A system for rural regional development planning

The official South African systems for rural regional development planning do not allow democratic representation, are not effective and need reorganisation. The National Regional Development Programme acknowledges the dynamic nature of development planning, but the system is still trammelled by earlier misconceptions. Similarly, in rural regions the demand for regional services does not warrant regional services councils. In a new structure proposed for rural regional development planning each municipality provides all services and its boundaries are extended to include its rural hinterland. Regional services councils become regional development councils with the sole purpose of promoting social and economic development. Nongovernmental organisations and interest groups form standing committees to liaise with regional development councils. Implementation of development proposals will rest with local and higher levels of government.     

VILLAGE GOVERNMENT AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIA: THE NEW DEMOCRATIC FRAMEWORK

The political reforms that began in Indonesia in 1998 have created new opportunities for a revised relationship between state and community, replacing the New Order's centralistic and uniform framework with local-level institutions that are strong and responsive. This paper presents the new legal framework for the democratisation of local-level politics and village institutions. Representative councils have been elected in all Indonesian villages, and the village head is no longer the sole authority in the community. Village governments are provided with far-reaching autonomy and do not need the approval of higher authorities to take decisions and implement policies. However, decentralisation and democratisation are necessary but not sufficient preconditions for developing the countryside and alleviating poverty. An active government and civil society engagement must ensure that regulations are not distorted during implementation, and that ordinary people are included in public policy making and local governance.     

New Wine in Old Bottles? England's Parish and Town Councils and New Labour's Neighbourhood Experiment

This paper deals with English parish and town councils in the context of English local government reform. It explores their potential for community and local economic development and in fulfilling a role in neighbourhood government in the light of the current UK Government's declared intention of empowering neighbourhoods. There are some suggestions for the development of realistic 'grass roots' local government and examples of involvement in local area regeneration. It ends with some thoughts on legislation currently (June 2007) before Parliament, and in particular on their reception in London. Much of material on which this paper is based was gathered through project work undertaken for Defra, the Countryside Agency (now the Commission for Rural Communities) and the Society for Local Council Clerks, dealing, with variously, the capacity and democratic legitimacy of local councils and their relationship with principal authorities and other community and statutory agencies. Altogether, approximately 130 interviews were conducted with parish and town council councillors and clerks, officers and members of principal authorities, and officers of County Associations of Local Councils. A case study approach was adopted, covering a large number of English counties and the cities of Bradford and Milton Keynes.     

Corridor or blind alley? The A1M Herts corridor consortium

Local authority intervention in the local economy has proliferated in recent years and is not, as much work suggests, confined to large Labour controlled authorities coping with inner city problems and/or declining heavy industry; a wide variety of economic development initiatives are being executed by councils across the political spectrum. This paper examines the notion of growth coalitions and attempts to shed some light on these aspects of neglected research and reasons for local authority intervention, exemplified by the A1M Herts Corridor Campaign, an economic development initiative to attract inward investment to an affluent county.     

Multidimensional poverty in South Africa in 2001–16

This study uses the Census 2001 and 2011 as well as Community Survey 2007 and 2016 data to derive a multidimensional poverty index in South Africa for each year, before assessing the changes in non-money-metric, multidimensional poverty over time. Both the incidence and intensity of multidimensional poverty decreased continuously, and these declines were more rapid than that of money-metric poverty. The decrease in multidimensional poverty between 2001 and 2016 was most rapid for female Africans residing in rural areas in Eastern Cape and KwaZulu–Natal provinces. Multidimensional poverty was most serious in numerous district councils in these two provinces, despite the fact that poverty decline was also most rapid in these district councils. The results of the multidimensional poverty index decomposition indicated that Africans contributed more than 95% to multidimensional poverty, while unemployment, years of schooling and disability were the three indicators contributing most to poverty.     

'Race', Employment, and Contract Compliance: A Way Forward for Local Authorities?

The concern of this article is with action at the local level to combat racial inequality in employment. It draws on the authors' evaluation of the 'West Midlands Common Standard', an innovative policy introduced by a consortium of West Midlands councils to ensure their contractors have, and implement, an equal opportunities in employment policy. The article assesses the impact of the initiative and its potential transferability. It is argued that the Common Standard provides a highly promising model for other local authorities to adopt.     

