Numerous U.S. cities suffered immense fiscal strain following the subprime mortgage crisis and financial crash of 2007–8. Diminished revenues, tightened credit, and speculative financing that went bad in the aftermath fueled widespread fiscal distress on the local scale. Although the current moment resembles fiscal crises that crested in cities in the 1970s–90s, two factors distinguish the current period. First, municipal affairs have become thoroughly financialized—dominated by speculative securities and volatile debt arrangements—such that local crisis can no longer be understood apart (...) from financial market instability. Second, local fiscal politics have become increasingly removed from democratic oversight and control. This de-democratization hinders the capacity of political communities to reregulate markets and rebuild urban communities. An analytic model derived from the work of Hyman Minsky and Karl Polanyi emphasizes how cities become ensnared in a “financial instability” cycle and how communities seek to protect themselves by way of the “double movement.”. (shrink)

The article is devoted to reviewing and analyzing the results of the All-Russian scientific and practical conference “Municipal management in new realities: modern challenges and opportunities”, held in Chelyabinsk on October 26—27, 2023, and is a digest of the main events of the conference.

Recent debates about the most appropriate political agents for realising social justice have largely focused on the potential value of national political parties on the one hand, and trade unions on the other. Drawing on the thought of Murray Bookchin, this article suggests that democratic municipalist agents – democratic associations of local residents that build and empower neighbourhood assemblies and improve the municipal provision of basic goods and services – can often also make valuable contributions to projects of just social (...) change. I identify a long-term and a more short-term argument for the value of democratic municipalist agency in Bookchin's thought and claim that the latter provides a compelling case for the valuable contributions this form of action can make to the achievement of a wide variety of visions of social justice. This provides a useful partial corrective to recent political theorising about the nature of the partisanship and trade unionism necessary to secure social justice. (shrink)

This article attempts to open the debate on a territorial development perspective that fixes the interest in organized territories that are characterized by the existence of a community with a local identity, politically and administratively regulated. We conceive these territories as subjects of development promotion interventions. For this we propose a model for the creation of Municipal Development Forums, which with the participation of local actors, can generate a tailor-made Local Development Program. The development program will consider a diagnosis of (...) the productive profile of the territory and its relationship with the characteristics and origin of goods or services consumed at the municipality. Based on the diagnosis, the causes of the decoupling between the local production system and consumption needs can be detected. And with this, find a way to readjust local production systems to meet the demand for goods and services of the inhabitants, generating new companies and encouraging local consumption. (shrink)

This paper attempts to open the debate on the idea of local and territorial development of microregional nodes in the Province of Buenos Aires. Under this approach, a model that proposes the creation of Municipal Development Forum, with the participation of local actors, generate local development program is proposed. The proposal is formulated for territories over 5,000 and below 30,000 inhabitants. This criterion is based on the applicability of the proposed model to municipalities with potential for territorial development, large and (...) balanced internal consumption, but where progress is hindered by the proximity of one or two political jurisdictions of a larger productive scale that have became regional administrative centers. The development program will consider a diagnosis of the productive profile of the territory and its relationship with the characteristics and origin of goods or services consumed at the municipality. This territorial development model aims to move towards self-sufficiency on goods and services, to create new jobs and to promote effective and efficient use of local resources. In short, we propose to tackle territorial development from an innovative perspective, focusing on the creation of Municipal Development Fora that foster the improvement and growth of the productive system, the creation of jobs, local identity and the consumption of goods and services locally produced. (shrink)

This article examines the municipal ID card programs in New Haven and San Francisco. With a municipal ID card, undocumented immigrants can access basic city services and identify themselves with police and other city officials. The article draws on twenty-eight interviews with key stakeholders to show that city officials navigated the conflicting demands of ID card supporters and opponents to create a local membership policy focused on improving city administration, not expanding the rights of undocumented immigrants. In capitalizing on their (...) discretionary administrative powers to develop programs that safeguard the health, safety, and welfare of all city residents, officials in New Haven and San Francisco managed to promote the integration of undocumented immigrants into city affairs without upsetting the federal monopoly over immigration and citizenship powers. This new form of local bureaucratic membership has implications for the urban citizenship literature and illustrates that city officials have some freedom to develop programs that benefit undocumented immigrants. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the study of the development patterns of the local government system in the Russian Federation. The submission to the State Duma of the Russian Federation of the draft Federal Law «On the general principles of the organization of local self-government in the unified system of public authority» in December 2021 means the preparation of a new stage of municipal reform and makes it relevant to study long-term changes in the institutional organization of local self-government. The (...) purpose of the study is to analyze changes in the structure of local self-government bodies and the rules of their formation at each stage of the development of this institution, as well as to identify the main patterns of this process. The analysis of the legislative base regulating the structure and rules of formation of local self-government bodies has been carried out. The data related to the development of the local government system provided by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation were analyzed. It is shown that the structure of local self-government bodies has not undergone significant changes. However, there have been changes in the ways of forming local self-government bodies, which reflect the trend towards their loss of institutional independence and integration into a single system of public power. This trend appeared at the stage of implementation of the Federal Law on Local Self-Government in 2003 and was consolidated in the new Draft law on Local self-government submitted to the State Duma of the Russian Federation in 2021. It is concluded that there is a tendency to increase the dependence on federal and regional legislators of local self-government bodies. For the institute of heads of municipalities, the loss of institutional independence was clearly manifested by the introduction of the procedure for electing heads by competition, displacing both election at municipal elections and election from the Council of Deputies. The formation of representative bodies, having passed the stage of delegating deputies to higher levels, returns to the model of direct elections. However, this happens in the context of the rejection of a two-tier system of local self-government. (shrink)

Recent debates about the most appropriate political agents for realising social justice have largely focused on the potential value of national political parties on the one hand, and trade unions on the other. Drawing on the thought of Murray Bookchin, this article suggests that democratic municipalist agents – democratic associations of local residents that build and empower neighbourhood assemblies and improve the municipal provision of basic goods and services – can often also make valuable contributions to projects of just social (...) change. I identify a long-term and a more short-term argument for the value of democratic municipalist agency in Bookchin's thought and claim that the latter provides a compelling case for the valuable contributions this form of action can make to the achievement of a wide variety of visions of social justice. This provides a useful partial corrective to recent political theorising about the nature of the partisanship and trade unionism necessary to secure social justice. (shrink)

