Outsourcing local democracy? Evidence for and implications of the commercialisation of community engagement in Australian local government

ABSTRACT

Participatory governance practices are enjoying popularity, not least in local government. This is driven by legislation that requires councils to undertake some of these processes; also by communities and practitioners – parties that derive income from participatory governance. An industry is emerging: one characterised by demand and supply, with frameworks, strategies and processes, training and conferences. This industry warrants investigation so that its impacts upon local democracy can be understood. Following a theorisation of local democracy and community engagement, the paper describes the community engagement industry, presenting evidence about council activities, providers and professional associations to establish that the commercialisation of engagement is a significant phenomenon in Australian local government. Possible risks to local governance and local democracy are explored.     

Towards an understanding of local protest: hospital closure and community resistance

The aim of this paper is to suggest an analytical framework through which the complex question of hospital closure and local protest can be further explored. The significance of this area of study lies with the extraordinary events that surrounded a campaign to save the Kidderminster General Hospital from downsizing. Whilst the hospital was not saved, the local campaign committee organizing the protest took their fight into the political arena and were successful in gaining a parliamentary voice in the 2001 general elections. Such an achievement has had considerable political implications, however, the question asked here is how might we begin to interpret the events that took place. To this end, the paper draws on current geographical literature in an attempt to construct a framework that accounts for both national policy debates and the local context within which such campaigns emerge.     

Mayors and urban governance: discursive power,identity and local politics

This article combines political and economic geographies with social and cultural theory by reviewing structural and actor-centred approaches to urban governance alongside work on identity, community, masculinity and ‘rights to the city’. The article seeks to bring these literatures into dialogue via an analysis of mayoral politics, presenting empirical research from a UK city in order to highlight the influence of class, sexuality and racism on urban politics. It shows how theoretical and empirical engagement with unequal social relations and their discursive construction through cultural forms and practices offers fruitful avenues for geographical understanding of territorial and relational urban governance.     

Markets,regions, and the world system: Explorations beyond the local community

Mines, Mattison. The Warrior Merchants: Textiles, Trade, and Territory in South India. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984. xiii + 178 pp. including 2 maps, references, glossary, and index. $34.50 cloth.

Plattner, Stuart, ed. Markets and Marketing (Monographs in Economic Anthropology, No. 4). Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1985. xx + 418 pp. including chapter references, 3 maps, and tables and figures throughout. $16.75 paper.

Smith, Joan, Immanual Wallerstein, and Hans‐Dieter Evers, eds. Households and the World Economy: Explorations in the World‐Economy. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1984. 296 pp. including chapter references, tables, and index. $25.00 cloth.     

International influence and local response: understanding community involvement in urban heritage conservation in China

This paper explores the situation of community engagement in the heritage sector in China, which is facing increasing international pressure particularly through donor agencies. It is argued that government-led residents’ committees do not essentially serve the interest of the local communities, whilst grassroots civil societies and NGOs are, to a great extent regulated, by the prevailing political power. Given the situation of insufficient community involvement in the sector of cultural heritage conservation in China, local government has adopted the international approach introduced by donor agencies, but this has not resulted in power sharing and the state constrains community involvement within certain limits. This paper examines the situation of community involvement in heritage management in the city of Yangzhou.     

No-go- area,no-go- school: community discourses,local school market and children's identity work

This article focuses on how 11-year-old children in a segregated Swedish suburb at the time of choosing school for Year 6 in the 9-year compulsory school used current community discourses in their identity work, while constructing an ‘us’ in relation to ‘them’. The segregation in the suburb was strengthened by the process of a school market, with competition among the schools. Even if the formal choice was made by the parents the study shows that the choosing process was also an important part of the children's identity work. The results show differentiations among the children with a majority of children involved in re-constructing both a neighbourhood and the neighbourhood's school as no-go-areas while other children rather choose that school.     

