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Political information is key to political competence. The relationship between political information and the decision to vote, however, is understudied at the municipal level of government. Based on a survey of 3,200 electors in the province of Quebec, our results highlight the importance of information in voters' decision to go to the polls as well as how this information affects other variables. Our analysis shows that the more a voter is knowledgeable about the candidates' platforms and projects, the more likely he or she is to vote. Our findings extend knowledge regarding political information, political competence and turnout from other levels of government to the municipal level. Keywords: political platform and projects informations, Quebec voters, voters knowledge of candidate Si l'information politique contribue à la formation de la compétence politique, peu de travaux analysent la relation entre l'information politique et la décision de se rendre aux urnes à l'échelle municipale. À partir d'une enquête menée auprès de 3 200 électeur-trice-s de la province de Québec, nous montrons d'une part l'importance que détient l'information chez les électeur-trice-s dans la décision d'aller voter et d'autre part la façon dont cette information est susceptible d'influencer d'autres variables. Notre analyse montre que plus un.e électeur.trice est informé.e sur les programmes et les projets des candidat.e.s, plus il.elle est susceptible de voter. Ces résultats élargissent ainsi plus largement les connaissances concernant l'information politique, la compétence politique et la participation électorale. Mots-clés : infomation électorale des candidat-e-s, électeur-trice-s du Québec, connaisance des électeur-trice-s ses programmes et les projets des candidat-e-s, Introduction Information deficits are often cited as possible explanations for lower voter turnout (Elmendorf and Schleicher 2012). This relationship between information and turnout has been extensively studied for the upper [...]

Neighbourhood groups are a feature of municipal politics across Canada yet are understudied in mid-sized cities. They are often portrayed as a mechanism for allowing residents to be more engaged in decisions affecting their neighbourhoods and to improve municipal decisions by incorporating the lived experience of municipal residents into that decision-making. It is therefore important to examine the formation of neighbourhood groups, whether they influence municipal decisions, and whether they are representative of their neighbourhoods. This article examines these issues through a case study of four neighbourhood groups in Windsor, Ontario. Using interview data as well as analysis of primary and secondary sources, it examines the top-down and grassroots forces that shaped these groups and their involvement in council decisions relating to vacant buildings in the city. The conclusions reached are that there were clear limits to the influence that they exerted on municipal decision-making. These groups did represent the interests of their communities and, when provided with external resources to develop their institutional capacity, they did help promote municipal policy change. This was, however, incremental change at the margins of the policy process. Keywords: neighbourhood groups, residents participation and municipal decision-making, Windsor (Ontario) Les groupes communautaires de quartier, qui sont partout au Canada, sont une caractéristique de la politique municipale Ils sont souvent décrits comme un mécanisme permettant aux résidents de s'impliquer davantage dans les décisions affectant leurs quartiers et d'améliorer les décisions municipales en intégrant l'expérience vécue des résidents dans cette prise de décision. Il est donc important d'examiner la formation des groupes communautaires de quartier, leur capacité à façonner les politiques municipales et la mesure dans laquelle ils sont représentatifs de leur quartier. Cet article examine ces questions par le biais d'une étude de cas de quatre groupes communautaires de quartier à Windsor (Ontario). ?€ l'aide des données d'entrevues ainsi que de l'analyse de sources primaires et secondaires, l'on examine les forces descendantes, les mouvements de base qui ont façonné ces groupes, et leur implication dans les décisions du conseil relatives aux bâtiments vacants dans la ville. Les conclusions tirées montrent qu'il y avait des limites claires à l'influence qu'ils exerçaient sur la prise de décision municipale. Néanmoins, ces groupes ont représenté les intérêts de leurs communautés et lorsqu'ils ont reçu des ressources pour développer leur capacité institutionnelle, ils ont contribué à promouvoir un changement de politique municipale bénéfique pour les quatre quartiers. Mots-clés : groupes communautaires de quartier, implication des résidents et décisions municipale, Windsor (Ontario), Introduction Neighbourhood groups are a feature of municipal politics in Canada. They exist in various forms in different cities, often with different names, different levels of institutional support, and different [...]