The human immunodeficiency virus since its genesis has continued to affect a large number of the population in the African region and has caused exponential deaths. At the same time, new infections have been reported in South Africa. However, religion as a vehicle of change through the institution of the church has been acting on the contrary, since it discourages the use of condoms and moralising the pelvic area in its characterisation against the commandment of God. Such a perspective has (...) largely been drawn from the Christian doctrine. We argue that in its condemnation and moralisation of the virus, the church, through its pastors, engaged in biblical discourse.Contribution: The article applies a qualitative phenomenological approach and system theory as theoretical lenses. Furthermore, the article locates the study within Christian communities located in Thulamela Municipality, Limpopo province. It proposes Christian practices that can be useful in combating the virus. (shrink)

The received wisdom among welfare state scholars is that policy feedbacks render social insurance programs durable. Yet, in the case of Detroit’s municipal bankruptcy, a voting majority of retired city workers accepted a settlement that asked them to waive key legal protections, formally accept gutted medical benefits, trimmed pension benefits, and a new public-private pension financing mechanism. This article synthesizes interactionist theories of loss to introduce the concept of “collective cooling.” I argue that collective cooling helps to establish the limits (...) of policy feedbacks by explaining how a group of retirees’ collective self-understandings were adjusted from that of contractual rights holders to charitable dependents. Key components of this process included: First, seeking to adjust understandings of how pensioners were perceived by powerful outsiders; And, second, seeking to adjust the loss from one that reflected poorly on pensioners to one that did not. Implications are discussed for how people accept unexpected economic losses, especially those imposed by a trusted institution such as an employer or government organization. (shrink)

Introduction. Ensuring stability and a high level of rates of socio-economic development of the country and growth in citizens’ quality of life, the authorities operate under conditions of limited resources. This requires improvement of management efficiency and qualitatively formulated indicators for assessing the effectiveness of the authorities’ activities. One of the reasons for the difficulty in formulating indicators is the identification of state and municipal governance. The purpose of the study is to separate the effectiveness of municipal governance from the (...) effectiveness of public administration. Methods. Within the framework of the research on the basis of the method of interpretation and system approach the following analysis was applied: scientific publications, normative legal acts, statistical data. Scientific novelty of the study. The concept of a new method of assessing the effectiveness of municipal governance is proposed. Results. The works of Russian and foreign scientists were considered to identify approaches to assessing the effectiveness of state and municipal governance. Domestic and foreign methods of efficiency assessment have been studied. Regulatory legal acts of the Russian Federation regulating the efficiency assessment of state and local government bodies were analyzed in order to compare the efficiency assessment indicators. The concept of a new method of assessing the effectiveness of municipal governance by compiling a universal list of indicators has been proposed. Conclusions. One of the two approaches to assessing the efficiency of state and municipal governance is generalizing - the assessment of municipal governance efficiency is carried out similarly to the assessment of public administration efficiency. The second approach is differentiating - the assessment of the effectiveness of municipal governance differs from the assessment of the effectiveness of public administration, while taking into account the impossibility of full autonomy. There are a number of common shortcomings in the methods of assessing the efficiency of government performance: the current indicators do not allow to unambiguously assess the result of government performance; the indicators for assessing the efficiency of municipal government are of a private nature. (shrink)

Between 2017 and 2019, Barcelona was one of the first European cities to implement a basic income experiment, the B-MINCOME pilot, aimed at reducing poverty and social exclusion in a low-income area of the city. A new cash grant was designed along with a package of active policies. Four modalities of participation were then established depending on two criteria: whether attending these policies was mandatory or not, and whether participants’ additional income altered the amount of the grant or was instead (...) net added on top. The context which initially moulded the pilot is firstly explained. Then, the cash schema and the active policies are described followed by an explanation of its experimental design. The main results at individual, community and institutional levels formerly released in the official reports are now integrated and jointly addressed. Finally, conclusions discuss some issues raised by the pilot’s results in light of the findings gathered in other similar basic income experiments. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to reveal the essence of digital technologies in the municipal government system, to identify the main problems of their transformation in the territory of the subjects, and to develop directions for the mechanism of adaptation of the relationship between different management structures in the conditions of digitalization of processes. The article considers the author's vision of the development of digital technologies in the territorial aspect. In particular, the problems of technical equipment of remote territories (...) are considered, in particular, the problems of training personnel and territorial access to Internet resources are touched upon. When evaluating the legislative and regulatory acts of the Russian Federation, it is clear that digital technologies require a separate approach to solving problems of both legal and economic nature, while we focus on their relationship. It is obvious that when developing the strategic direction of digital technologies, the adapted elements require some adjustments and additions, which is currently being carried out. Such changes and additions are promoted not only through legislative and regulatory activities, but also on the basis of scientific research, which in turn develop new directions that contribute to solving problems in the development of digital technologies, not only in the management system, but also in the areas of business, professional education, training and retraining of personnel, etc. As a result, the identified problems in the resource provision of digital technologies allowed us to develop measures that specify the strategic direction. (shrink)

The article analyzes the forms of public participation in the implementation of local self-government at various stages of municipal reform. It studies the consolidation of various forms of participation in federal laws on local self-government. The analysis of data from the annual Monitoring of the development of the local government system has been carried out, which makes it possible to assess the real prevalence of various forms of public participation. It is shown that the new Draft Law on local self-government (...) reinforces the general trend towards reducing the municipal sphere and simplifying the institutional organization of local self-government. This, in turn, leads to a reduction in the total number of forms of public participation in self-government, a reduction in their demand and a reduction in the space of deliberative democracy as a whole. At the same time, there is a reduction in both power and advisory forms of participation. (shrink)

