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This paper examines the issue of empowerment in participatory budgeting (PB). We position empowerment as part of the generally agreed theory of change in PB yet acknowledge the limits of an individual construction of empowerment that neglect sufficient attention to dynamic relations of power in participatory spaces and surrounding social contexts. Using the three forms of power theorized by Lukes (1974) and Gaventa (1980), we examine the ways in which these forms of power constrain individual and collective agency and transformative outcomes in participatory projects. We shift the gaze from empowerment to the concept of community power to suggest that getting beyond small adjustments to local services and resource allocations to substantive changes in relations of power may depend on ordinary citizens coming together in sites of radical possibility to define themselves, deliberate, and then act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The forecast and estimation of total electric power demand of a residential community, its baseload, and its heating ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) power component, which represents a very large portion of a community electricity usage, are important enablers for optimal energy controls and utility planning. This paper proposes a method that employs machine learning in a multi-step integrated approach. An LSTM model for total electric power at the main circuit feeder is trained using historic multi-year hourly data, outdoor temperature, and solar irradiance. New key temperature indicators, TmHAVC, corresponding to the standby zero-power operation for HVAC systems for summer cooling and winter heating are introduced using a V-shaped hourly total load curve. The trained LTSM model is additionally run with TmHVAC and zero irradiance inputs yielding an estimated baseload, which is representative of typical occupancy patterns. The HVAC power component is disaggregated as the difference between total and baseload power. Total power forecasts of an aggregated residential community as seen by major distribution lines are experimentally validated with a satisfactory MAPE error below 10% based on a 4-year dataset from a representative suburban community with more than 1800 homes in Kentucky, U.S. Discussions regarding the validity of the separation method based on combined considerations of fundamental physics, statistics, and human behavior are also included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to examine the impact of investments in community organizing made as part of a 10-year comprehensive community initiative focused on community power building in California. Data from multiple sources were used to examine the relationship between investments and one measure of civic engagement, voter turnout. Comparisons were made over time (2010–2019) and between intervention and propensity-weighted comparison sites. Analyses determined that investments by the funder were positively associated with turnout; this effect differed across elections and was largest in 2012. Broad investments to support community engagement, organizing, and base building had a positive impact on voting, an important indicator of civic engagement. In historically marginalized or underserved communities, investing in power building can yield benefits despite structural barriers that result in inequities. As restrictive electoral reforms grow across the country in the wake of the 2020 election, initiatives designed to build power may support proactively organizing against these changes or provide the infrastructure to understand and navigate them. Investing in community power building is a promising strategy for philanthropic organizations, organizers, and policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The duty of states to consult indigenous communities is a well-established legal principle, but its implications for practice remain uncertain. Sweden is finding itself at a particularly critical juncture as it prepares to legislate a duty to consult the Sami people in line with its international obligations. This paper explores the ability of Swedish state actors to implement the duty to consult, based on lessons from an already existing duty set out in Swedish minority law, namely to ensure the effective participation of minorities in land and resource decisions. Presenting novel empirical material on the views of Sami communities and state officials in ministries and agencies, we demonstrate the existence of considerable implementation gaps linked to practice, sectoral legislation, and political discourse. We argue that if state duties are to promote the intended intercultural reconciliation, then new measures are needed to ensure enforcement, e.g. via mechanisms of appeal and rules of nullification. In addition, sectoral resource regulations should be amended to refer to the duties set out in minority law and/or a potential new bill on consultation duty in a consistent manner. In the near-term, the state should ensure that Sami communities are adequately resourced to engage in consultation and should invest in state authorities' own ability to implement, i.e. through competence development, staffing, intersectoral coordination, and independent evaluation. Much could also be gained if state agencies and Sami communities worked together to develop detailed consultation routines for relevant resource sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the paper on analyzing questions of social control and direction of the technological and scientific revolution which was discussed at the conference titled "The Control of Science for Civil Needs" at a Northwestern University Colloquium on April 12-13, 1971. The paper focuses on the impact of technological innovations on the structure of the government. The author points out that the amount of power that the technological revolution has created far exceeds the capability of even the most inspired, dedicated or brilliant leaders to control that power unaided.

