This project aims to identify and "map" the stages of municipal decision making including the development of an Ethical Purchasing Policy by a coalition of community organizations, the approval by the municipal Council, and the implementation of the policy through the municipal departments. The focus is the standardized processes that comprise public participation, public decision making, and public administration. By using institutional ethnography in an innovative manner, this project develops a new way of studying social movements in general, and the social organization of activism in particular that demonstrates that activism is work which is coordinated translocally by text-mediated ruling relations. The results of this project will further the understanding of community members, and municipal Councillors and staff of the social implications of their work and the Ethical Purchasing Policy they helped develop and implement. This research could be used by community organizations and other municipalities considering developing similar policies.

This thesis is about whether the political majority has an impact on gender mainstreaming at the committee decisions. Gender mainstreaming is the main strategy in Sweden in order to increase equality. It has been the dominant strategy for over 20 years, but gender equality is still not achieved. Political majority could have an impact on how municipalities work with gender mainstreaming. I study three municipalities, the municipality of Örebro, the municipality of Umeå and the municipality of Jönköping and how decisions have been made in the committee responsible for preschool and primary school in each municipality. Therefore, I study in this thesis if there are any similarities and differences between the municipalities with gender mainstreaming and if political majority can have an impact on gender mainstreaming. I have chosen to use a comparative case study to compare the gender mainstreaming of these three municipalities, using a qualitative content analysis. The analysis is based on the municipalities' gender equality plans, strategic plans and meeting protocols using the Municipal Population Model and the CEMR-declaration (Council of European Municipalities and Regions). The conclusions of the analysis are that there are similarities and differences in how municipalities use gender mainstreaming in their decisions. The similarities depends on that all municipalities are based on the same strategy and that everyone is based on the CEMR-declaration and the differences are that they have formed the goals different. The conclusion is that political majority does not have such a major impact on gender mainstreaming. Keywords: gender mainstreaming, municipalities, political parties, CEMR-declaration

Magister Legum - LLM / The aim of this research paper has been to answer the question whether the actions of the National Treasury in invoking section 216(2) of the Constitution in respect of the 59 municipalities for debt owed in arrears to the creditors Eskom and the water boards, has been legal. Did its decision meet the substantive requirements as well as the procedural requirements as set under the legal framework of the Constitution and the MFMA? The second question was to assess the value in using the intervention against defaulting municipalities, by looking at whether the intervention was effective and what impact did it have on the defaulting municipalities.

Since the advent of democratic dispensation in 1994, the local sphere of government has had a significant role to play in the achievement of the South African government's goal of facilitating the social and economic development of communities. This development manifests itself in improving the lives of women, who have for the most part been excluded from taking part in the economy, politics and business. While accomplishments have been made in improving the lives of women post 1994, with reference to the increased participation and representation of women in all three spheres of government, the situation of women has degenerated especially in the local sphere. Women are threatened with problems such as gender-based violence, poverty, HIV and AIDS, the lack of provision of basic services, illiteracy and unemployment. This situation has drawn attention to analyse the issues municipalities are tackling in implementing government polices in their communities, in this research the policy that will be utilised is the Gender Policy Framework for Local Government Framework established to improve the lives of men and women. Challenges associated with implementing a gender policy are aligned with local government authorities making an allowance for gender as an auxiliary issue and not as precedence and the lack of capacity; financial, human resource and institutional in all municipalities in South Africa to implement gender policies. The premise of this research is to construct a comparative investigation of the progress that the Buffalo City and the Amahlathi Local Municipalities have made in the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the effectiveness of the Gender Policy Framework for Local Government Framework. / Dissertation (MPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / School of Public Management and Administration (SPMA) / unrestricted

One of the main present problem of the municipalities is decision about legal forms for provision of public services. In this thesis I'm analysing posibilities of selected legal forms and defining the main factors which influence the decision of the munucipality. In conclusion I'm aplying individual factors to the real example of Sezimovo Ústí and I'm presenting general recomandation for the municipalities.

