Democracy as Local development

Artykuł prezentuje wyniki badań przeprowadzonych w połowie 2014 r., mających na celu identyfikację oczekiwań władz małych miast wobec polskiej państwowej polityki rozwoju lokalnego. Jako źródło informacji o tych oczekiwaniach wybrano grupę 46 burmistrzów małych miast, natomiast jako metodę badawczą zastosowano sondaż diagnostyczny oparty na długim wywiadzie osobistym. Zidentyfikowane oczekiwania dotyczyły reformy systemu stałego finansowania gmin, zmian systemów dystrybucji środków unijnych, wyposażenia samorządów lokalnych w nowe instrumenty oddziaływania na ponadlokalne relacje ich gmin, redukcji antywzorców prowadzenia polityki, usuwania sprzeczności i niejasności prawa, a także zmian zasad funkcjonowania organu stanowiącego i wykonawczego władz lokalnych. Oczekiwania te można i należy traktować jako współczesne wyzwania państwowej polityki rozwoju lokalnego, ponieważ dotyczą one jej gruntownych, wielowymiarowych zmian. Ponadto rozpatrywane łącznie tworzą dla tej polityki wyzwanie, które można określić jako jej współczesne wyzwanie generalne. Jest nim oczekiwanie władz lokalnych, że władze państwowe zwiększą ich podmiotowość w definiowaniu i kreowaniu rozwoju kraju, pogłębiając swoją aprobatę dla paradygmatu rozwoju lokalnego.

[The article presents the results of research carried out in mid-2014 to identify the expectations presented by the authorities of small cities in the light of Polish state local development policy. 46 mayors were selected as the source of information about these expectations and a diagnostic survey based on long personal interviews was chosen as the research method. The expectations concerned the reform of the municipalities’ permanent funding system, changes in the systems governing EU funds distribution, providing local authorities with new instruments for shaping their municipalities’ supra-local relationships, reducing anti-patterns in policy and politics, eliminating contradictions and ambiguities in law, and changes in the rules governing both decisive and executive bodies of local authorities. The expectations discussed should be approached as contemporary challenges for state policy on local development, since the mayors refer to thorough and multidimensional alterations to that policy. Furthermore, if analysed jointly, the expectations constitute a challenge for this policy, which can be referred to as its general contemporary challenge. Local authorities expect that the state government will increase its subjectivity in defining and creating local development by extending its approval for the local development paradigm.]

This research, conducted by the author when a Senior Researcher at Newcastle University, UK, was funded by a UK governance organisation to help them assess, integrate and improve their understanding of the governed population.

ABSTRACT: Governance organisations have been urged to develop more holistic evidence-based approaches with partners to better deal with issues affecting the governed population. This presupposes an understanding of the population, yet there has been little research work addressing how governance organisations come to understand their governed population, nor how this understanding can be improved upon within such organisations.

This case study examined in-depth how understanding of a governed population was developed within one UK local governance organisation and it explored how such understanding might be developed and improved through more holistic and evidence-based organisational learning within the organisation and its governance partnerships.

The research methodology involved placement within the governance organisation, participant observations on several projects and innovative initiatives, observations within, across, and outside the organisation, and also interviews with varied key stakeholders.

The study examined:

- stakeholder engagement and networks
- current and varied understandings of the population
- mechanisms actually used for developing understandings
- the influence of context on organisational learning

and analysed these to arrive at a recommendations to improve organisational understanding of the governed population.

In the case studied, significant strengths were found: including innovative past learning trials for development, extensive ongoing networking activities, and many varied and accumulating quantitative datasets available across partnerships.

However, entrenched organisational approaches and practices constrained the development of holistic evidence-based understanding, for instance: the absence of systematic maintained collective learning processes; weak recording and forgetting of understandings; methodological exclusion of stakeholders from the development of understanding; the relative neglect of qualitative data, explanations, investigations, interpretations, and reflexivity; and also implicit organisational acceptance of such limitations and low aspirations.

Nonetheless, untapped opportunities existed to enable change including: latent practitioner knowledge and innovative management champions, the desire for improvement and raised aspirations within learning networks, and the development potential of alterative learning approaches.

It was concluded that more holistic evidence-based understanding was possible, but required new learning approaches beyond those then in use in both local government or academia.   

Recommendations are made to utilise and develop improved organisational learning approaches trialed and reported in the case study.

It is argued that the case study findings, conclusions, and recommendations may be applicable to other similar local governance organisations and partnerships that seek to better understand local populations, services and interventions.