Climate change, conflict and development in Sudan: global neo-Malthusian narratives and local power struggles

Dystopian accounts of climate change posit that it will lead to more conflict, causing state failure and mass population movements. Yet these narratives are both theoretically and empirically problematic: the conflict–environment hypothesis merges a global securitization agenda with local manipulations of Northern fears about the state of planetary ecology. Sudan has experienced how damaging this fusion of wishful thinking, power politics and top-down development can be. In the 1970s, global resource scarcity concerns were used locally to impose the fata morgana of Sudan as an Arab-African breadbasket: in the name of development, violent evictions of local communities contributed to Sudan's second civil war and associated famines. Today, Darfur has been labelled ‘the world's first climate change conflict’, masking the long-term political-economic dynamics and Sudanese agency underpinning the crisis. Simultaneously, the global food crisis is instrumentalized to launch a dam programme and agricultural revival that claim to be African answers to resource scarcity. The winners, however, are Sudan's globalized Islamist elites and foreign investors, whilst the livelihoods of local communities are undermined. Important links exist between climatic developments and security, but global Malthusian narratives about state failure and conflict are dangerously susceptible to manipulations by national elites; the practical outcomes decrease rather than increase human security. In the climate change era, the breakdown of institutions and associated violence is often not an unfortunate failure of the old system due to environmental shock, but a strategy of elites in wider processes of power and wealth accumulation and contestation.     

Scientific strategists in the period of mamlakhtiyut: Interaction between the academic community and political power centers

In the first decades of the State of Israel an elitist group of scientists and scholars from academic institutions organized itself into a powerful status group. Its members participated in the establishment and development of programs and processes that had a significant impact on Israeli society. The power of this group (which we term “scientific strategists”) derived from personal and institutional cooperation between its members and leading political figures who had a strong influence on its agenda. This interaction was based on mutual trust and loyalty and contributed to establishing the infrastructure for the main political tradition at that time – mamlakhtiyut (the centrality of state interests). The article examines the activities of the scientific strategists, their ability to participate in government institutions without forfeiting their academic bases, and the ways in which political leaders promoted their symbolic status, financially supported their scientific activity, and endowed them with rewards and public recognition.     

The state,compartmentalization and the turn to local community: A critique of the political thought of Alasdair MacIntyre

Alasdair MacIntyre condemns modern politics, specifically liberalism and the institutions of the liberal state, as irredeemably fallen. His core argument is that the liberal state encourages a disempowering “compartmentalization” of people's everyday roles and activities that undermines the intersubjective conditions of human flourishing. MacIntyre's alternative is an Aristotelian politics centred on the notion of “practice.” Defined by justice and solidarity, this politics can only be realized, he claims, within local communities which oppose and resist the dictates of the administrative state and capitalist market. Here it is argued that MacIntyre's notion of “practice” represents a compelling ethical-political ideal. However, the belief that this ideal is best realized within local communities is rejected. In privileging local community, MacIntyre relies on a reductive view of modern states and overlooks the institutional conditions of a just polity. Against this, it is argued that a politics of human flourishing cannot succeed without an emancipatory transformation of large-scale, trans-communal institutions, in particular the state.     

续修方志与前志的关系及其处理

续志与前志的关系及其处理是续修工作中的一个重要课题。作者首先分析了目前方志界对续修的不同看法及提出的多种续修模式,并指出应依据前志质量状况来选择续修模式,同时也要考虑前志体例篇目是否容纳发展变化了的地情。指出前后志的关系主要体现在指导思想、志书断限、体例篇目、志书内容和行文表述上。最后指出,处理好前后志关系是提高志书质量的重要一环。     

第二轮修志应增补艺文志

艺文很重要,志书中不可或缺,然而首轮志书多未设置该项目。从艺文志的源流和当代方志学家对该类志重要性的认识上看,第二轮志书有增补艺文志的必要。文章对艺文志的编纂方法、收录范围、篇目设置、艺文内容的收集方法等作了探讨。     

也谈续志与首轮志书的关系

本以编年体续志为研究对象,论述了续志与首轮志书的关系。作认为不应过分强调续志主体独立的意识,而应对前志做有限度的接续;不应过分拘泥于前志,而应在设计篇目时做到与时俱进。     

The local articulation of central power in the north of the Iberian Peninsula (500–1000)

Envisaging political power as dynamic allows the historian to deal with its structures with some sophistication. This paper approaches political power, not as a circumscribed block of bureaucratic elements, but as a complex phenomenon rooted in social reality. The authors explore the dialogue between local and central power, understanding 'dialogue' in its widest sense. Thus the relationships (both amicable and hostile) between local and central spheres of influence are studied. The authors propose a new analytical framework for the study of the configuration of political power in the northern zone of the Iberian peninsula, over a long period of time, which takes in both the post-Roman world and the political structures of the early Middle Ages.