It has been widely acknowledged that boundary problems resulting from urban growth is one of the persistent issues at the local level. At least three main problem areas have been identified: fragmentation of the planning system, inefficiency in the service provision and the scale of local participation. The main objective of this thesis is to analyze the restructuring of the organizational structure and statutes of local authorities in terms of boundary changes, amalgamation and annexation with reference to the Turkish case. The city of Denizli has been taken as a case study as there has been a recent change in the municipal boundaries which brought the annexation of small-sized municipalities to the Denizli Municipality. The thesis problematizes the Denizli case in terms of planning processes, service provision and local participation. The experience of other countries and the literature on this issue are to be used in order to provide a yardstick against which the case of Denizli could be measured.

Advocates of local economic development (LED) in cities confront the problem of exclusionary socio-economic outcomes, despite the purported pro-poor objectives of many local authority leaders. Most studies engage with aspects of this problem in a fragmented manner. This study examines exclusionary outcomes systematically by integrating the themes of urban governance, leadership and LED; and by applying Stone’s (1989) urban regime theory (URT) and Heifetz’s (1994) adaptive leadership theory (ALT). The study employs a cross-national comparative case study design, by comparing and contrasting LED approaches in the urban regimes of Leeds in England and Johannesburg in South Africa. It uses primarily a qualitative research strategy, complemented by the interpretation of quantitative data. Empirical evidence was collected during primary research activities undertaken from 2008 to 2011 using document analysis, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and non-participant observations. Thematic analysis was applied to the data and the NVivo software package was used to verify the analysis of interview data. The thesis argues that governance processes in pro-growth urban regimes are neither sufficiently networked nor adaptive enough to achieve pro-poor LED outcomes. These failures can be explained in part by the power of private business interests and structural barriers that tend to perpetuate income inequality and unemployment, undermining both equitable regime governance and adaptivity towards pro-poor objectives. Drawing from the perspectives of URT and ALT, the thesis highlights four inter-related factors which are central to a better understanding of LED approaches and leadership processes in urban regimes: (i) context, (ii) capacity, (iii) consequences, and (iv) collaboration dynamics and power. It concludes by identifying lessons for theory and policy practice, together with proposals on how determined leaders could begin to confront the intractable challenges of socio-economic exclusion in cities.

This thesis is concerned with the measurement and determinants of efficiency of local governments in the provision of public goods and services. In particular, the three chapters provide new contributions to the literature of fiscal federalism studying, from different angles, the relationship between policies that can stimulate the electoral accountability of politicians and local government efficiency in the provision of public services. In all chapters the measurement of local government efficiency has been obtained through data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier models using different measures of inputs and outputs employed in the production of public services. Subsequently, the determinants of efficiency have been studied using panel data models and quasi-experimental methods. The analysis takes advantage of the policies implemented by the Italian and the United Kingdom (UK) government in the last 20 years. In particular, Italian local authorities have been subject to an intense process of fiscal decentralisation, and English councils have been subject to a unique process of performance evaluation based on quantitative measures of outputs.

Post-war Sierra Leone faces a deep deficit in the supply of basic public goods which is detrimental to quality of life and remains a risk factor for future conflict. The government, under substantial donor influence, seeks to address this deficit through democratic decentralization. However, evidence of the link between decentralization and improved public goods provision remains weak. I approach the public goods deficit from a different angle; rather than assuming that an imported solution is needed, I consider what can be learned from existing patterns of public goods provision. At the core of this study is a comparison of ‘success versus failure’ in local public goods provision in the city of Makeni, with the aim of understanding key dynamics that lead to divergent outcomes. While I set out to focus on cases of public goods provision led by two main categories of local government actors — elected councils and chiefs — I found that it in all four cases, citizens played a substantial role. I therefore analyze the cases as instances of coproduction of public goods. I find that coproduction is an important means of maintaining a basic supply of local public goods when state capacity is weak. With this in mind, I draw on the case study evidence to develop a set of propositions about the conditions under which coproduction is more likely to succeed in contemporary Sierra Leone. These propositions are suggestive of an alternate institutional approach to addressing the public goods deficit—one that is based on the development of workarounds for key obstacles rather than institutional overhaul. However, coproduction is no ‘magic bullet’; it has troubling implications for social equality and the development of state capacity over the longer term and thus judgements about the desirability of coproductive arrangements are likely to involve complex trade-offs.

