Can Institutional Reform Have a Lasting Impact on the Policy Agenda? Evidence From the 10-1 in Austin, TX

2021 ◽  
pp. 107808742110382
Author(s):  
Brooke Nicole Shannon
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Reform ◽  
Descriptive Representation ◽  
Institutional Constraints ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
City Councils ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
Large Systems ◽  
The City

Institutional reforms to districted city councils from at-large systems are typically motivated by the desire to increase geographic and descriptive representation, enriching representation for historically excluded groups. The policy impact of descriptive representation, however, have been found to be conditional and not definitive. In this article, I explore whether institutional reform from at-large to districts has effects on a city council's policy agenda, or whether institutional constraints can quell the reform's impacts. I look to the “10-1” reform in Austin, Texas, implemented in 2015, using an original dataset collected from items in the council's 2009–2019 meeting minutes for a direct measure of the agenda. After coding each item for policy substance and testing the agenda's diversity, I find that the reform had short-term effects on the policy agenda. Instead, local government's agenda is largely driven by external problems and pragmatic needs facing the city. Consequently, the effects of reform are overwhelmed by institutional stickiness.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul D. Kenny
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Research ◽  
Party System ◽  
Institutional Reform ◽  
System Change ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Institutional Reforms

This final chapter draws out the two main conclusions from the book. First, it discusses the policy implications of its findings. It suggests caution in the decentralization of political authority as a remedy for democratic underperformance in patronage-based democracies. Rather than making government more accountable, it may instead exacerbate principal–agent conflicts between center and periphery. More important than decentralization in the short term may be institutional reforms at the center that make parties more programmatic and responsive to citizens. Second, it sets out some of the implications of the book’s findings for the study of populism and party-system change more generally. It shows that the varied ways in which voters and parties are linked creates different pathways to the decline of establishment parties and the success of populist alternatives. Further comparative research across party systems might contribute positively to institutional reform and political change.

scholarly journals Macroscopic Modeling of On-Street and Garage Parking: Impact on Traffic Performance

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Jakob ◽  
Monica Menendez
Keyword(s):  
Urban Traffic ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Macroscopic Modeling ◽  
Aggregated Data ◽  
City Councils ◽  
Traffic Performance ◽  
Numerical Solver ◽  
Parking Pricing ◽  
The City ◽  
Over Time

The short-term interactions between on-street and garage parking policies and the associated parking pricing can be highly influential to the searching-for-parking traffic and the overall traffic performance in the network. In this paper, we develop a macroscopic on-street and garage parking decision model and integrate it into a traffic system with an on-street and garage parking search model over time. We formulate an on-street and garage parking-state-based matrix that describes the system dynamics of urban traffic based on different parking-related states and the number of vehicles that transition through each state in a time slice. This macroscopic modeling approach is based on aggregated data at the network level over time. This leads to data collection savings and a reduction in computational costs compared to most of the existing parking/traffic models. This easy to implement methodology can be solved with a simple numerical solver. All parking searchers face the decision to drive to a parking garage or to search for an on-street parking space in the network. This decision is affected by several parameters including the on-street and garage parking fees. Our model provides a preliminary idea for city councils regarding the short-term impacts of on-street and garage parking policies (e.g., converting on-street parking to garage parking spaces, availability of garage usage information to all drivers) and parking pricing policies on: searching-for-parking traffic (cruising), the congestion in the network (traffic performance), the total driven distance (environmental impact), as well as the revenue created for the city by the hourly on-street and garage parking fee rates. This model can be used to analyze how on-street and garage parking policies can affect traffic performance; and how traffic performance can affect the decision to use on-street or garage parking. The proposed methodology is illustrated with a case study of an area within the city of Zurich, Switzerland.

scholarly journals Città metropolitane e politiche urbane

2010 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Personal Relationship ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
City Councils ◽  
Direct Election ◽  
Metropolitan Cities ◽  
Good Government ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The City

