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Local Interests: Politics, Policy, and Interest Groups in US City Governments
by Sarah F. AnziaA policy-focused approach to understanding the role of interest groups in US municipal governments. Local politics in the United States once seemed tranquil compared to the divisiveness and dysfunction of the country’s national politics. Those days have passed. As multiple wide-ranging crises have thrust America’s local governments into the spotlight, they have also exposed policy failures and systemic problems that have mounted for years. While issues such as policing and the cost of housing are debated nationally, much of the policymaking surrounding these issues occurs locally. In Local Interests, Sarah F. Anzia explores how local governments—and the interest groups that try to influence them—create the policies that drive the national conversation: policing, economic development, housing, and challenges of taxing and spending. Anzia examines local interest groups in terms of the specific policies they pursue, including how these groups get active in politics and what impact they have. By offering new perspectives on these issues, Anzia contributes to our knowledge of how interest groups function and the significant role they play in shaping broader social outcomes.
Local Interests: Politics, Policy, and Interest Groups in US City Governments
by Sarah F. AnziaA policy-focused approach to understanding the role of interest groups in US municipal governments. Local politics in the United States once seemed tranquil compared to the divisiveness and dysfunction of the country’s national politics. Those days have passed. As multiple wide-ranging crises have thrust America’s local governments into the spotlight, they have also exposed policy failures and systemic problems that have mounted for years. While issues such as policing and the cost of housing are debated nationally, much of the policymaking surrounding these issues occurs locally. In Local Interests, Sarah F. Anzia explores how local governments—and the interest groups that try to influence them—create the policies that drive the national conversation: policing, economic development, housing, and challenges of taxing and spending. Anzia examines local interest groups in terms of the specific policies they pursue, including how these groups get active in politics and what impact they have. By offering new perspectives on these issues, Anzia contributes to our knowledge of how interest groups function and the significant role they play in shaping broader social outcomes.
Local Leadership in Democratic Transition
by Chavanne L. PeercySince the end of the Cold War, the United Nations has become increasingly involved in peacebuilding. However, the often questionable results have led to much mistrust of the methods employed by international organizations. The current transition paradigm assumes that local leaders which participate in the process will assist in the democratic transition and are themselves an output of the process. This assumption appears to be fundamentally wrong. This book examines whether the inclusion of non-democratic leadership in post-conflict transition induces democratic principles and sustainable peace, or if it in fact undermines the values which the international community attempts to promote and contribute towards the solidification of non-democratic regimes. Using an in-depth analysis of local leadership before, during and after democratic transition in three key case studies, namely Burundi, Cambodia and Liberia, the author provides a unique insight into the type of leadership required for transitioning a country to democracy. Delivering a new framework that assists scholars, policymakers and practitioners in understanding the roles of local leaders in democratic transition, it also includes recommendations for future peacebuilding operations.
Local Leadership in a Global Era
by Amy M. HochadelThis book examines local leadership and policy changes as a result of globalisation. The author identifies what behaviours are facilitating the connection of local economies to the global economy and what local structures enable or inhibit the activity. It presents positive indicators from empirical research and three local case studies, that a dyadic arrangement of transformational leadership and a legislative-activist structure are more likely to connect a local economy to opportunities in the global economy. Further, the research presents a new measure for behaviour and structure to deduce the potential for local participation in a global economy. The book is based in and expands several fields of study, and will appeal to scholars of international relations, economics, public management, immigration and politics.