The Arab citizens of Israel lived until the late 1940s in self-sufficient, semiautonomous villages, where the majority of them were peasants who finished elementary school at most. During the 1950s and 1960s, the government of Israel started to establish local municipalities, whose head and council would be elected in free and fair democratic elections. This article examines, first, how the traditional social unit, the clan or extended family, has dominated the democratic municipal institutions since their establishment. Second, what is the strength of the municipal institutions in upholding the rule of law and extracting direct property taxes from a clan society? The article concludes that the municipal institution in the Arab towns has emerged as a weak institution that has been unable to impose the rule of law or extract taxes from the village residents, thus providing poor services to the residents in return. This weakness and poor performance is attributed to two factors: discrimination by the state of Israel in allocating resources to the Arab municipalities and the clan politics that has obstructed the municipal attempts of penetrating society and extracting taxes., INTRODUCTION THE ARAB CITIZENS HAVE BEEN ENGAGED IN DEMOCRATIC PROCESSES at the national and municipal levels. These two-level democratic processes have been marked by different grassroots political solidarity and organizations [...]

Little has been written about the Canadian municipal chief administrative officer (CAO). Given the growing importance of municipalities, it is an important gap in the literature. This article depicts CAOs as a group of older white men, highly educated and very experienced. Given the impending retirement of a significant number of CAOs, municipalities have an opportunity to achieve a greater degree of representativeness. The authors identify a number of research trajectories to enhance our knowledge and understanding of this critical administrative position. Il existe peu de documents sur les chefs des services municipaux au Canada. Etant donne Timportance croissante des municipalites, cela represente une grave lacune dans la documentation. Cet article decrit les chefs des services municipaux comme un groupe d'hommes blancs d'un certain age, ayant un haut niveau d'etudes et une grande experience. Comme un grand nombre d'entre eux vont prendre leur retraite d'ici peu, les municipalites ont une occasion de parvenir a un plus grand degre de representativite. Les auteurs identifient un certain nombre de pistes de recherche pour ameliorer nos connaissances et notre comprehension de cette fonction administrative cruciale., Despite the growing importance of municipalities in our federal system of government and the critical role that chief administrative officers (CAOs) play therein, it is perhaps the least studied and [...]

Under Prime Minister Paul Martin, the federal government developed a "cities and communities" agenda, with Ottawa prepared to be much more active about municipalities. The pendulum has swung back under the Harper government, which is far less inclined to intrude into this area of provincial jurisdiction. But these recent developments are not unique. The federal government was involved with the urban file in the 1970s through the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, and there have been other historical instances of federal interest in municipalities. This article explores the factors that are associated with the place of municipalities and urban issues on the federal policy agenda. The time period covered is 1867-2005. The methodology is the one common to the agenda-setting literature: cross-correlation functions and lagged correlations. The authors think there may be three operative independent variables: rapid population growth in cities; restructuring of municipal systems by provincial governments; and financial stress. The analysis investigates the strength of each factor in placing urban issues on the national policy agenda. In the end, there is no single explanatory model to explain the rise of municipal issues on the agenda: history matters. Sous le regime du Premier ministre Paul Martin, le gouvernement federal d'Ottawa etait dispose a etre beaucoup plus actif aupres des municipalites en mettant au point un programme intitule << Villes et collectivites >>. Le pendule est revenu en arriere sous le gouvernement Harper, qui est beaucoup moins enclin a s'infiltrer dans ce domaine de competence provinciale. Mais ces recents developpements ne sont pas uniques en leur genre. Dans les annees 1970, le gouvernement federal s'etait investi dans les affaires urbaines par l'intermediaire du departement d'Etat charge des Affaires urbaines, et il y a eu d'autres cas historiques d'un interet federal accorde aux municipalites. Le present article examine les facteurs associes a l'importance qu'occupent les municipalites et les questions urbaines dans le programme de la politique federale. La periode etudiee va de 1867 a 2005. La methodologie est celle propre aux documents sur letablissement de programmes : fonctions de correlations croisees et correlations retardees. Selon les auteurs, il pourrait y avoir trois variables independantes en jeu : une croissance rapide de la population dans les villes; la restructuration des systemes municipaux par les gouvernements provinciaux; et le stress financier. Uanalyse examine la force de chaque facteur pour placer les questions urbaines a l'ordre du jour de la politique nationale. Finalement, il n'existe pas de modele unique pour expliquer la croissance des questions municipales a l'ordre du jour : c'est l'histoire qui compte., How issues get onto the policy agenda is an intriguing question. Since the seminal work by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw (1972), an enormous body of work on agenda-setting has [...]

