The public sector is a major purchaser of goods and services. By setting requirements for environmental and social considerations in public procurement, an authority has the possibility to use consumer power to influence the actors in a market. The purpose of this paper is to investigate public procurement of textile products in a municipality, in order to gain knowledge about factors that may be important for the use of environmental and social criteria. Håkan Hydén´s (professor in sociology of law) norm model was used as the basis of the analysis, where the conduct was investigated along three dimensions of the norm – willingness, knowledge and system conditions – in order to identify underlying factors that can influence the process. The results – analyzed by using interviews and documents – show that the procurer's willingness, motivation and knowledge are important factors in this context, as well as the political priority of the municipality. Procurers gain knowledge in this area to a large extent through networking with other actors. The possibilities to be able to verify the criteria are important. Verification of requirements is problematic because the municipality, as a public actor, is far from the production in the textile production chain. Lack of knowledge, in the form of mapping the textile production, prevents the development of criteria for best available technique. However, demands on manufacturing can be set indirectly by asking for some eco-labels (or equivalent) as verification. Furthermore, system conditions in terms of rules in the public procurement legislation set the framework for the procurement process. / Chemicals in textiles: Managing environmental and health risks from products with complex product chains

Approximately one out of every seven Canadians over the age of 15 years (3.4 million people) has some level of disability. The increasing prevalence of disability in our aging society is commonly accepted as fact with both disability and the severity of disability gradually increasing with age (Statistics Canada, 2001). Recognizing that persons with disabilities often face "barriers" to full participation in society, some provinces have enacted human rights or accessibility planning legislation to remove these barriers. This study examines the process of accessibility planning for persons with disabilities within Canadian municipalities with a population of between 50,000 –500,000, otherwise referred to as mid-size cities (MSC). The underlying assumption of this research is that mid-size Canadian municipalities are carrying out some form of accessibility planning using planning instruments [or other tools] to remove barriers and improve accessibility for persons with disabilities. The purpose of this study is to determine: first, what planning instruments are being used in the design of open space and built environments in MSCs to remove physical barriers, and what other tools are available to attain greater accessibility for persons with disabilities living in mid-size urban settings. Secondly, to consider who is involved in the implementation and use of planning instruments and other tools, and to determine what are their respective roles. Third, to discover the conditions under which planning instruments and other tools are being applied, to learn what financial or other resources are being allocated and how are they being allocated in the short and long term. This study concludes that planning instruments are being used to improve accessibility for persons with disabilities in mid-size Canadian municipalities. Planning tools are not the only way to remove barriers to persons with disabilities. Furthermore, the effectiveness of those tools is clearly contingent upon available human and financial resources. Nevertheless, the study finds that municipal planners and others are using these essential planning tools in a variety of ways to remove physical barriers to accessibility. Inherent in all efforts to remove barriers is the active involvement of persons with disabilities. Thus, involving persons with disabilities in the development and application of planning instruments and other tools has the potential to build the foundation of successful accessibility planning efforts in Canadian mid-size communities. These conclusions have implications for research in the area of accessibility planning and recommendations for Canadian planning practice.

This research addresses the question of what explains municipal performance in terms of delivering social services and fiscal performance. While the existing literature explains governmental performance with political, institutional and socio-demographic factors, I suggest that the greatest influence on municipal performance comes from having qualified managers. Specifically, I argue that that mayoral qualifications influence municipal performance. By qualifications I mean mayors’ human capital, that is, their educational and job-related experience. The rationale for my proposition rests on the fact that in developing municipalities the mayor is not just the elected leader but also the public manager, as s/he performs not just political but also administrative functions. Under certain circumstances, however, mayoral qualifications may not have the same influential power on municipal performance. Therefore, I also argue that in unfavorable municipal contexts, the potential influence of mayoral qualifications on performance decreases. I use both statistical and survey-experimental methodologies to test the hypotheses derived from the proposed “mayoral quality theory.” I collected six years of data for the statistical analyses by doing field research across the 40 municipalities that comprise the Colombian Department of Norte of Santander. For the surveyexperimental analysis, I gathered data from interviews and surveys with 120 mayors from 12 Latin American countries, who participated in the II Latin American Congress of Cities and Local Governments held in Cali, Colombia, on July 26-29, 2006. The statistical findings reveal that mayoral qualifications—education and jobrelated experience—positively influence municipal performance with respect to education enrollment, tax property collection, and social program investment. However, the positive impact that mayoral qualifications have on such performance indicators decreases under external constraints, such as the presence of illegal armed groups. From the survey-experimental study, findings show that issue salience (or nature of municipal need) moderates the impact that mayoral qualifications have on mayors’ decision-making. In education issues, for example, qualified mayors are more likely to perform better, while in infrastructure issues they are less likely to do so.