Local Legitimacy in Peacebuilding: Pathways to Local Compliance with International Police Reform (Routledge Studies in Intervention and Statebuilding)
by Birte Julia GippertThis book analyses the role of legitimacy in explaining local actors’ compliance with international peacebuilding operations. The book provides a comparative, micro-level study of local actors’ reasons for compliance with or resistance to international peacebuilding. Specifically, it analyses three pathways to compliance –legitimacy, coercion, and reward-seeking – to explore local police officers’ compliance with the reforms stipulated by the EU Police Mission in Bosnia and the EU Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo. The work constructs a holistic framework of the mechanisms connecting each pathway to compliance and measures legitimacy using micro-level indicators. This study not only shines light on the question why local actors comply, a crucial factor in mission effectiveness, but it also illuminates exactly how compliance works. The book contributes nuanced evidence about the often-heralded importance of legitimacy in peacebuilding, showing exactly in which situations local legitimacy matters and in which it does not. It is also highly relevant for policy-makers as it unpacks and explains the mechanisms behind local legitimacy, assisting in understanding this usually nebulous concept. This book demonstrates the need for micro-level analysis by revealing the relevant processes of legitimation usually hidden behind commonly perceived social fault lines, such as the Serb-Albanian divide in Kosovo. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, war and conflict studies, Balkans politics, security studies and International Relations.
Local Migration Policy: Governance Structures and Policy Output in Swedish Municipalities
by Gustav Lidén Jon NyhlénThis book examines local migration policy in Sweden in light of the European migrant crisis. The novel approach of this volume covers both local governments’ policies on admission of immigrants and their efforts for enhancing social integration. The focus is on the division of responsibilities between political levels, examined through theories encompassing both governance structures and output and outcomes of policy. Sweden is a rare example where migration policy has undergone massive changes in the last decade. During the crisis, the country received some of the largest flows of immigrants in relation to its population compared with other European countries. Drawing from statistical material, case studies and a rich body of interviews, this innovative work provides a valuable resource that aspires to investigate the significance of the local level of government in migration policy. The objective is to reach general conclusions that go beyond the realms of the empirical focus.
Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut (Routledge Studies in Ethnomusicology)
by Thomas BurkhalterThis book offers the first in-depth study of experimental and popular music scenes in Beirut, looking at musicians working towards a new understanding of musical creativity and music culture in a country that is dominated by mass-mediated pop music, and propaganda. Burkhalter studies the generation of musicians born at the beginning of the Civil War in the Lebanese capital, an urban and cosmopolitan center with a long tradition of cultural activities and exchanges with the Arab world, Europe, the US, and the former Soviet Union. These Lebanese rappers, rockers, death-metal, jazz, and electro-acoustic musicians and free improvisers choose local and transnational forms to express their connection to the broader musical, cultural, social, and political environment. Burkhalter explores how these musicians organize their own small concerts for ‘insider’ audiences, set up music labels, and network with like-minded musicians in Europe, the US, and the Arab world. Several key tracks are analyzed with methods from ethnomusicology, and popular music studies, and contextualized through interviews with the musicians. Discussing key references from belly dance culture (1960s), psychedelic rock in Beirut (1970s), the noises of the Lebanese Civil war (1975-1990), and transnational Pop-Avant-Gardes and World Music 2.0 networks, this book contributes to the study of localization and globalization processes in music in an increasingly digitalized and transnational world. At the core, this music from Beirut challenges "ethnocentric" perceptions of "locality" in music. It attacks both "Orientalist" readings of the Arab world, the Middle East, and Lebanon, and the focus on musical "difference" in Euro-American music and culture markets. On theoretical grounds, this music is a small, but passionate attempt to re-shape the world into a place where "modernity" is not "euro-modernity" or "euro-american modernity," but where possible new configurations of modernity exist next to each other.