An amendment to the Indian Constitution provided for the representation of women in local government aimed at creating a gender-equal society. The impact of the aforementioned democratic reform on the quality of public governance is analyzed. Women's political behavior as state legislators are also discussed.

This article focuses on the use of strategic planning and management processes in municipal governments with populations over 25,000. Strategic planning has been used in municipalities for 20 years now, but little is known about how it is used and the results obtained. In particular, we explore whether municipal governments tie other components of the overall strategic management process to their strategic plans. Findings do not show a dramatic expansion in the use of strategic planning, but there is some evidence of growing sophistication, as demonstrated by links to other management and decision-making activities. Managers were enthusiastic about their experiences with strategic planning and largely satisfied with their achievement of goals and objectives. Overall, we find a raising of the bar as far as strategic planning is concerned, but the use of comprehensive strategic management is only beginning to develop in a small number of leading-edge municipalities.

When Carrollton, Texas, began a managed competition process, the first department to compete with the private sector was the Carrollton Solid Waste Division (CSW), for residential waste collection and disposal. […]

The polycentric model of municipal governance suggests that multiple jurisdictions may approximate an efficient market for local public services: citizens move to jurisdictions offering services they value at tax rates they are willing and able to pay. The model is appealing to political theorists for its emphasis on free association and responsive governance, but problematic insofar as institutions prescribed by the model permit exclusionary practices and objectionable inequalities. I argue for a revised conception of polycentricity: efficient spatial patterns of boundaries and services are acceptable only if they are consistent with (inter alia) fair opportunities for both mobility and loyalty to place. This suggests a vision of the polycentric city in which fairness and contestation are as important as freedom and efficiency.

This article explores the interplay of local government policy and legitimacy from a broad postpositivist perspective where historical accounts and narratives are used in a complementary fashion. The basic assumption is that legitimacy is the product of satisfying felt needs and solving perceived problems. Health and social malaise problems and related policies of the past 120 years are analyzed in 50 Swedish municipalities. The analysis indicates that municipality policies respond to local problems only partly. Generally, local government policies responded dynamically to 'objective' and perceived problems before the 1970s, but did not resolve the problems. Today's legitimacy crisis could, to some extent, be explained by the discrepancy between high expectations created in the policy discourse and the central and local government's incapacity to offer sustainable solutions to ongoing problems. It is suggested that if history is considered more seriously in public policy making it could help policy makers and citizens readjust expectations, illuminate the limits and prospects for public policy, and identify ways to restore legitimacy. Moreover, legitimacy could be restored if more realistic policies are worked out and if a new division of power between the levels of government is introduced.

Using the 'Informational City' concept of Castells and its extension to the world-city literature, this paper examines contemporary strategies of urban management in Moscow. The focus is on international communication trends transforming Moscow into an Informational City, manifested locally in the establishment of various types of business districts. Using detailed data (local postal zones), we examine the location of diverse business facilities, their restriction to particular types of urban environments, their relation to the geography of government organization, and the location of the financial sphere and trade (especially in luxury items). Moscow's transformation from Soviet to Informational City has produced a polarized city that increasingly fits the 'citadel-ghetto' model. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O18, O19, R12. 3 figures, 3 tables, 71 references.