The work was also submitted for, and awarded, an MPhil (at Newcastle University, supervised by Prof. Patsy Healy)

Démocratie et Décentralisation : un couple platonique ? (revue Civitas Europa-n° 11-septembre 2003, pp.7-29)
Christophe CHABROT
I-L'indifférence technique des deux notions
A/ Deux notions spécifiques
1°) La démocratie, technique de désignation politique
2°) Une décentralisation d'essence administrative
B/ Un rapport juridiquement indifférent
1°) La démocratie sans décentralisation
2°) La décentralisation sans démocratie

II-Une conjonction volontariste imparfaite
A/ L'affirmation nouvelle d'une « démocratie de proximité »
1°) L'implication des citoyens
2°) La permanence d'une décision « autoritaire »
B/ Une « démocratie locale » encore à définir
1°) L'impossible comparaison avec la démocratie nationale
2°) Une refondation sur des critères propres

This paper sets out an ambitious critique of contemporary political scientists, political historians and others concerned with the history of democracy. It argues that overwhelmingly the history of democracy relies on an overtly Eurocentric narrative that emphasizes the keystone moments of Western civilization. According to this narrative, democracy has a clear trajectory that can be traced from ancient experiments with participatory government in Greece and to a lesser extent in Rome, through the development of the British parliament, the American Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution, and then finally onto the triumphant march of the liberal model of democracy across the globe over the last 200 years, particularly under Western tutelage. Histories of democracy that focus exclusively on these events not only privilege Europe and its successful colonies, but also miss the broader human story of the struggle for and achievement of democracy.

This presents us with a distinct challenge. For those whose heritage does not include a direct link to Greek assemblies, the American Congress or the French Revolution, the 'standard history of democracy' provides a distant and exclusive narrative, which limits one's ability to embrace democracy. This paper concludes by noting that, as democracy spreads out across the world today, political scientists not only need to break down the intellectual orthodoxy that democracy has exclusively Western roots, but also to embrace a more global view of democracy as a political practise that has been present at various times and in sometimes unfamiliar ways in the complex histories and rich cultural traditions of most of the people of the earth.

Many of the works on Middle Eastern democracy, whether from the neo-Orientalist camp or from those who avidly detail and support the region’s democratic developments, are based on a Western conception of democracy. This is the result of a discursive lineage that has its antecedents in the erroneous belief that democracy miraculously sprang out of Greek civilization in the fifth century B.C. This superior system of governance was later utilized by the Roman Empire and arguably gave rise to those great moments in the construction and propagation of Western civilization. Democracy, in its modern, representative form, resurfaced later as a result of the major social upheavals that transformed Europe and America during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, many of the scientific methods, literary motifs and political systems that have formed the major cultural discourses of Western civilization ironically have their origins in the ancient Afro-Asiatic world. By placing the emphasis on the common heritage of both parts of wider Eurasia in the urban revolution of the Bronze Age, these scholars are not only able to undo the longstanding binaries between East and West, but are also able to gain new insights into the origins of some of humankind’s greatest achievements. Specifically, as is detailed below, these achievements include the earliest political mechanisms for human governance, “primitive democracy.”

Inklusi merupakan syarat praktik governance yang tertuang dalam kebijakan dan pelayanan publik dapat berjalan. Inklusi memastikan suara dan aspirasi warga terserap, juga memastikan peran warga diperhitungkan dalam kebijakan publik. Inklusi mensyaratkan warga yang aktif sekaligus pemerintahan yang terbuka. Dengan inklusi,
kebijakan pemerintah yang inovatif dan berbasis pada kebutuhan warga dapat disusun.
Dalam konteks inilah penelitian ini dilakukan. Penelitian bermaksud mengelaborasi lebih dalam eterlibatan warga dalam berbagai inovasi kebijakan pemerintah. Penelitian mengambil kasus kebijakan pendidikan di Kota Surakarta, terutama yang dituangkan dalam Bantuan Pendidikan untuk Masyarakat Kota Surakarta (BPMKS) untuk melihat sejauh mana inklusi warga dan hambatan apa yang ditemukan.
Menggunakan metode wawancara dan studi dokumentasi, penelitian ini menemukan bahwa, bidang sektoral pada dasarnya masih menjadi bidang yang dikuasai kalangan teknokrat, dan inklusi warga masih terbatas. Namun, di Kota
Surakarta, kebijakan dan program sektoral, tidak lepas dari peran warga, baik melalui Musrenbang, public hearing maupun peran-peran inisiasi LSM kepada pemerintah. Warga memiliki ruang inklusi, namun dalam beberapa kasus masih terhambat bias elite dan partai. Di sisi lain, inklusi warga juga belum didukung oleh komunikasi politik yang tertata, melalui proses interaktif pemerintah dan warga. Hambatan teknis dan
kultur menjadi penjelas mengapa inklusi masih memiliki berbagai kelemahan.

