3,120 research outputs found
'Gemeentegrootte en lokale democratie': Een repliek aan H. van Goor
Get PDFReplies to H. van Goor's (1999) critical review of the volume, edited by Denters and Geurts, Lokale democratie in Nederland: Burgers en hun gemeentebestuur ([Local Democracy in the Netherlands: Citizens and Their Local Government] 1998), which tests the modernization and the political community model to analyze the ways in which individuals perceive the functioning of their local governments and the effects of these perceptions on political behavior. Van Goor criticized the book severely in three respects: (1) models, analysis, and data- are not pertinent to the theoretical questions, (2) an alternative model of complex local government is ignored, and (3) the data-gathering method is unreliable. It is argued that (A) the analytical apparatus is certainly relevant to the theoretical questions addressed in the book, albeit less interesting for alternative questions formulated by Van Goor, (B) the alternative model is nowhere explicated and appears to consist of aspects that can easily be rephrased in terms of the modernization and the political community model, and (C) the unreliability associated with the data-gathering method used is predictable and can therefore be integrated into the results. 31 References. S. Paul<br/
Utopie of utiliteit? Enige kanttekeningen bij het debat over een Wereldwijd Parlement van Burgemeesters. Slotbeschouwing
No full textIn his concluding remarks the chief editor (and also editor of this special issue) discusses shortly the desirability and feasibility of a global parliament of mayors as proposed by Benjamin Barber. On both points, according to him, the idea of a global parliament of mayors can be questioned. Concerning the desirability of the proposal there is no clarity about the underlying notion of democracy and about its contribution to the democratic goals it aims at. Concerning the feasibility of the proposal Bas Denters questions if Barbers high expectations of the blessings of advanced ICT tools, that will be used for a virtual debating platform, are that realistic. Crucial are also the financial and material resources which are needed for the organization and functioning of a global parliament of mayors
City size and the nature of associational ecologies
No full textIt is 30 years since Dahl and Tufte published their path-breaking book Size and Democracy. This volume systematically explored the relationship between the size of political systems and the quality of democracy. The main focus of Dahl and Tufte’s work was in the area of local government studies (Sharpe 1988; Keating 1995). In this field a limited number of empirical studies has since been directed towards effects of city size on various aspects of local democracy: e.g. people’s satisfaction with local government performance (Mouritzen 1989; Denters and Geurts 1998); the level of electoral participation (Verba and Nie 1972; Verba et al. 1978; Gaardsted 2002; Smeets et al. 1998; Oliver 1999, 2000 and 2001); the level of non-electoral participation (Verba and Nie 1972; Verba et al. 1978; Rose 2002; Oliver 1999, 2000 and 2001) and people’s social and political trust (Denters 2002; Denters and Geurts 1998). Even though one of the main concerns in Dahl and Tufte’s book is the relationship between city size and associational life in political systems, subsequent work has largely ignored the possible impact of size on the nature of local civil society. This is regrettable since the vibrancy of associational life in communities is often considered a crucial aspect of the vitality of a democratic system. Dahl and Tufte claim that increases in city size and associated characteristics of a city’s organizational life (e.g. the degree of heterogeneity) affect the democratic performance of its political system. This effect may be for better or for worse. Robert Putnam (1993: 182) is confident that such effects are essentially positive. He boldly claims: ‘Tocqueville was right: Democratic government is strengthened, not weakened, when it faces a vigorous civil society’. On the other hand, ever since Adam Smith, social scientists have indicated that organizational life may be a mixed blessing. A strong and active network of civic organizations may also have paralysing effects on the political system’s capacity to meet collective demands
Do participants consider community initiatives as successful, and if so why?
Get PDFCommunity-initiatives (CIs) - as residents' bottom-up initiated collective efforts to improve the livability of their everyday-world - increasingly attract scholarly attention. From an urban vitality perspective understanding CI-participants' evaluations of CI-success is crucial. We make two contributions to this topic: first by presenting new evidence on participants' evaluations of CI-success; second by providing a theoretically grounded, empirically validated explanation of perceived CI-success, combining agent-based and often-neglected structural factors. This article primarily uses survey-data from a CI-initiator-sample of 129 CIs from 22 municipalities in the Dutch province Overijssel (using snowball-sampling); but findings were validated by additional survey-results (from a province-wide probability-sample) of 179 CI-participants. We found that most initiators/participants consider CIs as successful, that the odds for CI-success were not different for privileged and underprivileged groups, and in more and less urbanized municipalities. Moreover, odds for CI-success were higher in larger groups and for CIs receiving municipal financial support
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