The Complexity of Drug Consumption Room Policy and Progress in Finland

Drug consumption rooms (DCRs) have been established to reach high-risk people who use drugs (PWUDs) and reduce drug-associated harm. Despite effectiveness, their establishment requires strong advocacy and efforts since moral perspectives tend to prevail over health outcomes in many countries. DCRs have generally emerged as a local response to inadequate central government policy. Likewise, the initiative of the Municipality of Helsinki in 2018 opened up a discussion between central government, society, and local actors in Finland. This would be the first DCR in Finland, which makes the policy process and the progress of the initiative interesting for analysis. In this article, the identification of agents, structures of interactions, environmental challenges, and policy opportunities are analyzed within the framework of complexity theory. Our results show that the initiative faces policy barriers that have mainly arisen from the conceptualization of DCRs in moral frameworks that result in the prolongation of political and professional actors to take a position on DCRs.

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Forms of participation and teacher voice. Self-appraisal in Academy schools.

10.35542/osf.io/wg52d ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Martin Brown

Keyword(s):

Performance Appraisal ◽

Personal Development ◽

Central Government ◽

Network Governance ◽

Professional Autonomy ◽

Teacher Voice ◽

Teacher Interviews ◽

Teachers Experiences ◽

Local Actors ◽

Professional Conflicts

Since 2010, privatisation of English state funded schools has accelerated. This is an educational policy that continues to shift accountability for effective teaching away from central government and local authorities towards schools and individual teachers. New models of network governance continue to exacerbate old tensions between ideas of professional accountability and contractual accountability. In this context quality assurance mechanisms have displaced opportunities for personal development and job satisfaction.The phenomenon of participation has been conceptualised here as teacher voice and as the means of reducing professional conflicts in secondary schools. This discussion draws on empirical evidence from teacher interviews and teacher self-appraisal submissions in order to answer the question, ‘What are teachers’ experiences of participation in their performance appraisal in English Academy schools?’, where ‘evaluation has become an embedded practice giving less room to local actors’ (Kauko and Salokangas, 2015). Voice is described with reference to reflective writing for self-appraisal. Institutional forgetting is described in relation to reductions in professional dialogue and professional autonomy. Keywordsprivatization, self-appraisal, participation, voice, active, passive, compliance, non-compliance, forgetting, knowledge, stratification, separation, compartmentalization

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Jacksonian Consular Reform and the Forging of America’s First Global Bureaucracy

Journal of Policy History ◽

10.1017/s089803062100018x ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 33 (4) ◽

pp. 401-428

Author(s):

SIMEON ANDONOV SIMEONOV

Keyword(s):

Foreign Policy ◽

South America ◽

Government Policy ◽

Government Regulation ◽

Central Government ◽

Us Foreign Policy ◽

National Character ◽

Department Of State ◽

The Us ◽

Professional Bureaucracy

AbstractAs revolutions swept across Central and South America in the 1820s and 1830s, Andrew Jackson’s administration undertook a landmark reform that transformed the US foreign policy apparatus into the nation’s first global bureaucracy. With the introduction of Edward Livingston’s 1833 consular reform bill to Congress, the nation embarked on a long path toward the modernization of its consular service in line with the powers of Europe and the new American republics. Despite the popularity of Livingston’s plan to turn a dated US consular service comprised of mercantile elites into a salaried professional bureaucracy, the Jacksonian consular reform dragged on for more than two decades before the passing of a consular bill in 1856. Contrary to Weberian models positing a straightforward path toward bureaucratization, the trajectory of Jacksonian consular reform demonstrates the power of mercantile elites to resist central government regulation just as much as it highlights how petty partisans—the protégé consuls appointed via the Jacksonian “spoils system”—powerfully shaped government policy to achieve personal advantages. In the constant tug-of-war between merchant-consuls and Jacksonian protégés, both groups mobilized competing visions of the “national character” in their correspondence with the Department of State and in the national press. Ultimately, the Jacksonian reform vision of an egalitarian and loyal consular officialdom prevailed over the old mercantile model of consulship as a promoter of national prestige and commercial expertise, but only after protégé consuls successfully exploited merchant-consuls’ perceived inability to compete with the salaried European officials across the sister-republics of the southwestern hemisphere.

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UK E-Voting

Politics, Democracy and E-Government ◽

10.4018/978-1-61520-933-0.ch011 ◽

2010 ◽

pp. 183-198

Author(s):

Mark Liptrott

Keyword(s):

Public Policy ◽

Voter Turnout ◽

Policy Process ◽

Central Government ◽

Policy Model ◽

The Public ◽

Public Policy Process ◽

The Uk ◽

Voluntary Adoption ◽

Elected Representatives

This chapter evaluates the UK government strategy to promote electronic voting through the public policy process as an integral part of the e-government agenda to enhance participatory democracy. It argues that the formulation of the present policy is flawed as it lacks a diffusion strategy to enhance the likelihood of policy adoption. The electoral modernisation policy arose from concerns regarding the falling voter turnout at elections and is being introduced via local authorities through a series of voluntary pilot schemes. If issues influencing local authority pilot participation are not resolved e-voting may be permanently rejected by local elected representatives and so will not be available to citizens. This author identifies variables influencing pilot participation and suggests a revised public policy model incorporating selected diffusion concepts at the formulation stage of the linear policy process. The model is used to propose recommendations to enhance the likelihood of voluntary adoption of a policy introduced by central government for voluntary implementation by local government.