Lahan yang produktif seringkali lebih dilihat semata-mata sebagai komoditas ekonomi yang dapat dengan mudah dialihfungsikan dan dipindahtangankan. Berbeda di tempat lain, Desa Ngadisari memiliki keyakinan bahwa tanah mereka tak boleh dijual kepada orang di luar Desa Ngadisari, sekalipun mereka masih orang Tengger. Sistem adat menjadikan tanah memiliki makna yang sakral dan basis penghidupan yang paling penting bagi masyarakat Ngadisari yang agraris. Riset di Desa Ngadisari, Kabupaten Probolinggo ini menunjukkan sejumlah temuan penting" (1) inisiatif warga dalam memproteksi lahan mereka dibingkai secara kolektif oleh reproduksi adat Tengger yang menjadikan tanah sebagai sesuatu yang sakral. (2) Kepemimpinan desa hadir melalui kebijakan dan peraturan desa yang juga melarang praktik mutasi tanah tanpa persetujuan inistitusi desa. (3) Representasi formal BPD tak cukup kuat mengimbangi kapasitas pemerintah desa yang lebih mengandalkan representasi langsung dan cenderung memangkas peran representasi inistitusi ini. Dari studi ini, dapat ditarik kesimpulan bahwa perlindungan lahan menjadi arena dimana inisiatif warga untuk memproteksi lahan menjadi isu publik yang paling penting di desa dan kepemimpinan desa hadir dengan responsnya melalui hadirnya kebijakan yang mengatur peran desa dalam mengontrol transaksi atas lahan. Sayangnya, representasi formal BPD lemah dan mekanisme representasi dijalankan dengan cara mereka sendiri melalui tradisi rembug desa dan penjaringan aspirasi Wulan Kapitu. Pengantar "Pikiran orang sini gini, Mas. Kalau kita, tanah dijual ke orang luar lah nantinya kita jadi kuli mereka. Itu udah pasti itu" (Warga Ngadisari, 2015) Begitulah warga menjawab ketika ditanya mengapa tanah di Desa Ngadisari tak boleh dijual kepada orang di luar Ngadisari. Kira-kira, dengan pertanyaan yang sama, hampir semua masyarakat yang peneliti temui mengatakan hal yang sama. Ini tentu saja menjadi menarik mengingat desa yang didiami oleh Suku Tengger ini merupakan desa yang berbatasan langsung dengan kawasan wisata Gunung Bromo di Kecamatan Sukapura, Kabupaten Probolinggo sekaligus Pasuruan. 3 Kondisi ini menjadikan lahan di desa ini sebagai aset strategis yang bernilai secara ekonomis dan praktis menjadi daya tarik bagi investor.

The article presents how local authorities of Polish small towns perceive and form at the strategic level, these supra-local relations of their towns, which are connected with local culture. The article begins with key categories explanation: local system (LS), local development (LD), local culture, supra-local relations of local system, local development strategic governance (LDSG) and its supra-local perspective. The next part presents rationale, objects, goals, questions, methods of research and information sources. It is followed by discussing the research results divided into 4 parts, corresponding to types of supra-local relations of local systems and activities for their pro-developmental formation.

