Decentralization is Dead,Long Live Decentralization! Capital City Reform and Political Rights in Kampala,Uganda

African cities are currently experiencing some of the highest population growth rates in the world. Accompanying this growth is constant and continuing pressure on national and local governments to develop political and institutional structures that respond to the multiple demands this demographic change provokes in relation to service delivery, economic development and social wellbeing. In response to these challenges, national governments are reviewing the political and administrative structures of their capital cities, sometimes recentralizing authority. This article examines the reforms to Kampala, capital city of Uganda. The article explains how the national government gradually created the legal conditions necessary to take over the capital city directly, and the political rhetoric and conflict that ensued. We argue that while Kampala had deep internal problems and fared poorly in service delivery, matters were exacerbated by the national government's historical indifference to the city. Moreover, past service delivery failures offered an easy rationale for recentralizing authority. We demonstrate that this recentralization was a well‐planned effort by the central government to regain political control of the capital city. This article illustrates how the national government's recentralization of authority in Kampala is a significant departure from its longstanding policy of democratic decentralization.     

协商民主视域下公共事务可治理性机制探索

在当代公共事务渐趋复杂多样的演进态势下，传统公共行政特有的“主体—客体”管制模式日渐式微，现代公共事务治理的“主体—主体”模式开始凸显，并直接塑造了公共事务治理多元化的基本格局。时下，公共事务的多元治理坚持以问题导向和结果导向的统一为出发点，寻求在公共目标的指引下，通过一系列动态活动过程实现公共利益。然而，多元治理过程中碎片化、多样化的利益诉求同公共利益塑造之间不可回避的悖论性使得可治理性问题更加凸显，一度影响了治理效能的发挥。因此，不同治理主体之间的协商机制的建设成为解决公共事务可治理性问题的关键。系统分析公共事务多元治理过程中的协商机制，必须在善治目标指引下，着眼于中国特色协商民主发展的现实与前景来寻求问题之良方。     

Voters’ Acceptance of Land Use Policy Measures: A Two-Level Analysis

Sustainable spatial planning has become increasingly important during the last decades. Politics tries to counter land use related challenges such as urban sprawl by the implementation of policy measures. In a direct democracy, the implementation of policy measures requires citizens’ acceptance. This paper examines determinants of voters’ policy measure acceptance in the area of spatial planning. The study analyses 18 popular votes on spatial planning measures between 1984 and 2008 in Switzerland. A Bayesian multilevel modelling method is used to estimate both determinants at the individual level as well as the contextual level. Results show that the main individual factor for voters in Switzerland to accept spatial planning measures in a broad sense are the party affiliations of voters. Another important factor for the voting decision is being a homeowner. In contrast, whether voters live in urban or rural areas does not influence such voting decisions. At the contextual level, policy measures which contain incentive and market-based instruments have a higher probability to be accepted than bans and rules. Moreover, the degree of organisational capacity and conflict capability of interests concerned seem to influence democratic acceptance of spatial planning measures.     

The legitimation of risk and Bt cotton: a case study of Bantala village in Warangal,Andhra Pradesh,India

This article explores Ulrich Beck’s theorisation of risk society through focusing on the way in which the risk of Bt cotton is legitimated by six cultivators in Bantala, a village in Warangal, Andhra Pradesh, in India. The fieldwork for this study was conducted between June 2010 and March 2011, a duration chosen to coincide with a cotton season. The study explores the experience of the cultivators using the ‘categories of legitimation’ defined by Van Leeuwen. These are authorisation, moral evaluation, rationalisation and mythopoesis. As well as permitting an exploration of the legitimation of Bt cotton by cultivators themselves within the high-risk context of the Indian agrarian crisis, the categories also serve as an analytical framework with which to structure a discourse analysis of participant perspectives. The study examines the complex trade-off, which Renn argues the legitimation of ambiguous risk, such as that associated with Bt technology, entails. The research explores the way in which legitimation of the technology is informed by wider normative conceptualisations of development. This highlights that, in a context where indebtedness is strongly linked to farmer suicides, the potential of Bt cotton for poverty alleviation is traded against the uncertainty associated with the technology’s risks, which include its purported links to animal deaths. The study highlights the way in which the wider legitimation of a neoliberal approach to development in Andhra Pradesh serves to reinforce the choice of Bt cotton, and results in a depoliticisation of risk in Bantala. The research indicates, however, that this trade-off is subject to change over time, as economic benefits wane and risks accumulate. It also highlights the need for caution in relation to the proposed extension of Bt technology to food crops, such as Bt brinjal (aubergine).     

A direct test of direct democracy: New England town meetings

Representative democracies govern most locales in the US, making it difficult to compare performance relative to direct democracy. New England states, however, provide an opportunity to test both direct and representative democracy at the local level. This article uses revealed preference axioms to compare spending patterns in New England towns and cities against median voter hypothesis benchmarks. Contrary to previous evidence, we find no differences between direct and representative democracy. The results suggest that horizontal competition arising from local fragmentation minimize differences between direct and representative local government, providing support for wider applicability of median voter-based empirical models of local government behaviour in the US.     

The determinants of international migration: Unbundling the role of economic,political and social institutions

International migrants may relocate because of economic, political and social factors in their origin or destination countries. Using global bilateral migration flows from 103 countries over the period 1990–2000, we explore whether emigrants self-select based on economic, political and social institutions. Our study adds social dimension as a potential determinant of migration and separates the pull and push effects of political, economic and social institutions. Our results indicate that economic, political and social institutions are significant pull factors of migration; economic freedom has the most substantial pull effect followed by the political institutions; social institutions have the weakest pull effect on migration. Moreover, economic and social institutions are significant push factors of migration, while political institutions do not show any push effect. Furthermore, educated migrants are more sensitive to the destination economic, political and social institutions than less-educated migrants, and less-educated migrants are more sensitive to the social institutions at the origin.     

经济民主与社会主义市场经济的政治经济学含义:基于生产方式视角的分析

长期以来,作为社会主义市场经济的政治经济学含义的主要载体,经济民主的作用并不明显。出现这一现象的原因有二:在理论上,学界关于经济民主的论述强调生产关系视角而忽视生产方式视角。这样的把握方式导致经济民主体系处于悬置的状态;在现实中,将美国型市场经济视为唯一的参照系导致具有后福特主义色彩的经济民主无法进入政策议程。本文认为,以生产方式视角下的经济民主为中心,有选择、有秩序地推进经济民主是当下的现实选择。