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.

Kommunerna har som markägaren en viktig roll för att styra bebyggelseutvecklingen och locka aktörer att etablera sig i kommunen. Genom markanvisningar kan kommunen bjuda ut mark som ska exploaterats till intresserade byggherrar. Begreppet markanvisning är inte entydigt men innebär i huvudsak att en byggherre under en viss tid och under vissa villkor får en ensamrätt att förhandla med kommunen om att i ett senare skede förvärva ett område för bebyggande. Det har i tidigare studier påtalats brist på transparens och förutsägbarhet i den kommunalamarkanvisningsprocessen varför denna studie syftade till att utreda hur det ser ut idag vad gäller transparens och förutsägbarhet. För att få svar på frågeställningarna genomfördes en kvantitativ enkätundersökning som skickades ut till alla Sveriges 290 kommuner, dels för att kunna skapa en helhetsbild av nuläget och dels för att tidigare studier begränsat sig till större kommuner. Enkäten besvarades av 133 (46%) kommuner varav 62 (46%) angav att de använde markanvisningar och 70 (53%) att de inte gör det eller gör det vid enstaka tillfällen, en kommun svarade inte på frågan. Denna studie har endast gett en översiktlig bild av dagsläget och av resultatet framkom att rutinerna för att informera om och utvärdera markanvisningsprocessen skiljer sig åt och det finns fortfarande brister vad gäller transparens och förutsägbarhet, framförallt med avseende på motivering, uppföljning och utvärdering. Det fanns även skillnader mellan kommunerna och det framstår som att kommuner som genomfört fler markanvisningar i större utsträckning informera om, motivera, uppfölja och utvärdera markanvisningar. De flesta kommunerna ser även ut att uppleva att markanvisningssystemet och arbetet med markanvisningar fungerar ganska bra, men att det kan bli bättre. Slutligen bör nämnas att flertalet kommuner ser ut att befinna sig i en utvecklingsfas och det finns därav anledning att tro att markanvisningssystemet i framtiden kommer bli mer transparent och förutsägbart. / The municipalities as landowners have an important role to control the urban development and attract developers to establish themselves in the municipality. Municipalities can trough land allocation offer land for development to interested developers. The concept of land allocation is not clear but essentially means that a developer, during a certain time and under certain conditions has a right to negotiate with the municipality to subsequently acquire an area fordevelopment. There have been previous studies complaining of the lack of transparency and predictability in the municipal land allocation process. That’s why the purpose of this study is to investigate the situation of today in terms of transparency and predictability. To get answers to the questions a quantitative survey was conducted and it that was sent out to all 290 municipalities in Sweden, partly to create an overall picture of the current situation and partly because previous studies were limited to larger municipalities. 133 (46%) of the municipalities answered the questionnaire by witch 62 (46%) stated that they used the land allocation and 72 (53%) that they do not or do it occasionally, one municipal didn’t answer the question. This study only gives a general picture of the reality and the result showed that the routines to inform about and evaluate land allocation process differs and there are still shortcomings in terms of transparency and predictability, particularly with regard to motivation, follow-up and evaluation. There were also a differences between the municipalities and it appears that municipalities conducted more land allocation of teams to a greater extent inform, motivate, monitor and assess land allocation. The overall experience for the municipalities is that the land allocation system and work with land allocation works pretty well, but there are still areas for improvement. Most municipalities are in a development phases and there is hence reason to believe that the land allocation system in the future will become more transparent and predictable.

This study examines the impact of the municipality level characteristics on the average Math achievement of students in third year of lower secondary schools in Mexico. Using data from different Mexican and international sources and multi-level regression models the present work shows that municipality characteristics provide additional explanation of the unexplained variability in educational achievement controlling for school-level factors and even without accounting for student characteristics. Although school factors are highly correlated with municipality’s characteristics, the present study finds that unobservable characteristics of the municipality are playing an important role in Mexican students’ achievement which goes beyond the possible impact that school factors have on achievement. / text