Policies employed by the FRG in order to exemplify political conditions for trade with socialist countries∗

Abstract

Unlike most previous works which commonly define globalization as a strict economic characteristic, using the overall globalization index and its three sub-dimensions – economic, social and political integrations to proxy openness, this paper examines the effect of globalization on economic growth associated with autocratic institutional in China, using the a two-step dynamic panel generalized method of moments technique in a panel of 30 provinces, municipalities and the autonomous regions over the period of 1970–2006. We find that different globalization indices have different impacts on regional economic growth. Also, autocracy may harm regional development, but these conclusions are very sensitive to different globalization variables specifications. Further, considering the interactive effects between globalization and economic growth, we show that in the period of higher global integration, the higher democracy (lower autocracy) may harm economic growth in the case of China. We emphasize that democracy is clearly not a necessary condition for the purpose of economic growth in China.     

网络著作权侵权浅析

网络作品一般既符合传统作品的构成要件,又符合法律关于网络作品的特别规定,包括上网作品和网上作品。网络著作权侵权行为认定时依然要适用行为的违法性、损害事实、因果关系和主观过错这四个最基本的构成要件。网上著作权侵权主要有将网上作品下载并发表到传统媒体上、将传统作品上传到网上、链接、浏览以及网页抄袭等几种形式。     

Communists and the Fight for Jobs and Revolution

Winning in the battle for jobs is two-fold: making gains in jobs and relief, and making gains in the development of anti-racist revolutionary class consciousness. Marxists and institutionalists have shown theoretically that unemployment is endemic to capitalism. The global experience of the 20th century validates this view. Efforts to ease the negative social effects of unemployment can modestly and temporarily assist distressed unemployed workers and their families, but only when there is a significant grassroots mobilization??at both local and national levels??to struggle for such improvements. Communist organizers have often been the most effective leaders of struggles against unemployment and its effects by relying on mobilizations of unemployed, employed, and unionized workers. Communist organizations have often combined efforts to win ??survival?? reforms (i.e., attempts to keep unemployed workers?? heads above water) with agitation and education about the need to end unemployment permanently with socialist and/or communist revolution. Two examples of these struggles are described: the Unemployed Council of St. Petersburg in 1905?C06 and the unemployed councils initiated by the Communist International (the Comintern) during the early 1930s, with an emphasis on the U.S. experience. Lessons for today??s global struggle against unemployment are drawn from these earlier experiences.     

创新思想政治工作促进企业和谐发展

思想政治工作是企业科学和谐发展的灵魂,是凝聚人心、提高效率的有效方法。在日新月异的新形势下,不断创新思想政治工作,发挥思想政治的强大优势,是思想政治工作者,也是企业领导者面对的新课题。必须不断适应新形势、研究新创新思想政治工作促进企业和谐发展     

Monitoring quality of life in cities: The Durban case

South Africans were promised a better life for all in the run-up to the first democratic elections in 1994. Local governments throughout South Africa are seeking to improve service delivery to underdeveloped areas in line with the new policy. The seven councils of the Durban Metropolitan Area have a vision for the city, to be realised by the year 2015, that residents will live in acceptably serviced housing and will enjoy a generally high quality of life that can be sustained. To monitor performance towards achieving this vision, the Urban Strategy Department of the Durban Metropolitan Council initiated a project to guide budget allocations and measure the impact of local government actions on residents' perceptions of quality of life. This article reports on results from the pilot study for the project, which included a sample survey of 300 residents and in-depth interviews with a cross-section of 60 residents. The baseline study revealed vast differences in living conditions, access to services and life satisfaction across neighbourhoods. Satisfaction with housing and the neighbourhood, as indicated by disinclination to move, were major factors contributing to life satisfaction of Durban residents.     