Local Organizations and Urban Governance in East and Southeast Asia: Straddling state and society (Routledge Studies on Civil Society in Asia)
by Benjamin L. Read Robert PekkanenThis edited collection brings together enterprising pieces of new research on the many forms of organization in East and Southeast Asia that are sponsored or mandated by government, but engage widespread participation at the grassroots level. Straddling the state-society divide, these organizations play important roles in society and politics, yet remain only dimly understood. This book shines a spotlight on this phenomenon, which speaks to fundamental questions about how such societies choose to organize themselves, how institutions of local governance change over time, and how individuals respond to and make use of the power of the state. The contributors investigate organizations ranging from volunteer-based organizations that partner with government in providing services for homeless children, to state-managed networks of neighborhood- or village-level associations that perform representative as well as administrative functions and seeks to answer a number of questions: When do the "vertical," top-down imperatives of the state stifle "horizontal" solidarities, and when might the two work in harmony? Are useful social and administrative purposes served by this type of fusion? Does it amplify or merely muffle citizens’ voices? What does it tell us about existing accounts of community, social capital, "synergy," "complementarity," "subsidiarity," and related concepts? Representing seven countries: China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Singapore this volume will be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and academics in Asian studies, political science, sociology, anthropology, development, history, nonprofit studies.
Local Ownership in International Peacebuilding: Key Theoretical and Practical Issues (Studies in Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding)
by Alpaslan Özerdem Sung Yong LeeThis edited volume empirically examines key theoretical and practical issues relevant to the promotion of local ownership in contemporary international peacebuilding. This book attempts to provide comprehensive understanding of the issue of local ownership in international peacebuilding. By providing an empirical analysis of nine case studies, the volume aims to supplement contemporary academic discussions on local ownership, which have thus far mainly focused on its normative or theoretical dimensions. The case studies included here examine the peace operations in a wide range of countries - Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Cyprus, Kenya, Uganda, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and Sri Lanka. The book seeks to address the weaknesses of conventional studies by:,empirical review of the achievements and limitations of previous attempts to promote local ownership; examination of the key concepts of local ownership; and analysis of structural and practical challenges. The volume concludes by presenting practical proposals for addressing the limitations of contemporary local ownership promotion. Through these means, the book aims to explore a key research question from both theoretical and empirical perspectives: How can international peacebuilding facilitate effective, active local community participation? This volume will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, development studies, global governance, peace and conflict studies, security studies and IR.
Local Participatory Governance and Representative Democracy: Institutional Dilemmas in European Cities (Routledge Critical Studies in Public Management)
by Nils Hertting Clarissa KugelbergOver the past few decades and throughout the world, numerous government-initiated experiments and attempts at directly engaging and including citizens have emerged as remedies for a variety of problems faced by modern democracies, including political disaffection and insufficient capacity to deal with the complexity inherent in many contemporary public problems, such as climate change and segregation. In practice, these attempts are given many names, such as citizen panels, deliberative fora, collaborative dialogues, etc. In the academic literature as well, the phenomenon falls under many different headings, for instance collaborative, deliberative or interactive governance. Participatory Governance and Representative Democracy refers to this empirical phenomenon as local participatory governance, that is, government-sponsored direct participation between invited citizens and local officials in concrete arrangements and concerning problems that affect them. Participatory governance, we argue, may take many forms, regarding (1) type of interaction and type of communication between participants within the specific participatory arrangement (e.g., deliberative vs. aggregative) as well as regarding (2) the relation and connection between the specific arrangement and the more traditional representative structures (e.g., compatible, incompatible, transformative or irrelevant). The proposed edited volume addresses the matter of institutionalization, highlighting the difficulties associated with establishing stability and a shared understanding of the roles and rules among citizens, local politicians and administrators in participatory arrangements.
Local Partnership and Social Exclusion in the European Union: New Forms of Local Social Governance? (Routledge Studies in Governance and Public Policy #Vol. 5)
by John Benington Mike GeddesThis book explores local partnership-based initiatives to tackle European-wide problems of poverty and social exclusion. A major comparative study of the fast developing theme of social exclusion, the contributors look at its causes, effects and at the ways it might be combatted. Based on in-depth, cross-national research from areas across Europe it provides a uniquely authoritative account of the complexities of policy development in the EU, and will be invaluable to researchers in European studies, politics, and economics.
