scholarly journals The National Spatial Strategy: Lessons for implementing a National Planning Framework

2016 ◽  
Vol 64 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 5-21
Author(s):  
Sean Ó’Riordáin ◽  
Chris van Egeraat

Abstract The Irish Government is in the process of developing a National Planning Framework (NPF). This will replace the National Spatial Strategy for Ireland 2002-2020 (NSS). The NSS is generally considered to have been unsuccessful, mainly due to a lack of implementation driven by shortcomings in governance. This paper explores these shortcomings, and suggests ways to prevent similar difficulties with the NPF. The paper concludes that the political process needs to be at the heart of the preparation and adoption of the NPF. There is the danger that the NPF will fail if the political environment remains embedded in traditional approaches to planning across the state.


Author(s):  
Kenneth D. Wald

Lacking sovereignty, a well-developed theology of politics, and a central organizing mechanism, the Jewish political experience is unique among the three Abrahamic faiths. Apart from research on the political content implicit in Jewish scriptures, there has been little scholarship on what Jews do when they engage in political action. Using a contextual framework, this article examines the politics of Jews by reviewing both single-country studies and the few extant cross-national analyses. In considering why Jewish political behavior differs from one place to another, political process theory and Medding’s theory of Jewish interests guide the analysis. Medding argued that Jewish politics is primarily a response to threats perceived in the political environment. The ability of Jewish communities to resist such threats depends largely on the rules governing the political environment, the political opportunity structure. Where Jews are a majority and control the rules, as in the state of Israel, they have adopted a regime that prioritizes the Jewish character of the state against perceived threats from the country’s Arab citizens. Where Jews are a minority, as in the United States, their ability to control the political environment is limited. However, the political rules of the game embodied in the U.S. Constitution have levelled the playing field to the advantage of religious minorities like Jews. Specifically, by rejecting “blood and soil” citizenship and denying the religious character of the state, those rules provide Jews and other minorities a valuable resource and access to sympathetic allies in the political system. Hence American Jews have been able to counter what they perceive as the major threat to their political interests—a replacement of the secular state by a confessional regime. Focusing on threats, the political opportunity structure, and political context helps to anchor Jewish political studies in research on ethnic political cohesion and to bring such research into the scholarly mainstream.



2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Tawanda Zinyama ◽  
Joseph Tinarwo

Public administration is carried out through the public service. Public administration is an instrument of the State which is expected to implement the policy decisions made from the political and legislative processes. The rationale of this article is to assess the working relationships between ministers and permanent secretaries in the Government of National Unity in Zimbabwe. The success of the Minister depends to a large degree on the ability and goodwill of a permanent secretary who often has a very different personal or professional background and whom the minster did not appoint. Here lies the vitality of the permanent secretary institution. If a Minister decides to ignore the advice of the permanent secretary, he/she may risk of making serious errors. The permanent secretary is the key link between the democratic process and the public service. This article observed that the mere fact that the permanent secretary carries out the political, economic and social interests and functions of the state from which he/she derives his/her authority and power; and to which he/she is accountable,  no permanent secretary is apolitical and neutral to the ideological predisposition of the elected Ministers. The interaction between the two is a political process. Contemporary administrator requires complex team-work and the synthesis of diverse contributions and view-points.



Author(s):  
Roudabeh Kishi ◽  
Giuseppe Maggio ◽  
Clionadh Raleigh

AbstractRates of foreign direct investment (FDI) to Africa are increasing, yet little is known about how this will affect the political environment. One possibility, explored here, is that increasing levels of FDI within developing states will incentivize state conflict activity. Using an instrumental strategy, we show that in states with a low regard for civil liberties, or with unhealthy economies (i.e. states with a cash deficit), increased access to investment is associated with a higher number of conflict actions by the state. We argue that access to investment can push regimes into using violent strategies to secure their internal environment and to ensure their survival, specifically in their engaging in conflict against opposition and armed combatants. This underscores the need for extensive monitoring of state behavior following the receipt of investment, similar to the oversight of conditional aid.



2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 511-533
Author(s):  
Aaron Rosenthal

AbstractDoes political distrust generate a desire to engage in the political process or does it foster demobilization? Utilizing a theoretical framework rooted in government experiences and a mixed-methods research design, this article highlights the racially contingent meaning of political distrust to show that both relationships exist. For Whites, distrust is tied to a perception of tax dollars being poorly spent, leading to increased political involvement as Whites to try to gain control over “their” investment in government. For People of Color, distrust of government is grounded in a fear of the criminal justice system, and thus drives disengagement by motivating a desire for invisibility in relation to the state. Ultimately, this finding highlights a previously unseen racial heterogeneity in the political consequences of distrust. Further, it demonstrates how the state perpetuates racially patterned political inequality in a time when many of the formal laws engendering this dynamic have fallen away.



1973 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 482-507 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mansel G. Blackford

While events of major significance for banking occurred on the national scene in the populist and progressive years, noteworthy changes also materialized on the state level. Like their brethren elsewhere in the country, California bankers struggled through their organizations with such problems as how to achieve “sound banking,” how to influence the political process in their state, and how to give banking more of the trappings of professionalism.



