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Talk about gender equality in relation to parental leave is pervasive in Sweden. The state encourages families to share parental leave and has recurrently tasked the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA) to promote gender equality. As theories and applications of street-level bureaucracy have emphasized, how policy is practically realized in social interaction with clients is an important question, specifically whether gender equality discourse also permeates such encounters. We use conversation analysis to examine how equal sharing of parental leave is raised in interactions between parents and practitioners at the SSIA. The data consist of 300 telephone calls, 378 email exchanges, and 642 Facebook exchanges. Our analysis indicates that the talk of equal sharing is not as omnipresent as previous research might suggest. When parents orient to equal sharing, they tend to describe parental responsibilities, while practitioners connect equality to regulations that in themselves work to promote equal sharing. Equal sharing is also a resource for negotiating the citizen–state relationship, as parents complain about state interference while practitioners in response must balance provision of personalized support with the state imperative to promote sharing. The study highlights the complex work of practitioners in the "feminist welfare state" and sheds light on nuanced notions of equality promotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local governments may play a key role in making outdoor sports clubs smoke free. This study aims to assess the activities, motives, challenges and strategies of Dutch municipalities regarding stimulating outdoor sports clubs to become smoke free. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 policy officers of different municipalities in the Netherlands. The included municipalities varied in terms of region, population size and degree of urbanization. Data were analyzed using content analysis. Municipalities stimulated sports clubs to become smoke free by providing information and support and, to a lesser extent, by using financial incentives. Motives of municipalities varied from facilitating a healthy living environment for youth, responding to denormalization of smoking and aligning with goals formulated in national prevention policy. Policy officers faced several challenges, including limited capacity and funds, a reluctance to interfere with sports clubs and little support within the municipal organization. These challenges were addressed by employing various strategies such as embedding smoke-free sports in a broader preventive policy, setting a good example by creating outdoor smoke-free areas around municipal buildings, and collaborating with stakeholders in the municipality to join forces in realizing smoke-free sports clubs. Municipalities demonstrated evident motivation to contribute to a smoke-free sports environment. Currently, most municipalities fulfil an informative and supportive role, while some municipalities still explore their role and position in relation to supporting sports clubs to become smoke free. Other municipalities have established, according to them, effective strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article addresses the role of local governments in the most American of activities: the lawsuit. During the last few decades, city litigation has grown more proactive, diverse, and prominent. Cities now frequently file lawsuits respecting the most notable issues of the day. Each of these suits involves specific policy concerns peculiar to its subject matter, but as a group--as a legal phenomenon--they all raise common, and disputed, doctrinal questions pertaining to standing, local preemption, res judicata, state immunity, and more. When tackling these diverse doctrinal issues--sounding in both civil procedure and local government law--courts and scholars have failed to establish a coherent and principled approach. Such an approach is attainable, however, once one recognizes that at their core all the disparate doctrines applicable to city suits give voice to the same foundational questions: (1) what is the nature of the city's right to sue?, and (2) what is that right's scope? This Article answers these two questions. First, this Article establishes the nature of the city's right to sue as inherent. For both conceptual and normative reasons, the defining element of cityhood has always been the city's status as a separate legal entity--its corporate personhood. Corporate personhood, in turn, is manifested through the right to sue and be sued. Cities' right to sue, therefore, persisted throughout Anglo- American legal history. Contemporary criticisms notwithstanding, city suits are not some newfangled tools of social reform. Second, this Article explains that because the right to sue expresses the city's separate status, its scope is limited to suits that protect the city's own separate interests as an entity--not simply the economic, political, or social interests of its residents. A city suit may serve, or even be motivated by, residents' interests, but it must also further an independent city interest. A city suit solely reflecting residents' interests undermines the social promise of the city as a distinct and collective body. Contemporary proponents' enthusiastic embrace of the city suit often misses this limitation. Drawing the connection between the city suit and cityhood, this Article thus answers both the doctrinal and academic challenges of the day. It provides ready solutions to civil procedure and local government law problems that have bogged down courts, while offering a normative theory of the city suit firmly grounded in values associated with the law of the city on the one hand and with access to justice principles on the other. In so doing, it erects potential defenses for the city suit against challenges that might come from a federal judiciary hostile to public-interest litigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long demonstrated that cities are constrained by states and the federal government in the exercise of their power. While important, the emphasis on these "vertical" constraints on cities does not account for the "horizontal" constraints on city power from private actors. This Article suggests that the emphasis on vertical constraints on city power is due to a misunderstanding of the history of local government law that describes its sole function as the vertical distribution of power between cities and different levels of government. I revise the history of Dillon's Rule, the doctrinal cornerstone of local government law's vertical distribution of power, by arguing that local government law also distributes public and private power, between private capital and cities. Correcting the historical misunderstanding helps to show how private power still shackles cities in their efforts to address important challenges. Dillon's Rule is a rule in local government law holding that localities wield only the powers expressly granted to them by states and no others. In this Article, I suggest that this view rests on a misinterpretation of the Rule's origins narrowly centered on nineteenth-century jurist John Forrest Dillon's hostility toward local power and his faith in state power. I put Dillon's Rule back