The study explains the perception of the nation in the political thinking of Svetozár Hurban Vajanský, which is founded on primordialist starting points and has a holistic character. In this context, the relationship between the nationally conscious elite and the people is analysed in more detail. The ambivalence of Vajanský's political thinking is evident in the fact that, in many ways, he formally promotes Ľudovít Štúr's original idea of unity, but, within Slovak political discourse, he promotes the idea of programme uniformity. Subsequently, this becomes a source of cultural and political isolationism. This fact is complemented in parallel by reflecting the primary acculturation importance of the national elite in developing the national consciousness of the population. Vajanský also incorporated the idea of Slavic mutuality into the national emancipation concept of developing Slovak national identity. Its content is in line with Štúr's ethnic romanticism. The historicist concept of the development of Slavs under Russian protection also appears in his thinking. Vajanský's Russophilism was, thus, loosely tied to the ideas of Russian Slavophiles and the idealising perspective of the Slavs' civilisational mission, who were to form a new, more spiritual and culturally advanced, civilisation circle compared with the morally declining nations of the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

English School accounts of international relations always stressed some degree of interaction between political international society and ideational world society. Yet, English School research, relying on agential and structural premises, often misses how and where international society and world society interact. If intermediation between the two societies is identified, it often remains abstract. I argue that identifying agents and the standards defining their practices helps to understand intermediation between international society and world society. I suggest that likely candidates that practice intermediation are rooted in both international society and world society. This is because practices rooted in both realms are also defined by the standards of both realms. I argue that the Pope and the United Nations Secretary-General are likely intermediation instances between international society and world society. Both are equally footed in international society and world society. Given their organizational embedding in international society, both rely on practices informed by international society standards such as diplomacy. Yet, both also rely on world society standards such as their concern for humanity. Focusing on the sanctity of the individual rather than only on state-based interests and agendas of international society marks their concern and caring for refugees. I illustrate this argument with advocacy, an intermediation practice. Deprived of membership in a community, solutions for refugees in international society require political and moral theory from world society, relying on concepts such as humanity. Advocating for refugees on the grounds of world society's common humanity, the Pope and the United Nations Secretary-General are intermediation instances between world society and international society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy services are crucial to human wellbeing and development, and without reliable energy, it is difficult to escape subsistence lifestyles and poverty. Here, we report on four identical capacity rural minigrid interventions undertaken in Kenya and Uganda with differing socioeconomic characteristics and demographics. The research outcomes presented briefly discuss the preparation stages of the interventions including community surveys that informed the technical design, deployment phases, and setup of the community cooperatives to manage the minigrid projects. The main focus here is on lessons learned, including system design and minigrid performance under various load profiles. The results show a clear and increasing uptake of power by the communities with intensities varying depending on the electricity tariff used. Across the four minigrids, daily electricity growth rates are seen to vary by a factor of 8. The Ugandan minigrids operated at close to utility grid tariff and reached the 28-kWh/day design limit within two years. By contrast, the Kenyan minigrids charged a higher cost recovery tariff, which capped the demand and systems operate below the design limit. These findings have implications not only to system design but also to system stability and longevity. The approach taken here, of community centered cooperatives running the delivered minigrids, is now embedded within the rural electrification authorities/agencies in both countries, with additional similar projects being planned in 2019/2020. The application, ramifications, and replication of such a minigrid concept as compared to other approaches are also discussed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the paper on analyzing questions of social control and direction of the technological and scientific revolution which was discussed at the conference titled "The Control of Science for Civil Needs" at a Northwestern University Colloquium on April 12-13, 1971. The paper focuses on the leadership issues on technological innovations and scientific revolution. The author points out that the discussion of technology assessment needs to be broadened to consider the subject of control of technology.

In this paper, a theory of cultural marginality is used in examining the role behavior of American business executives in an Argentine community. The data presented verify the hypothesis that although these executives are accepted in their limited roles as workers and guests within the country, they are marginal in that they are not accepted as people willing to share in its culture. The findings suggest that contrary to the charges of some critics, these executives are clearly not manipulating the power structure of the host community, even though a sizable proportion of adults in Argentine City believe that they are. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars engaged in the study of community power have debated the merits of the so-called "reputational" and "pluralist" methods of inquiry at length. This paper suggests that differences in substantive results can be understood in terms of the assumptions made by each method concerning what is being studied, and, therefore, in terms of the investigative techniques that are appropriate. The "reputational" school, based principally on sociology, views the community as a system of action and examines the structure of political roles involved in setting community policies. The "pluralist" school, based principally on political science, views the community as a collection of individuals and attempts to measure in quantitative terms the amount of power held by each individual. Both systems of thought are examined, and questions are raised with regard to the adequacy of the currently popular "pluralist" method. Finally, some problems common to both methods are noted, and suggestions for further research are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper considers the effects of economic globalization on the relationship between national economic and political elites. It is contended that high levels of globalization lead to the de-coupling of economic elites from national political elites and that economic globalization also marginalizes the powers of dependent nation states. The thesis of this paper is that in economically globalized states there is a duality of power. A political elite is legitimated electorally to a national constituency but excluded from the nexus of power by globalized processes. The composition and balance between ruling elites diverge between nation states. A comparison is made between the British and Russian economic elites. The paper considers the composition of the boards of directors of twelve leading companies in the UK and fourteen in Russia. Attention is given to their national and educational background as well as their current or previous links with governments and economic institutions. On the basis of the biographies of directors and other company data, it is concluded that the economic elites in British companies are global in composition and decoupled from the UK's political elites. Globalization moves capitalism out of a nation state framework and neo-liberalism legitimates markets over states. Such de-coupling leads to increasing political weakness of national political elites and stimulates movements for economic nationalism. Russia is considered a hybrid system with many leading companies being closely integrated with the political elite but others are more autonomous and multinational in control and ownership. The economic structure is the basis of Russia's economicn ationalism. Political leadership is considered a key variable in tipping the balance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a fresh interpretation of the role played by the Dream of Scipio in Cicero's De re publica. It explores Cicero's key distinction between the cosmic and the local levels of statesmanship and the problems he sees with localism, and it details fully for the first time the importance that Cicero attached to the virtue of magnitudo animi ("greatness of soul"). The paper makes the case that in De re publica Cicero promotes his own innovative cosmic model of politics, in which magnitudo animi is developed through an educational process situated in the traditional Roman mos maiorum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than 50 years, community power scholars have debated the significance of power and decision-making in U.S. urban areas in order to develop a theory of who does, or does not govern. In this paper, we argue that systemic power in US urban areas can be viewed from the vantage point of complexity theory, especially through Meadow's normative understanding of feedback and Lukes' third face of power in essence, challenging Stone's largely socioeconomic understanding of systemic power. Our paper focuses on a new model that reveals the interrelation of complexity theory and systemic power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reform of local and regional governance offers the promise of better economic development outcomes. This paper looks at the experience of searching for an institutional fix to the challenge of local and regional development in England. The paper shows that local and regional governance have been subject to successive waves of reform with the aim of improving economic performance. To date though, such reforms have not had much impact on the geography of economic development. The paper pays particular attention to the recent shift from a regional approach to economic development to a putative 'localism'. The paper identifies the partial, uneven and limited nature of this transition and considers some of its possible impacts. It also considers whether constant institutional upheaval may now be part of the development problem in the English regions. At a broader level the paper offers a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of governance reform, which is of wider relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2004 New Zealand's (NZ) Labour-led government launched the Communities for Climate Protection – NZ (CCP-NZ) programme. Following a shift in Government leadership in 2008, from Clark's Labour-led to Key's National-led government, the CCP-NZ programme was discontinued. Through the narratives of managers charged with the implementation and delivery of the CCP-NZ programme, this paper explores the structural challenges that contributed to the initiative's decline in NZ local government. This research contributes to the academic literature by shedding light on the outworking of a local government carbon management strategy. Additionally, this study provides policy makers and managers seeking to embark on organisational carbon mitigation the opportunity to glean insight from the experience of public sector managers responsible for the CCP-NZ programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing socio-spatial inequalities in Europe have led to a revival of the term “peripheralization” in urban and regional research. In this context, peripheralization is often seen as an outcome of powerlessness. It is stated that peripheralized actors are lacking the capacities to influence decisions or are excluded from decision-making networks. This paper contributes to the understanding of the relationship between peripheralization and power by empirically testing if the notion of “powerless” peripheries holds true in the light of established theories on local power. Therefore, we refer to the Community Power Debate, especially to concepts known as the “three faces of power” and the distinction between “power over” and “power to”, which were brought forward by Urban Regime theories. We discuss two empirical cases in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, and demonstrate that peripheralization here cannot be regarded as the outcome of an intended disadvantage facilitated by powerful elites (“power over”). Rather, we highlight a number of structural constraints, which decisively limit the capacity to act and the scope for local decision-making (“power to”). We conclude that future research should overcome a perspective on peripheries as exclusively being dominated and disadvantaged by the centres and focus on the lack