This thesis explores the relationship between local government and social change strategies. More specifically, it examines the series of highly contested attempts during the 1980s to deploy local government in order to challenge the discrimination and prejudice facing lesbians and gay men. Whilst, much of the effort was directed at making council services more responsive to lesbian and gay needs, a key aspect of the project concerned the transformation of dominant sexual meanings. Four questions provide a theoretical and empirical framework for this research. First, why did some local authorities address lesbian and gay issues? Second, how successful were they in doing so? Third, what factors constrained or limited their attempts? And fourth, why were lesbian and gay municipal initiatives so controversial? The first section of this thesis examines the reconstitution of lesbian and gay issues on the local government agenda, and the subsequent trajectory of their development within particular authorities. The thesis then goes on to examine the impact of bureaucratic processes and right-wing opposition on lesbian and gay municipal discourses. I argue that despite significant opposition to lesbian and gay policies, in general the right did not mobilise. The ideological steer within local government bureaucracy was usually sufficient to 'weed out' or dilute more progressive proposals. However, on occasions where this broke down, opposing forces intervened, both to obstruct lesbian and gay initiatives and to use the policies' existence to advance their own political agenda. The final part of this thesis draws together several key issues: the general absence of a more radical sexual politics; the crisis of implementation; the nature of opponents' attitudes towards homosexuality and local government; and the decline of lesbian and gay municipal politics post-1987. In the conclusion, I return to the question of local government's radical potential by proposing an alternative, decentred approach to municipal sexual politics. Methodologically, this thesis is eclectic drawing on several disciplinary areas in conjunction with a range of theoretical perspectives, particularly neo-marxism, feminism and poststructuralism. Field research comprises of interviews, mass media and local government documentation combined with my own experiences as an actor within the municipal lesbian and gay project. This thesis is intended to make a contribution to a theoretical understanding of municipal politics, especially to the relationship between local government, sexuality, ideology and social change. it also offers a detailed account and analysis of lesbian and gay municipal developments, one of the most controversial initiatives of the 1980s.

This thesis examines the development by local authorities of alternative models of ownership of public housing, focusing on large scale voluntary transfers (LSVTs) to specially created housing associations. I attempt to place stock transfer within the wider policy context of changes in the State’s role in the provision of services; and changes in organisational development, reflected in transfer structures; and the wider shift in responsibility for the delivery of public services to the private sector. I examine theories that explain the development of the State’s role in housing and discuss their relationship to LSVT. As discussions involving ‘the State’ must recognise the different interests and motivations of Central and local government, I examine action taken to promote and achieve stock transfer by local authorities and central government. The research method adopted to achieve my aims includes both analysis of existing data and the collection of new data through a sample survey of twenty LSVT associations. I approached the research in five stages: background research – including reviewing literature and examining the legal and regulatory framework for LSVT; identifying the characteristics of early LSVT associations; selecting a sample of twenty selected associations for in-depth survey; conducting in-depth interviews with the twenty associations; analysing and tabulating the data collected and drawing conclusions. The survey focuses on staff perceptions of the reasons for transfer and why politicians and tenants accepted the change; organisational and management change brought about by the new landlords; and the changes brought about by private sector involvement, including new personnel brought in to help run the organisations and the influence of private funders. I attempt to draw key conclusions about LSVT associations from the evidence presented. Finally, I examine how early LSVTs paved the way for a wider stock transfer programme, including transfers by inner-urban authorities and large city councils. I argue that while LSVT may have been developed in response to the financial pressure upon local authorities from the early 1980s onwards, the process has created a new style of business orientated social landlord.