W artykule zaprezentowano wyniki badań, które miały na celu zidentyfikowanie, jak władze polskich małych miast postrzegają i kształtują na poziomie strategicznym te ponadlokalne relacje ich miast, które związane są z innowacjami i lokalną innowacyjnością. Badania te przeprowadzono w roku 2014 metodami sondażu diagnostycznego i analizy treści. Wykorzystano w nich także wyniki obserwacji uczestniczących, przeprowadzonych w latach 2010-2014. W początkowej części artykułu wyjaśniono kategorie i procesy kluczowe z punktu widzenia badań, takie jak: rozwój lokalny w obu jego perspektywach, innowacje i ich znaczenie w rozwoju lokalnym, innowacyjność lokalna, ponadlokalne relacje układu lokalnego, zarządzanie rozwojem lokalnym, zarządzanie strategiczne rozwojem lokalnym, ponadlokalna perspektywa tego zarządzania. W dalszej części zaprezentowano przesłanki, obiekty, cele, pytania, metody i techniki badawcze oraz wykorzystane źródła informacji. Następnie przedstawiono wyniki badań, dzieląc je na 4 części odpowiadające relacjom waloryzacji, animacji, supresji i deprecjacji układu lokalnego oraz działaniom prowadzonym w celu ich prorozwojowego kształtowania, wyznaczającym egzogeniczną utylitarność, neoendogeniczną absorpcyjność, protekcyjność i retencyjność zarządzania rozwojem lokalnym. Artykuł kończą wnioski oraz zalecenia co do zmian lokalnych i ponadlokalnych polityk rozwoju, których dokonanie upowszechni i ułatwi proinnowacyjne kształtowanie ponadlokalnych relacji małych miast.
[The article presents the research results whose aim is to identify how local authorities of Polish small towns perceive and form at the strategic level, these supra-local relations of their cities, which are connected with innovations and local innovativeness. The research was conducted in 2014 using diagnostic survey and content analysis methods. In addition, the results of participant observations, conducted in 2010-2014, were used. In the initial part of the article key categories of research field are explained, such as local development in both perspectives, innovations and their role in local development, local innovativeness, supra-local relations of local system, local development governance, local development strategic governance and its supra-local perspective. The next part presents rationale, objects, goals, questions, methods and techniques of research and used sources of information. Then the results of the studies are presented, dividing them into 4 parts, corresponding to different types of supra-local relations of local systems and activities for their prodevelopmental formation. The article concludes with findings and recommendations for changes of local and supra-local policies which will popularize and simplify pro-innovative shaping of supra-local relations of small towns].

In this study, we intend to present, using a socio-historical approach, the political and administrative aspects of the interwar Romanian society and state, as it has been investigated, from the perspective of monographic methodology, by the Sociological School of Bucharest, headed by Professor Dimitrie Gusti. The article aims at highlighting the existing legislative conflict between the traditional local government organization in the “old” Counties of Făgăraş and Vrancea, for example, and the modern administrative codes, adopted after 1864, by the “new” centralized Romanian state. Furthermore, we also highlight the negative perception of the population in the Romanian villages of Bessarabia and Transylvania (who lived under the tsarist and Austro-Hungarian rule until World War I) on the deficient administrative functioning of the interwar Romanian state. Although various projects of administrative reform attempted to correct these shortcomings, within the interwar period studied, excessive bureaucratization of the state and poor salaries of the public servants remained constant elements of the Romanian administrative political life.

This study discusses the amalgamation of local governments as a method of creating larger and more effective local governments that place fewer burdens on central government budgets. Beyond ‘economies of scale’, our findings from a case study of Israel’s 2003 amalgamation plan support the "democracy” claim. This study reveals that amalgamation reduces local democracy in terms of voter turnout and representation. The likelihood of having a greater level of local democracy increases in smaller local governments, in terms of population. The new "efficiency and democracy" approach suggests that a new amalgamated local government must be sufficiently small to maximize local democracy. While at the same time, new amalgamated local governments need to be sufficiently large to maximize economies of scale. This study uses field research with in-depth interviews to enhance the findings of the empirical analysis.

The purpose of the paper is to indicate the potential of the museums in facilitating the process of civic learning and to exemplify it with  several cases providing the methods supportive to civil society. The civic learning with the central position of the active and reflective learning subject supported by educator seems to meet this conditions.

                                                    ***

Artykuł zwraca uwagę na potencjał edukacyjny muzeów w zakresie edukacji obywatelskiej. Podejmuje również próbę odpowiedzi na pytanie, jakiego typu obywatelskość może kształtować muzeum i jakimi metodami. Wywód  jest  poparty  trzema  przykładami  pomysłów  lub  realizacji  edukacyjnych  wypracowanych przez Małopolski Instytut Kultury we współpracy z muzeami: Orawskim Parkiem Etnograficznym w Zubrzycy Górnej, Muzeum Pszczelarstwa w Stróżach oraz Muzeum Początków Państwa Polskiego w Gnieźnie.

The article is devoted to problems of defining the subject and objects of local development strategy. In its first part the author presents planning processes typical for local self-governments, as well as frequently made mistakes while preparing them. Next he concentrates on difficulties in defining the mentioned above subject and objects, pointing to the consequences of choosing improper solutions. Such criticism results in the author’s suggestion of a solution to the discussed problem, supported by practical and verified recommendations referring to defining strategic objectives

The article deals with the subject matter of strategic planning within Polish self-government units. The author presents selected problems encountered by authors of development strategies referring to communes, district and regions in the process of their preparation. They are related to: the process of conditions’ diagnosis and local self-government unit development prognosis, as well as the key elements of its environment, strategic analysis, conducting social consultancy, making strategic choices, specifying strategic objectives and tasks and also designing the system of strategy implementation