Local Party Organizations in the Twenty-First Century
by Shannon Jenkins Douglas D. RoscoeWhile the media pay the most attention to the actions of the national political committees, political scientists have long emphasized the key role of local party organizations. Despite sweeping changes in the political environment, remarkably little research has sought to understand precisely how these local parties are structured, what they do, and whether they have any impact on the political system. In Local Party Organizations in the Twenty-First Century, Douglas D. Roscoe and Shannon Jenkins use data collected from more than 1,100 local parties in forty-eight states to provide the most thorough examination of the role of local political parties in the US political system, something that has been lacking in contemporary accounts of the role of parties. They show that party organizations take particular forms and engage in certain activities because political actors find these forms and activities useful for winning elections. While past research has centered primarily on the role of national and state political parties in the United States, this book demonstrates the continuing central role of local political parties in the electoral process, providing readers with a more comprehensive understanding of the US party system.
Local Peace, International Builders: How UN Peacekeeping Builds Peace from the Bottom Up
by William G. NomikosCommunal disputes over local issues such as land use, cattle herding, and access to scarce resources are a leading cause of conflict across the world. In the coming decades, climate change, forced migration, and violent extremism will exacerbate such disputes in places that are ill equipped to handle them. Local Peace, International Builders examines the conditions under which international interventions mitigate communal violence. The book argues that civilian perceptions of impartiality, driven primarily by the legacies of colonialism, shape interveners' ability to manage local disputes. Drawing on georeferenced data on the deployment of over 100,000 UN peacekeepers to fragile settings in the 21st century as well as a multimethod study of intervention in Mali – where widespread violence is managed by the international community – this book highlights a critical pathway through which interventions can maintain order in the international system. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Local Peacebuilding and Legitimacy: Interactions between National and Local Levels (Routledge Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution)
by Christopher Mitchell Landon E. HancockThis volume searches for pragmatic answers to the problems that continue to beset peacebuilding efforts at all levels of society, with a singular focus on the role of legitimacy. <P><P>Many peacebuilding efforts are hampered by their inability to gain the support of those they are trying to help at the local level, or those at regional, national or international levels; whose support is necessary either for success at the local level or to translate local successes to wider arenas. There is no one agreed-upon reason for the difficulty in translating peacebuilding from one arena of action to another, but among those elements that have been studied, one that appears understudied or assumed to be unimportant, is the role of legitimacy. Many questions can be asked about legitimacy as a concept, and this volume addresses these questions through multiple case studies which examine legitimacy at local, regional, national and international levels, as well as looking at how legitimacy at one level either translates or fails to translate at other levels, in order to correlate the level of legitimacy with the success or failure of peacebuilding projects and programs <P><P>The value of this work lies both in the breadth of the cases and the singular focus on the role of legitimacy in peacebuilding. By focusing on this concept this volume represents an attempt to build beyond the critical peacebuilding approach of deconstructing the liberal peacebuilding paradigm to a search for pragmatic answers to the problems that continue to plague peacebuilding efforts at all levels of society. <P><P>This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, conflict resolution, development studies, security studies and International Relations.
Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi
by John DittmerWinner of the Bancroft Prize, the Lillian Smith Book Award, the Mississippi Historical Society McLemore Prize, the Herbert G. Gutman Prize and the Gustavus Myers Center for Study of Human Rights Outstanding Book Prize. For decades the most racially repressive state in the nation fought bitterly and violently to maintain white supremacy. John Dittmer traces the monumental battle waged by civil rights organizations and by local people, particularly courageous members of the black communities who were willing to put their lives on the line to establish basic human rights for all citizens of the state. Local People tells the whole grim story in depth for the first time, from the unsuccessful attempts of black World War II veterans to register to vote to the seating of a civil rights-oriented Mississippi delegation at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Particularly dramatic - and heartrending - is Dittmer's account of the tumultuous decade of the sixties: the freedom rides of 1961, which resulted in the imprisonment at Parchman of dozens of participants; the violent reactions to protests in McComb and Jackson and to vote registration drives in Greenwood and other cities; the riot in Oxford when James Meredith enrolled at Ole Miss; the cowardly murder of longtime leader Medger Evers; and the brutal Klan lynchings of civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman during the Freedom Summer of 1964. Dittmer looks closely at the policies and actions of the Kennedy administration, which, bowing to Mississippi's powerful senators John Stennis and James Eastland, refused to intervene even in the face of obvious collusion among local officials and vigilantes. Through oral history accounts readers will come to know many of the local people and grass-roots organizers who worked, and in some cases gave their lives, for the cause of civil rights. Among those whose stories are told are Fannie Lou Hamer, the Sunflower County sharecropper who helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party; Victoria Gray and Annie Devine, who with Mrs. Hamer challenged the seating of Mississippi's congressional delegation in 1965; Bob Moses of SNCC, the most significant "outsider" in the movement; Hollis Watkins, a SNCC field secretary from southwest Mississippi; and Dave Dennis, a freedom rider from New Orleans who became CORE's Mississippi field secretary in 1962. In the final chapter, Dittmer charts the transformative strength of the Mississippi movement while pointing out the limitations of its hard-earned reforms. If black Mississippians did not achieve all their goals, he reminds us, they nonetheless managed to bring about extraordinary changes in a state that had been locked in the caste system for nearly a century. John Dittmer, a professor of history at DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana, is the author of Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920. From 1967 to 1979 he taught history at Tougaloo College in Mississippi.
Local Planning: Contemporary Principles and Practice
by Eugenie L. Birch Gary Hack Paul H. Sedway Mitchell J. SilverThis all-new edition of the popular book (2000 Title-Practice of Local Government Planning, 3e) will continue to be a valued resource for preparing for the AICP exam. This new edition helps the reader understand the complexities of planning at the local level, and prepare to make decisions in a challenging environment. The eight chapters in Local Planning, roughly spanning from context to applications, consist of articles written by a wide range of expert academics, practitioners, clients, and observers of planning. Many examples of planning in action illustrate central principles.
Local Policies and the European Social Fund: Employment Policies Across Europe (Research in Comparative and Global Social Policy)
by Katharina ZimmermannThis book reviews how local social and employment policy fields react to the European Social Fund (ESF) to determine the role of the ESF in local activation policies. Drawing on both sociology and political science literature on welfare state reforms, the author examines what shapes local policy reactions to ESF and what effects these reactions have on change in local policy fields. Comparing data from 18 local case studies across 6 European countries, and deploying an innovative mixed-method approach, the book presents comparative evidence on everyday challenges in the context of the ESF and discusses how these findings are applicable to other funding schemes.
Local Politics And Development In The Middle East
by Louis J. Cantori Iliya HarikAlthough development at the local level is a primary goal of most assistance schemes, most development agencies and banks know little of politics at the local level in developing countries. As a result, assistance programs generally lack relevance to indigenous populations and are--at the community level--viewed as being controlled from the "outside." The authors of this book concentrate on how local politics influence development in the Middle East, with the intent of encouraging more appropriate--and thus more effective--assistance programs. They discuss general policy issues and the nature of center-periphery relations in Middle East countries and delve into specific problems encountered in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Tunisia, and North Yemen, showing how information about local political schemes can aid administrators of development programs in providing assistance that is acceptable--and accepted--at the local level. The case studies provide a broad base for planning, encompassing capitalist, state capitalist, and socialist systems in both rural and urban settings.
Local Politics and Contemporary Transformations in the Arab World
by Malika Bouziane Cilja Harders Anja HoffmannThe contributors link innovative analytical concepts and ethnographic in-depth case studies from the Arab world. Based on the debates on politics from below and dynamic concepts of state, all the chapters focus on informal institutions, non-elite actors, and the dynamic and contradictory relationship between state and society.