of resources that hinders peripheries to have a more sustained influence in political decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International organisations have acknowledged that providing information to and communicating with communities affected by disasters should be considered as an integral part of the humanitarian aid. Yet little is known on the information and communication needs of the population during the disaster reconstruction phase. This paper presents a case study of the information and communication needs of the population and the role of social media during the reconstruction process after the earthquake that struck Emilia-Romagna (Northern Italy) in 2012. Data were collected through field notes and a multiple choices questionnaire distributed online and by hand to community-based groups. Results show that the most sought information concerns housing and infrastructure reconstruction, funds/refunds, business recovery and damage assessment and that city councils and regional council are considered as the main source of the information. Communication channels used to search for reconstruction-related information vary between online and offline respondents. Social media technology is used by citizens affected as a platform to read and share recovery information and post queries rather than as an engagement tool with recovery agencies. Main barriers to engagement are lack of trust towards the authorities and the belief that authorities do not use social media to communicate with citizens. In this context, community-based groups, especially those supported by social media, play an important role in sharing recovery-related information to other residents, clarifying legal acts and regulations and providing informational support to the affected population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much emphasis has been placed on designing development projects to include community participation (CP), which is normally seen as a way of ensuring project effectiveness, but less attention has been directed to identifying households that exclude themselves and their reasons for doing so. This paper uses household-level survey data from twenty-nine African and Latin American communities to show the extent to which some socioeconomic characteristics of a household influence the members' willingness to participate in community development (CD). It provides answers to the question, ‘in what ways do income, education, security of tenure, household type and household size correlate with variables that are measures of CP and management?’ From the findings, the paper concludes that income levels and housing status have positive correlation with factors influencing CP and management. On the other hand, educational level, household size and family type have no significant correlation with CP and management. Two lessons are drawn from the study. First, efforts to promote CP as a useful approach to CD require a sociological study of household characteristics. Prior information about a community's household set-up can help project organizers and outsiders to develop realistic expectations about CP. Second, the findings that certain groups of households do not participate while others are more likely to play a leading role have implications in terms of the distribution of the benefits of community intervention programmes. Those who play leading roles will not only capture the benefits but will also translate their dominance into unequal power relations at the community level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper examines the links between the rise of local entrepreneurialism and state rescaling in a neo-liberal context. The thrust of the article is that the agency of localities, increasingly manifested in the form of local entrepreneurialism, emerges through the political activism of a local bourgeoisie, in pursuit of a multiscalar local accumulation strategy. The article focuses on the spatial interest representation strategies of the local bourgeoisie introducing the concept of scalar strategies of representation, to examine in what ways the broader state rescaling process contributes to the formation of local agency and how this agency influences state rescaling. The city of Gaziantep, Turkey, constitutes its empirical focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under which conditions can ICT4D initiatives empower poor communities of developing countries? In this paper we evaluate the promise of development associated with the introduction of an ICT initiative in Nigeria. We employ the basic concepts of Sen’s capability approach to understand how the introduction of a prepaid electricity billing system has empowered people to participate in accessing electricity supply. Our analysis illustrates that various activities resulting from the introduction of the system allow for the participation of both consumers and electricity workers, and that in order for them to be empowered to participate in each of the activities, different resources are required. We conclude with some implications for policy makers advancing an agenda for ICTs for development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article offers a contribution to the anthropology of tourism by investigating the tourism encounter in community-based tourism (CBT) in Northern Thailand. It does so by discussing MacCannell's (1992) idea of the Empty Meeting Grounds and Said's Orientalism (1978), two works that contributed to research on power inequalities between tourists and residents in the developing world. By establishing a relationship between the two and embedding these in the wider literature on the tourism encounter, this article suggests moving away from binaries towards understanding the space of the tourism encounter and its potential for change. Building on empirical research conducted in Ban Mae Kampong, a CBT village in Northern Thailand, findings suggest that CBT shows signs of resident-host interactions that are based on understanding and learning rather than exploitation. While also in CBT friendships and meaning take time to emerge and the 'Other' is used as attraction, villagers' agency and control over tourism are acknowledged. This paper therefore calls for a revisiting of the theoretical grounding that influences our understanding of the tourism encounter and argues for an investigation of community power relations in connection to the tourism encounter and its potential for residents' empowerment in CBT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the