into the historical path from which it emerged, the evolution of U.S. public debt and economic development in the nineteenth century. I argue that this new historical contextualization reveals that Dillon's Rule also distributes public and private power. Dillon and his Rule emerged during a critical moment in the evolution of U.S. public debt and economic development, after federal and state debt-financed economic-development projects failed, and localities took up the task. Iowa was the epicenter of local debt finance, and it was where Dillon, then a state court judge, saw a wave of defaults in the 1860s as evidence of cities' inherent wastefulness and susceptibility to public corruption. Dillon believed, left to their own devices, cities and their mismanagement of debt would repeatedly deprive creditors and investors of their property. In response, Dillon authored the doctrine that would become known as his Rule. But Dillon did not give states the task of disciplining fiscally irresponsible cities. The Rule's empowering of states was largely procedural. Dillon made cities fiscally powerless so that they could only borrow and spend in a narrow way that would convince municipal creditors that their debts would be repaid. This constraint on local power by private capital was at the core of the Rule's design. In closing, I explore the contemporary ramifications of the Rule's distribution of public and private power. Today, in the name of attracting and shielding capital against city power as Dillon intended, the Rule shackles cities to a limited range of market-consented options with which to address shortages in local economic development, affordable housing, and climate change. Critically, these burdens fall disproportionately on people of color. I argue that seeing the Rule in this new light should impact how we view the project of revitalizing city power moving forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incorporation by reference is a traditional procedural mechanism that allows for actors at each level of government to include all or parts of a previously enacted law into the newer version of the law by simply including a statement stating that the second law should be treated as if it was part of the primary law. While incorporation by reference could facilitate and streamline legislation, New York has seemingly banned incorporation by reference in Article III, § 16 of the State Constitution. However, even though this ban is in place, there are several limitations and exceptions placed on the ban that make New York's policy regarding incorporation by reference potentially difficult to follow due to the lack of uniformity in the law. This article will discuss the policy issues surrounding incorporation by reference in the New York state legislature, agency regulations, and local government regulations as well as the exceptions involved in those policy issues. Furthermore, this article will give various suggestions to fix the issues in New York's incorporation by reference policy to make it more workable for the current legal environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Municipal charters are the forgotten constitutions of our federal system. Scholars generally understand our democracy to be governed by federal and state constitutions, but there is a third, almost entirely ignored realm of constitutional law and practice that lives at the local-government level, embodied in the charters that govern cities, counties, and towns. Engaging these foundational documents is critical. In an era of political gridlock and national polarization, with cities and other local governments increasingly grappling with policy concerns once considered state, federal, or even international responsibilities, the legal institutions that govern local democracy merit newfound scrutiny. Although municipal charters serve many of the functions that constitutions perform at other levels of government--delineating public institutions and articulating areas of "higher" law--legal scholars rarely take them seriously as constitutional texts. This Article argues that foregrounding the constitutional nature of municipal charters provides new theoretical insights into local governance and the role that local governments play in our political order. Like the federal Constitution, charters can be an important locus for constitutional meaning and civic identity, rendering fundamental choices about governmental structure, political process, and individual rights more salient and doctrinally significant. Understanding municipal charters as constitutions, in turn, carries important normative implications. Properly framed, charters can reinforce the contested nature of local governments as democratic polities, rather than administrative arms of the states or quasi-private service providers, at a time when the democratic underpinnings of localism are under strain. Improving charter constitutionalism can also serve to legitimate cities and other local governments by furthering rule-of-law values, such as transparency and stability. A newfound appreciation of the conceptual and normative potential of municipal charters, finally, suggests pathways for reforming the law and practice surrounding these instruments. This Article thus proposes pragmatic innovations in how local governments and the states can approach charters, emphasizing the centrality of inclusive process in ratifying and amending charters at what are, ultimately, vital local constitutional moments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

States have enacted a wave of statutes over the past several years preempting local government law and policies that potentially promote public health in various ways. Among these local preemption measures are statutes in at least 9 states that outlaw municipal policies providing some form of "sanctuary" to immigrants. Such policies, and their preemption, have importance both for direct access to health services and for broader social determinants of health. This article gauges the coverage and potential impact of these state preemption laws based on key informant interviews nationally and a close legal analysis of relevant laws and policy documents. It distinguishes between preemption laws focused on law enforcement cooperation and those that also encompass a wider array of "welcoming" policies and initiatives. It also distinguishes between more passive forms of preemption that prohibit barring cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, and those statutes that more affirmatively require active measures to assist federal enforcement. Drawing these distinctions can help municipalities determine which immigrant-supportive measures are still permitted, and how best to mitigate the adverse public health effects of these preemption laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few contest the importance of a robust transparency regime in a democratic system of government. In the United States, the "crown jewel" of this regime is the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Yet despite widespread agreement about the importance of transparency in government, few are satisfied with FOIA. Since its enactment, the statute has engendered criticism from transparency advocates and critics alike for insufficiently serving the needs of both the public and the government. Legal