Local Politics and Democratization in Russia (BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies)
by Cameron RossThis comprehensive study of local politics in Russia shows that the key reforms of local government, and the struggle to forge viable grassroots democracies have been inextricably linked to the wider struggle for power between the regions and the Kremlin, and to the specific nature of Russia’s highly politicized and negotiated form of asymmetrical federalism. During the Yeltsin era all attempts to create a universal and uniform system of local-self-government in the federation were a failure. Under the protection of their constitutions and charters, and the extra-constitutional rights and powers granted to them in special bilateral treaties, regional leaders, particularly in Russia’s 21 ethnic republics were able to instigate highly authoritarian regimes and to thwart the implementation key local government reforms. Thus, by the end of the Yeltsin era the number of municipalities, their type, status and powers, varied tremendously from region to region. Putin’s local government reforms also need to be viewed as an integral component of his wider centralizing political agenda, and his assault on the principles and practices of federalism. With the instigation of his ‘dictatorship of law’ and ‘power vertical’, Putin has thwarted the development of grassroots democracy and overseen the creation of local ‘electoral authoritarian’ regimes. Putin’s new system of local self-government marks a victory for the proponents of the ‘statist concept’ of local self-government over those who championed the ‘societal concept’, codified in Article 12 of the Russian Constitution. Overall, this book is an important resource for anyone seeking to understand politics in Putin’s Russia.
Local Politics and Mayoral Elections in 21st Century America: The Keys to City Hall (Routledge Research in Urban Politics and Policy)
by Sean D. Foreman Marcia L. GodwinSome of the most populated and storied American cities had mayoral elections in 2013. Open contests in New York City, Los Angeles and Boston, for example, offer laboratories to examine electoral trends in urban politics. Cities are facing varied predicaments. Boston was rocked by the bombing of the marathon on April 15. Detroit is roiled by being the largest U.S. city to declare bankruptcy, and Chicago, which had an open, competitive election in 2011, is dealing with significant gun violence. San Diego’s mayor resigned in August 2013 due to sexual harassment charges and other mayors are surrounded by corruption scandals. Houston and St. Louis had non-competitive elections recently but their mayors are notable for their tenure in office and emphasis will be on public policy outcomes in those cases. Leaders in most cities face dramatic changes and challenges due to economic and social realities. The Keys to City Hall offers a complete and succinct review and analysis of the top mayoral campaigns in major American cities in recent years as well as the politics and public policy management of those urban areas. Emerging theories of urban governance, demographic changes, and economic conditions are examined in introductory chapters; the introduction will provide a unique and comprehensive focus on major trends in advertisement, changes in campaign strategies, fundraising, and the use of social media at the local level. In Part Two, scholars with expertise in local politics, urban public policy, and the governance explore some of the largest and most noteworthy U.S. cities, each of which has a recent, competitive mayoral election. They will also provide updated data on mayoral powers and problems faced by local executives. Written as lively narratives in a highly readable style, this book advances theory on urban politics by reviewing developments in the field and aligning theoretical approaches with realities on the ground based on the most recent elections and governance structures. As such, it will be a much needed resource to scholars interested in local politics, and the public policy debates of specific major urban and metropolitan areas.
Local Politics and National Policy: Multi-level Conflicts in Japan and Beyond (Routledge Contemporary Japan Series)
by Ken Victor HijinoThis book is about why and how central and local governments clash over important national policy decisions. Its empirical focus is on the local politics of Japan which has significantly shaped, and been shaped by, larger developments in national politics. The book argues that since the 1990s, changes in the national political arena, fiscal and administrative decentralization, as well as broader socio-economic developments have led to a decoupling of once closely integrated national and local party systems in Japan. Such decoupling has led to a breakdown of symbiotic relations between the centre and regions. In its place are increasing strains between national and local governments leading to greater intra-party conflict, inter-governmental conflicts, and more chief executives with agendas and resources increasingly autonomous of the national ruling party. Although being a book primarily focused on the Japanese case, the study seeks to contribute to a broader understanding of how local partisans shape national policy-making. The book theorizes and investigates how the degree of state centralization, vertical integration for party organizations, and partisan congruence in different levels of government affect inter-governmental relations. Japan’s experience is compared with Germany, Canada, and the UK to explore sources of multi-level policy conflict.