The article discusses barriers in strategic governance of local development characteristic for Polish local governments, i.e. municipalities, which occurred within the first 15 years of the XXI century. These barriers were identified in the period 2000-2015 by means of using the qualitative field research method, in the process of research and implementation as well as research and development projects’ execution, directly and indirectly related to the conceptualization, application and assessment of development strategies for Polish municipalities. The introduction to the article presents the reasons, origins, purpose, method, techniques and the course of conducted research. Next the concept of local development perceived from two perspectives, a local and supra-local one, as well as their governance concept and strategic approach to such governance, are discussed. The core part of the article is devoted to presenting the identified barriers in strategic governance of local development and also their sources. The article is concluded by providing recommendations regarding the continuation of research covering these barriers and the instruments of their reduction.

Pakistan is a developing nation of third world yet struggling to launch a local level system that ensures targeting of developmental problems at grass roots and striving to make the communities empowered in the sense that they plan and prioritize their problems and decide the solutions at local levels. The purpose of the paper is to study the new approach of Devolution of Power in its procedural perspective. The paper also aims to highlight the procedural lope holes in the concept of devolution of power in Pakistan due to which the real essence of participation, local level planning, and empowerment did not reach the targeted communities. The paper critically comments on the gaps that were not addressed in the policy due to which the idea of devolution came under severe attacks by the social scientists.

This essay presents models of multiparty negotiation as a means to compare the conventional public meetings format of planning to a preliminary process, the technical advisory committee. A metric of market concentration, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, is used to quantify the structural advantages in each, and presented within the context of municipal planning processes. In doing so, this work advances several propositions: First, open meetings expand power differentials between parties, which lead to outcomes that reflect the political efficacy of participants over the regulatory purpose of government. Second, such meetings create substantial transaction costs for the public, creating a barrier to the expression of community values. Finally, preliminary processes constitute a more effective forum for citizen participation than open meetings.

The absorption of exogenous factors represents one of the main components of local development governance (LDG). Today, in many countries, it is facilitated by numerous supra-local determinants. It primarily refers to these countries where local governments take advantage of the financial support of the EU. This absorption, however, experiences occasional failures which have various reasons and effects. The article presents the results of research in this subject matter conducted in Poland. They were carried out in two phases. The first covered participant observations performed in the period 2000-2014 in 61 Polish municipalities, aimed at the identification of the a.n. failures characteristics and their typical patterns. The second focused on determining the prevalence and reasons for these patterns occurrence in local development governance of Polish small towns. Long personal interviews, conducted in 2014 with the mayors of 46 such towns, were used in its course. The article is concluded with recommendations related to the improvement of local and supra-local governance of local development and focused on the reduction of the number and consequences of absorption failures.

La programación propuesta persigue comunicar socialmente información que contribuya a movilizar el potencial existente, para que la población de las localidades de la Región de la Ribera del Rio Hondo y de la Región Limítrofe con el Oriente de Campeche, ambas del municipio de Othón P. Blanco, accedan a los beneficios de un desarrollo integral centrado en el bienestar real y verificable de sus habitantes.

The article discusses the problems of planning in Polish self-governments. Its introduction presents the whole plethora of implemented planning processes. Next the author concentrates on twelve rules for preparing such documents, the identification of which results from the research he has conducted. The discussed rules are as follows: compliance with the development strategy, internal compliance, vertical compliance, horizontal compliance, legal compliance, meeting social, economic and environmental needs, sustainable development, external financing sources maximization, internal consultations, financial feasibility, implementation procedures, monitoring and evaluation procedures. The study is completed with comments on the permissible deviations from their application, as well as application tips.

The international literature offers a number of motives which should incline local authorities toward strategic planning of local development; it also emphasizes that they should be strongly motivated to do that. Meanwhile, their actual motivation for such planning can remain low and dominated by motives so far unrecognized in the literature. The article presents research confirming this assumption, conducted in 2014 among the authorities of Polish small towns. The results reveal that the general motivation for strategic planning of local development among 37.7% of the authorities of Polish small towns is low. It also disclosed that the motive for obtaining means from the EU funds (so far unrecognized in literature) was and is motivating strongly at least 68.6% of these authorities for the discussed planning and, moreover, that it is a short-lived motive. The article indicates that this situation may also refer to other local authorities, not just the Polish ones. It also indicates that it is an unintended effect of the dependence of municipal development projects' support by the means from the EU funds on including them in the local development strategy. The final part of the article presents recommendations of actions to rectify such an unfavorable situation and for further studies of planning motives followed by local authorities.