scholars have widely documented these flaws in the federal public records law. In contrast, scholars have paid comparatively little attention to transparency laws at the state and local level. This is surprising. The role of state and local government in the everyday lives of citizens has increased in recent decades, and many critical government functions are fulfilled by state and local entities today. Moreover, crucial sectors of the public--namely, media and advocacy organizations--rely as heavily on state public records laws as they do on FOIA to hold the government to account. Yet these state laws and their effects remain largely overlooked, creating gaps in both local government law and transparency law scholarship. This Article attempts to fill these gaps by surveying the state and local transparency regime, focusing on public records laws in particular. Drawing on hundreds of public records datasets, along with qualitative interviews, the Article demonstrates that in contrast with federal law, state transparency law introduces comparatively greater barriers to disclosure and comparatively higher burdens upon government. Further, the Article highlights the existence of "transparency deserts," or localities in which a combination of poorly drafted transparency laws, hostile government actors, and weak local media and civil society impedes effective public oversight of government. The Article serves as a corrective to the scholarship's current, myopic focus on federal transparency law. In doing so, it makes three central contributions. First, it provides a much-needed descriptive account of the state and local transparency regime. Second, it makes a normative contribution. It mines empirical and qualitative public records data to evaluate the costs and benefits of the current transparency regime and then applies those insights to contemporary academic and policy-oriented debates. In the process, the Article reveals that unique features of state and local government both heighten the salience of statutory transparency mechanisms and challenge dominant strands of thought in the contemporary transparency scholarship. Third, the Article has implications for ongoing public law debates, demonstrating that failures in the local transparency regime undermine certain theories of federalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy PointsPreemption is a legal doctrine whereby a higher level of government may limit or even eliminate the power of a lower level of government to regulate a certain issue. Some state legislatures are using preemption with increasing regularity to thwart local policies that have the potential to reduce health inequities.Despite recent trends, preemption is not inherently adversarial to public health, equity, or good governance but rather reflects its wielder's goals and values. Existing frameworks for assessing preemption fail to reconcile its potential to both advance and hinder health equity.An equity‐first preemption framework can facilitate case‐by‐case assessments of whether preemption is likely to worsen inequities or whether it is an appropriate response to address existing inequities. Robust empirical evidence is needed to develop and operationalize such a framework. Context: Due to the inequitable distribution of various social determinants of health, disparities in health and well‐being are tied to where an individual lives. In the United States, a zip code often better predicts a person's health than their genetic code. As communities seek to redress these inequities, many find that, due to state preemption, their zip code also dictates their ability to pursue more equitable laws through local government action. Preemption is a legal doctrine whereby a higher level of government may limit or even eliminate the power of a lower level of government to regulate a certain issue. Methods: We conducted a literature review to survey existing scholarship about the effects of preemption on public health and health equity using online databases such as PubMed, WestLaw, and Google Scholar. We also cohosted a series of cross‐sector, interdisciplinary research convenings with preemption, public health, and equity experts. Based on our findings, this article reviews the role of law and policy in the genesis of health inequities and highlights how preemption has both created and alleviated such inequities. We demonstrate how a normative framework rooted in redressing health inequities can advance a more just approach to preemption and outline a research agenda to support future action. Findings: Law and policy have been central to creating health inequities, and while those same tools can promote health equity, some state legislatures are using preemption with increasing regularity to thwart local policies that may improve health and equity. Nevertheless, preemption is not inherently adversarial to public health, equity, or good governance. Preemptive federal civil rights laws, for example, have countered government‐sanctioned discrimination. However, existing frameworks for assessing preemption fail to reconcile its potential to both advance and hinder health equity. Conclusions: Shortcomings in existing preemption frameworks demonstrate the need for new approaches to elevate equity as a central consideration in assessing preemption. We propose the development of an equity‐first preemption framework to establish evidence‐based criteria for assessing when preemption will enhance or inhibit equity and a research agenda for developing the evidence necessary to inform and operationalize the framework. An equity‐first reconceptualization of preemption can help ensure that local governments remain places of innovation while allowing states and the federal government to block local actions that are likely to create or perpetuate inequities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We develop the notion of the public domain to study how decentralization alters power relationships in local governance. • We synthesize two threads of scholarship that emphasize the institutional and social dimensions of democratic deepening. • We study how India's MGNREGA – the largest transfer of resources to local governments to date – is changing local governance. • We present detailed histories of political change in three local governments in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh. • The public domain shows how decentralization is altering citizenship through changing practices of local democracy. Over the past three decades, governments around the world have undertaken reforms for decentralization. These reforms are founded on the belief that more democratic participation in local governance will lead to better outcomes for rural development, public service delivery, and environmental governance. However, the effects of these efforts have been highly variable in practice. Extensive literature has studied the factors associated with different outcomes of policy interest, yet we continue to lack knowledge of how local democracy evolves through changing power relationships over time. In this article, we draw together two dominant threads of scholarship, which have emphasized the social and institutional dimensions of democratic deepening respectively, to develop an analysis of local political change through the conceptual lens of the public domain. We define the public