More than fifteen years after the introduction of direct election, the mayors are still the most popular politicians in Italy. The personal relationship set up with the citizens and the strengthening of the city councils has restored energy and stability to the action of the municipal administrations. Nevertheless, these institutional reforms, while important, have failed to guarantee good government. The effects of the mayoral reform are, in fact, considerably different from one city to another, and from one type of policy to another. What does this variety of results derive from? The book provides an answer to this question through an investigation of the decisional processes of around a hundred "local collective assets" in six large metropolitan cities. To explain the different outcomes – in addition to the "council effect", that is, the relevance of policy, and the "sector effect", the relevance of the different decisional milieus – the authors also underscore the role of the "governance effect", namely the different approaches to decision-making and building consensus on urban policies.

scholarly journals The Incoherence of Institutional Reform: Decentralization as a Structural Solution to Immediate Political Needs

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Paul Faguet ◽  
Mahvish Shami
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Institutional Reform ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Long Term Consequences ◽  
Main Effects ◽  
Structural Solution

AbstractInstitutional reforms are structural changes in the rules and norms of authority, with effects that are long-term and unpredictable on government, politics, and society. But leaders may undertake them to solve unrelated, discrete, short-term political problems. Understanding the latter is key to understanding the characteristics of many real reforms, and hence their fate. We introduce the concept of instrumental incoherence and use it to construct a theory of decentralization where reform is motivated by orthogonal objectives. We show that reformers’ incentives map onto the specifics of reform design via their side effects, not their main effects, which in turn lead to the medium- and long-term consequences eventually realized. We characterize downwardly accountable decentralization, which ties the hands of the center to empower local voters, vs. upwardly accountable decentralization, which ties the hands of local government to empower the center. We use these ideas to explain highly divergent outcomes in two extreme cases, Bolivia and Pakistan, using detailed, original evidence. Our analysis likely extends to a broader class of reforms where the incentives of agents pursuing a change, and the effects of that change, are highly asymmetric in time and dimension.

Emplacing Berlin: Digital Itineraries and Short-term Study Abroad in the City

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Apgar
Keyword(s):  
Study Abroad ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Study Abroad Programs ◽  
Term Study ◽  
Digital Maps ◽  
Short Term Study ◽  
The City

As destination of choice for many short-term study abroad programs, Berlin offers students of German language, culture and history a number of sites richly layered with significance. The complexities of these sites and the competing narratives that surround them are difficult for students to grasp in a condensed period of time. Using approaches from the spatial humanities, this article offers a case study for enhancing student learning through the creation of digital maps and itineraries in a campus-based course for subsequent use during a three-week program in Berlin. In particular, the concept of deep mapping is discussed as a means of augmenting understanding of the city and its history from a narrative across time to a narrative across the physical space of the city. As itineraries, these course-based projects were replicated on site. In moving from the digital environment to the urban landscape, this article concludes by noting meanings uncovered and narratives formed as we moved through the physical space of the city.

ADMINISTRATIVE AND LEGAL STATUS OF THE CAPITAL OF UKRAINE - THE HERO CITY OF KYIV AS A GUARANTEE OF THE RIGHTS OF CITIZENS OF UKRAINE AND THE TERRITORIAL COMMUNITY OF THE CITY

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oleksii Chepov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Legal Regime ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
City Councils ◽  
The Social ◽  
District Management ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