Introduction. The need for a transition to a new system of motivating state and municipal employees’ activities has been widely discussed in recent years. Moreover, some government bodies have taken certain actions in this direction. But in general, there have not been any significant changes. The authors of the article are convinced that the transition to more effective management is impossible without changing the civil servants’ remuneration system, which should motivate them to achieve significant results in the areas for which (...) they are responsible. The paper considers the conceptual approach of transferring the civil servants’ remuneration to a new system, shows the advantages of using performance indicators to stimulate the employees’ activities. The purpose of the article is to justify the reasonability of using performance indicators when remunerating state and municipal employees. Methods. Within the framework of the systems approach, the authors use structural and functional analysis, as well as general scientific methods: abstraction, comparison, description and explanation. Scientific novelty. The authors show possibilities of using the personnel performance indicators in the state and municipal service in order to increase their motivation for obtaining significant results in their work. Results. The authors analyze the conditions for successful implementing the key personnel performance indicators in the state and municipal service, describe the typical mistakes militating the effectiveness of the personnel performance indicators in public authorities. The authors develop some recommendations to improve the use of the personnel performance indicators in the system of state and municipal administration. Conclusions. The proper use of key performance indicators of state and municipal employees will significantly increase their motivation in order to achieve high efficiency in their work. At the same time, the personnel performance indicators must be balanced and matched taking into account the goals of the organization. (shrink)

Would primary care services benefit from the aid of a clinical ethics committee (CEC)? The implementation of CECs in primary care in four Norwegian municipalities was supported and their activities followed for 2.5 years. In this study, the CECs’ structure and activities are described, with special emphasis on what characterizes the cases they have discussed. In total, the four CECs discussed 54 cases from primary care services, with the four most common topics being patient autonomy, competence and coercion; professionalism; cooperation (...) and disagreement with next of kin; and priority setting, resource use and quality. Nursing homes and home care were the primary care services most often involved. Next of kin were present in 10 case deliberations, whereas patients were never present. The investigation indicates that it might be feasible for new CECs to attain a high level of activity including case deliberations within the time frame. It also confirms that significant, characteristic and complex moral problems arise in primary care services. (shrink)

Our great teacher and leader Chairman Mao always stressed the study and propagation of materialist dialectics and dedicated himself to the application of materialist dialectics in analyzing problems, directing revolution and, through practical struggle, advancing the dialectics of revolution ceaselessly. In that immortal collection of Marxist-Leninist essays, Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, Volume Five, Chairman Mao provided us with a new chapter of materialist dialectics. Essays of particular interest included in Volume Five are: "On the Policies for Our Work in (...) Tibet — Directive of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China," "In Refutation of ‘Uniformity of Public Opinion,’" "On the Ten Major Relationships," "Speech at the Second Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China," "Talks at a Conference of Secretaries of Provincial, Municipal and Autonomous Region Party Committees," "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People," "Speech at the Chinese Communist Party's National Conference on Propoganda Work," and "A Dialectical Approach to Inner-Party Unity." These essays provide us with important educational materials for learning Chairman Mao's new thought and new conclusions concerning dialectics, and comprise a supremely powerful weapon of thought for carrying through the wise political policies of Chairman Hua and deeply criticizing the "gang of four.". (shrink)

In January 2022 the new Dutch Civic Integration programme was launched together with promises of improvements it would bring in facilitating the ‘integration’ of newcomers to the Netherlands. This study presents a critical discourse analysis of texts intended for municipalities to take on their new coordinating role in this programme. The analysis aims to understand the discourse in the texts, which actors are mobilized by them, and the role these texts and these actors play in processes of governmental racialization. The (...) analysis demonstrates shifting complex assemblages are brought into cascades of governance in which all actors are disciplined to accept the problem of integration as a problem of cultural difference and distance, and then furthermore disciplined to adopt new practices deemed necessary to identify and even ‘objectively’ measure the inherent traits contributing to this problematic. Lastly, the analysis displays that all actors are disciplined to accept the solution of ‘spontaneous compliance’; a series of practices and knowledges, which move the civic integration programme beyond an aim of responsibilization, into a programme of internalization, wherein newcomers are expected to own and address their problematic ‘nature’, making ‘modern’ values their own. (shrink)

Promoting a better understanding of the phenomenon of colonization and its connection with environmental knowledge and technology, this article proposes a reframing of research agendas to take into account the municipal character of colonization in the Hispanic realm and to ask new questions. Questions should address what human–ecosystem relations, and the ways of knowing and techniques for transforming the physical realm, can tell us about colonization itself; who the historical agents involved were, and what these actors knew, learned, and did (...) in their environments. Using the Basin of Mexico’s drainage and the agency of commoners, this article proposes that colonization depends on the massive deployment and generation of tacit knowledge about how to harness matter, energy, and time for the reproduction of human societies; the quotidian appropriation and reworking of autochthonous knowledge, techniques, and technology by the colonizing groups; the collaboration of the local populations in whom these are vested; and the agency of commoners with practical skills, environmental knowledge, and technological savvy derived from and honed in the realm of material production. In the Ibero-American realm, these agents were primarily commoners with skills in agropastoral production and the building trades; race, ethnicity, language, and gender were secondary conditions. (shrink)

Brazil's health councils appear to offer inspiring examples of what Fung and Wright term “empowered participatory governance.” But what happens in practice? This article narrates an episode in the life of a municipal health council in northeast Brazil, in which democracy itself came under deliberation. It seeks to locate normative assumptions embedded in theories of deliberative democracy and participatory governance in everyday conduct in one of these institutions. It suggests that assessing the democratizing potential of the myriad new spaces that (...) now populate governance landscapes the world over calls for far closer attention to be paid to power, political culture, and politics. (shrink)

The goal of the article is to compare methods of financing ARs and ERs based on the data from the 1st half of 2013 and 1st half of 2014 from the K. Jonscher 3rd Municipal Hospital in Lodz. All the stays in the AR/ER in the 1st half of 2013 and the 1st half of 2014 were analysed. Based on the presented data, it can be clearly seen that the new method of financing AR/ER services proposed by the NFZ will (...) beyond doubt have negative outcomes, and will certainly not improve the financial situation of hospitals. (shrink)

