Democratic Rural Development: Leadership Accountability in Regional Peasant Organizations

Many development analysts assert the importance of democratic social organizations, but few either document or analyse the actual processes of internal democracy. This study examines part of the broader problem of the ‘Iron Law of Oligarchy’ — the ebbs and flows of leadership accountability over time. Drawing on the history of a Mexican regional peasant organization since 1974, the analysis suggests that different kinds of organizational structures encourage or discourage membership action, but moments of mass direct action in turn shape the ways in which organizational structures actually distribute power. The case analysis shows how the interaction of internal and external factors shaped the balance of power between leaders and members at each critical turning point. Participatory subgroups turn out to be the crucial counterweight to concentrated leadership power, mediating relations with the membership and providing alternative sources of leadership. Whether formal or informal, multiple vertical channels and alternative horizontal linkages between membership groups are crucial complements, and sometimes substitutes, to conventional organizational structures.     

Capacity Development as the Model for Development Aid Organizations

Sociological studies of organizational fashions tend to focus on commercial firms. This article looks at the Capacity Development concept that is globally applied as a model in governmentally supported development assistance organizations. The organizations themselves adopt the concept, asserting that an increase in ‘capacities’ in developing countries will contribute to a higher success rate for projects. This article argues that a primary function of concepts such as Capacity Development is to meet the legitimacy requirements of development assistance organizations. The more the effectiveness of these organizations is criticized or challenged, the more they feel the need to defend themselves by developing new — and hopefully more effective — concepts.     

Linking Public Agencies With Community-Based Watershed Organizations: Lessons From California

Watershed organizations routinely seek to influence public agencies and sometimes also depend on them for financial and technical assistance. For some agencies this relationship is strained and problematic. Watershed organizations tend to develop closer working relationships with decentralized and locally responsive agencies, like the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Centralized and unresponsive agencies, like the Forest Service, tend to be unreliable partners. Ironically, the same characteristics that once led to accusations that the BLM was captured by local stakeholders such as ranchers have allowed BLM officials to reorient themselves in the 1990s to become responsive to watershed organizations, which currently are favored by grass-roots environmentalists. This paper examines these relationships through a case study from California, where state and federal agencies designed and partially implemented a public/private strategy to preserve biodiversity. The strategy was a curious hybrid of top-down planning and bottom-up implementation. Although orchestrated primarily by the BLM, the strategy was implemented initially in a region of the state where the Forest Service predominated. The case study, therefore, highlights some of the fundamental tensions underlying the relationship between watershed organizations and public agencies.     

Regional Development Agencies and Local Economic Development: Scale and Competitiveness in High-technology Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire

Regional Development Agencies have been given the fundamental aim of improving their regions' economic performance and competitiveness. Supporting innovation is a cornerstone of this policy. This paper explores the limitations of region-based strategies arguing that this neglects the importance of policy intervention at the local level, using case studies of Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire.     

Between Paralysis and Practice: Theorizing the Political Liminality of Palestinian Cultural Heritage

The Israeli military occupation of Palestine since 1967 coupled with the introduction of limited autonomy in 1993 has positioned the yet-to-be formed nation-state in political liminality—neither completely sovereign nor entirely subjugated. While this ambiguity has obvious ramifications for Palestine as a political entity, it also places the cultural heritage of Palestine in potential jeopardy. This paper examines the legal and historical construction of liminality for Palestine and explores how its ambiguous political status impacts the preservation, protection and management of cultural heritage in Palestine and influences the construction of cultural heritage narratives by Palestinians.

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Résumé  L’occupation militaire israélienne de la Palestine depuis 1967 associée à l’introduction d’une autonomie limitée en 1993 a positionné l’état national encore à venir en liminalité politique—ni complètement souveraine, ni complètement soumise. Tandis que cette ambigüité possède des ramifications évidentes pour la Palestine en tant qu’entité politique, il pose également la question de l’héritage culturel de la Palestine potentiellement en péril. Cet article examine la construction légale et historique de la liminalité concernant la Palestine et explore combien son statut politique ambigu a un effet négatif sur la préservation, la protection et la gestion de l’héritage culturel de la Palestine et influence la construction de récits de l’héritage culturel par les palestiniens.