The main objective of this thesis is to explore the issue of microregional associations, the center of my interest is the Borsko microregion and the renewal project of the recreational area Bonětice. I am especially interested in how this association is performing since its establishment, how it is pursuing its aims, which projects were implemented by the Borsko microregion, whether it is operating effectively and, ultimately, what barriers and limits the development is facing. To confirm my initial assumptions, I used the survey method. The work is divided into two parts, theoretical and practical. In the theoretical part I deal with basic concepts and practical part deals with the microregion Borsko. The work also includes socio-economic analysis of microregion Borsko.

This paper concerns itself with the nature of local government associations in Canada. The small body of literature concerning local government associations which precedes this study confines itself to an evaluation of local government associations based on their performance in the intergovernmental arena. In other words, ability to lobby the provincial government is the yardstick by which local government associations have been measured in the past. As this body of literature maintains that local government associations are a type of interest group, it is appropriate to attempt to situate the behaviour of these associations within some kind of interest group framework. A review of interest group literature suggests that it is inappropriate to analyse and evaluate local government associations based on the single activity of lobbying the provincial government. Local government associations spend much of their time providing other services to their membership. As well, the provision of these services impacts their ability to lobby effectively. The interest group literature suggests that members join interest groups for a variety of reasons, only some of which are related to the pursuit of a collective good. The criticisms of Lionel Feldman and Katherine Graham in Bargaining for Cities: Municipalities and Intergovernmental Relations, An Assessment and in Peter G. Johnson's research on the Union of Nova Scotia Municipalities are based on too narrow an interpretation of the activity of local government associations. This paper discusses their criticisms that local government associations are neither legitimate nor representative, that they act solely as agents of provincial governments, and that they allow themselves to be circumscribed by more senior levels of government. A case study of the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) provides an overview of the organizational structure of this local government association, which suggests that the UBCM is an interest group whose main activities include lobbying the provincial government and providing other services to its membership. The presentation of survey data addresses itself primarily to Feldman/Graham's and Johnson's criticisms of local government associations, and concludes that when a broader range of local government association activity is taken into account, these criticisms are largely ill-founded. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

This master thesis deals with management of municipality property municipality Stará Turá in the years 2013 - 2018. The theoretical part defines the territorial self-government in the Slovak republic, as well as management of the municipality, budget revenues and budget expenditures and municipality property. The analytical part contains basic information about the village Stará Turá, analysis and subsequent management of municipality property in the years. The last part deals with the possible utilization of the economic result for improvement of the municipality of Stará Turá.

The diploma thesis Sport as Local Cleavages: Case Study of Vysočina Region analyses whether sport and sport related topics (sport financing and other support, organization of sports events, operation and building of sport facilities, association activities, etc.) are able to divide a society, or whether it can be one of the cleavages at the local level in the Vysočina Region and what intensity this cleavage could have in the examined municipalities. The theoretical part contains the concept of conflict lines of S. Rokkan and S. M. Lipset. The research put emphasis on the local level of politics, the Czech environment and the cleavage connected with a sport. Authors such as S.Balík, V. Bubeníček, J. Čmejrek, J. Čopík, V. Hloušek and M. Kubálek are dealing with these issues. The analytical part of the thesis is a case study that examines the presence of cleavage, its intensity and the approach of actors through both semi-structured interviews with representatives of selected municipalities, records of municipalities and as well through media news monitoring. Based on research it is obvious that sport could evoke and develop conflicts and, in some cases, can indeed significantly divide a society and establish a new local policy player.

Swedish municipalities have very different age structures. Migration from rural to urban areas has led to a polarisation of Swedish regions, where urban centres have an inflow of young and skilled workers while rural regions are ageing and falling behind economically. This thesis examines what effect population ageing has on output of Swedish municipalities and how that effect differs between urban and rural municipalities. By classifying all 290 municipalities as either rural or urban and dividing the population of each municipality into six age cohorts, a clear negative relation is found between the share of people aged 65 to 79 and gross regional product per capita in both types of municipalities. Surprisingly, this negative relation is not found for the share of people above 80. This group is positively related to output in urban municipalities, but not in rural ones. Overall, population ageing seems to be negative for economic growth in both urban and rural municipalities.