China’s transition from planned economy to market economy (economic liberalization) has catalyzed the private sector’s emergence and growth, as well as given birth to new forms of business associations within the private sector, such as Non-local Chambers of Commerce (NCCs, hereafter). NCCs emerged from mid-1990s, and have proliferated rapidly across China’s localities and industries. Unlike traditional official business associations, NCCs have significantly participated in local governance and demonstrated new types of state-society relations. However, they have not yet reached the attention of scholarly researchers, and have been understudied within and outside of China. At the same time, political scientists working on policy processes have begun to include China as a case to enrich their theory, but find it hard to adapt established models to China’s policymaking system. Research on the Chinese policy process have gone from elite politics in the 1950-1960s, to “fragmented authoritarianism” in the 1970-1980s, then to “fragmented authoritarianism 2.0” after 2000. During the evolution of these theories, it has been noticed that more and more non-bureaucratic actors have been involved into the policymaking process if not being the prominent actors. There have been studies on “policy entrepreneur”, environmental NGOs, international NGOs, Chinese think-tanks and different forms of business lobbying. However, within the spectrum of business lobbying, there is a gap in understanding business associations’ influence in policy processes, especially the new type of so claimed “grass-roots” business associations. This thesis sheds lights on this new type of private sector business association - NCCs and their influence in the local urban policy process. NCCs have been widely involved in local governance and political engagement. However, their political participation shows great variation due to differences in regions, organizational forms, industries and policy spheres. So the question of what lead to the variation of NCCs’ policy influence has become the highlights of this research project. By using the empirical materials from participant observation and interviews, this thesis aims to answer two main questions: How did NCCs influence the local policy process and what explains the difference in their policy influence? In this thesis, I develop a typology for NCCs by using the dimensions of “origins” and “networks”. Thus all the NCCs have been categorized into four types: “Dependent NCCs”, “Independent NCCs”, “Coupling NCCs” and “Decoupling NCCs”. Through in-depth case analysis, I argue that NCCs’ networks and their ability to mobilize resources within their networks determine their policy impact. In terms of NCCs’ network orientation, the state networks of NCCs directly affect their access to policy lobbying, while the business networks directly affect the resources for their lobbying, thus determine NCCs’ lobbying capacity in the local policy process. In terms of NCCs’ network strategy, network span influences policy making while network intensity influences policy implementations. To be specific, NCCs with network span strategy could influence more general policy agendas and policy spheres, while NCCs with network intensity strategy could exert more influence in specific policies especially in the policy implementation stage.

No description available.

This thesis constitutes a new approach to the study of labour movement opposition and resistance to Conservative Government policy and practice toward local government in the 1980s. In contrast to previous analyses, for example, this exploration of labour movement activity considers trade union involvement, does not use artificial frameworks, such as New Urban Left, or evaluate subject matter against a priori standards. Examination of the campaigns studied is undertaken within the framework of society as a whole, so that the development of campaign practices and conceptual principles, identified in relation to campaign aims of defending local government services, jobs, and local democracy, are subjected to reciprocal processes of interrogation. This is achieved by examining events within an historical context, that begins with the expansion of local service provision and employment in the 1960s, includes retrenchment of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and concludes with labour movement campaigns against rate capping in the mid-1980s. This period also includes: changes in local democratic practice, in both constitutional and labour movement terms; developments in the composition, organisation, and outlook of constitutive labour movement bodies; and, labour movement responses to attempts to reduce public expenditure, local government service provision, and local government employment. The interrelations between these factors, changing socio-economic developments, conceptual principles and practice within the labour movement, and government policy and practice are all identified and explored as part of this thesis. Similarly, an integral part of this process involves the consideration afforded to interrelations between labour movement officers, leaders, activists, members, and the broader populace; in terms of conceptual principles, the use and development of labour movement structures, and democratic practice. Thus, by exploring the interrelations between the areas identified, as opposed to imposing dichotomous or causalistic interpretations, the fate of the campaigns against rate capping are explained.

As the first study focusing on the implementation of the constitutions and quality of government (QoG) in Kurdistan from a practical point of view, this thesis examines the question why the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) fails to deliver the constitutions in a way that strengthens its democracy and produces a good QoG. From analyses of the data gleaned from 41 semi-structured interviews the thesis identifies the main factors that affect the implementation of the constitutions and QoG with particular reference to the 2005 Iraqi constitution and the Kurdistan draft constitution of 2009. The study also outlines the reform process in the Kurdistan Region and explains how a system of political checks and balances in a democratic society can improve QoG and democracy. This research considers the main obstacle to the establishment of a good and democratic government in the region to be political influence on all state institutions, including the executive, parliament, the judiciary, military forces, police and security services, and use of these institutions for political and personal benefits. Other obstacles identified are a reliance on oil products, a culture of corruption, poor administration, a low-quality legal system, Kurdish disputes with the central Iraqi government, the absence of a clear, enforceable regional constitution, the lack of experience with democracy and, more importantly, the absence of political will for reform by the ruling parties. In this light, the study recommends strengthening the state institutions, reducing political influence over them and establishing a process of political checks and balances – as exists in democratic states – as extremely important to improving QoG. However, it also argues that these aims will not be achieved without a genuine political will for reform. Thus, this thesis stands as the first detailed research in this field that qualitatively investigates the effect of the implementation of democratic constitutions in a region that has gone through conflict and violence; attempts to set out the factors that form obstacles to such implementation; and puts forward recommendations for the improvement of QoG in the light of the constitutions. This study therefore, can help the government and politicians to take action in terms of reforms to improve QoG in the region and develop the democratic process. This research will also contribute to future study on a similar theme.