2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 117-119
Author(s):  
Lina Khatib

If there is one element of the politics of Iranian cinema that is understudied,it is that of the relationship between Iranian films and the Iranian film audience.Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad’s book, The Politics of Iranian Cinema: Filmand Society in the Islamic Republic, fills this glaring gap by providing aunique insight into how Iranian films are received in Iran; what political andsocial debates they spark; and how they form part of a larger nexus of powernegotiations between the state, artists, and film viewers. The book takes anexpansive approach to “politics,” not favoring hard politics over soft politics or vice versa, but showing how the two go hand in hand in defining the filmmakingprocess in Iran.The book’s uniqueness lies in its reliance on participant observation, inaddition to interviews, as one method of studying the Iranian film audience.Through this, the reader gets a sense of people’s reactions to the films discussed.Zeydabadi-Nejad often reproduces sections of conversation amongfilm viewers that bring to life his statements about the films’ relationshipwith the political environment. The cynicism expressed by a group of youngpeople after watching Bahman Farmanara’s 2001 film House on the Water(p. 86), for example, serves as a sharp illustration of the disillusionment withstate ideology among the urban middle class — an issue covered elsewherein the literature on Iranian cinema, but usually presented in generalized termsrather than through the prism of individual reactions found here ...



Author(s):  
Basri Amin

This article examines student politics articulated by university students in contemporary Ternate, North Maluku. The involvement of students in the political arena in the region is mostly organized through regional (ethnic) organizations.The larger context of such political process is decentralisation, which make religional resource resources dominated by the state. At the same time competition among local elites and ethnic groups flourish. This is the main background of a new formation of group interests in local level -including local university students-- to gain group advantages. The case of Ternate, North Maluku, is an example of how groups of students organize their practical interests in the arena of politics by exploiting youth associations and ethnic organizations.Artikel ini mengkaji tentang politik yang diartikulasikan oleh kalangan mahasiswa dalam percaturan politik lokal di Ternate, Maluku Utara. Keterlibatan mahasiswa dalam arena kekuasaan di kawasan ini lebih banyak dilakukan melalui instrumen organisasi kedaerahan (etnis). Konteks besar yang menjadi landasan dari proses sosial ini adalah desentralisasi yang menempatkan sedemikian rupa sumberdaya pembangunan lebih banyak didominasi oleh negara, tapi pada saat yang sama perkembangan politik etnis terus menyertai persaingan kelompok dan elit lokal. Kasus Maluku Utara adalah sebuah contoh bagaimana kaum muda memainkan kepentingannya sendiri dalam percaturan kekuasaan dan dalam hal memanfaatkan kesempatan-kesempatan praktis untuk mereka.



Politics ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 159-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Moran

Gramsci revised classical Marxist accounts of the role of the state in society, culture and ideology, and stressed the autonomy of the political process from the economic base. Sociologists often labelled neoWeberian also focus on social change, the state and the political process. Michael Mann, whilst remaining discrete from Marxism has nevertheless moved away from classical Weberian sociology, engaging deeply with materialism in analysing the state. This article compares the work of Gramsci and Mann regarding the state, to examine whether a genuine synthesis is possible between Gramsci (perhaps the first ‘neo-Marxist’) and Mann, a neoWeberian.



2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-162
Author(s):  
Hamsa Kahtan Khalaf

Abstract The Iraqi political parties had been affected since 2003 by the political pivotal transformations which happened according to the aftermaths of democratic elections , especially under the disruptions of American’s invasion that led in cooperation with its allies in April 2003 .So the social and political situations became ruling according to the new aspects of practicing the new stage of authority as compromise settlements and quota and ethno - sectarian distribution to be as following as compatible with theory of practicing the authority responsibilities(Power sharing ) as what happened now , besides to that all political democracy scene has greatly been distorted because of the instability penetrated within rebuilding the state and its institutions from the beginning as planned by an active powerful political forces . Many functions that are characterized by competitions among the political parties had changed the concepts of exercising democracy in a real way to be done an effective shape ,because of the political and social actors had different role ,which were being a reflection of another reality within the democracy’s process .So that all the situations had been complicated too much owing to the factors of political instability that influenced negatively on the framework of the state , especially the impacts of economic and social factors as of poverty, stagnation , ignorance and disease and another underdevelopment features which predominated over political and social retrogression levels . In addition to that the absence of an efficient administrative elites , which appeared recently under different conditions and circumstances .So it was became very obviously as we know precisely that democracy’s process in Iraq since 2003 was comprehensively undemocratic in practicing because the political forces have not democratic culture that encourage the dialogue to solve all pending problems , and have not abundant tolerance to accept the differences of others parties yet . The phenomenon of the political instability has divided into different varieties by which scattering among the addresses of suspicion and it definitely has a sectarian discourse dimension in case of dealing among each other . So these addresses and dialogues were being away from the political national conformity correctly , because of there was something like definitely as the exclusion and marginalization discourses in order to narrowing any active political party within the political process try to do pro - active role to settle all pending crises . Furthermore , the reality of political life has been under the continuous crises and conflicts over an authority along time not to gain gradually the outcomes of procurement during application the constitution clauses and valid laws , in order to preserving the political stability and to be done more far from the national unity fragmentation and the weakness of political institutions . Finally , we need too much time to reach into condition of stability , especially after opening anew spaces toward active real participation , and because there was a growing need for educated people who could administer the society and the state institutionally by existing strong government, and ultimately peoples will have ability to form new political governing elites later.



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