Local Mayors Research Articles

Local and catchment-scale effects of water retention measures at Lake Velence

AbstractClimate change manifested its adverse impacts last year, with an extreme drought leading to a drastically low water level in Lake Velence, Hungary. Nature-based solutions have the potential to alleviate these impacts locally. While a few initiatives have been implemented in Hungary, widespread adoption of these solutions is expected to be a goal for the more distant future.This research focuses on one catchment at Lake Velence to evaluate decision-maker's readiness and urban water management infrastructure for broadly implementing nature-based solutions. Methods include delineating the stormwater system and creating a numerical model to evaluate rainfall-runoff processes and the possible impacts of nature-based retentions. Surveys among local mayors were conducted to assess their perception of existing water infrastructures and implementations of nature-based solutions. Its widespread use may become significant, but its effect on the lake's water level remains negligible.

Pandemia COVID-19 w Chile. Wyzwania dla stosunków między organami władzy i koordynacji w zdecentralizowanym państwie unitarnym

The paper explores the relationship between national and subnational authorities in Chile in the context of the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly analyzing the principle of coordination and the complexities of the state of emergency. The analysis is carried out in light of the constitutional provisions of the Chilean political system. Although subnational authorities developed significant activities to address the effects of the pandemic in their respective territories, particularly the local mayors, this was not accompanied by legal or practical reforms to integrate institutional or procedural changes to incorporate the subnational levels of government in the decision-making processes. During this state of emergency, the formal and informal institutions failed to be accountable for the necessary coordination of their competences at national, regional and local levels. Therefore, the COVID-19 pandemic, occurring during a nationwide constitution-making debate in Chile, opened the opportunity to discuss institutions and arrangements that could lead to an effective and legitimate system of intergovernmental relations in a decentralized unitary state.

Compact City and Mayoral Entrepreneurship: A Study of Success and Setbacks in Two Japanese Cities

Controlling urban sprawl are the overarching challenges facing cities worldwide. This article delves into the pivotal role of policy entrepreneurship throughout the planning and implementation phases of compact city initiatives. Drawing insights from the experiences of Aomori City and Toyama City in Japan, this study scrutinizes the drivers behind the shift toward urban compactness and its consequent outcomes. The incorporation of policy studies theories into the realm of compact city development has been scant. To bridge this gap, the research leverages process-oriented theories from policy studies to dissect the decision-making processes guiding compact city development in these two pivotal municipalities. Through this investigation, it is revealed that the effective transition to compact urbanization in Japanese municipalities predominantly stems from policy entrepreneurship. The author posits that this achievement is primarily attributed to adept local mayors who possess the acumen to cater to specific local needs.

Harmonization of Parking Fee Regulations in Local Regulations and Mayor's Regulations in the City of Yogyakarta

Harmonization of Parking Fee Regulations in Local Regulations and Mayor's Regulations in the City of Yogyakarta

Art tourism and paradigms of island revitalization in Japan

ABSTRACT Art tourism in rural destinations in Japan has received attention in both media and academia. Two major regional art festivals that are conducted in a regular cycle have triggered this boom in the 21st century. However, art and cultural tourism have formed an important part of regional revitalization strategies for 30 years. This paper focuses on four island destinations in the Seto Inland Sea that have incorporated art in their branding strategies to examine how shifts in national policies for regional development are reflected in the local context. We examine trends in island research in Japan, paradigm shifts in regional development policies and the role of art tourism in rural revitalization to establish a framework for comparison. Through this framework, we analyze how art tourism is integrated into general development concepts and examine the main actors and the roles of the private sector and residents. We identified two paradigm shifts in the framework of national development plans and laws. Two of our case studies fall into the first phase, where subsidies by the national government form the core of investment for art tourism under the leadership of local mayors but result in different outcomes in terms of success as tourist destinations. On the other hand, two case studies from the latter phase feature a stronger variety of integrated art tourism policies, depending on the engagement of private sector actors and residents. In conclusion, the expansion of art tourism on rural islands reflects a complex interplay of global trends and national development paradigms on the local level.

Nurses-Led Municipal Leadership and Governance Program: Experiences of Local Chief Executives in Central Visayas, Philippines.