Resumen. La presente investigación ofrece la oportunidad de pensar y dialogar sobre la estrategia, los objetivos, las personas y el futuro de la gestión municipal del H. Ayuntamiento de Navolato desde una perspectiva del conocimiento. Se trata pues de averiguar qué características deben cumplir esos recursos para adquirir un carácter estratégico. La información se obtuvo mediante una encuesta semiestructurada, aplicada a 181 individuos. Los datos recabados fueron objeto, en un principio, de dos tipos de tabulaciones. En algunos casos sólo se (...) efectúo una tabulación simple, que consistió en el conteo de una sola variable; en otros casos la tabulación fue cruzada contando dos o más variables de forma simultánea. Para el análisis de los datos se utilizó el programa de tratamiento de datos estadísticos SPSS versión 12 para Windows, que facilitó el tratamiento inferencial de los datos extraídos de la muestra seleccionada. El análisis de los resultados muestra que el Ayuntamiento presenta perfiles favorables para una gestión del conocimiento, óptima y eficaz, al alcanzar una puntuación total de 115, contando con una fortaleza estructural interna. Se concluye que las administraciones públicas no son ajenas a la sociedad del conocimiento, se están acomodando a estas nuevas exigencias, mejorando sus procesos para satisfacer las nuevas necesidades de los ciudadanos. Redefiniendo la función pública y el servicio público, a través de la búsqueda de mecanismos para conocer y medir el valor de la gestión del conocimiento, y así poder llevar a cabo una gestión eficiente y eficaz de estos recursos.Palabras Claves. Administración pública municipal, Gestión del conocimiento, Nueva Gestión Pública, Economía aplicada.. This research provides an opportunity to think and discuss the strategy, goals, people and future of municipal management of Navolato City knowledge perspective. It is about finding out what characteristics should meet those resources to acquire a strategic nature. The information was obtained through a semistructured survey applied to 181 individuals. The data collected were subjected, in principle, two types of tabs. In some cases only made a simple tabulation, which consisted of a single variable count, in other cases the cross tabulation was counting two or more variables simultaneously. For data analysis software was used for statistical data processing SPSS version 12 for Windows, which facilitated inferential treatment of the extracted data from the selected sample. The analysis of the results shows that the City has profiles favorable for knowledge management, optimal and efficient, to achieve a total score of 115, relying on internal structural strength. We conclude that public administrations are not foreign to the knowledge society, are arranging to these new demands by improving their processes to satisfy the new needs of citizens. Redefining the civil and public service, through the search for mechanisms to analyze and measure the value of knowledge management, and therefore be able to carry out a efficient and effective management of these resources.Keywords. Municipal public administration, knowledge management, new public management, applied economic. (shrink)

Vaccine mandates played a critical role in the success of New York City’s COVID-19 response. By relying on evidence as a substantive basis for the mandates and adhering to procedural requirements and precedent, New York City leveraged its position and expertise as a local governmental authority to devise mandatory vaccine policies that withstood numerous legal challenges. New York City’s experience highlights the role of municipal government in mounting a meaningful public health response, and the strategies adopted by NYC may provide (...) a blueprint for municipalities around the world facing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the threat of future public health emergencies. (shrink)

Multicultural cities in the Global North are rapidly developing and releasing urban food policies that outline municipal visions of sustainable food systems. In turn, these policies shape conceptions of food citizenship in the city. While these policies largely absorb activities previously associated with “alternative” food systems, little is known about how they respond to critical food and race scholars who have noted that these food practices and spaces have historically marginalized immigrants. A critical discourse analysis of 22 urban food policies (...) from Global North cities reveals that most policies do not meaningfully consider immigrant foodscapes, foodways, and food-related labour. Many promote hegemonic and/or ethno-nationalistic understandings of “healthy” and “sustainable” food without recognizing immigrants’ food-related knowledge and skills. Policies largely fail to connect the topic of immigrant labour with goals like shortening supply chains, subject immigrant neighbourhoods to stigmatizing health discourses, and lack acknowledgement of the barriers immigrants may face to participating in sustainable food systems. Relatedly, policy discourses articulate forms of food citizenship that emphasize individual obligations over rights related to food. This jeopardizes the potential for immigrants to be seen as belonging to dominant political urban food communities and benefitting from the symbolic and material rewards associated with them. (shrink)

The article proceeds from the concept of understanding local government in Russia as a projection of the potestar (pre-state) organization of public life, which transforms under the dominance of methods of state organization of public life, but retains its influence as the essential core of political and social interaction between people. The existing complex «state-municipal» mechanism for exercising power at the local level largely determines the forms and nature of political actors’ interaction at the regional level. State authorities, which are (...) focused on the totality of their own administrative influences, have not yet succeeded in fully integrating local self-government into the general public space of responsibility for powers, since local power is unbuilt initially on the principles of autogenesis, autochthony and autonomy. The current situation contributes to the archaicism of a part of social relations. For some time now, to work in the multidimensional reality of society, the authorities have begun to need analytical models to understand what is happening. As an explanatory theoretical basis for the modes of existence of local authorities developed and described by the author in the current stage of development of Russian statehood, a modal methodology is used, supplemented by the results of constructing model-oriented political ontologies, which reflect the aggregates of the layers and actors of the municipal sphere of sociopolitical reality at the regional level that are actually and actively present in the Russian society. The author is interested in searching the patterns that operate in the environment created and cultivated by the organizational and activity efforts of state structures against the background of sociocultural and other characteristics inherent in the regions. Possible working models for the needs of public administration arising from the modes offered by the author are still under development, since the reform of constitutional rules proposed by the country’s leadership raises the question of new forms of organizing the continuum of coexistence and interaction of local and state authorities in Russia. The article outlines the main research lines that indicate a number of features and reference points of the author’s approach in understanding the relationship between local government and municipal government, which may serve as an occasion for a new circle of discussions of specialists interested in the prospects for the development of political potential in the Russian municipal environment. (shrink)

South Africa’s groundbreaking constitution explicitly confers a right of access to sufficient water. But the country is officially ‘water-stressed’ and around 10 % of the population still has no access to on-site or off-site piped or tap water. It is evident that a disconnect exists between this right and the reality for many; however the reasons for the continuation of such discrepancies are not always clear. While barriers to sufficient water are myriad, one significant factor contributing to insufficient and unpredictable (...) access to water is the high percentage of broken water pumps. Previous studies have reported that between 20 and 50 % of all hand operated water pumps installed on the African continent are broken, or out of use. Monitoring and maintenance of pumps, which in South Africa is the responsibility of local municipalities is often ineffective, in part due to the distances between municipal centres and rural communities and the consequent costs of site visits, as well as breakdowns within the local bureaucratic system. The emergence of new telemetry tools that can remotely monitor water applications constitutes a novel and cost-efficient alternative to undertaking regular sites visits. Sustainable, appropriate, low-cost telemetry systems are emerging that could be used to monitor the operational performance of water pumps, or a wide range of other field parameters, and to communicate this information swiftly and cheaply to water service providers, using SMS messages. Data on the performance of water pumps could also be made available to the public online. This is an example of how ICT can be used for water resources management and environmental regulation, as well as in the governance of socio-economic rights: helping to optimize water allocation by improving communication and strengthening accountability. (shrink)

