, Issue 1 2003
Armelle Faure
It is becoming more common for public authorities in charge of dam construction and management to inform the population living in the area soon to be submerged by a proposed dam. However, populations living further downstream along a river to be dammed, have often been left to find out by chance, despite the fact that the changes to the river flow regime will have an important impact on their lives, sometimes serious negative impacts. This article makes a comparison between two dams, one at Bort-les-Orgues across the upper Dordogne River in southern France, the other the Bagré Dam over the Nakambé (or White Volta) River in south-eastern Burkina Faso. The article discusses dam construction and operation from the point of view of the concerned populations living in the reservoir and downstream areas. In 2000, a study was carried out in the Dordogne Valley to ascertain downstream impacts of dam operations and information needs of the population. Suggestions from local river users related mostly to improving public information about predicted and actual flow rates and actual flow in real time along the 300 km course of the Dordogne between the dams and the estuary. Such information should be disseminated as widely as possible through available media, including the Internet, and also displayed visibly in key locations along the length of the river. [source]

Developmental states, civil society, and public health: Patent regulation for HIV/AIDS pharmaceuticals in India and Brazil

REGULATION & GOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2010
Thomas Eimer
Abstract While both India and Brazil are seriously affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, each country has chosen a different approach to providing affordable pharmaceutical treatment. Whereas the Indian government has paved the way for market-driven solutions, Brazilian public authorities are strongly involved in the research and production of HIV/AIDS medication. Brazilian regulations permit comprehensive and free provision of HIV/AIDS drugs, whereas the majority of the affected population in India does not receive adequate pharmaceutical treatment. To explain the different policy outputs, we draw on the developmental state literature. Efficient decisionmaking structures, a devoted bureaucracy, and effective policy instruments enable public authorities to provide public goods even in the context of relative scarcity. We show that the assumptions of developmental state theory have to be complemented by the assessment of civil society actors' potential to trigger governmental interventions in the market. [source]

Opening up Public Services to Competition by Putting Them Out to Tender: An Evaluation

ANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2003
P. Bance
This article examines the effects of systematizing tendering procedures when awarding public service concessions. The opening up of the water supply industry to competition is used by way of illustration. Results show that arguments in favour of systematization are not robust when focusing solely on the expected benefits of the liberalization process. The peculiarities of the contract relationship in the delegation of public services, the mobilization of specific assets, and the long duration and incompleteness of the contracts invalidate this type of argument and expose public authorities to the opportunism of operators. The efficiency of awarding public services concessions relies on cost,benefit analysis, taking into account sectoral aspects as well as specificities of the contracting organizations and structures. The public service culture of these organizations is in this respect a key factor in the choice of efficient organizations since it conditions their ability to internalize the mission of fulfilling the public interest. [source]

The Social Economy Sector in Japan

ANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2002
Hideo Ishizuka
The Social Economy Sector is a new comer in Japanese society. Based on two experiments and theories derived from the European concept of social economy and the American concept of the non profit organization, the Japanese way of integration of a social economy sector is developing under the name of the Non Profit and Co-operative Sector. The change of social policy and public policy under the influence of the new liberalism has urged a change in traditional relations between public sector and private sectors and created the new role of a social economy sector. Even though there is no clear image of the sector, both the financial need of public authorities and the social needs of citizen users especially in social security and medical care has made the social economy sector an alternative for realizing better service supply. [source]

Do PPPs in Social Infrastructure Enhance the Public Interest?

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 2010
Evidence from England's National Health Service
This article outlines and critiques the main fiscal and economic rationales for the Private Finance Initiative , by far the dominant form of public-private partnership in the United Kingdom (UK) , and examines the impact of the policy on the long term financial viability of the National Health Service. It shows that the interest rate on private finance contains a significant element of ,excess return' to investors, and there is no evidence that this ,excess cost' to the public sector is offset by greater efficiency through the contracting process. It concludes that the private financing of public capital investment is highly problematic , and can have a serious impact on the finances and capacity of public authorities. [source]

The Alchemists' Search for the Philosophers' Stone: The Status of Registered Social Landlords under the Human Rights Act

THE MODERN LAW REVIEW, Issue 5 2003
Jill Morgan
Social housing in Great Britain is undergoing a radical transformation with the transfer of local authority housing to housing associations, more particularly registered social landlords (RSLs). While the former are clearly ,public authorities' for the purposes of the Human Rights Act (HRA), the status of the latter is less clear. The first part of this article addresses the increasingly important role played by housing associations in the provision of social housing, and the significant implications of the stock transfer process. It goes on to explore the meaning of ,public authority' for the purposes of claims under the HRA, taking into account available approaches to interpretation as well as the tests traditionally used to determine amenability to judicial review. It concludes that there is a strong case for acknowledging that RSLs are hybrid authorities for the purposes of the HRA, given in particular their ,publicness' and the fact that they are often carrying out the same functions as local authorities. [source]

Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa

Precarious Democratization and Local Dynamics in Niger: Micro,Politics in Zinder

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 5 2001
Christian Lund
Literature on the African state often finds it hard to specify what is state and what is not. The closer one gets to a particular political landscape, the more apparent it becomes that many institutions have something of a twilight character. This article argues that studies of local politics in Africa should focus on how the public authority of institutions waxes and wanes and how political competition among individuals and organizations expresses the notion of state and public authority. This is explored in the context of contemporary political struggles in Niger, played out in three different arenas in the region of Zinder around 1999, as home,town associations, chieftaincies and vigilante groups all take on the mantle of public authority in their dealings with what they consider to be their antithesis, the ,State'. [source]