The qualitative and clear definition of the legal regime of the capital of Ukraine, the hero city of Kyiv, is influenced by its legislative enshrinement, however, it should be noted that discussions are ongoing and one of the reasons for the unclear legal status of the capital is the ambiguity of current legislation in this area. Separation of the functions of the city of Kyiv, which are carried out to ensure the rights of citizens of Ukraine and the functions that guarantee the rights of the territorial community of the city of Kyiv. In the modern world, in legal doctrine and practice, the capital is understood as the capital of the country, which at the legislative level received this status and, accordingly, is the administrative and political center of the state, which houses the main state bodies and diplomatic missions of other states. It is the identification of the boundaries of the relationship between the competencies of state administrations and local self-government, in practice, often raises questions about their delimitation and ways of regulatory solution. Peculiarities of local self-government in Kyiv city districts are defined in the provisions of the Law on the Capital, which reveal the norms of the Constitution in these legal relations, according to which the issue of organizing district management in cities belongs to city councils. Likewise, it is unregulated by law to lose the particularity of the legal status of the territory of the city. It should be emphasized that the subject of administrative-legal relations is not a certain administrative-territorial entity, but the social group is designated - the territorial community of the city of Kiev, kiyani. Thus, the provisions on the city of Kyiv partially ignore the potential of the territorial community.

Municipal Government in 1917: against the Provisional Government and the Bolsheviks (Based on Materials of Yaroslavl and Kostroma Governorates)

2021 ◽  
pp. 156-174
Author(s):  
Yuliya Krasovskaya ◽  
Dmitriy Khristenko
Keyword(s):  
Municipal Government ◽  
The Political ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
City Councils ◽  
Food Shortages ◽  
Democratic Elections ◽  
The City ◽  
Revolutionary Period

The article discusses activities of municipal government in the inter-revolutionary period andtheir relationship with the Provisional Government and the Bolshevik’s Soviets on the example of Yaroslavl and Kostroma Gover-norates. As a result of democratic elections in the city councils, the majority in-cluded representatives of moderate socialist parties such as the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries. Based on the analysis of archival sources, the au-thors investigate the ways and methods of the urban socialist self-government’s activities in the context of a comprehensive crisis. In both governorates, munici-palities were unable to solve any of the pressing problems vital to the population like food shortages, public order, and the functioning of the urban economy. Their main concern was the political struggle and confrontation between repre-sentatives of various factions on issues far from the area of their direct respon-sibility. By their activity, and in other cases by inaction, they firstly acted actu-ally against the Provisional Government, and then against the Soviets. The inability to justify hopes in resolving key problems caused the loss of credibility in the eyes of the citizens and the Soviet government. As a result, the city coun-cils became unnecessary to both of them.

scholarly journals The Interconnectedness between Institutional Quality, Civil War and Institutional Reform: A Case Study of Nepalese Maoist Civil War

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 59-70
Author(s):  
Saroj Kumar Aryal
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Institutional Reform ◽  
Institutional Quality ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Made In

Various factors trigger civil war, depending on the society and stages of political development. But analyzing it through the quality of an institution or some provisions of institutions may lead to a possible cause of a civil war. Thus, the primary objective of this article is to investigate institutional quality and its role in triggering a civil war. This paper argues that there is interconnectedness between institutional quality, civil war, and institutional reforms, which occurs as a series of events. Although the article provides many examples, in the second section, the case study of Nepalese decade-long civil war and post-civil war institutional reform has been presented to back the argument made in the paper. By discussing various dynamics of historical institutionalism, the paper mainly analyzes the primary and secondary sources.

scholarly journals The impact of University of Žilina´s employees on regional development

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-24
Author(s):  
Lucia Možuchová ◽  
◽  
Lucia Gašperová ◽  
Mária Rostášová ◽  
Dorota Jelonek
Keyword(s):  
Regional Development ◽  
Strong Impact ◽  
University Staff ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Total Size ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Registered Office ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

The university is an important part of the region's infrastructure and has the potential to initiate changes and transform the economy into a diverse range. The presence of a university in a host city or region has a strong impact on regional development. Universities are usually among the largest employers in the city. Their employees, students and visitors spend some of their finances in this city, which have an impact on local and regional economic development. The total size of the impact of university varies depending on the size of the university and the characteristics of the local and regional economy. The primary aim of the contribution is identification of the selected short-term impacts of the University of Žilina to the city and region, where it has its registered office. To achieve the stated goal, primary research was carried out primarily focused on the economic impact of university staff on the development of the Žilina´s region.

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