domain as comprising three distinct yet interrelated elements: (a) the citizens that are constituted as a "public", (b) the collection of "public goods" that they are able to access, and (c) the means and channels by which they seek to influence decision-making. Through case studies of three local governments in the Indian states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh, we show how the decentralized architecture of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)—the largest downward transfer of resources to local elected governments to date—has interacted with local histories of social and institutional change, leading to different trajectories of political transformation. While the devolution of resources under the MGNREGA has improved access to state resources and increased participation in development planning overall, the intensity, equity, and extent of influence varies according to the character of local political relationships. By offering a relational and processual understanding of how local governance evolves over time, the public domain lends new insight into the ways that decentralization is redefining citizenship through new articulations of the 'public' in local democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article provides a novel investigation of how law both enables and constrains the ability of city residents to claim, name, and often rename their neighborhoods. A rich interdisciplinary dialogue in fields such as geography and sociology has emerged on the significance of place names, but this literature has largely ignored the legal dimensions of the phenomenon and its implications for urban governance, belonging, and community conflict. This Article's empirical exploration of the role of law in change and conflict regarding neighborhood identity thus advances the discourse both for legal scholars focused on urban dynamics and across disciplines. From gentrification fights sparked by efforts to rename the southern part of Harlem as "SoHa" to a successful community movement to change the name of the area once known as South Central to "South Los Angeles," neighborhood identity has long sparked controversy and is increasingly leading to proposals for legal change. These conflicts raise fundamental questions about the legal dimensions of urban governance and people's sense of ownership over their communities: How do neighborhoods actually get their formal names and why is neighborhood identity so hotly contested? And how does law mediate what we use to identify local communities? Understanding the texture and significance of neighborhoodnaming conflicts, moreover, carries implications in two distinct areas of legal theory. First, in terms of property, neighborhood identity provides insights into collective cultural ownership in the absence of formal rights, reflecting the central tension in property theory between economic value and personhood. Likewise, conflicts over neighborhood naming shed new light on our understanding of local government law, foregrounding often-overlooked dynamics of formality and informality and the microscale interplay of public and private forces in urban governance. These related theoretical frames, finally, supply insights into the normative stakes in conflicts over neighborhood naming, where the advantages of formalization must be balanced against dynamics of exclusion and vulnerability, suggesting notes of caution for any attempt to reform the legal foundations of neighborhood identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The law regulating certification marks--a close cousin of trademarks--is inadequate to handle the needs of state governments as certifiers. While states play important roles in certifying products, the Lanham Act's certification mark provisions impose restrictions on certifiers that are designed to rein in self-dealing and anticompetitive conduct by private businesses and trade groups. Although these restrictions help ensure that certifiers stick to standards that they promulgate for themselves, this Note argues that these same restrictions do not account for states' need to consistently update certification standards to fulfill public policy imperatives that are distinct from the commercial motives that private certifiers face. This Note argues that because the Lanham Act is so restrictive, courts, agencies, and Congress should all work to give more latitude to states as certifiers. In doing so, this Note also examines some of the underdeveloped doctrinal areas surrounding certification marks, including the ability to amend a certification mark and the rights-remedies gap for many violations of the Lanham Act's certification mark provisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on decentralization points out that there is a tendency to limit discretion at the local level by, for example, imposing national standards. It is therefore of interest to understand how sub-national authorities act under conditions of political decentralization, which is not followed by a similar delegation of administrative competence. Are subnational authorities able to make policy changes or do they simply follow the same path as the central state authorities prior to decentralization? Drawing on insights from organisational perspectives, it might be expected that the shift of organisational locus affects policy change. Based on qualitative data, we explore the Norwegian Reform of Government Administration, which transferred the bulk of the national road network to the regional level in 2010. This was a political decentralization reform. The sub-national authorities continued to rely on the national road agency's competence. Although standards, the professional community in the road agency and limited financial resources hampered the effect of the reform, we find that the regional authorities were able to influence the focus of the road agency towards a more sustainable and holistic regional perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effects of bargaining law characteristics on rates of unionization in over 10,000 local government departments, representing five different government services, that were without bargaining units in 1977. Duty-to-bargain laws significantly increased the probability of bargaining union formation between 1977 and 1982. The results of the analysis reject the hypotheses that this effect reflects only underlying union strength, the release of pent-up demand for unionization, or the transformation of nonbargaining unions into bargaining unions. The changes in unionization attributable to duty-to-bargain laws are so large that they account for nearly all of the differences in average unionization rates between states with and without these laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under current doctrine interpreting 42 U.S.C. § 1983, local governments are not subject to respondeat superior for their officers' constitutional torts but can only be held liable for those torts if the plaintiff can show the violation was caused by the local government's policy or custom. The Supreme Court has developed complicated, stringent, and heavily criticized tests plaintiffs must meet to show the requisite policy or custom, which require plaintiffs to plead, discover, and prove facts about municipal policies, practices, and patterns of conduct well beyond the