Counties in the twenty-first century are enigmatic hybrids of state and local government. Behaving sometimes as agents of state government, sometimes as county governments, and increasingly as municipal governments, urban counties are becoming more relevant as deliverers of urban services. Studies of county government have long recognized two roles of counties: as service delivery arms of state government and as local governments. More recently, analyses of county activities have pointed to increasing involvement in the delivery of services typically left to cities, particularly in urbanized areas. The rise of counties' municipal services role deserves greater attention. Using a two-year, in-depth analysis of Los Angeles County, the authors examine the extent to which L.A. County has increased its municipal presence. They find that this municipal, or urban, services role comprises a significant portion of Los Angeles County's activities and takes several distinct forms.

This article explores the application of the so-called 'common sense' agenda of the Ontario government to the municipal sector in selected communities. By examining a range of restructuring proposals considered and/or adopted during 1995-97 in six municipalities in southern Ontario the study addresses two objectives. First, it delineates the manner in which the term 'rationalize' has been understood by the province and the municipalities. Evidence suggests that the derive to 'restructure' has evolved into a fairly simplistic strategy: amalgamate and eliminate units of municipal government and reduce the number of municipal councilors and staff. Second, it analyses the government's promise to 'sit down with the municipalities' in this process. The Harris government, in fact, implemented a far-reaching conceptual agenda but forced municipalities to design the specific responses to it. Since 1995, municipalities large and small in all corners of the province have struggled - in some good faith, some with reluctance - to find ways to develop a local response to the province's restructuring agenda, all the while fearing that a failure to acquiesce would invite an imposed solution. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

This article examines the transitional and short-term impacts of consolidation in three Canadian municipalities - the City of Abbotsford (British Columbia), the City of Miramichi (New Brunswick), and the Halifax Regional Municipality (Nova Scotia). The study involves an analysis of the administrative, financial and political impacts of the restructuring in these three urban regions, as well as the provinces' roles in the reform process. The analysis of the transition period identifies the many municipal functions and local services that must be considered in a restructuring initiative. The reorganization of intricate administrative and political structures that sustain municipal functions is a complex task and will be unique to each region considering reform. The complexity of municipal restructuring allows no easy answer as to whether consolidation will lead to effectiveness and efficiency improvements in service delivery or municipal governance. Ultimately, the success of consolidation in achieving greater efficiency and effectiveness will depend on the specific circumstances of the municipalities considering reform. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Since the election of the Mike Harris Conservative government in 1995, Ontario has been the site of some of the most turbulent provincial-local relations ever experienced in a Canadian province. The province's agenda has included restructuring and realigning the responsibilities and resources of municipal governments and asserting control over the financing and governance of Ontario's education system. The sheer size of this agenda and the interconnections between its two main elements have made the quest to simplify or disentangle provincial-local relations impossible to achieve. This article documents events as the Conservatives moved from their 'Common Sense Revolution' election manifesto to develop and implement a plan for disentanglement of provincial and local government services. It also identifies themes and potential lessons that emerge for government agenda setting and intergovernmental relations. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Urban policy making approximates the components of a path-dependent model - random selection and self-reinforcement - which suggests that cities get locked into suboptimal policies. Thus, despite rigid rules of individual and collective behavior posited by many urban theorists, identical cities can evolve along drastically different paths. The author shows how simple time-series models can overlook path dependence and demonstrates the trends of a path-dependent series using budget data from Chicago and New York. New York exhibited policy lock-in in the decades following the Great Depression, but Chicago did not.

The author reports on the current status of cities in the devolving federal system and the resulting implications for city politics. In particular, he examines the strength of the fiscal link between the federal government and municipal governments and the implications of growing interest in federal devolution for city government. He concludes by arguing that growing local fiscal and administrative self-reliance create pressures on local politicians to focus on public management skills rather than on the pursuit of social and racial agendas that were the focus two decades ago. The result is a deep change in the moral tenor of city politics.

'Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.' Oliver Wendell Holmes ([1904] 1980, 644) Devolution is the term used in the 1990s for what Richard Nixon called the New Federalism--the [...]