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Public Safety and Home Defence: The Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) and Central Government Policy

Bombardment, Public Safety and Resilience in English Coastal Communities during the First World War ◽

10.1007/978-3-030-86851-2_3 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 93-125

Author(s):

Michael Reeve

Keyword(s):

Government Policy ◽

Public Safety ◽

Central Government

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Territorial Politics, Regionalism and England

10.1332/policypress/9781529205886.003.0009 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 241-272

Author(s):

Jonathan Bradbury

Keyword(s):

Policy Process ◽

Central Government ◽

Entire Period ◽

Short Term ◽

Local Elite ◽

British Labour ◽

Territorial Politics ◽

Identity Based ◽

The 1960S ◽

The Uk

This chapter addresses the reform of government in England over the entire period between 1997 and 2007. First, the chapter considers the nature of the territorial strain, problem and resources for change present in England. Second, the chapter considers peripheral elite leadership in England — whether through intermediate English elite or English regional elite leadership — and the codes, strategies and goals pursued. It explores further the thesis that movements for territorial change also in England adopted indirect instrumental cases for territorial reform rather than direct identity-based ones, emphasising functional arguments and the development of institutional mechanisms for gradual decentralisation, rather than major root and branch reform. Third, the chapter analyses the approach of UK central government, and in particular that of the British Labour leadership both in opposition before 1997 and in government afterwards. Here, we should note that Bulpitt suggested that the English governing code had tended to parallel the indirect local elite assimilation approach used territorially in the rest of the UK. Nevertheless, under modernisation projects since the 1960s, including those of the Thatcher–Major governments, the overall government strategy was a promotional one, often requiring direct central intervention in the short term to realise central governing projects. Finally, the chapter assesses the policy process by which English reform was developed, the extent to which it may be seen as effective and legitimate, and judged as successful or not in sustaining a new centre.

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Analyzing Actors’ Engagement in Sustainable Energy Planning at the Local Level in Ghana: An Empirical Study

Energies ◽

10.3390/en13082028 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 13 (8) ◽

pp. 2028

Author(s):

Hassan Qudrat-Ullah ◽

Mark McCarthy Akrofi ◽

Aymen Kayal

Keyword(s):

Local Government ◽

Central Government ◽

Focal Point ◽

Sustainable Energy ◽

Local Level ◽

Energy Development ◽

Energy Planning ◽

Government Agencies ◽

Non Governmental Organizations ◽

Local Actors

Actors play a crucial role in sustainable energy development yet interaction in different contexts is an area that has not received much scholarly attention. Sustainable energy transitions theories such as the Multi-Level Perspective, for instance, have been criticized for not describing precisely the nature of the interactions between actors and institutions within socio-technical systems. The goal of this study was to empirically examine local actors’ engagement and its impact on the planning and implementation of sustainable energy initiatives in the villages and remote areas in Ghana. Using the mixed methodology approach, interviews were performed, focus discussion groups were held, and archival data were collected, and social network modeling and case study analysis was performed. Our findings showed that sustainable energy development at the local level depends on an interplay between local government agencies, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), central government agencies, local communities, and private sector organizations. Despite being the focal point at the local level, local government involvement in sustainable energy planning is limited. In the case of Ghana, sustainable energy planning remains centralized and is manifested in a low level of awareness of local actors on national energy plans. The implication for decision makers is that energy planning functions should be devolved to the local government. Such devolution is expected to ensure the integration of sustainable energies into local government plans for the well-coordinated implementation and effective monitoring of sustainable energy projects.

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Empowerment of local government in New Zealand: A new model for contemporary local-central relations?

Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance ◽

10.5130/cjlg.v1i0.754 ◽

2008 ◽

pp. 30-48 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Christine Cheyne

Keyword(s):

New Zealand ◽

Local Government ◽

Government Policy ◽

Central Government ◽

Social Economic ◽

Intergovernmental Relations ◽

Balance Of Power ◽

Significant Shift ◽

The Relationship

Since 2000 intergovernmental relations in New Zealand have been evolving rapidly as a result of a significant shift in government policy discourse towards a strong central-local government partnership. New statutory provisions empowering local government to promote social, economic, environmental and cultural wellbeing have significant implications for the range of activities in which local authorities are engaged. In turn, this has consequences for the relationship between local government and central government. The effectiveness of the new empowerment and the prospects for further strengthening of the role of local government are critically examined. Despite some on-going tensions, and an inevitable mismatch in the balance of power between central and local government, it is argued that there is a discernible rebalancing of intergovernmental relations as a result of new legislation and central government policy settings which reflect a ‘localist turn’. On the basis of developments since 2000 it may be argued that the New Zealand system of local government is evolving away from the recognised ‘Anglo’ model. However, further consolidation is needed in the transformation of intergovernmental relations and mechanisms that will cement a more genuine central-local government partnership.

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