confines of the individual case. The Court has refused, however, to allow municipal defendants to invoke the qualified immunity defense available to individual officers, which allows an officer to defeat liability and escape suit if she can show that her conduct did not violate the plaintiff's clearly established constitutional rights. Building on other scholars' criticisms of the doctrine, this Article proposes that § 1983 doctrine should be changed so that municipal defendants are liable in respondeat superior for their officers' torts but are allowed to invoke their officers' qualified immunity defense. This Article supports that proposal based primarily on the following policy grounds. First, it would make § 1983 litigation simpler and more efficient, by eliminating the complicated and discovery-intensive municipal liability doctrine and by focusing litigation on the narrower legal question of qualified immunity. Second, it would improve local governments' incentives under the statute. Replacing municipalliability doctrine with respondeat superior would replace the current incentive to insulate policymakers from traceable connections to constitutional violations with an incentive to monitor and prevent violations of clearly established constitutional law, while allowing municipal qualified immunity would prevent municipal governments from being exposed to expansive new liabilities. Third, the changes would make cases against local governments easier to prove and potentially more valuable for more deserving plaintiffs, and eliminate recovery for less deserving plaintiffs. Finally, the changes would better serve the federalism policy of respect for state and local governments that underpins the Court's § 1983 jurisprudence, because they would eliminate direct federal court scrutiny into local policies, customs, and practices and so give local governments more flexibility to choose policies and practices to effectively deter constitutional violations by their officers. The Article then briefly explains why the proposal is both possible and feasible. It is possible because it can be justified in terms of the statute's text, legislative history, and background in common law, in the same way as the Court's current doctrine can be so justified. And it is feasible because (1) the Court has often made major changes in its § 1983 doctrine based on policy; (2) the Court is notably enthusiastic about qualified immunity but has been more equivocal about municipal liability; and (3) the proposal has appeal as a compromise that takes from municipal defendants by expanding their responsibility while giving to them an additional, powerful affirmative defense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is an attempt to analyze the reform of the local government electoral system introduced by the Act of January 11, 2018. The authors of the study describe the most important changes from the point of view of the citizens mentioned in the title of the act as well as of the institutions involved. Among the most important changes the authors list those related to passive voting right, seat allocation method and the structure of constituencies. Because of the lack of an appropriate time perspective, the authors limit themselves to legal and political analysis, pointing only to their possible consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper draws on in-depth research on the impacts of urban regeneration programmes on small business communities in Haringey, London. It uses the Haringey case to document and describe the rolling out of more entrepreneurial forms of delivery-based urban policy and planning. It explores the relationships between austerity and local government finance; recent reforms to the planning system and the implementation of delivery-based, housing-focused urban regeneration programmes; and the types of urban built environment that are now emerging in cities. The discussion uses the example of small business communities to assess the impacts that contemporary planning interventions have on the form and character of urban economic development. It concludes by highlighting some of the broader implications for the planning of diverse cities and outlines future directions for research and analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the Civil War, the South faced a problem that was almost entirely new in the United States: a racially diverse and geographically integrated citizenry. In one fell swoop with emancipation, millions of former slaves were now citizens. The old system of plantation localism, built largely on the feudal control of the black population by wealthy white planters, was no longer viable. The urgent question facing both those who sought to reform and those who sought to preserve the "Old South" was: What should local government look like after emancipation? This Article tells the story of the struggle over the answer to that question. At the center of that struggle is an untold legal history of local government reform during Reconstruction. In the years immediately after the Civil War, idealistic Yankee reformers went south with the explicit aim of remaking the "fabric of southern culture" by rebuilding the South in the image of their northern homes. Specifically, in North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina, these reformers rewrote state constitutions to replace the plantation and county court with townships modeled on the New England town. Southern conservatives resisted the new townships, understanding them as foreign impositions targeted to destroy their old way of life. Within a decade they had dismantled the new townships and built the foundations of a new Jim Crow local order rooted in the county and approximating a return to the plantation. By telling this new history, this Article contributes to present scholarship in at least two ways. First, the story highlights a binary struggle between "communitarian" localism embodied in the civic participation of the New England town and "proprietary" localism embodied in the private power of the plantation owner. This struggle was framed with crystal clarity during Reconstruction, but it remains a powerful analytic tool for understanding today's debates and struggles over local government. Second and relatedly, this history reveals the extent to which racial anxiety shaped and continues to shape local institutions. The communitarian township experiment was fueled by a vision of racial equality--and the white supremacist response to it was fueled by resentment and resistance to that vision. When we think about localism and racial inequality, we tend to think about the responses to school desegregation in the mid-twentieth century when racial resentment and fear during the "Second Reconstruction" drove white flight and contributed to resegregation through suburbanization. This Article shows that we may be looking at the wrong Reconstruction. In fact, the pathologies of local government, racial segregation, democracy, and protection of property were framed after the Civil War, in the crucible of a direct conflict between utopian racial egalitarianism and white supremacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A common challenge for health sector planning and budgeting has been the misalignment between policies, technical planning and budgetary allocation; and inadequate