potential benefits of giving local communities a greater role in planning for housing—an approach being pioneered by the government in the UK. That new government has embarked on an ambitious programme of reform, including dismantling the ‘top-down’ system of planning for housing and replacing it with a ‘bottom-up’, community-driven approach. This paper explores the implications of this new approach to ask whether it can be effective in reducing opposition to new housing. It draws upon evidence taken from a study into opposition to small-scale housing schemes in rural England, and broader literature related to opposition to development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The reality of supporting community-based urban disaster risk reduction is daunting. This paper provides a cross-cultural analysis of the experiences of Oxfam GB in supporting urban community-based disaster risk reduction in Haiti, Guyana and the Dominican Republic. The paper focuses on the efforts of Oxfam GB and its local partners to overcome the determining influence of local governance on who benefits from interventions, and the longevity of positive outcomes. The most successful projects built on strong pre-existing partnerships with buy-in from local and municipal government, promoted longevity in physical and social infrastructure through dual use investments that had an everyday as well as a disaster risk reduction purpose, and integrated technological and lay focus exercises to generate local participation as well as provide baselines for project planning. Overall, however, disaster risk reduction was constrained by a lack of vision and funding constraints, which prevented root causes in the wider urban and regional environment or political economy to be tackled. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As part of a broader 'Localism' agenda, the Coalition government elected in the UK in May 2010 was committed to introducing a new land-use planning system built mainly from the 'bottom' through the promotion of forms of community-led plans. Its approach was built heavily on the experience of parish and town plans in rural communities across England. This paper provides a background to, and a review of, key issues from the experience to date of rural community-led plans. It highlights challenges and opportunities for adapting these into a system based on the government's developing approaches to localism and collaborative planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local government reform 2001 is an important part of the Government of Pakistan's programme for democratic renewal. The main feature of introducing the Local Government System was to empower the people at the grassroots level and to transfer power from the elite to the masses. This paper uses councillors' data from north-western Pakistan to examine the economic and social status of village representatives. Land ownership, high income, education and political connections increase the chances of election to public office at the district and sub-district level, but do not have much impact at the village level. There is evidence of genuine change at union (village) level as the majority of councillors (65 per cent) at this level belong to low-income group and small landowners. So the system has changed the identity of the locally politically dominant group. But, at the same time, results suggest that while local governments units are helpful in creating spaces for a broader range of non-elite community leaders to emerge, elite control of decision making is pervasive. However, it is expected that the presence of non-elite members in the councils may change the allocation of resources in favour of the disadvantaged group with the passage of time, provided elections to councils are held regularly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries in the Musee Cluny in Paris are an early example of the use of excess as personal promotion. They were made for Jean Le Viste, a young man on the rise through the fifteenth-century French court to demonstrate his wealth and taste and thus his fitness to aspire to high position. The paper began as an exercise in thinking about a contemporary high-flyer might choose to portray on a similar set of art works. This was based on a reading of the Financial Times How to Spend It glossy supplement which acts as a guidebook and style manual for the rich and powerful of the contemporary world. Through this process excess is revealed as legitimating display, acting as a marker of belonging, discernment, connoisseurship and exclusivity, all of which mark the possessor out as a member of an elite. Parallels are drawn with humanist notions of magnificence and magnanimity as markers of fitness to rule, and with How to Spend It as a cultural intermediary. The paper ends by reflecting that while Jean Le Viste found room to include images about transcending wealth and care of the soul, thoughts of putting away material things would disbar the consumers of How to Spend It from the powerful elite to which their material possession give access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A strategic approach to local sustainability assessment requires that sustainability implications of proposed policies, plans and programmes are evaluated. These evaluations need to critically consider organizational structures, processes and outcomes. The establishment of ‘communities of practice’, groups or networks of practitioners with shared interests, is a helpful mechanism for facilitating change in a wide range of organizations. This paper analyses the potential for communities of practice to contribute to the implementation of sustainability assessments by local government. Focusing on Sutherland Shire Council in Sydney, Australia, this paper presents the findings of a project that engaged practitioners in the design of a sustainability assessment system. The establishment of communities of practice helped to break down the ‘silos’ created by institutional divides within local government, but this approach also raises challenges in maintaining momentum and overcoming political agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments around the world have privatized public services in the name of efficiency and citizen empowerment, but some argue that privatization could also affect citizen participation in democratic governance. We explore this possibility by estimating the impact of charter schools (which are publicly funded but privately operated) on school district