The adaptation of the new municipal entities to present-day social life is a success. The concentration of the local administration with better organized services has left human relations unaffected. The amalgamation of the territory and its administration has effected a more equitable distribution of the casts. Considering the administration, the new municipalities could have been bigger but the human dimensions did not allow such enlargement. In most cases, the amalgamation contributed to the inception of a real social and economie entity. (...) But the deliberations did not always lead to new municipalities that would normally have been required. In view of the rationalisation and improvement of the services the new municipality has succeeded. More goods and services are being distributed for the same cost. The amalgamation of the municipalities led to better organization and more efficiency of the administration.The power to manage increased. Concerning municipal finances, the amalgamation operation has not caused any deficits. The causes of the deficits have to be sought elsewhere : a tendency to extend social benefits and to overstaff, the transformation of the Centers for Public Assistance into Public Centers for Social Welf are, the failure of the national government to fulfil its financial obligations vis-à-vis the municipalities. In addition to these causes, errors in judgment have compromised the finances of many municipalities. On the whole, the amalgamations have been a success. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Descartes’s Lettre Apologétique aux Magistrats d’Utrecht:New Facts and MaterialsErik-Jan BosThe lettre apologétique aux magistrats d’utrecht was Descartes’s final effort to obtain satisfaction from the Municipality or ‘Vroedschap’ of Utrecht. In 1643 the Vroedschap had condemned Descartes’s Epistola ad Dinetum and Epistola ad Voetium in defence of Descartes’s opponent Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676), professor of Theology at the University of Utrecht.1 In the Lettre apologétique Descartes requests the Utrecht Vroedschap to (...) revoke their condemnation, to clear his name and to reconsider Voetius’s position.The Lettre apologétique receives little attention in modern editions of Descartes’s works. Adam and Tannery give both the French and the Latin version of the Lettre apologétique, but with scanty annotation and an unsatisfactory introduction (AT VIIIB).2 The only other edition of the Lettre apologétique is provided by Verbeek, in La Querelle d’Utrecht (1988), but it does not go beyond Adam and Tannery’s edition.3In 1992, however, Verbeek noted that the Lettre apologétique could not possibly date from 1645, which was the hypothesis of Adam and Tannery and still is the [End Page 415] prevailing view.4 This raises once again the question of the real date of the Lettre apologétique as well as of the history of the text. In this essay I propose a new date and a new account of the history of the text. I also draw attention to the Dutch version of the Lettre apologétique, which Descartes sent to the Utrecht Vroedschap in 1648, but first I will give a short survey of Descartes’s dispute with Voetius.1. THE UTRECHT QUARRELIf we are to believe Descartes in his Lettre apologétique, it was Voetius who started the quarrel in 1639 by accusing him of atheism in several disputations, an accusation to which Voetius stuck throughout the affair.5 Descartes admits he is not mentioned in the writings of the Utrecht theologian, but “[Voetius] counted among the characteristics of atheism everything he knew to be commonly attributed to me” (AT VIIIB 205). A few years later, in 1641, Voetius called the adherents of the New Philosophy atheists outright. In a reaction to Descartes’s champion in Utrecht, the professor of medicine Henricus Regius (1598–1679), who claimed Aristotelian philosophy to be of no use for explaining natural phenomena, Voetius warned that the rejection of traditional philosophy would lead to scepticism and eventually to disbelief. With Descartes’s help Regius furnished a reply, in which he insinuated that it was, instead, the obscurities in Neo-Scholastic thought which led to the denial of God.6 This answer elicited protest from the University Senate. On the Senate’s request the Utrecht Vroedschap confiscated Regius’s book and forbade the teaching of any ideas deviating from Aristotle. Regius having been silenced, Descartes proceeded in a personal capacity. He vehemently attacked Voetius, first in the Epistola adDinetum, then in an elaborate work, the Epistola ad Voetium. The latter was meant as a response to a book opposing Descartes published by the professor of philosophy in Groningen, Martin Schoock (1614–1669), a friend of Voetius.7 The Vroedschap then condemned the works and Descartes became [End Page 416] subject to criminal charges. Thanks to his influential friends, Descartes was never put on trial, yet he felt that his reputation had been badly damaged. Several times he demanded satisfaction from the Utrecht Vroedschap, but to no avail.Until recently, the texts published in the polemic between Descartes and Voetius were considered to be of no more than anecdotal value in Descartes’s biography. It is only for the past decade that their philosophical relevance has been recognized. From what seemed to be unpromising material, various scholars have presented new perspectives on both Voetius and Descartes.8 They have shown that the objections raised by Voetius and Schoock against Cartesian philosophy prove to be more fundamental and to the point than formerly believed. Although Descartes never made a serious attempt on his own to meet Voetius on philosophical grounds, his writings are interesting because he brings forward theoretical positions which before he had... (shrink)

Th is microhistorical case-study of the role of the Antifascist Front of Women of Yugoslavia in popularising New Year celebrations in the Serbian municipality of Čačak aims to examine the internalisation of the communist discourse through ritual practices serving to infiltrate the private life of the local community and to expand the Party’s support basis. In the first post-war years, the new authorities not only tolerated, but tacitly approved and aided celebrations of Christian holidays. Yet this policy changed radically in (...) 1948, when local mass organisations were instructed to replace winter holidays with New Year festivities, based on the Soviet model. These events bore an observably ideologised character, since New Year’s Day was not only supposed to mark the calendar year’s end, but also to symbolise the new beginning as a ubiquitous simulacrum for a new socialist society. The primary agents of this novel collective identity practice were women, champions of the socialist emancipation project, whereas the main channel for dissemination were children, which embedded this measure within the farsighted project of tempering a “new man.”. (shrink)