Audit Hours and Unit Audit Price of Industry Specialist Auditors: Evidence from Korea

Higher audit fees associated with auditor industry specialization could represent higher unit price charged by industry specialist auditors (ISAs) or the provision of a greater quantity of audit services. This study exploits a field setting in Korea, where the disclosure of audit hours is required in company annual reports, and finds that ISAs charge significantly higher total audit fees but also expend significantly greater audit hours than non‐ISAs. When audit fees and hours are considered together, the unit audit price of ISAs is significantly lower than that of non‐ISAs. This indicates that higher total audit fees associated with ISAs are likely to be attributable to greater audit hours associated with ISAs. However, greater audit hours for ISAs may suggest higher audit quality or may simply indicate that the additional audit work performed by ISAs is conducted by relatively cheaper junior auditors. Our work provides an alternative explanation for the higher total audit fees documented in the previous studies.     

The survival of apartheid's last town council in Groblersdal,South Africa

The reconfiguration of South Africa's internal territorial spaces after 1990 was a logical outcome of the need to undo the effects of decades of territorial dismemberment under apartheid. In spite of the spatial reordering of areas which were controlled and administered by town councils established during apartheid, the Town Council of Groblersdal and its area of jurisdiction have remained unchanged up to the time of writing. This article attempts to explain and analyse the survival of the town council of Groblersdal in the Northern Province. It argues that the town council used the vacuum created by the provincial boundary dispute between Mpumalanga and the Northern Province to maintain the status quo in spite of legal struggles to determine its political future.     

浅谈思想政治工作在企业后勤服务保障中的作用——温州广播电视传媒集团

思想政治工作是在后勤保障工作中培植企业精神最有效的途径。在当前经济飞速发展的社会中,持续深化的社会改革对于企业的广大干部职工的思想政治工作是新的考验。因此我们应当结合形势任务要求,认真研究企业职工的思想情况,从而有针对性地做好思想政治工作。     

悲剧文学的起源和创作原则

悲剧文学一直是西方文学的创作主流，因为它们源出于历史悠久的《旧约》《新约》、特洛伊战争、荷马史诗和古希腊悲剧。通过悲剧作品，人类的良知和同情心被唤醒，然后人们就会有意识地尊重生命、友谊、友爱和道德伦理。所以，在西方文学中，作家的地位和作品的价值都是由他的悲剧性描述和作品中的伦理特性所决定的。     

Piracy,Imitation, and Optimal Copyright Policy

This article presents a model of optimal copyright policy which incorporates several realistic features which have hitherto been largely ignored. First, although copyright is understood as a means of encouraging the creation of new works, the optimal number of such works is generally not considered. Second, copyright infringement encompasses two different activities subsumed under the same legal umbrella: One might either “pirate” (i.e., illegally copy) a work or one might create a “new” work which is a close imitation of an existing one. The mutual recognition of these two features leads to some surprising conclusions relevant to current debate over copyright reform. In particular, while strong piracy protection encourages overproduction of intellectual property, enhanced protection against imitation can mitigate the associated inefficiencies, benefitting society.     

控股供电企业职工思想政治工作的特质及应对策略

思想政治工作是我们党的政治优势,由于改制的不完全性,使得控股供电公司的思想政治工作与其他企业相比大为不同。本文尝试从控股供电企业职工思想政治工作的特质出发,探析具有针对性的应对措施与策略。     

Housing expenditure and neighbourhood economic development

In low-income neighbourhoods, with limited commercial and industrial development possibilities, the only major local investment opportunities tend to be associated with housing and environmental upgrading. However, when these investments take place the typical experience is that the residents of the area enjoy only limited employment and training benefits from the works carried out. This paper assesses a number of initiatives where serious attempts have been made to secure long-term employment and training gains for local people in association with environmental and housing expenditure programmes in their locality. It shows that modest benefits can be achieved and discusses the longer run potential for such initiatives.     

国有跨国经营公司办公室思想政治工作研究

随着国有企业“走出去”战略的实施,传统的国有企业通过海外并购及重组整合,转变成跨国经营公司,这对于办公室各项工作提出了更高的要求。办公室是一个企业对外开放的基本平台,是展示企业形象的窗口,只有在以提高办公室思想政治工作为基础的前提下,才能不断提高工作质量和工作效率,适应跨国经营以及国企改革对于办公室工作提出的新目标。