elections. The analysis indicates that the enrollment of district students in charter schools reduced the number of votes cast in district school board contests and, correspondingly, reduced turnout in the odd-year elections in which those contests are held. This impact is concentrated in districts that serve low-achieving, impoverished, and minority students, leading to a modest decline in the share of voters in those districts who are black and who have children. There is little evidence that charter school expansion affected the outcomes of school board elections or turnout in other elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a model for community leadership capacity building. This model for individual and organizational development is being used with the Resource and Development Foundation (RDF) in Stellenbosch, South Africa. RDF is a non-governmental organization with the aim of providing resource-based training and capacity-building services to the socially excluded and disadvantaged youth, women and rural people of the Western Cape. Here we examine the process of capacity building, theoretically and practically, with the intention of discovering lessons to inform management education in relation to leadership and change. The paper explores the issues related to developing empowerment: the capacity of a system to engage in enterprising dialogue where power is unequally distributed. It proposes a community leadership development framework that comprises three components: leading change through dialogue, collective empowerment and connective leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A feminist stock-taking on 'post-conflict', this paper revisits a study made by the author in 1996-1997, when the women's community sector was a lively actor in the processes leading to the Good Friday Peace Agreement of 1998. Refusing to observe sectarian conflict lines, women's centres were re-writing official 'community development' policy as community empowerment and political challenge. The author draws on new interviews conducted in 2012 with feminist community activists of that earlier period of 'frontline feminism', associated with the Belfast Women's Support Network. The women reveal how continuing poverty, discrimination, violence and unhealed trauma still characterise working-class life in the post-conflict period, and impede the integration of Protestant and Catholic communities. Official provisions for gender equality have been interpreted in gender-neutral ways, and in some cases turned against women. The demilitarisation of masculinity has been painfully slow. The women's community sector has experienced a loss of political drive as women's centres have become service providers, dependent on state funding. Feminism is renewing itself, but in fresh forms with different priorities. Will it recover a voice that 'speaks truth to power'? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on French's (1956) Formal Theory of Social Power. In the theory, a population's power structure is formally related to its structure of influential communications which, in turn, is formally related to its pattern and prevalence of interpersonal agreements. The theory's predictions include the following about the members of a population: (1) the expected influence of each member in determining other members opinions on an issue; (2) the probability of consensus on an issue in the population or in any given subset (dyad or cluster) of the members; and (3) the probability that any given proportion of the members (e.g., a majority) will be in agreement on an issue. The theory overcomes well-recognized limitations of French's seminal effort. Its predictions rest (1) on a micro-level process of opinion change and (2) on macro-level variations in the pattern and strengths of the ties that comprise a power structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of community power, influence, and leadership have rapidly increased in popularity and in number during the decade since Hunter's epochal study of Regional City in 1954. Foci of the various studies since then have ranged from the delineation of traits of leaders or power figures to conceptualizations of types of community power structures. Some few studies have been concerned with the relationship between attributes and actions of community leaders and community social structure. Outside the field of sociometric research the distribution of influence and the effect of community social structure upon this distribution has received little more than passing attention. The usual leadership research is concerned with the study of ways in which leadership affects the social structure of the community. This study will attempt to take the reverse orientation, that of how social structure affects leadership. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the distribution of influence and community social structure. More specifically, this study is concerned with the relationship between consensus on leadership and community homogeneity. Homogeneity of community socioeconomic characteristics is assumed to be a basis for the shared values, attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and interests which serve as the basis for community consensus which may be manifested in agreement on nominations (choices) of community influentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent phase of economic globalization has constituted a social context of deteriorating opportunity and increasing risk for disadvantaged communities in Hong Kong. While different studies have shown the ‘revitalization’ of the significance of the community in general and community work service in particular in most developed countries to further the interests of disadvantaged groups, the survival of the community development service in Hong Kong has been threatened by the government's intention to cut it. New initiatives, however, were started by the government to tap resources from the community to provide help to individuals and families in need without utilizing the existing community development programme that emphasizes community empowerment. This paper first examines the relationship between the global impact and the community work service in the developed countries. It then analyses the changing role of the service consequential upon the actions of the Hong Kong government in mediating the global impact. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Conservative/Liberal Democrat Government has introduced major changes to the UK, intended to reduce dramatically the roles of the public sector in managing urban and rural development and community services. 