Comment une accession sociale à la copropriété coopérative peut-elle s'émanciper de certains effets de domination traversant les dispositifs de démocratie locale? Comment un exemple aussi atypique peut-il nous permettre de réinterroger le« nouvel esprit de l'action publique moderne» (Blondiaux, Sin tomer, 2002: 28) incarné par les dispositifs participatifs parisiens, qui font « du gouverné, citoyen ou société civile, un simple organe du gouvernement, de moins en moins en position d'extériorité par rapport à celui-ci » ? Pour rendre compte de la capacité d'un projet public d'accession sociale à la propriété à produire de la mobilisation, dès lors qu'il se donne une ambition coopérative, nous présenterons d'abord la manière dont cette accession sociale à la
copropriété coopérative a engendré trois mouvements de concernement qui l'ont transformée en un véritable instrument critique. Nous montrerons ensuite comment les copropriétaires se sont émancipés des gouvernants en constituant leur bien commun comme problème public. Puis, nous décrirons les enjeux de l'efficience participative qui caractérise aujourd'hui la démocratie locale parisienne, pour mieux mettre en évidence les moyens par lesquels ce mode de gouvernance affaiblit la critique à travers une domination furtive.

Over the past decade, Brazil has stepped up its involvement in international security and development. However, few studies have looked at how Brazil's concrete experiences in postconflict and fragile states have shaped its broader positions on key security and development issues (and vice versa). Analysing Brazil's role in Guinea-Bissau, this article asks how Brazilian government actors interpret the intersection between security and development. Drawing on a combination of document analysis and interviews, findings suggest that the Brazilian government has rejected labels such as 'failed state' and 'narco-state' and that cooperation needs to address the multidimensional causes of Guinea-Bissau's instability. Brazil's stress on combining security sector reform with broader institution-building and socioeconomic development reflects a somewhat different emphasis than the approach promoted by actors that have concentrated more narrowly on curbing the drug trade.

The rise of initiatives involving small towns at risk of depopulation offers the opportunity to empirically grasp different paths "to imagine a different future". In particular, we focus on cultural strategies: interventions drawing on symbols to fight marginalizing trends and trigger processesof local development. Such strategies are tackled by comparing two case studies: the experimentation of the Sprar model of widespread reception for refugees and asylum seekers in a small village of Calabrian Appennino (Sant'Alessio d'Aspromonte) and the variety of social andcultural initiatives that welcome fragile social groups promoted by the association Nocetum in a former agricultural village situated between the rural area Parco Agricolo Sud Milano and Milan. The heterogeneityof the selected cases will make evident two recurring mechanisms: first, the fact that associative styles and organizational cultures are in both cases the result of multiple levels of negotiation, in which local leaders areengaged in many ways to implement the reputation of their interventions; second, it will be shown the ambiguous role played by the traditional collective representations concerning the analysed local communities,thus illustrating how such representations are unavoidable conditions for anyone promoting cultural strategies in those communities.

In the last twenty years, British governments have promoted user, citizen and public centred planning processes. To this end they have encouraged local service providers to respond to the views of the participating public. What the government means by responsiveness is not always clear. Sometimes it takes responsiveness to mean state agencies acknowledging the viewpoint of the public, i.e. ‘we have heard what you have said'. Other times responsiveness is used to mean acknowledging what the public have said and agreeing to act in accordance with it. The government suggests that responsive government can be secured by establishing deliberative forums between local people and local authorities. This claim relies on the first sense of responsiveness for its coherency. If the second sense is being used, then the claim relies on the questionable assumption that service providers automatically act on the views of the public. This article tests that assumption by reviewing 53 empirical studies on participation in the UK between 1989 and 2001. The review suggests that more often than not the participating public does not influence local state agencies. It is argued that this is because the democratic nation state tends to be influenced only by groups that possess resources that the state wants and cannot get at less cost or at all, that threaten the state and its projects, and/or that are made up by a large number of voters. Because the participating public rarely constitutes one of these three groups, it rarely influences local state agencies or the government. It is concluded that the government's ambition of responsive local state agencies requires more than 'encouragement'. The participating public must be enabled or empowered to make decisions at the local level. Two corresponding models of participation are offered. This article starts by describing participation in health and social services under the Conservatives between 1979 and 1997 and under New Labour between 1997 and 2002.