This article examines how local experiments and negotiation processes contribute to social and field-level learning. The analysis is framed within the niche development literature, which offers a framework for analyzing the relation between projects in local contexts and the transfer of local experiences into generally applicable rules. The authors examine 2 case studies drawn from a meta-analysis of 27 new energy projects. The case studies, both pertaining to biogas projects for local municipalities, illustrate the diversity of applications for a technology (...) through processes of local variation and selection. The authors examine the diversity of expectations and the negotiation and alignment of these expectations underlying the diversity of local solutions. Moreover, the authors address how the transfer of lessons from individual local experiments can follow different pathways and yet always require due attention to the social and cultural limits to the transferability of solutions. (shrink)

This paper advances the thesis that democratic populism and the commons can and should complement each other in counter-hegemonic interventions promoting egalitarian and ecological democracy in our times. After elucidating its key terms, the article makes, first, a theoretical case for the combination of egalitarian, inclusionary populism and the commons by debunking arguments which highlight the conflicts between them and by explaining the political significance of their conjugation. Subsequently, discussion builds an empirical argument for the real possibility and the democratic (...) promises of such a convergence by considering three ways in which populist politics and the commons merge and recompose each other in contemporary social movements, from the Spanish 15M and new municipalism to Occupy and other collective contestation in the Americas over the last two decades. These cases will illustrate how late social activism has effectively blended populist mobilization with the spirit of the commons, engendering a hybrid figure of ‘common populism’ that fosters grassroots processes of democratization. (shrink)

Gianantonio Tadini (1754–1830) is the little known protagonist in an important experiment carried out in Bergamo between 1794 and 1795. Based on the measurement of the deviation of a falling body, the experiment owes much to the one that was conducted by Giambattista Guglielmini (1760–1817) in Bologna in 1791, which aimed at demonstrating Earth’s rotation. Tadini’s experimental work represents the most successful attempt carried out before the 19th century, and it led to the first correct formulation of deviation’s measurement. In (...) spite of this, it is not well represented in the general literature on the history of experiments intended to show diurnal Earth’s motion.1 The discovery of Tadini’s diary of experiments as well as some notes and a part of his correspondence – preserved as manuscripts in the Angelo Mai municipal library in Bergamo – allows us now to reconstruct the history of Tadini’s experiment and of his reasoning about Guglielmini’s work. In this paper, I describe the genesis and the development of Tadini’s experiment, clarify the role played by the different personalities involved and set these trials against the background of the widest history of proofs on diurnal Earth’s rotation carried out in Europe in those years. (shrink)

In Belgium, the number of municipalities was reduced from 2,663 to 596 by means of amalgamation.In the sketching of the framework of this reform, attention is first of all given to the manner in which the consensus required for it could be obtained. At the same time, the criteria employed and the pragmaticapplication thereof are investigated.Then, the new municipal division is tested for the motives and objectives that lay at the foundation of this reform. The expectations involved were in large (...) measure, related to the effects that were seen as the inherent consequence of the expansion of the territoria! scale of the municipalities.Finally, this reform is tested with respect to other than territorial components of the municipal administrative power. The reform remains incomplete on several points. This appears, for example, from the continuing absence of functional reforms with regard to decentralisation and from the lack of attention for the adjustment of the municipal working rules both in the area of effective administration as wellt as in the area of open and democratie administration. (shrink)

In this synthesis report of the congress that was sponsored by the Politologisch Instituut on the evaluation of the amalgamations of the municipalities, the changes are further investigated that were the consequences of this reform in the areas of municipal organisation and policy implementation.The overall impression that one can receive from the evaluation conducted up tilt now allows one to point to several favourable developments ihat relate, for example, to the content improvement of policy formation and to a better support (...) of it by a quantitatively and, apparently, also a qualitatively better constructed official apparatus. In most of the new municipalities, there are more perspectives available for policy implementation than was previously the case.Nevertheless, the weak points of the transition from the small to the large-scale administration must also be stressed. These are strongly related to the necessity of continuing to assure the open and democratie content of the policy implementation in a context in which the newly created distances between the administration and the citizens, the danger of bureaucratisation, and the tensions coupled with the integration demand a new approach and new insights. (shrink)

For a little over a decade we have been witnessing a profusion of discourses on autochthony — that is, an original belonging to a group or territory — in many parts of the world. A global approach to this question first requires a look at the principle of autochthony and its genealogy. Starting from African examples, places of prolific expression of the phenomenon, this article shows how autochthony plays the role of capital that can be invested, valued and profited from. (...) The structure of this capital carries within itself the seeds of conflict. The article analyses how the stabilization of its value requires the execution of specific strategies. Among these strategies, I will focus in greater depth on voting. The relationship between capital, autochthony and elections will thus bring us back to debates that animate political science: in new municipalities, autochthony as capital is at the heart of candidate selection, suffrage, political participation and citizenship. (shrink)

Since the mid-sixties an important change in the attitude of local authorities towards cultural infrastructure such as meeting halls, public libraries, sporting accommodation, etc. can be noticed. Induced by the government many state-subsidized initiatives have been taken in this field, implicating an active role of public authorities and contrasting with the former merely supporting policy. However cultural policy also supposes citizen's participation. This involvement has been legally guaranteed: every ideological tendency in the population bas the right to participate in the (...) management of public provisions in the cultural sector. Up to now the scale enlargement of the municipalities had no directimpact on the expansion of the cultural infrastructure. Many options were decided before the mergers and since 1977 the crisis in public finance lead to other priorities. The participatory structures have been reorganized on the level of the new municipalities, thus creating a social distance to the grass roots. (shrink)

New York City has a long history of gentrification, well demonstrated by the strategies of “revitalization” and “re-development” that have occurred in Harlem throughout the last century. Less well known is the historical, political, and social context surrounding New York’s Pier 45, also known as the Christopher Street Pier. As a historically-known gathering spot for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals, the Christopher Street Pier gained recognition for harbouring what could be described as a queer public . However, recent processes (...) of gentrification have changed Pier 45 into the Hudson River Park, ostensibly privatizing the site. With reference to Braidotti’s nomadic subject, this paper explores the Christopher Street Pier as a representation of queer geographies. Further, it argues that the re-appropriation of the once queer public space of Pier 45 exposes a municipal agenda of surveillance in relation to sexualized and racialized identities. Through reference to the activist practices of FIERCE, a local NGO, I show how the nomadic subjectivities of queer youth open up a discussion of ethical responsibility and point toward strategic movements of resistance in the face of gentrification in New York’s West Village. (shrink)

