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This book helps to understand in which ways local governing elites are important for the success or failure of national democratic development. Although we know a great deal about the general importance of civil society and social capital for the development of sustainable democracy, we still know little about what specific local governing qualities or political capital that interact with democratic development. The collected data covers time series of surveys from between 15 to 30 political and administrative leaders in over a hundred middle-sized European and Eurasian cities. The study takes us across the 1980s and 1990s, going from cities in Sweden and the Netherlands - through the Baltic cities - to the cities of Belarus and Russia. The findings show the importance of local political capital based on commitments to core democratic values, informal governance networks, and the significance of initially connecting the community to global, non-economic relationships.
Explores ways to make democracy work better, with particular focus on the integral role of local institutions.
This book identifies sources of power that help business and economic elites influence policy decisions.
Research on the economic origins of democracy and dictatorship has shifted away from the impact of growth and turned toward the question of how different patterns of growth - equal or unequal - shape regime change. This book offers a new theory of the historical relationship between economic modernization and the emergence of democracy on a global scale, focusing on the effects of land and income inequality. Contrary to most mainstream arguments, Ben W. Ansell and David J. Samuels suggest that democracy is more likely to emerge when rising, yet politically disenfranchised, groups demand more influence because they have more to lose, rather than when threats of redistribution to elite interests are low.
This book helps to understand in which ways local governing elites are important for the success or failure of national democratic development. Although we know a great deal about the general importance of civil society and social capital for the development of sustainable democracy, we still know little about what specific local governing qualities or political capital that interact with democratic development. The collected data covers time series of surveys from between 15 to 30 political and administrative leaders in over a hundred middle-sized European and Eurasian cities. The study takes us across the 1980s and 1990s, going from cities in Sweden and the Netherlands - through the Baltic cities - to the cities of Belarus and Russia. The findings show the importance of local political capital based on commitments to core democratic values, informal governance networks, and the significance of initially connecting the community to global, non-economic relationships.
References pp. 115-132.
Nearly all countries worldwide are now experimenting with decentralization. Their motivation are diverse. Many countries are decentralizing because they believe this can help stimulate economic growth or reduce rural poverty, goals central government interventions have failed to achieve. Some countries see it as a way to strengthen civil society and deepen democracy. Some perceive it as a way to off-load expensive responsibilities onto lower level governments. Thus, decentralization is seen as a solution to many different kinds of problems. This report examines the origins and implications decentralization from a political economy perspective, with a focus on its promise and limitations. It explores why countries have often chosen not to decentralize, even when evidence suggests that doing so would be in the interests of the government. It seeks to explain why since the early 1980s many countries have undertaken some form of decentralization. This report also evaluates the evidence to understand where decentralization has considerable promise and where it does not. It identifies conditions needed for decentralization to succeed. It identifies the ways in which decentralization can promote rural development. And it names the goals which decentralization will probably not help achieve.
“Identity politics” is everywhere, polarizing discourse from the campaign trail to the classroom and amplifying antagonisms in the media, both online and off. But the compulsively referenced phrase bears little resemblance to the concept as first introduced by the radical Black feminist Combahee River Collective. While the Collective articulated a political viewpoint grounded in their own position as Black lesbians with the explicit aim of building solidarity across lines of difference, identity politics is now frequently weaponized as a means of closing ranks around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests. But the trouble, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò deftly argues, is not with identity politics itself. Through a substantive engagement with the global Black radical tradition and a critical understanding of racial capitalism, Táíwò identifies the process by which a radical concept can be stripped of its political substance and liberatory potential by becoming the victim of elite capture—deployed by political, social, and economic elites in the service of their own interests. Táíwò’s crucial intervention both elucidates this complex process and helps us move beyond a binary of “class” vs. “race.” By rejecting elitist identity politics in favor of a constructive politics of radical solidarity, he advances the possibility of organizing across our differences in the urgent struggle for a better world.
How does the elite continue to affect the evolution of local communities in the developing region of former Sovietized Europe? This book is concerned with the issue of local leadership in the countries of East-Central Europe. It is an attempt to examine, with a comparative method, the profile and the role of the local political elites (members of the Municipal Councils) in six towns in six transitional democracies of the region.
This is the first book to examine and compare how rebels govern civilians during civil wars in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Drawing from a variety of disciplinary traditions, including political science, sociology, and anthropology, the book provides in-depth case studies of specific conflicts as well as comparative studies of multiple conflicts. Among other themes, the book examines why and how some rebels establish both structures and practices of rule, the role of ideology, cultural, and material factors affecting rebel governance strategies, the impact of governance on the rebel/civilian relationship, civilian responses to rebel rule, the comparison between modes of state and non-state governance to rebel attempts to establish political order, the political economy of rebel governance, and the decline and demise of rebel governance attempts.