The strategic response of nurses in addressing health inequities in marginal sectors led to the conduct of a health leadership governance training program for local chief executives. This study aimed to explore and provide a description of the experiences of local chief executives (LCEs) or mayors who participated in the nurse-initiated health training named Municipal Leadership and Governance Program (MLGP). A qualitative descriptive design was used through key informant interviews of fifteen mayors or local chief executives (LCE) in the provinces of Bohol and Negros Oriental, Philippines. Data were collected from 16 to 20 November 2022 and analyzed using a thematic approach. The findings generated six themes: a) Leadership capacitation promoting transformative experience, b) Pandemic and program-induced limitations in the training implementation, c) Personal leadership motivation, d) Experiential learning promoting learning as applied in real-world situations, e) Celebrating leadership transformation, and f) 3R's of MLGP: revisit, review, recommend. The realizations of the training participants provided valuable implications for the quality of training offered by nurse leaders who advocated the MLGP implementation. It served as a proactive and responsive approach to the health leadership capacitation of mayors. It guided them in their personal realizations that inspired them to apply what they had learned and enabled them to effect experiences of personal to institutional transformation.

Public versus Political Decision in Administrative Space

This article aims to make a brief review of some important issues related to the "opening" of the administration to citizens in Romania and to describe, briefly, some recent decisions taken by various local councils in large cities of Romania (such as Cluj-Napoca, Iasi, Craiova or Galati) and which testify to the willingness of local and central authorities to really address those on whom their decisions will really produce their effects. To our pleasant surprise, we found that in most cases the decisions taken in recent years at the local level in our country have dealt with issues that demonstrate the connection of local councils and mayors to issues of greatest interest to the community: urban planning issues, environmental quality, air quality, support for disadvantaged and sensitive groups in society or issues related to the chances of involving young people in the community. In the last 20 years the public sector offered citizens the opportunity to be actively involved in the life of the city and in the decision-making process, which demonstrates the approach of the Romanian authorities to the European trend of transparency in the decision-making environment, but also the application of the principle of subsidiarity as a fundamental principle of the Romanian administration.

The Influence of Urban Processes on the Community Spirit in the Municipality of Craiova

"The present article results from the data processing of a study carried out in July 2023 in the Municipality of Craiova, the largest city in the Oltenia region. The study was scheduled as a stage in the preparation of a new General Urban Plan where the population consultation stage has the role of providing the local mayors with a set of information necessary for prioritizing the city's problems from the point of view of the population's expectations. The most appropriate research method was the sociological survey, through which opinions were collected by questioning 732 inhabitants on topics related to the degree of coverage of urban functions specific to a modern urban community, how they appreciate modern urban processes and comparative influences. The main problem that is at the basis of such a study is that of harmonizing technical approaches, originating from fields of activity that assume knowledge from the field of exact sciences (architecture, engineering) and approaches that assume a background from the field of social sciences (sociology, anthropology, psychology). To a large extent, Romanian urban and rural communities have benefited from development programs segmented according to financing flows, prioritizing investments in favor of material ones, against the background of indifference to the preferences and expectations of the population. The aim of this research was to mitigate the distance between institutional and community strategies with the aim of integrating community spirit into local development policies. The analysis carried out proved that investments in the development of the city increased the degree of appreciation of the population and fueled value principles that lead to the overvaluation of some areas and the disinvestment of other areas, ignoring some synthetic indicators that contribute to the formation of realistic opinions."

The Big, the Small, and the Ugly: The Politics of Scale-Making in a Contested Railway Project in Italy

ABSTRACT This article explores the politics of scale-making in infrastructural development. It argues that ‘megaprojects’, rather than self-evidently ‘big’, are constructed and contested across a continuity of scales from the ‘global’ to the microscopic. Scalar struggles are constitutive of the projects as well as of their contestation. I examine this through a focus on a disputed high-speed railway project in Alpine Italy. First, I examine expert contests over ‘big numbers’ describing the project. Here, the ‘bigness’ is discussed on its own terms, but its rationality is disputed. Second, I study a campaign by local mayors who challenge the project by stressing infrastructural needs that could be met in their respective towns for a fraction of the railway's cost. Third, I describe controversies over microscopic pathogens released during railway construction. This highlights how the megaprojects’ apparent ‘bigness’ depends on the ability to obviate socio-material relations and actants at other scales.

The value of a party: Local politics and the allocation of intergovernmental transfers

This paper investigates how party connections affect the ability of local politicians to obtain central government funds for their municipality. Using a novel data set for mayoral elections in Germany spanning 2322 municipalities in eight states in the years 2000 to 2008 and regression discontinuity design, I find that party alignment between a local mayor and the state government increases transfers to a municipality by 20% per year. Such favoritism has been interpreted as a sign of partisanship and blamed on central governments which use public funds for partisan purposes. I show that local political conditions, such as reelection incentives and information transmission can partly account for the alignment effect. Taken together, the results provide alternative channels for the interpretation of alignment effects.

