How street-level dilemmas and politics shape divergence: The accountability regimes framework

Hierarchical accountability often proves insufficient to control street-level implementation, where complex, informal accountability relations prevail and tasks must be prioritized. However, scholars lack a theoretical model of how accountability relations affect implementation behaviors that are inconsistent with policy. By extending the Accountability Regimes Framework (ARF), this paper explains how multiple competing subjective street-level accountabilities translate into policy divergence. The anti-terrorism “Prevent Duty” policy in the United Kingdom requires university lecturers to report any student they suspect may be undergoing a process of radicalization. We ask: what perceived street-level accountabilities and dilemmas does this politically contested policy imply for lecturers, and how do they affect divergence? An online survey of British lecturers (N = 809), combined with 35 qualitative follow-up interviews, reveals that accountability dilemmas trigger policy divergence. The ARF models how street-level bureaucrats become informal policymakers in the political system when rules clash with their roles as professionals, citizen-agents, or “political animals.”     

Urban Policy in the Nordic Countries—National Foci and Strategies for Implementation1

In this paper we discuss the emergence and practise of an urban policy in the Nordic countries. We find that although the focus and organization vary among the five countries, there are common trends. Firstly, the emergence of an urban policy has challenged the Nordic welfare model because it emphasizes specific and geographically varied qualities, rather than general equity. Secondly, the emergence of an urban policy has challenged the traditional thinking about “urban” as a necessary evil, and replaced it with the notion of the “urban” as a positive driving force in society's well-being. Thirdly, the way urban policies are conceived and implemented has supplemented planning and regulations with programmes and initiatives involving local actors in governance based ways, but the state still has a strong role to play. The paper discusses these three statements based on a case study of the implementation of urban policies in the five Nordic countries.     

The Decline of the Shepherd Metaphor as Royal Self-Expression1

In the Old Testament, shepherd is a common metaphor of kingship, and this metaphor is sometimes also used to denote the Israelite god as a ruler (See for instance HALOT entry ??? ). In Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian and Greek works this metaphor is remarkably more common in pre-exilic literature than in the later Greek and Roman literature, where it is almost absent. In this article I argue that shepherding was central to Assyrian and Babylonian ruling class identity, while absent as royal self-expression in the Persian, Achaemenid Empire. The imageries of these empires were influential as models for court life throughout the Ancient Near East, and beyond.     

Planning Analysis and Political Steering with New Public Management

Interviews with members of the Norwegian national assembly's Standing Committee for Transport and Communications were conducted in 1995, 1997, 2001 and 2004. The politicians were asked about the usefulness of analytic input that planners contribute to national plans, first the Norwegian Road and Road Traffic Plan and later the National Transport Plan. Questions related to steering, coordination, delegation and the inclusiveness of the planning process were also posed. Changes in the politicians' attitudes to types of analytic planning input are outlined. Furthermore, the last round of interviews sheds light on the apparent paradox that parliamentarians accept delegation of highway investment decisions despite their profound scepticism regarding the cost–benefit analyses and impact calculations that are essential to management by objectives and results (MBOR), which was to give them continued political control despite delegation. Another conundrum is the parliamentarians' willingness to renounce the right to decide over most highway projects, even if these were seen as politically important, in order to obtain a strategic overview which they have been unable to use for changing the priorities set by the Government. The political concentration on strategic steering, the concomitant delegation, and MBOR are central components of New Public Management.     

DEBATING MODERNITY AS SECULAR RELIGION: HANS KELSEN'S FUTILE EXCHANGE WITH ERIC VOEGELIN

This article reviews Hans Kelsen's mysterious and recently published last book, contextualizing it with reference to the little known dialogue between Kelsen and Eric Voegelin. The confrontation between Kelsen and Voegelin, two of the most illustrious émigré scholars who found a new home in America, is important to revisit because it touches upon several axes of debate of crucial importance to postwar intellectual history: the religion–secularity debate, the positivist–antipositivist debates, and the controversy that also led to the famous Voegelin–Arendt debate: how to read the horrors of totalitarianism into a historical trajectory of modernity. Although the Kelsen–Voegelin exchange ended in failure and bitterness, its substance goes to the heart of modern intellectual history.     

For Richer,for Poorer: Marriage and Casualized Sex in East African Artisanal Mining Settlements

Migrants to Tanzania's artisanal gold mining sites seek mineral wealth, which is accompanied by high risks of occupational hazards, economic failure, AIDS and social censure from their home communities. Male miners in these settlements compete to attract newly arrived young women who are perceived to be diverting male material support from older women and children's economic survival. This article explores the dynamics of monogamy, polygamy and promiscuity in the context of rapid occupational change. It shows how a wide spectrum of productive and welfare outcomes is generated through sexual experimentation, which calls into question conventional concepts of prostitution, marriage and gender power relations.     

Beyond the Transfer of Capital? Second-Home Owners as Competence Brokers for Rural Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Abstract

The current paper addresses the possible role of second-home owners as competence brokers in terms of rural entrepreneurship and innovation. Empirically, the paper draws on a case study of second-home owners from two municipalities in Telemark, one of the regions with the highest densities of second homes in Norway. Data were collected using a semi-structured questionnaire on 2200 second-home owners and with a response rate of 43% and 47%, respectively. The study results show that the second-home owners demonstrate in different ways a genuine interest in their second-home community, and also a willingness to use their knowledge and competence to contribute to the development of the local economy. Furthermore, we have also seen that an impressive number of second-home owners are educated to a higher level, within a variety of industrial fields and sectors, and have extensive managerial and hands-on experience from establishing and developing companies: in other words, they have both the interest and willingness and the required skills and experiences to become important competence brokers for local entrepreneurship and innovation.     

Labor agency and the importance of the national scale: Emergent aquaculture unionism in Chile

In this article we argue for the continuing relevance of the national scale in understanding the geographies that shape and constrain labor agency. Recent contributions to labor geography have held that some of the central concepts used to understand the transformative capacities of labor, such as agency and scale, are under-theorized. On the basis of our study of the emergent labor movement in the Chilean aquaculture industry, we suggest that this field suffers from what we term “glocalocentrism”, which overshadows the fundamental importance of structures and processes that are primarily scaled nationally. With the labor repression of the Pinochet regime imprinted in current national institutions and organizational traditions, the aquaculture sector was able to develop in southern Chile from the early 1980s onwards, without a significant union movement to press workers’ claims, and it benefited from exploitative practices and low wages. The first company level unions did not appear until the late 1980s, and a national confederation of aquaculture unions was formed as late as 2006. After the outbreak of the ISA virus in 2007, thousands of workers were left unemployed, and the young union movement struggled for state intervention and programs, with some success. International networks brought attention to the issue, but structures and processes at the national level conditioned the possibilities for the emergent labor movement to press its claims successfully.