The foundation of modern local governments in Turkey was laid with an imperial edict in 1839. This reform also called Gulhane Hatt-i Hümayunu or Tanzimat Edict, paved the way for local and regional councils. Since the 1850s, the municipalities have been established. However, it is not possible to talk about the functionality of these municipalities in current terms. Since the proclamation of the Turkish Republic, modern laws regulating local governments were issued. Village Law and Municipal Law are the first examples of these reformations. With the 1961 Constitution, modern participatory local government approach was adopted and mayors began to be elected directly by people for the first time. From 1960 to present, many local government reforms were made, but none of them were so fundamental as in 2012. With this reform, local government system has completely changed. Aim of this study is investigation of results of this reform and find out needs for a new wave of reform. New Metropolitan Municipalities Law is problematic in terms of local governance and local participation. Although European Charter of Local Self-Government and the European Urban Charter paying special importance to citizen's participation, last developments in Turkey as a European Union candidate continues in the opposite direction. Therefore, it is necessary to discuss all aspects of the new regulation. So that, field researches will be analyzed and recommendations will be presented in the light of these field studies relevant to the reforms. Political Participation Two basic indicators for modernization of the societies are healthy urbanization processes and effective political participation processes. Western democracies have experienced the industrial revolution and political revolution concurrently and achieved today's advanced level of democracy. It makes sense for the societies outside the western democracies to aspire to idealize the democracy standards in these democracies and transfer them to their countries. However, the fact that those countries do not take into account the long-lasting course of revolution undergone by the western democracies, the transformation of national and environmental factors, is one of the most important impediments to formation of a political/social structure in those societies at the level of the western democracies (Steinbach, 10982, p. 7). Political participation is a modern, democratic institution, which is achieved at the end of such a long political and societal run, and has a constitutional foundation in the democracies. Participation either exists or does not exist based on the formation type of the political systems and convention of formation. If the system limits freedom of the administrators in favor of the administered, there is a

We identify and describe four strands in the literature on forestry decentralization policies: studies that assess impacts of forestry sector decentralization policies on forests and livelihoods; studies that examine whether forestry decentralization empowers public and democratic local institutions; studies focusing on power and the role of elites in forestry decentralization, and; studies that historicize and contextualize forestry decentralization as reflective of broader societal phenomena. We argue that these strands reflect disciplinary differences in values, epistemologies, and methods preferences, and that they individually provide only partial representations of forestry decentralization policies. Accordingly, we conclude that a comprehensive understanding of these policies cannot rest solely on any of these strands, but should be informed by all of them.

Demokrasi Lokal? Suatu proses bermasyarakat yang localy dan ideal, inilah point penting dalam UU Desa. Hari-hari ini di masyarakat, utamanya aparat desa, harus menyadarinya, bahwa hal tersebut adalah jantung dalam berdemokrasi dan "berdesa" sebagai jalan menuju kesejahteraannya.

At the heart of the current paper are two separate but related questions: a) How local are local governments in Turkey? b) How democratic are local governments in the country? The paper attempts to answer those questions by providing, first, a cursory assessment of Turkey's situation on the centraliza-tion-decentralization continuum and then a brief analysis of the two major principles/pillars of contemporary democracies, namely popular sovereignty and representation, as applied to local politics and elections in Turkey. It thus discusses, albeit with varying degrees of depth and detail, whether and to what extent existing policies and practices related to local elections and electoral politics in the country are reflecting chief characteristics of an advanced democracy (e.g., free, frequent, and fair elections) on one hand, and thorough and true local-ness (e.g., locally determined election rules and regulations, locally-designed agendas and issues, and locally decided candidates and campaigns) on the other. It leaves readers pondering whether or not the current state of local democracy in the country can rather be called as one of pseudo-local, plebiscite democracy.

The article refers to problems of strategic planning related to Polish local authorities. The Authors concentrate on the reasons for a strategy construction and on strategic diagnosis. They present main theoretical assumptions in the above areas, as well as the results of their observations performed in the process of many conducted research and implementation studies. The differences between theory and practice are discussed and explanations for their reasons are provided. The article is concluded with recommendations for the development of self-government strategic planning phenomenon

The article is devoted to strategic planning issues in communes and districts. The author presents his own model procedure for the construction of territorial self-government unit development strategy. It was constructed based on self-government experiences, professional literature, as well as research and implementation studies conducted in a few dozens of European selfgovernment units. The main body describes nineteen stages of territorial self-government unit development strategy construction.

This article is devoted to the problems of Polish communal authorities’ social responsibility in the process of local development planning. At the beginning of the article the author defines the concept of the social responsibility of these authorities. Next the category of local development and its management process are discussed, followed by presenting
the relations between local development strategic planning problems and the idea of social responsibility. The empirical part of the article includes the author’s research results in the
form of examples illustrating incorrect activities undertaken by local authorities in the process of the preparation of development strategies, which may be considered as a failure of their social responsibility.