Nevyriausybinės organizacijos Europos sąjungoje yra pilietinės visuomenės garantas, leidžiantis vyriausybei, savivaldybėms padėti žmonėms tapti pilietiškais, tobulėti įvairiose gyvenimiškose srityse, aktyviai dalyvauti kuriant stabilią valstybę. Šiam tikslui pasiekti vyriausybės, ministerijos, savivaldybės ir privatūs asmenys skiria lėšas nevyriausybinių organizacijų veikloms finansuoti, užsibrėždamos tikslus, tokius kaip žmoniškumo ir tolerancijos skatinimas bendruomenėse, miesto ir kaimo atotrūkio mažinimas, jaunimo iniciatyvos ir užimtumas regionuose, kurie įsikūrimų provincijoje, naujų technologijų skverbimasis ir kūrybiškumo skatinimas. . Darbo tikslas – išanalizuoti finansavimo šaltinio poveikio nevyriausybinėms organizacijoms, veikiančioms prie savivaldybių, problematiką. Darbą sudaro keturios pagrindinės dalys, įvadas ir išvados. Pirmojoje dalyje, kitaip dar vadinamoje teoriniu pagrindimu yra nagrinėjami užsakovo – vykdytojo teorijos problematika bei projektinės veiklos finansavimo principai ir metodai. Šis skyrius yra labai svarbus, leidęs atrinkti tinkamas sąvokas ir konceptualizuoti tyrimą. Antroji dalis skirta nevyriausybinių organizacijų, veikiančių prie savivaldybių sąvokų ir sampratų analizei. Šioje dalyje gilinimąsi į nevyriausybinių organizacijų apibrėžtis skirstant jas ne tik pagal tipus, bet ir pagal veiklos pobūdį, lokalinę padėtį. Trečioji dalis skirta nevyriausybinių organizacijų finansavimo niuansams paaiškinti, gilinimąsi savivaldybių kaip paslaugos... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Non-government organizations in European Union are civic society‘s guarantee, which lets the government and municipalities help people get more public, improve in various life fields and actively participate in creating a stable country. To achieve this purpose, governments, ministries, municipalities and private persons provide financial help to non-goverment organizations with a purpose of encouraging tolerance and humanity in society, reducing the distance between country and town, keeping the youth busy in more distant regions, spread of new technology and creativity. The aim of this Master's thesis – to analyze the problems of financial sourcing to non-government organizations which work with municipalities. The work consists of four main parts, introduction and conclusion. First part, which can be called reasoning of theory, takes the problems of principal – agent’s theory and project-based sponsorship methods and rules. It is a very important part, which enabled to gather appropriate ideas and conceptualize the research. Second part analyzes the conceptions and ideas of non-government organizations working with municipalities. It concentrates on definitions of non-goverment organizations not by types, but work order and local placement. Third part is for the explanation of financing of non-goverment organizations. It takes the municipalities’ role as principal and non-goverment organization as agent and their interests. Methodology of research is described here... [to full text]

This research project acknowledged that the introduction of PS 3150 guidelines were presented to Ontario municipalities as a new, unfunded mandated responsibility which was viewed by these municipalities to be an impossible challenge within the completion timeline. This research project identifies impacts that PS 3150 guidelines will have on infrastructure planning for municipalities, with a population of less than 5000, in Northern Ontario. The PS 3150 guidelines were created by the Public Sector Accounting Board (PSAB) of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) to outline the general process for public sector organizations to change from a modified accrual format to full accrual accounting complete with new financial statements. Municipalities have had to better account for both financial and non-financial assets when reporting on revenues and expenditures. The evaluation of the policy mandate outlined in PS 3150 guidelines has yet to be completed, however the impacts of the guidelines can be assessed based on the development and subsequent implementation of Tangible Capital Asset policies and asset management plans by municipal governments. The findings identified four key similarities among responses from the municipal representatives. The Impacts of PS 3150 legislation are primarily related to personnel, financial, planning, and technical issues. The key recommendation arising from the completion of this research is that municipalities need to move forward, pursue complete asset management plans, in order to demonstrate in a quantitative manner the costs associated with municipal infrastructure planning.

This thesis examines energy planning to reduce GHG emissions from cities. Examining federal government policy to reduce GHG emissions suggests that municipalities and provinces may be the better government levels for action. A review of types of municipal energy planning, and energy-GHG reduction plans from three cities shows different strategies and policies in implementation, and differing levels of success. Interviewing planners from these case-study cities provides critical insight into the challenges of implementing energy-GHG planning. The lessons learned show the best course of action for other jurisdictions, including the importance of an appropriate policy framework to support municipalities. Such a framework is suggested by this thesis. This research is meant to inform planners of best practices, challenges, opportunities, and courses of action for municipalities in formulating GHG reduction strategies.

Today there is a large consensus about the importance of Swedish schools providingconditions enabling students to develop the ability to manage and learn through information technologies (IT). The goal of this study was to describe and examine how national education goals for the use of IT transformed into municipal IT-strategies for the school. A content analysis was conducted of thirty-eight municipal IT-strategies collected from Swedish municipal websites on the Internet. The content in the municipal IT-strategies was compared with the content in both the Swedish education act and the national curriculum. The results showed that the content in the Swedish education act and the national curriculum in fact was translated into municipal IT strategies, but that the range of strategies concerning technology, pedagogy and content in relation to IT was broad. In several of the IT-strategies, aspects of technology and pedagogy were clearly expressed while links to content was given a limited attention.