community involvement in priority setting. Health system decentralisation has often been promoted to address health sector planning and budgeting challenges through promoting community participation, accountability, and technical efficiency in resource management. In 2010, Kenya passed a new constitution that introduced 47 semi-autonomous devolved county governments, and a substantial transfer of responsibility for healthcare from the central government to these counties. Methods: This study analysed the effects of this major political decentralization on health sector planning, budgeting and overall financial management at county level. We used a qualitative, case study design focusing on Kilifi County, and were guided by a conceptual framework which drew on decentralisation and policy analysis theories. Qualitative data were collected through document reviews, key informant interviews, and participant and non-participant observations conducted over an eighteen months' period. Results: We found that the implementation of devolution created an opportunity for local level prioritisation and community involvement in health sector planning and budgeting hence increasing opportunities for equity in local level resource allocation. However, this opportunity was not harnessed due to accelerated transfer of functions to counties before county level capacity had been established to undertake the decentralised functions. We also observed some indication of re-centralisation of financial management from health facility to county level. Conclusion: We conclude by arguing that, to enhance the benefits of decentralised health systems, resource allocation, priority setting and financial management functions between central and decentralised units are guided by considerations around decision space, organisational structure and capacity, and accountability. In acknowledging the political nature of decentralisation polices, we recommend that health sector policy actors develop a broad understanding of the countries' political context when designing and implementing technical strategies for health sector decentralisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Pakistani Pakhtun-tribal belt or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is part of Pakistan yet it is governed differently from the rest of the country through the colonial era regulation known as Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) 1901. Local government system, which is considered as nursery for a participatory system of governance has never been introduced until lately in the FATA. Therefore, the tribal people have remained deprived of their rudimentary right of self-governance. However, the process of introducing local government began in FATA when the former President General (Retired) Pervez Musharraf pledged in January 2002 to have elected municipal councils in the FATA. Thus in 2002 the first draft for the current Local Government Regulation was prepared. Then in 2004, Local Bodies (LBs) polls with limited participation of tribal people were held in the FATA. More recently in 2012, another Local Government Regulation was drafted but the tribesmen are still waiting for the promulgation of an Ordinance, Act or Regulation for materialising the system in FATA. This paper attempts to analyse administrative structure of FATA and the importance of local government system as a basic step to introducing participatory governance and thereby bringing the FATA to the mainstream politics. The broader approach of the paper remains democracy where people share the right of rulership in a nation state and the theory of human development presented by Dr. Mebabul Haq and later evolved by Amrtya Sen advocating for good governance states that participation in local governance is the main indicator to measure the human development of a society. The research is purely qualitative in nature and the scholar has extensively used the research tools of interviews, focused group discussion (FGDs), personal interactions and observations, the unpublished documents and existing literature on local government. The key informants, politicians belonging to FATA, academicians, tribal students, tribal elders, legal experts and bureaucrats have been interviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, many initiatives have attempted to tackle the deprivation currently experienced in South Rotterdam. Efforts have been made to attract creative workers and, in a counter-reaction, other initiatives have aimed to encourage the creative talents of poorer residents to strengthen their economic position. One example of this is Freehouse, which has established projects in the Afrikaanderwijk, including a neighbourhood cooperative. Our article addresses two questions: 1) What are the effects of the Freehouse projects on the economic position of residents of the Afrikaanderwijk? and 2) Which insights do our results provide into the possible effects of local government policies that rely on citizens playing an active role? Although the economic effects of the projects were limited, our study reveals that citizens' initiatives, such as the Afrikaander Cooperative, can help residents gain employment. In order to succeed, these initiatives should not be hindered by obstructive regulations, and they should include input from the residents who function as staff. However, in deprived neighbourhoods, many residents require support to be able to contribute to citizens' initiatives, and cannot be expected to act like Baron Munchausen and pull themselves out of the swamp of deprivation by their own hair. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how local government authorities plan and financially provide for infrastructure while considering the needs of current and future communities. In New Zealand the Local Government Act 2002 provides a mandate for local authority planning through the requirement to publish Long Term Council Community Plans (LTCCPs). Our content analysis of the LTCCPs, annual plans and annual reports of five New Zealand local authorities reveals that these local authorities make conscious decisions about infrastructure that reflect concern for matters of intergenerational equity. They do so despite problems in relation to valuation, depreciation, deferred maintenance and financing of infrastructure assets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transportation development increasingly relies on local governments to implement sustainable strategies, yet implementation success varies widely. This begs an important question, why are some cities successful and others not? In response, this study focuses on the political culture characteristics of city leadership and staff pertaining to sustainable transportation. Employing semi-structured interviews with officials in two case study cities—Pomona and Pasadena, California—the study identifies and traces the impact of cultural characteristics on network interactions and the resulting transportation innovation. Finally, this research suggests key political and department characteristics that contribute to political cultures that facilitate sustainable transportation development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the poll provisions of the Western Australia Local Government Act 1995 and their impact on the efforts to reform the state's local government system.