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Resumen  La ocupación militar israelí de Palestina en 1967, unida a la introducción de un autonomía limitada en 1993, ha colocado a esta nación estado aún sin constituir en una especie de tierra de nadie política: ni es un estado totalmente soberano ni enteramente sometido. Si bien es cierto que esta ambigüedad tiene consecuencias obvias para Palestina como entidad política, también pone en serio riesgo su patrimonio cultural. En este trabajo se analiza la interpretación de esta tierra de nadie palestina desde un punto de vista jurídico e histórico, y se explora la repercusión de este ambiguo estado político en la preservación, protección y gestión del patrimonio cultural de Palestina y su influencia en la elaboración de obras literarias sobre patrimonio cultural por parte de los palestinos.

     

谈网络时代的旅行社发展

网络经济对旅行社的巨大冲击导致了旅行社的业内革命.这革命包括了多维的信息交流、个性化的旅游产品、网上促销、售后服务、内部运作改革和复合型旅游企业的产生.     

Flexibility and Public Accountability in Public Land Development Projects in Progress

Abstract

Local authorities have moved many entrepreneurial activities outside the direct control of the municipal council. This includes land development activities relating to planning policies which involve both private development and public infrastructure. Many studies have shown that positioning activities outside the control of elected bodies undermines public accountability. Less is known, however, about public accountability in contexts where entrepreneurial activities are still run by the local authority. This issue may be particularly relevant when it comes to projects that are already underway because entrepreneurial activities imply flexibility and the choices made as part of this flexibility also need to be justified. This paper is based on a study of five key projects in a single municipality, Midden-Delfland in the Rotterdam/The Hague metropolitan region in the Netherlands, and analyses how land development projects are organized within a local authority. It shows that while they are structured to allow for flexibility in the process, the level of public accountability is not ideal. The quality of arguments used and the way in which decisions are justified leave room for improvement, which might be promising because they are organized within the local authority.     

Disequilibrium in Development Finance: The Contested Politics of Institutional Accountability and Transparency at the World Bank Inspection Panel

This article examines the dynamic nature with which independent accountability mechanisms operate. Focusing on the World Bank, the authors argue that its Inspection Panel evolves according to internal and external pressures. In seeking to achieve equilibrium, and protect its authority and independence, the Panel has gone through several distinct phases: negotiation, emergence, protracted resistance, assertion of independence and authority, renewed tension, and contestation. The core novelty of the article is its application of concepts from outside the field of development studies — notably institutional accountability from the governance literature, and judicialization from the legal studies literature — to the topic of the Inspection Panel. Examining the Panel in this way demonstrates that accountability mechanisms represent a hybrid of transnational governance influenced by a range of actors including project‐affected peoples, national governments, managers and development donors. Accountability in development finance is about competing interests as well as competing conceptions and expectations of accountability. In such a complex and multi‐scalar system, the Panel is not only concerned with delivering well‐researched investigation reports; it is also an entity seeking to ensure its own survival, as well as an arbiter of its own brand of legitimacy and accountability.     

行政院各部会商解决大中学生毕业后失业问题史料一组

抗战结束后,各地青年失学失业情况日趋严重.国民政府特电饬社会部、教育部、经济部等研拟解决大中学生毕业后失业问题办法,社会部及其所属机构亦拟订辅导专科及大学毕业生出路要点、天津市中学生职业指导实施方案等具体措施.     