Mudding the playing field. Fiscal contributions to municipalities as a political construction

AbstractIn federal presidential democracies, discretionary transfers are often mentioned as a tool used by the national executive to build and strengthen subnational support, typically governors. Funds to local mayors, however, have been much less studied. With original data, in this study we analyze the distribution of a particular discretionary transfer (ATN) to the Argentine municipalities during two periods: 1997–2000 and 2016–2019. We show that the main driver for transfers is the mayor's political alignment. Indeed, the president is more likely to reward loyal mayors, but especially when both the latter and the President oppose the provincial governor. By this token, we highlight a nested political game, in which the President considers the loyalty of both mayors and governors combined to decide when to reward (or when not to reward) municipalities. Furthermore, we find that the Executive provides aid to smaller municipalities to circumvent the possibility of funding mayors from larger cities who may pose a threat as political rivals in the future. Since this pattern is more evident in localities with aligned mayors, we can infer that the President's strategy is aimed at preventing future challengers from within their own coalition.

Community Justice and Ritual Spectacle: A Case of Mayan Law in Guatemala

This essay, which accompanies the documentary “Suk’ B’anik,” is based on a case of theft settled by the so-called “ancestral Mayan law” in the municipality of Santa Cruz del Quiché, Guatemala, where more than 80% of the populace self-identify as Maya-K’iche’. The material seeks to deepen understanding of the collective reasoning and emotions that took place in the community trial of the case. In the face of the systemic weakness of the state’s justice system, in this region popular courts coordinated by local community mayors and supracommunal structures of ancestral authorities have become common to collectively try criminals or alleged criminals and to subject them to some form of corrective punishment. These judicial proceedings are developed within their own cultural understandings, which frequently offer highly ritualized spectacular choreographies for local as well as wider consumption. That visuality, often accompanied by community video practices, gives the participants’ performance an intrinsic status in the interior of these judicial processes while reaffirming the structures of local power. In these collective scenarios, the individual bodies of those accused are exhibited and prosecuted by the local authorities in front of audiences that demand sanctions to drum out the wrongdoing perceived as being damaging to the community. This, in turn, acts as a metaphor of moral cleansing and reequilibrium of a social body processing its own conflicts. Just as in rites of passage or in the theater, the popular trials in these Maya-K’iche’ communities often invoke other times and spaces, including supernatural ones, that have a bearing on the effectiveness of the reorganizational message that at the same time reinforces their own constructions of identity.

“En, goed gevoel dat je je stad naar de vernieling hebt geholpen?” Een kwantitatieve analyse van het relationeel besef van burgemeesters in hun publieke reacties op de avondklokrellen

“Well, did you enjoy molesting your home town?”: a quantitative analysis of the relational awareness in mayors’ public responses to the COVID-19 anti-curfew riots in the Netherlands When several local mayors fiercely denunciated the violent riots that erupted after a curfew was imposed as a COVID-19 mitigant in the Netherlands, journalistic and academics critics soon warned that such responses often unjustly and counter-effectively depoliticize and delegitimize public protest. The commentators joined a choir of scholars who postulate that public authorities readily distance themselves from troublemakers, let alone acknowledge their grievances. However, our content analysis of mayors’ public responses to the Dutch 2021 anti-curfew riots in 719 newspaper articles finds that office holders portray considerable relational awareness. We find that mayors communicate a complex leadership style that crucially combines strict law enforcement with interpersonal empathy.

Minority group local government mayors and their relations with welfare bureau social workers

Mayors play a major role in determining their locality’s welfare policies and significantly influence the welfare bureaus’ work. This study employed in-depth semi-structured interviews with 19 mayors of local Arab governments in Israel to examine this issue. It found that the mayors fiercely criticize the welfare bureaus in four areas of concern, claiming that they ignore particular needs, neglect core target populations, lack culture-sensitive responses and their functioning is defective. The mayors’ criticism of welfare bureau inadequacies sheds light on Welfare Ministry policies that allocate lower discriminatory budgets to Arab welfare bureaus and are insensitive to Arab society’s cultural-religious needs.

The Civic and Political Participation of Non-Citizen Residents in Japan: Multi-Ethnic Cities in an Ethno-Nationalist Society

ABSTRACT This article examines the roles that local actors play in driving a transition to multicultural co-living, drawing on the lessons learned from the experience of two Japanese municipalities in facilitating civic and political participation by non-citizens. It seeks to ascertain the factors that drive the transition to forms of local inclusion that foster the rights of foreign nationals to civic and political participation. Effective transitions to inclusiveness in these Japanese cities, the article finds, resulted largely from effective policy entrepreneurship and leadership, which I argue was produced by forward-looking local mayors, ethnic associations, and support groups. Given their lack of voice at the national level, the two municipalities in this study had previously had little option but to act on the pressing need to extend the rights of civic and political participation to foreign residents in their local communities. Despite differences in their circumstances, the two cities both had the skills and drive to overcome challenges and seize opportunities at the local level that effected real change for their inclusive communities.