'Big Society' and 'Localism' are intended to transform the previous planning system, giving residents of local neighbourhoods the powers to determine the future character and development of their own neighbourhoods and community services, reducing the roles of city-wide planning authorities and scrapping regional authorities. But these ideas raise fundamental questions: Can a neighbourhood be planned separately from its external world, and can residents make sensible plans separately from Business Initiative Districts? Would 'NIMBY' pressures undermine wider housing needs? And would participants in public consultations represent the full interests of all those affected by the plan? In this paper , the author suggests that for 'Localism' to succeed, a fundamental rethink about the nature of planning has to take root before all the details are formulated: human settlements are continuously evolving through decisions and actions of people who respond to changes made by other people or by nature. The outcomes are beneficial to some people and may be detrimental to others. The purpose of 'planning' is generally agreed -- to reduce the adverse impacts of change and maximise the beneficial impacts. It involves intervention in a complex system of causes and effects, interrelating several social, economic, environmental and other spheres of life. Planning can only succeed if it is based on a thorough understanding of the dynamic processes of change, who is involved and their motives and constraints, and if it prepares integrated plans with those involved. But in fact much of urban change is governed by compartmentalised thinking and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine Communities First, an area-based regeneration policy in Wales to explore the barriers to community empowerment. Three related research projects provide data to inform the discussion of community empowerment and to consider the implications of delivery of the policy for theorising the relationship between the citizen and the state as mediated through regeneration partnerships. Design/methodology/approach - Data from three related research projects are discussed. These are an evaluation of local delivery of the Communities First programme, the delivery of technical support to participating communities and a Joseph Rowntree-funded case study of nine regeneration partnerships. All projects are concerned with exploring the experience of community members within regeneration partnerships. Findings - The findings identify major barriers to the achievement of community empowerment including issues of community capacity, institutional capacity, organisational cultures and regulatory frameworks. The findings identify mechanisms for improving community participation and empowerment. The findings are also used to identify community actor agency within regeneration partnerships and to argue against an analysis of regeneration initiatives as a mechanism of social control and incorporation of community activism into a state led agenda. Research limitations/implications - The paper explores one specific policy within a UK devolved region and is not able to comment extensively on similar policy programmes in other areas of the UK. However, it uses this specific experience to comment on generic issues in the community empowerment field and to elaborate theory on the relationship between the citizen and the state. Practical implications - The paper offers practitioners and policy makers insight into the community experience of participation in regeneration partnerships and proposes methods and policy refinements which can improve empowerment outcomes and assist community participation to achieve higher levels of influence over statutory partners. Originality/value - While the paper identifies barriers to empowerment that are recognised in the wider literature, it demonstrates that such barriers can prevail even within a highly participative policy framework such as Communities First. The paper also provides evidence of a clear sense of agency on the part of community members of regeneration partnerships and counters models which suggest regeneration partnerships are simple mechanisms of social control which diffuse community activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Sherry Arnstein's classic "A Ladder of Citizen Participation" still shapes our understanding of citizen participation within and beyond planning. However, Arnstein's citizen control offers communities only partial authority. Rather, community control does not fundamentally alter the political and economic power differences between stakeholders that limit community influence over outcomes. In response, we describe a co-production participation model for inclusive participation to help communities confront the political and economic power relationships that limit their influential participation. Residents directly and influentially engage in a dynamic and iterative problem-solving process throughout problem formation and implementation. Co-production recognizes that truly inclusive community development requires adaptive and enduring processes to address the political and economic power inequalities that shape local decision making. In this way, co-production offers an evolving participation model, rather than a specific outcome or process, to continually refine strategies toward more equitable processes. To illustrate this argument, we describe a community-based initiative in California's Coachella Valley. We trace the initiative's evolution toward a co-production model of community engagement, shifting the initiative's strategies and goals toward greater community power. This evidence shows how a co-productive model can more effectively tackle political and economic power imbalances through adaptive, flexible, and long-term participatory processes. Takeaway for practice: Co-production models can offer new ways for planning practitioners to advance more inclusive community participation, with greater resident power sharing. Fundamentally, planners and local practitioners must extend participation beyond engagement and inclusion, using adaptive, long-term participation models, with capacity building and resource sharing, to build and sustain community power. This sustained approach challenges traditional government decision-making models, requiring power holders to shift greater power, resources, and influence toward