Theorizing the Submerged State: The Politics of Private Schools in the United States

In this paper, I apply Mettler's concept of the “submerged state” to aid for children at private schools in the United States, including education vouchers, in‐kind aid, and property tax exemptions. All aid policies are “submerged” in that they help private organizations take on state functions but some are more submerged than others. Theoretically, this paper distinguishes between subcategories of submergence. Using policy data from 50 states and an original database of court challenges between 1912 and 2015, I employ probit regression with sample selection to evaluate the effect of submergence on successful court challenge. I find that more submerged policies are less likely to be successfully challenged than less submerged policies. Submerged policy design enables supporters to avoid legal as well as political challenge.     

中国"三农"问题的由来和发展

中国在改革开放过程中出现的特有的城乡关系和特有的城乡发展路径,产生了中国特有的"三农"问题的理论.这个理论的形成和运用,对于深入认识我国的基本国情、用以指导社会主义现代化建设的实践和对其他国家的问题进行研究,都是很有意义的.我国"三农"问题总的情况是农业问题已经基本上得到了解决,但农民问题和农村问题还很严重,主要根源还在于计划经济体制下所形成的一套农村、农业政策还没有得到根本转变.解决农民问题和农村问题,要继续深化农村体制改革,下决心改革户籍制度,改革现有的土地承包制度,改革现有的国民收入分配格局和乡镇现有的政权体制包括财政体制.     

Theorizing Presidential Tenure: The Difficult Case of FDR's Fourth Term

This article examines Franklin Delano Roosevelt's pursuit of a fourth term in 1944, despite the significant erosion of his physical health beginning in late 1943. Not only did Roosevelt pursue a fourth term against long odds that he would not survive it, but he put little effort into the selection and policy education of Vice President Truman. This pursuit of a fourth term is critical to debates over presidential tenure, and particularly evaluations of the 22nd Amendment, which since 1951 has limited presidents to two terms. It is a "difficult case," however, because despite obvious miscalculations on the part of FDR and his advisors in 1944– which reinforce arguments of term limits proponents–a two term limit would have prevented a third term for Roosevelt as well, thereby depriving the nation of his experienced leadership in a time of war, especially in the crucial early years of the war. The article concludes by supporting the existing two term limitation which, despite its faults, effectively addresses problems of long presidential tenure while also providing periodic renewals of leadership.     

The Nation as a Problem: Historians and the "National Question"

How is it that the nation became an object of scholarly research? As this article intends to show, not until what we call the “genealogical view” (which assumes the “natural” and “objective” character of the nation) eroded away could the nation be subjected to critical scrutiny by historians. The starting point and the premise for studies in the field was the revelation of the blind spot in the genealogical view, that is, the discovery of the “modern” and “constructed” character of nations. Historians’ views would thus be intimately tied to the “antigenealogical” perspectives of them. However, this antigenealogical view would eventually reveal its own blind spots. This paper traces the different stages of reflection on the nation, and how the antigenealogical approach would finally be rendered problematic, exposing, in turn, its own internal fissures.     

The Evolution of American Colonial Assemblies as Legislative Organizations

I examine the organizational evolution of the American colonial assemblies. The assemblies, like their modern progeny, established organizational boundaries, created standing committees, adopted increasingly complex rules and procedures, evolved apprenticeship and seniority norms in regard to leadership positions, and acquired specialized staff and facilities. After documenting the rise of these common legislative features, I turn to the question of how we can explain their existence at a far earlier time than most political scientists realize. I conclude with an examination of the implications of these findings for our understanding of how legislative institutions evolve.     

Accountability,motivation and practice: NGOs North and South

This Article does not have an abstract.     

阿骨打称都勃极烈与金朝开国史之真伪研究

都勃极烈的出现是金朝开国史上的重大事件,但历史记载很含混,学术界的研究也是诸说并存.阿骨打与国相撒改关系密切,国相的特殊身份在阿骨打称都勃极烈的过程中起了重要作用.都勃极烈在女真人眼里就是"皇帝",阿骨打称都勃极烈被说成是称皇帝,引发了金朝开国史的系统篡改.