American courts have long struggled with categorizing municipalities. They treat municipalities sometimes as private corporations, sometimes as governmental bodies, and sometimes as something in between. This uncertainty provides a shaky foundation for local government law and hampers its development. Local governments are not sure of their powers, and states are unable to create a comprehensive vision of municipal governance. When federal law is involved, the situation is muddled further. In FTC v. Phoebe Putney, the Supreme Court's application of the state action doctrine unnecessarily injected federal antitrust law into the relationship between states and municipalities. The state action doctrine exempts states from antitrust liability and is only sometimes applicable to municipalities. Though ostensibly applying a "foreseeability" test to determine whether a municipality benefits from the doctrine, the Supreme Court instead pigeonholed municipal power into a narrow conception of municipalities' role in American governance. This narrowed foreseeability test not only on its face constricts states' ability to delegate certain functions to municipalities, but also creates constraining uncertainty as to which delegations of state power to municipalities will run afoul of federal antitrust law. Accordingly, this Note analyzes Phoebe Putney as an erosion of municipalities' ability to perform governmental functions--to promote the health, safety, and welfare of the community--and as denying municipalities a vibrant role in the American federal system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a survey of cases involving local government law in Georgia decided by the Georgia Court of Appeals. Topics include the consideration of ante litem notice in the case City of Greensboro v. Rowland; consideration of whether a private nonprofit's records were subject to disclosure under the Open Records Act in the case Smith v. Northside Hospital, Inc. by the Court; and the review of an individual's statutory right to videotape a public meeting in the case Gravitt v. Olens.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing debate on governance, accountability, transparency and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the mining sector of a developing country context. It examines the reporting practices of the two largest transnational gold-mining companies in Tanzania in order to draw attention to the role played by local government regulations and advocacy and campaigning by nationally organised non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with respect to promoting corporate social reporting practices. Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes a political economy perspective to consider the serious implications of the neo-liberal ideologies of the global capitalist economy, as manifested in Tanzania’s regulatory framework and in NGO activism, for the corporate disclosure, accountability and responsibility of transnational companies (TNCs). A qualitative field case study methodology is adopted to locate the largely unfamiliar issues of CSR in the Tanzanian mining sector within a more familiar literature on social accounting. Data for the case study were obtained from interviews and from analysis of documents such as annual reports, social responsibility reports, newspapers, NGO reports and other publicly available documents. Findings – Analysis of interviews, press clips and NGO reports draws attention to social and environmental problems in the Tanzanian mining sector, which are arguably linked to the manifestation of the broader crisis of neo-liberal agendas. While these issues have serious impacts on local populations in the mining areas, they often remain invisible in mining companies’ social disclosures. Increasing evidence of social and environmental ills raises serious questions about the effectiveness of the regulatory frameworks, as well as the roles played by NGOs and other pressure groups in Tanzania. Practical implications – By empowering local NGOs through educational, capacity building, technological and other support, NGOs’ advocacy, campaigning and networking with other civil society groups can play a pivotal role in encouraging corporations, especially TNCs, to adopt more socially and environmentally responsible business practices and to adhere to international and local standards, which in turn may help to improve the lives of many poor people living in developing countries in general, and Tanzania in particular. Originality/value – This paper contributes insights from gold-mining activities in Tanzania to the existing literature on CSR in the mining sector. It also contributes to political economy theory by locating CSR reporting within the socio-political and regulatory context in which mining operations take place in Tanzania. It is argued that, for CSR reporting to be effective, robust regulations and enforcement and stronger political pressure must be put in place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transparency policies and initiatives at the local level have expanded around the world but our academic understanding is still limited. Few studies have systematically analysed transparency practices at the local government level. This paper develops an analytical framework to examine local government transparency practices based on the literature. The framework is used to analyse the English Local Government Transparency Code 2015. The study shows that the Code delivers openness to a partial extent but has not yet met all criteria for transparent practices. The findings could contribute to the development and improvement of transparency practices at local governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article examines the history, development, and basis of legal standards applicable to Florida local government zoning decisions. Topics discussed include legal standard of review of local government decisions; the Snyder rule for quasi-judicial zonings; the Florida Supreme Court's decision in the case Schauer v. City of Miami; and Florida's standard and development of the fairly debatable standard.