Not if – but how – to defund the police: Response to our critics

Not if – but how – to defund the police: Response to our critics

ДОЛЖНОСТЬ В ОБМЕН НА ГОЛОСА: ВЛИЯНИЕ ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОЙ ЛОЯЛЬНОСТИ НА ПОЛИТИЧЕСКУЮ ВЫЖИВАЕМОСТЬ МУНИЦИПАЛЬНЫХ ГЛАВ В УСЛОВИЯХ КОНКУРСНОЙ МОДЕЛИ ИЗБРАНИЯ

The article explores the research problem associated with the political survival of local heads amidst the conditions of competitive mayoral elections. It probes questions like: Does political loyalty remain a significant factor for retaining a position? How does a mayor's political loyalty influence their political survival within a competitive framework? Employing the principal-agent theory, we examine factors such as electoral loyalty, economic efficiency, and personal characteristics of mayors (such as origin, age, work experience in local self-government executive branch, and electoral experience) as determinants of mayoral political survival. Our study encompasses 208 contests held in the Perm region and Sverdlovsk region from 2015 to 2022. Our regression analysis shows that successful electoral mobilization and high voting results for the "United Russia" party or the incumbent enhance a mayor's chances of retaining their position. However, a mayor's socio-economic success does not significantly impact their political "survival". Moreover, electoral loyalty is not the sole significant determinant of a mayor's "survival". Factors such as the local head's age and origin also play a role in their retention of position. This article broadens the understanding of the political survival of Russian local mayors and underscores the need to explore other explanatory models of mayoral "survival".

A Glimpse of Freedom: Allied Occupation and Political Resistance in East Germany

This paper exploits the idiosyncratic line of contact separating Allied and Soviet troops within East Germany at the end of WWII to study political resistance in a non-democracy. When Nazi Germany surrendered, 40 percent of what would become the authoritarian German Democratic Republic was initially under Allied control but was ceded to Soviet control less than two months later. Brief Allied exposure increased protests during the major 1953 uprising. We use novel data on the appointment of local mayors and a retrospective survey to argue that even a “glimpse of freedom” can foster civilian opposition to dictatorship. (JEL D72, D74, N44, P16)

Implementasi Kebijakan Penataan Pedagang Kaki Lima Di Kota Banjarmasin

Problems of street vendors has been entered into the issue of public order, the Regional Regulation No. Banjarmasin city 26 Year 2012 on the Establishment and Organizational Structure of Civil Service Police Unit Banjarmasin, an organization formed Civil Service Police Unit Banjarmasin which has the main task to maintain and organize public peace and order, enforce local regulation, Regulation and Decision Mayor Mayor as the executor of regional regulation. Mayor of London Based Decision No. 26 Year 2012 on the Establishment and Structuring Control Team Street Vendors of Banjarmasin, explained that the team composition and Arrangement of Control Street Vendors of Banjarmasin, implementing daily field operations conducted by the Civil Service Police Unit Banjarmasin. This study uses qualitative research. Source of data derived from primary data and secondary data, which were collected by interview and documentation. Analysis of the data using a model that consists of a qualitative analysis of data reduction, data display and conclusion. daily field operations conducted by the Civil Service Police Unit Banjarmasin. The results of this study indicate that the regulation number 26 of 2012 is not running as it should. This can be seen from: Lack of communication and coordination between the implementing organization of this local regulations. Less rapid response from the city government and the organization is concerned about street vendors who could potentially become a group that a lot of that in the future will be permasalahan.Kurang specifically the enforcement regulations in the enforcement process so that the vendors long tungginga market that should occupy a place which has provided the city government, being back on the roadside selling belitung. Lack of support of the external environment / community awareness about the importance of the order of their surroundings.

2019 Nyíregyháza City Council election

One of the main perspectives and urgent tasks of the newly formed government following the general elections of 2010 was to reform the local eletoral system. It is true, that the number of seats of the local representative bodies were significantly decreased, but it begs the question whether this change can reasonably explain the fact that the government considered this step as one of the first and most significant measures of its governance. To raise this question is justified by the fact that the reform (Act No. L of 2010 on the election of local government representatives and mayors) was introduced on June 14, 2010, with only sixteen days after the new Parliament approved and voted for the government’s program, and elected Viktor Orbán as prime minister of Hungary. After a brief presentation of the institutional framewortk of the local electoral system, the aim of this paper is twofold: first, I would examine whether the local electoral reform of 2010 could be considered as a „fair” step, based on John Ralws’ conception of „justice as fairness”, second, I would like to explain the actual process of transforming votes into local legislative seats in the case of the city of Nyíregyháza, in 2019.