A new recommendation has appeared in the Ethnic Dining Guide of Washingtoon, capital of the Unconscious States of Amurrica, put out by Tailor Coward III, Director of the Mercantilist Center and Professor of Shriekonomics at George Madison University, which is scattered across several municipalities in the northern Vagina suburbs of Washingtoon. Tailor’s father was from the clothier branch of the famous English playwright’s family, but had to flee to Amurrica when his stitch in time saved only eight. After marrying a (...) nice girl from Old Teashirt, they moved to Hoople, Southern North Dakota, where Tailor would become the regional chess champion at age 6, only to be defeated some years later by the 4-year old I.M.A. Bach, great-great-great-greatgreat-great-great grandson of P.D.Q. Bach, who had studied obscure gambits with Bobby Fischer’s dog. (shrink)

The article deals with the contemporary processes in the field of heraldry in Luhansk region limited by the chronological framework of the early 90's of the twentieth century till the present time. The choice of the theme is determined by the fact that no comprehensive analysis of the development of the city emblem has been made. It is also necessary to make historical and professional analysis of all its aspects, namely the peculiarities of its development, the features of the symbols (...) of city signs, the problems of creation and confirmation of new emblems. The author has studied the specific features of the heraldry formation in the region using periodical materials, documentary sources and images of emblems. The paper has traced the debates as of the re-approval of historical emblems of Luhansk and its evolution. A number of modern municipal emblems have been analyzed as regards their subject matter, color and symbols. The compliance of the emblem with the heraldry rules has been found out; their disadvantages have been described and proposal of their improvement have been suggested. It has been concluded that the modern heraldic process in the Luhansk region is characterized by simultaneous coexistence of professional and amateur emblem formation. According to the author's calculations, 28 of 37 cities are provided with municipal emblems but most of them must be improved because of their uniformity, colors congestion and low artistic level of accomplishment. The author cities the heraldry developments of specialists, members of Ukrainian Heraldry Society A.Zakoretskoho and O.Zhytnychenko as an example of successful emblems that correspond to classical heraldry and have a deep original symbolism. (shrink)

How China’s expansive new era of urbanization threatens to undermine the foundations of rural life Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, China has vastly expanded its urbanization processes in an effort to reduce the inequalities between urban and rural areas. Centered on the mountainous region of Chongqing, which serves as an experimental site for the country’s new urban development policies, The End of the Village analyzes the radical expansion of urbanization and its consequences for China’s villagers. It reveals a (...) fundamental rewriting of the nation’s social contract, as villages that once organized rural life and guaranteed rural livelihoods are replaced by an increasingly urbanized landscape dominated by state institutions. Throughout this comprehensive study of China’s “urban–rural coordination” policy, Nick R. Smith traces the diminishing autonomy of the country’s rural populations and their subordination to larger urban networks and shared administrative structures. Outside Chongqing’s urban centers, competing forces are at work in reshaping the social, political, and spatial organization of its villages. While municipal planners and policy makers seek to extend state power structures beyond the boundaries of the city, village leaders and inhabitants try to maintain control over their communities’ uncertain futures through strategies such as collectivization, shareholding, real estate development, and migration. As China seeks to rectify the development crises of previous decades through rapid urban growth, such drastic transformations threaten to displace existing ways of life for more than 600 million residents. Offering an unprecedented look at the country’s contentious shift in urban planning and policy, The End of the Village exposes the precarious future of rural life in China and suggests a critical reappraisal of how we think about urbanization. (shrink)

Society needs to find new ways to utilise its resources in the best possible way in order to enable satisfactory services for its citizens in the long term. This is particularly important in sparsely populated areas, and in cities and municipalities with a declining population. This study contributes to this field by analysing a project for collaboration between the rescue service and the home-care service that has been introduced in a number of Swedish municipalities. The collaboration is intended to ensure (...) welfare and safety for citizens, to guarantee a more efficient use of municipal resources, and to contribute to improved emergency management and civil protection. The rescue service and the home-care service are two clearly gender-coded occupations that also operate on gender-coded workplaces and places of work. An overarching aim has therefore been to study gendered obstacles and possibilities of the collaboration. In our analysis of the empirical data – interviews with persons involved in the collaboration – place emerged as an important aspect of the collaboration processes, and is therefore elaborated in this article to contribute with knowledge of how conceptions and gender-coding of places and occupations affect sustainable and well-functioning collaboration processes. The results show that collaboration processes between municipal services are complex and challenge ideals of the organisation, content and responsibility of work and who should perform certain work tasks. Notions of gender and gender differences are reproduced through the collaboration, which affect the efforts of municipalities to ensure welfare and safety for citizens. (shrink)

In his new book, Carlos Alberto Torres, an internationally renowned critical theorist of education, explores the early writings of Paulo Freire whose ideas have had a tremendous and long-lasting impact on the world of pedagogy and politics. Torres analyzes Freire's works, from the 1960s and 1970s, before Freire gained worldwide recognition for his Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Offering an in-depth look into the formative thinking of Freire, Torres identifies how his ideas produced frameworks for educating global citizens, building community and (...) mutual respect, creating social responsibility, instilling an appreciation for diversity, promoting multiple literacies, and social justice education. This volume is the result of more than 3 decades of research with access to Freire's personal library and the archives of the Paulo Freire Institute, as well as the author's extensive conversations with Paulo Freire over two decades--Dr. Torres was Freire's adviser during his tenure as Secretary of Education in the Municipality of São Paulo, Brazil, 1989-1991. (shrink)

As the restructuration of municipalities could bring along new local political alliances, one would have thought about the possibility of a relevant modification of the political map of Wallonie after the «elections communales» of October 10th, 1976.Some experts had even conceived that the reorganization of the local authority was a manoeuvre of the central government, made in order to neutralize a region in which the «Parti Socialiste Belge» had the majority. Others thought that the national political strategy would prevail.On the (...) contrary, the results of the election have proved, that the «Parti Socialiste Belge» has kept its predominance in Wallonie. The other political parties have kept their position.The national strategy didn't appear neither in the program, nor in the constitution of the voting lists.The national political «variables», haven't brought modifications to the local objectives for which the main reason remains either to keep the power or to make its conquest. (shrink)