Recent analysis of the municipal governing of Canadian census metropolitan areas (CMAs) has led to a variety of alternative schemes for reconstituted bi-level institutions. This essay first considers the historical and ideological context for the emerge of two-tier urban governments after World War II. It is then argued that area-wide governments have outgrown their original purposes and have become redundant in the 1990s. It is argued that provincial authorities should assume direct policy control over problems that cannot presently be resolved by the best cooperative efforts of existing municipalities. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

The classic urban pluralist studies are reconceptualized as providing alternative theoretical perspectives. These political order and economic development perspectives exert an enduring influence, as seen in urban regime theory and in Paul Peterson's economistic conception of politics in City Limits. A supplementary theoretical perspective is proposed that addresses the problem of inequality and takes the promotion of social justice as the principal task of urban governance. Reconciling the three perspectives provides a more comprehensive framework for conducting research., After languishing in the doldrums for two decades, 'the lost world of municipal government' finally was rediscovered in the 1950s. Indeed, a dazzling array of studies created a 'golden age' [...]

Urbanization is likely to be one of the key issues of the new millennium, and economic, environmental and governmental aspects are discussed. Cities must have a sound economic base, and the world's great cities all share large and diverse economies making them resilient and able to reinvent themselves as necessary. The costs in terms of pollution are, however, the minus.

Over the past several years in the San Francisco Bay area, a number of local governments have been the focus of headlines portraying community dissatisfaction, accusations of ethics violations, and [...]

In spring of 2003, management and staff of Key West, Florida, announced plans to open the inner workings of city government to the residents of the island and offered them [...]

Almost all U.S. cities are established by state charter as either mayor-council or council-manager cities. For decades, these two legal-statutory categories have been used by researchers as dichotomous variables in descriptions of city government form and in statistical equations. This study indicates that the mayor-council and council-manager categories, although legally based, mask several important empirical characteristics of U.S. city government. Using a large data set, the authors indicate that the structures of U.S. cities are surprisingly dynamic. Cities tend to change their structures incrementally. Over time, cities with mayor-council statutory platforms will incrementally adapt many of the characteristics of council-manager form cities to improve their management and productivity capabilities. Over time, cities with council-manager statutory platforms will adopt features of mayor-council form cities to increase their political responsiveness, leadership, and accounting capabilities. Because each of the two legal forms of cities adopts primary features of the other, these cities now constitute a third form of the U.S. city--the adapted city.

Applying the polycentric model to the urban core, the authors first examine how the polycentric model may be applied to an increasing number of large cities that are using subdistricts to provide supplemental public services that district residents desire such as security, sanitation (garbage collection), and economic development. They next analyze the recent creation of the Charles Village Community Benefits District in Baltimore, Maryland, as an empirical example and briefly discuss this subdistrict's positive impacts. The article concludes with some observations on the implications of subdistricts for equitable and efficient service delivery.

This article examines changes in form of government and other structural elements over a fifteen year period for all cities with a population greater than 100,000. No evidence is found to support current theories related to form changes in large cities during this period. Some convergence between the council-manager and mayor-council forms has occurred in the use of district city council elections, directly-elected mayors, and professional management positions. However, disparities still erast between forms in the use of nonpartisan elections, mayoral voting power, and city council size. The changes in structural design reflect an increased blending of representation and efficiency values.

Serving customers and meeting their needs are among the hallmarks of fine local government assistance. When city or county staff members provide high-quality customer service, citizens feel good about their [...]

The 20th century could well be called the century of local government in American democracy. The American system of governance is based on a federal system, which divides the powers [...]

In order to understand the full range of institutions at the local level, a broader concept of 'local state' is needed. This broader concept defines local state as being present in, and concerned with, the local community. Thus, it includes local agencies of the central state as well as local governments. Competing theories of local governments in Canada draw attention to non-municipal agencies at the local level, but fail to consider the structure and function of the local state as a whole. A new theory is needed, one that takes seriously the pressure for local self government and the significance of geographic variations and historical change.