As part of its controversial forced amalgamation program, the Baird Government announced that merged councils would fall under a rate path freeze for a period of four years. During that time, merged municipalities would face the same rate increases they would have experienced had they not been amalgamated. The NSW Government also requested the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) to offer recommendations on how the rate freeze policy should best be implemented and IPART released Freezing Existing Rate Paths for Newly Merged Councils in August 2016. This paper examines the rate freeze policy and the IPART report and demonstrates that they would impose serious efficiency, equity and financial sustainability problems on compulsorily consolidated councils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examine the purpose of local government in New Zealand from the promotion of community well-beings to the provision of local infrastructure, local public services and regulatory functions, as of December 2015. Topics discussed include introduction of the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Act 2012; interpretation of jurisdictional provisions of the amendment; and definition of 'Local Public Services' as defined by the act.

The article discusses how the U.S. state Ohio's home-rule principles and constitutionality of regional governments. Topic discussed include role of special-purpose governments such as Ohio Development Services Agency (ODSA) in dealing with local issues, history of Ohio home rule that became law, and the Ohio's home-rule amendment.

The article focuses on the several court cases related to local government law in the U.S. The cases discussed include Effingham County v. Roach regarding the drafting of termination or no-damages clauses for delays in contracts, Georgia Department of Corrections v. Couch on impliedly waiver of the sovereign immunity and Dillard Land Investments, LLC v. Fulton County on the condemnation to acquire property for public library facilities under takings clause.

The Irish local government system works on a partnership model, with powers shared between the elected members and the appointed manager or chief executive. Within this system, each local authority elects a mayor on an annual basis from among its own members. In 2001 legislation was passed which proposed a drastic change to the office of mayor, and potentially to the role of the manager. The Local Government Act, 2001, provided for the direct election of mayors with executive powers. The proposal was dropped in 2003 but resurfaced in a 2008 Green Paper. This Green Paper never proceeded to legislation but six years later Minister Phil Hogan, TD, provided for the direct election of a mayor in Dublin in the Local Government Reform Act, 2014. The minister, however, inserted a clause that each of the four Dublin local authorities would firstly have to adopt a resolution in favour of holding a plebiscite in Dublin on the issue. Fingal County Council voted against and so the issue of a directly elected mayor was shelved again. Undoubtedly it will reappear at some point in the near future and it is hoped that a meaningful debate on the issue will lead to greater clarity on details, especially the precise powers of the mayor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El artículo analiza diversos decretos y sentencias en Derecho Administrativo de España emitidos entre marzo y diciembre de 2014. Los temas discutidos incluyen el Real Decreto 876/2014 que desarrolla la Ley de Costas, en particular su papel en la protección de los terrenos costeros de propiedad pública; el Real Decreto-ley 17/2014 sobre financiamiento de las Comunidades Autónomas; y una sentencia del Tribunal Constitucional sobre autonomía local para la creación de un parque natural.

The article looks at the interpretive disagreement between the majority and the minority judges in the Hong Kong, China Court of Final Appeal decision of "T v Commissioner of Police." Topics discussed include the Hong Kong Places of Public Entertainment Ordinance (Cap 172) (PPEO), legislative history of the PPEO, and inclusion of public entertainments to the regulatory scope of the PPE.

Copyright of Optimum: Journal of Economics & Management Sciences / Ekonomi ve Yönetim Bilimleri Dergisi is the property of Optimum: Journal of Economics & Management Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article offers information on the history, functions and duties of the township government in the State of Indiana. It analyzes the need for reform and transfer of the duties of township government to their respective county based on the recommendation of the Kernan-Shepard Report of the Indiana Commission on Local Government Reform. It also discusses the efficiency and effectiveness of recommendations from the Blue-Ribbon Commission on Local Government Reform.

The article discusses the court case Squamish Nation v. British Columbia which examines the petition made by the Squamish Nation for the review of the Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development's approval of the 2011 Official Community Plan (OCP). Topics discussed include an overview of the OCP plan and the Local Government Act of 1996, details of the deliberation made during the examination, and the final judgment as expressed by the presiding judge.