In classrooms, museums, health clinics and beyond, the educational uses of visual media have proliferated over the past fifty years. Film, video, television, and digital media have been integral to the development of new pedagogical theories and practices, globalization processes, and identity and community formation. Yet, Brian Goldfarb argues, the educational roles of visual technologies have not been fully understood or appreciated. He contends that in order to understand the intersections of new media and learning, we need to recognize the (...) sweeping scope of the technologically infused visual pedagogy—both in and outside the classroom. From Samoa to the United States mainland to Africa and Brazil, from museums to city streets, _Visual Pedagogy_ explores the educational applications of visual media in different institutional settings during the past half century. Looking beyond the popular media texts and mainstream classroom technologies that are the objects of most analyses of media and education, Goldfarb encourages readers to see a range of media subcultures as pedagogical tools. The projects he analyzes include media produced by AIDS/HIV advocacy groups and social services agencies for classroom use in the 1990s; documentary and fictional cinemas of West Africa used by the French government and then by those resisting it; museum exhibitions; and TV Anhembi, a municipally sponsored collaboration between the television industry and community-based videographers in São Paolo, Brazil. Combining media studies, pedagogical theory, and art history, and including an appendix of visual media resources and ideas about the most productive ways to utilize visual technologies for educational purposes, _Visual Pedagogy_ will be useful to educators, administrators, and activists. (shrink)

The relevance of the study lies in the fact that in modern conditions globalization acts as the main trend in the development of the modern world; this is noted at the Davos forum in 2019. Development of all spheres of society, the state and the person - from politics, economics - to sports and gender equality. The problem of the research - globalization in sport - is transformation of sport into a global phenomenon, universal in nature, which has significant impact (...) on all aspects of society. Therefore, the scope of dispute and sports culture act as an object of scientific research. Sport stimulates and forms social and cultural reflection on a world scale, reviving the idea of interdependence of humankind in sport and through sport. Unity is formed due to a variety of factors, including a network of communication technologies of financial, political and cultural interdependencies, new cultural forms of interaction that give impetus to sports interactions, forming a single global market for goods, services, behavioral standards, models of sociality, formation of modern values achieving sports success. Problem of globalization in sports is associated with Eurocentric’s, based on formation of European values of sports, sports culture and sports success, and in general sports management. The object of the research is sports management as a condition for the development of sports culture in the context of globalization 4.0. The objectives of the research are to analyze new trends in the global mankind development that influence sports development and culture, contribute to self-fulfillment of a person from the physical and spiritual side as a priority of creative person. Methods - analysis and synthesis, abstraction, cross-cultural analysis, logical and historical, comparative analysis contribute the penetration into complex phenomena and processes of modern reality associated with sports in context of globalization. Results. Globalization is changing usual way people in sports, along with many advantages, has number of negative, painful problems associated with overt commercialization. Globalization has entered single microsystem structure as a process of integration and economic exchange; global artifacts are present in sports management, to extent that sport is institutionalized on the scale of global sports communities. The form of sports globalization refers to specific way that structuring problems of sports take place and their transfer to the globalization level of problem solving, that is, global and local integration takes place. Conclusion. Globalization means increase in available methods of organizing sport events, which requires formation of sports concept management - transnational, international, interregional, macro-rational, regional municipal, local organizations require improvement of sports management. This ladder of administrative levels is cut through the functional networks of corporations, international organizations and non-governmental organizations, as well as number of professional international organizations. Internationalization of sports is being determined by globalization. (shrink)

This article examines the political controversy in the United States surrounding a new process for the disposition of human remains, alkaline hydrolysis. AH technologies use a heated solution of water and strong alkali to dissolve tissues, yielding an effluent that can be disposed through municipal sewer systems, and brittle bone matter that can be dried, crushed, and returned to the decedent’s family. Though AH is legal in eight US states, opposition to the technology remains strong. Opponents express concerns about public (...) health and safety and about the dignity of our mortal remains. Proponents focus on AH’s environmental benefits over cremation and earth burial, aligning the technology with the “green burial” movement. Drawing from historical sources, Science, Technology, and Society literature, interviews with funeral professionals, industry literature, and various media sources, this article examines four prominent conceptions of the dead human body as they are deployed by various funeral stakeholders seeking to exercise authority over the dead human body, to influence the trajectory of AH technology in the United States, and to chart a course for US deathcare culture in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

An adaptation of the Municipal Law to the present-day requirements of modern management and the discharge of the centra! government of its financial duties vis-à-vis the municipalities are preliminary conditions for the Flemish Community to reinforce municipal autonomy. This reinforcement will go together with a granting of greater financial responsibility to the municipality. The resolution of the financial situation of the municipalities is a pressing issue for the Flemish Executive Body. In addition to the need for a new method of (...) distributing the Municipal Fund correctly over each region, the redress of the budgetary balance, leaving the municipal autonomy unaffected, is of primary importance. (shrink)

The restructuration of municipalities which has been decided by the Belgian government, is not only a purely technical operatzon but rather, and in the first place, a social problem. The shape and duty-profile of a local authority should not, indeed, be attuned only to fast changing expectations as far as services are concerned, but to consultation and participation as well.Public administration research cannot keep aloof from this debate, but is considerably hampered by the institutional confusion and the insufficient explicitation of (...) the aims of the present reform. A starting-pointcan, however, be found in the mergers of municipalities that were realized in 1964 and in 1970/1971. In 67 of these municipalities an inquiry was held concerning the consequences of the merger, and moreover, in twotest-cases this inquiry grew to a full-scale systematic policy analysis.This research shows that, as a rule, the former municipalities are reasonably represented in the new entity's council, but it also reveals that few efforts are made to give this representation a broader impact along formal or informal participation-channels. Integration of employees has not caused insurmountable problems. However, in large sized municipalities, resulting from mergers, one could notice a drastic increase in municipal personnel, not only with regard to new duties and objectives but to traditional administrative and police duties as well. Such a phenomenon points to the far-reaching changes which a substantial scale-increase provokes in a municipality's structure and policy profile. A large municipality resulting from mergers is no langer a simple sum of component parts, but a completely new entity, wishing to catch up as fast as possible with comparable municipalities that passed through a progressive growth process. Therefore, scale-increase is not only a means of economizing or an intra-administrative matter, but rather a way of creating chances for further development or wealth and well-being. (shrink)