Hidden behind the much-touted success story of India’s emergence as an economic superpower is another, far more complex narrative of the nation’s recent history, one in which economic development is frequently countered by profoundly unsettling, and often violent, political movements. In Democracy against Development, Jeffrey Witsoe investigates this counter-narrative, uncovering an antagonistic relationship between recent democratic mobilization and development-oriented governance in India.
           
Witsoe looks at the history of colonialism in India and its role in both shaping modern caste identities and linking locally powerful caste groups to state institutions, which has effectively created a postcolonial patronage state. He then looks at the rise of lower-caste politics in one of India’s poorest and most populous states, Bihar, showing how this increase in democratic participation has radically threatened the patronage state by systematically weakening its institutions and disrupting its development projects. By depicting democracy and development as they truly are in India—in tension—Witsoe reveals crucial new empirical and theoretical insights about the long-term trajectory of democratization in the larger postcolonial world.

The rise of initiatives involving small towns at risk of depopulation offers the opportunity to empirically grasp different paths “to imagine a different future”. In particular, we focus on cultural strategies: interventions drawing on symbols to fight marginalizing trends and trigger processes of local development. Such strategies are tackled by comparing two case studies: the experimentation of the Sprar model of widespread reception for refugees and asylum seekers in a small village of Calabrian Appennino (Sant’Alessio d’Aspromonte) and the variety of social and cultural initiatives that welcome fragile social groups promoted by the association Nocetum in a former agricultural village situated between the rural area Parco Agricolo Sud Milano and Milan. The heterogeneity of the selected cases will make evident two recurring mechanisms: first, the fact that associative styles and organizational cultures are in both cases the result of multiple levels of negotiation, in which local ...

Centralized government in Georgia under Soviet rule (1921–1991) did not allow communities to self-organize or mobilize around the issues effecting them. This only began in the early 1990s when Georgia (supported by international donor organizations) embarked on self-governance reform (Losaberidze, 2012). For the last twenty five years a wide range of organizations has been working on local democracy projects. Even though the theme of local democracy and its working methodologies were new to the transitional country, which had to overcome numerous obstacles and challenges associated with the processes involved, the extensive work undertaken over the course of those years has not been in vain. It has enabled the development of methods for working with communities and seen the emergence of
organizations and interest groups working at a local level.

Comprendre où commence la démocratie, comment elle d’identifie, puis synthétiser quelques expériences étrangères permet de livrer des enseignements pour la commune du XXIe siècle.
[Understanding where democracy begins, how it identifies and synthesize some foreign experiences can deliver lessons for the town of twenty-first century.]

Are political regimes drivers of economic growth? While political institutions are influenced by economic development, they are in turn a key determinant of the development process. This study builds in the Neoclassical Growth theory to identify the influence of political regimes on economic development through a panel data sample of 170 countries from 1960 to 2000. results suggest that once fixed effects are considered, the positive relationship between income per capita and political regimes measured by different democracy variables disappears. regiMenes Políticos y creciMiento econóMico ¿Son los regímenes políticos conductores del crecimiento económico? Mientras las instituciones políticas están influenciadas por el desarrollo económico, son en cambio determinantes claves en el proceso de desarrollo. Este estudio construye sobre la Teoría del Crecimiento Neoclásico para identificar la influencia de los regímenes políticos sobre el desarrollo económico a partir de una muestra de panel de datos de 170 países desde 1960 al 2000. Los resultados sugieren que una vez que los efectos fijos sean considerados, la relación positiva entre ingreso per cápita y los regímenes políticos desaparece una vez que son medidos a partir de diferentes variables democráticas Palabras clave: regímenes políticos, democracia, desarrollo económico.

La France effectue une réforme territoriale, portant notamment que la suppression de neuf régions. L’analyse géographique et économique conduit à mettre en évidence les nombreux effets négatifs de cette réforme qui n’a absolument pas été réfléchie.
[France is conducting a territorial reform, relating in particular that the removal of nine regions. The geographic and economic analysis leads to highlight the many negative effects of this reform that has absolutely not been reflected.]

The article is devoted to strategic planning issues in communes, districts and regions. The author presents his own model procedure standard for the construction of territorial self-government unit development strategy. It was constructed based on Polish self-government experiences, professional literature, as well as research and implementation studies conducted by the author in a few dozens of Polish self-government units during the last fifteen years. Initial part of the article presents conditions to be met by such plan. The main body describes nineteen stages of territorial self-government unit development strategy construction. The crucial issues covered are: the decision about strategy construction, the choice of its executor, diagnoses, social consultancy, strategic analysis, mission, vision, objectives, strategic tasks, horizontal and vertical compliance, financing, approval and implementation.