Local Politics and Social Policy in China: Let Some Get Healthy First
by Kerry RatiganDue to uneven economic reforms, Chinese provinces have developed distinct approaches to governing that impact social policy priorities and policy implementation. Ratigan shows how coastal provinces tended to prioritize health and education, and developed a pragmatic policy style, which fostered innovation and professionalism in policy implementation. Meanwhile, inland provinces tended to prioritize targeted poverty alleviation and affordable housing, while taking a paternalist, top-down approach to implementation. This book provides a quantitative analysis of provincial social policy spending in the 2000s and qualitative case studies of provinces with divergent approaches to social policy. It highlights healthcare, but also draws on illustrative examples from poverty alleviation, education, and housing policy. By showing the importance of local actors in shaping social policy implementation, this book will appeal to scholars and advanced students of Chinese politics, comparative welfare studies, and comparative politics.
Local Politics in Indonesia: Pathways to Power (Routledge Contemporary Southeast Asia Series)
by Nankyung ChoiCompetitive elections have become an institutionalized feature of contemporary Indonesia’s politics. This, together with other considerations, makes it reasonable to call Indonesia the world’s third largest democracy. Nonetheless, democratic elections in Indonesia are both more complex and interesting than is commonly understood. This book explores how local elections in Indonesia have affected the development and dynamics of Indonesia’s fledgling democracy. Based on fine-grained analyses of elections in five localities, the book shows how Indonesia’s transition to direct elections of local government executives has transformed party politics and elite development at local levels of governance. Employing the methods of political anthropology and informed by a critical reading of theories of democracy and decentralization, the book presents detailed analyses of elections in five localities across four Indonesian provinces. The book calls attention to the ambiguous relation between formal democratic reforms and political behavior. It illustrates how local elite politics has evolved within the context of political and administrative reforms, whose announced goals are to improve the representativeness and responsiveness of political institutions. This book provides a window onto local political processes that will be of interest to students and scholars of politics in Southeast Asia and beyond.
Local Politics in Jordan and Morocco: Strategies of Centralization and Decentralization (Columbia Studies in Middle East Politics)
by Janine A. ClarkIn recent years, authoritarian states in the Middle East and North Africa have faced increasing international pressure to decentralize political power. Decentralization is presented as a panacea that will foster good governance and civil society, helping citizens procure basic services and fight corruption. Two of these states, Jordan and Morocco, are monarchies with elected parliaments and recent experiences of liberalization. Morocco began devolving certain responsibilities to municipal councils decades ago, while Jordan has consistently followed a path of greater centralization. Their experiences test such assumptions about the benefits of localism.Janine A. Clark examines why Morocco decentralized while Jordan did not and evaluates the impact of their divergent paths, ultimately explaining how authoritarian regimes can use decentralization reforms to consolidate power. Local Politics in Jordan and Morocco argues that decentralization is a tactic authoritarian regimes employ based on their coalition strategies to expand their base of support and strengthen patron-client ties. Clark analyzes the opportunities that decentralization presents to local actors to pursue their interests and lays out how municipal-level figures find ways to use reforms to their advantage. In Morocco, decentralization has resulted not in greater political inclusivity or improved services, but rather in the entrenchment of pro-regime elites in power. The main Islamist political party has also taken advantage of these reforms. In Jordan, decentralization would undermine the networks that benefit elites and their supporters. Based on extensive fieldwork, Local Politics in Jordan and Morocco is an important contribution to Middle East studies and political science that challenges our understanding of authoritarian regimes’ survival strategies and resilience.