The ,Checks and Balances' Doctrine in Member States as a Rule of EC Law: The Cases of France and Germany

EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 5 2003
Theodore Georgopoulos
The paper argues that the mutation of the Judiciary and the Executive role vis-à-vis the Legislature appears to be an application of an emerging doctrine in EC public law that conspicuously resembles the ,Checks and Balances' theory of American constitutionalism. The action of one public authority is,or must be,countered by the reaction of another for the benefit of EC law. Apart from identifying the features of this ,principle' in comparison to its equivalent American doctrine, the paper deals with the question of a possible coexistence of this new model of governance with the traditional one. The comparative perspective is necessary here. Whereas in Germany the constitutional model appears to cope with European demands, in France it seems largely opposed to such a dynamic conception of the separation of powers. [source]

Global Transformations and New Conflicts

IDS BULLETIN, Issue 2 2001
Mary Kaldor
Summaries The central argument of this article is that a central feature of post-Cold War conflicts has been the delegitimisation of public authority, interacting with globalisation, through a process which is almost the reverse of state and nation-building. The political economy of the ,new wars' involves a mix of state and non-state, national and international violence. It creates vicious cycles, reinforcing the decline in the formal sector, breaking down the distinction between public and private spheres, and mobilising identity cleavages through strategies of fear and hate directed against civilians. These vicious cycles can only be broken by peace strategies, whose centrepiece, over the longer run, is the restoration of legitimate authority and the democratisation of politics. These strategies cannot, in a world in which the state has been eroded, be confined just to the state, but must also involve many other layers of political authority, from the local to the global. [source]

How Race, Sex, and Age Frame the Use of Authority by Local Government Officials

LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 3 2010
Shannon Portillo
Thanks to the civil rights movement, women and racial and ethnic minorities increasingly hold positions of public authority,but they experience and exercise this authority differently from white men. Based on 162 narratives collected from 49 US local government officials (city administrators and police), I find that women, minorities, and younger officials in positions of authority face a paradox of rules. Because they have lower social status with the public and within their organizations, they must rely on formal and explicit rules as a key basis for their authority, but such reliance causes their very authority to be questioned. Social status based on implicit assumptions about social identities, including race or ethnicity, sex, and age, originates outside of organizations and has effects society wide. This study shows that social status continues to permeate US local government organizations in both subtle and explicit ways, even in bureaucratic settings that are formally committed to merit and professional norms. [source]

Seeking the principle: chancels, choices and human rights

LEGAL STUDIES, Issue 2 2002
Ian Dawson
Chancel liability is an ancient property right, enforced by a Parochial Church Council, attaching to certain former rectorial lands. It requires a landowner to bear the cost of repair of the parish church chancel. The right poses particular problems for a purchaser, not least because it is hard to discover and is not limited to the value of the land. A recent decision of the Court of Appeal has found that a Parochial Church Council falls within section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 as a public authority, and that chancel liability infringes article I of the First Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights. This paper will dispute the rationale used by the Court of Appeal, and in so doing will argue that whilst chancel liability is outmoded, widely regarded as incongruous and does not bear scrutiny in its modern context, it should nevertheless be removed on a principled basis, avoiding unwanted repercussions elsewhere in the law. [source]

DOES PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY WORK?

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 1 2008
AN ASSESSMENT TOOL
In recent years, there has been a drive to strengthen existing public accountability arrangements and to design new ones. This prompts the question whether accountability arrangements actually work. In the existing literature, both accountability ,deficits' and ,overloads' are alleged to exist. However, owing to the lack of a cogent yardstick, the debate tends to be impressionistic and event-driven. In this article we develop an instrument for systematically assessing public accountability arrangements, drawing on three different normative perspectives. In the democratic perspective, accountability arrangements should effectively link government actions to the ,democratic chain of delegation'. In the constitutional perspective, it is essential that accountability arrangements prevent or uncover abuses of public authority. In the learning perspective, accountability is a tool to make governments effective in delivering on their promises. We demonstrate the use of our multicriteria assessment tool in an analysis of a new accountability arrangement: the boards of oversight of agencies. [source]

The politics of action on AIDS: a case study of Uganda

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2004
James Putzel
This article examines the political dimensions of Uganda's progress in bringing a generalised HIV/AIDS epidemic under control. The article documents the history of the political processes involved in Uganda's battle against HIV/AIDS and analyses the complexities of presidential action and the relation between action at the level of the state and that taken within societal organisations. By the mid-1980s, Uganda was experiencing a full-blown epidemic, the virulence of which was connected with social dislocation and insecurity related to economic crisis and war. Political authorities faced the same challenge as other regimes experiencing the onslaught of AIDS in Africa. The epidemiological characteristics of HIV and AIDS,transmission through heterosexual activities, with a long gestation period, affecting people in the prime of their productive life,meant that action required wide-reaching changes in sexual behaviour, and the educational activities to achieve this, as well as relatively complex systems to monitor the virus and control medical practices (blood supplies, injection practices, mitigating drug delivery). The centralist character of the Museveni regime was crucial not only to mobilising state organisations and foreign aid resources, but also to ensuring significant involvement from non-state associations and religious authorities. The Ugandan experience demonstrates that there is a tension between the requirements for systematic action that a strong public authority can deliver and the need to disseminate information requiring a degree of democratic openness. The President was able to forge a coalition behind an HIV/AIDS campaign in part because the virus largely ignored the privileges of wealth and political power. With the development of antiretroviral therapy and the access that the wealthy can gain to these drugs, this basis for the broadest possible coalition to fight HIV/AIDS may be weakened in the future. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]