communities. Power holders must hold spaces of power for communities while simultaneously building resident ability to effectively gain, retain, and exert local control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the past decade Americans have increasingly turned their attention to nonlocal information sources, raising concerns about disengagement from local communities. Regulation sometimes seeks to curtail the integration of media markets through the promotion of “localism.” This paper examines the role of local media. We make use of the rapid growth of Hispanic communities in the United States to test whether the presence of local television news affects local civic behavior. We find that Hispanic voter turnout increased by 5 to 10 percentage points, relative to non-Hispanic turnout, in markets where Spanish-language local television news became available. (JEL D72, J15, L82) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Purpose - The main purpose of this paper is to identify Bangprok community's information needs and to evaluate the performance and impact of its boat library. Designlmethodology/approach - The research methodology included a complementary two-stage process. First of all, a house-to-house survey was conducted to construct profile of Bangprok dwellers. At the same time, the key informant from each household was interviewed to find out the information needs and seeking patterns. The second part of the research involved a point of exit interview with Bangprok boat library users to undertake user profile and to gather their opinion on the library's performance and impact on community development. Findings - The results showed that a small-scaled community library has the potential to make a positive impact on the community. The results also yielded several implications for the boat library, including how its collections and services could be improved to make an equal impact on the community. Originality/value - This is the first time an effort has been made to assess a community-based library service in Thailand. This study may trigger more such research on evaluating rural community libraries in Thailand and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an assessment of normalised flood losses in Europe for the period 1970-2006. Normalisation provides an estimate of the losses that would occur if the floods from the past take place under current societal conditions. Economic losses from floods are the result of both societal and climatological factors. Failing to adjust for time-variant socio-economic factors produces loss amounts that are not directly comparable over time, but rather show an ever-growing trend for purely socio-economic reasons. This study has used available information on flood losses from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) and the Natural Hazards Assessment Network (NATHAN). Following the conceptual approach of previous studies, we normalised flood losses by considering the effects of changes in population, wealth, and inflation at the country level. Furthermore, we removed inter-country price differences by adjusting the losses for purchasing power parities (PPP). We assessed normalised flood losses in 31 European countries. These include the member states of the European Union, Norway, Switzerland, Croatia, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Results show no detectable sign of human-induced climate change in normalised flood losses in Europe. The observed increase in the original flood losses is mostly driven by societal factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of ICT to enable citizen participation (eParticipation) is expanding, especially at the local level of government. But to what extent is this actually occurring, how can we reliably measure it and what are the variables that affect eParticipation adoption at the local level? This paper tackles these three questions by looking at the case of Italian local government. A data collection tool, validated by a group of experts, was proposed and used to conduct a survey on the official websites of 113 Italian local authorities. Findings from primary data show that, within a context of a low level, overall, of adoption of advanced participatory features, institutional background factors such as scale, socio-economic status and centre-left political orientation are positively associated with greater information and consultation features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emerging discipline of community informatics (CI) has begun to trace out a distinct agenda for change in the social uses of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Focusing upon the appropriation of ICTs by local communities who have been disenfranchised by technological development, this agenda foregrounds uses of the Internet in the pursuit of distinctly community-related objectives. However, the role that the local state ought to play within this agenda for change remains marked by a degree of controversy and ambiguity. Assertions of the need for community autonomy coexist uneasily with a recognition that the local state can help develop and sustain CI. Much current work therefore focuses upon exploring notions of 'partnership' between the local state and local groups in developing CI. Against this background, this paper draws on a case study of Birmingham City Council (BCC) in order to explore a series of significant organizational changes to local government, which have seen BCC adopt a fundamentally new 'community leadership' role. This shift to community leadership is being expedited by innovative uses of Internet technology. It is argued that, rather than straightforwardly re-creating BCC as a better partner to community groups in developing CI, such changes are deeply paradoxical. In the first instance shifts to community leadership have enabled BCC to develop valuable web resources that enhance their role as a partner facilitating citizen-led CI. Conversely, however, these changes are bound up in a broader attempt by BCC to reassert managerial control at a time when its legitimacy as a social institution is being questioned. Faced with a series of external challenges, BCC has replicated important CI activities in the pursuit of its own interests. Ultimately it is argued that this assimilation of CI could eventually undermine the broader CI agenda for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews issues related to the relationship between agency and power. In the article, agency is cast as an issue in terms of whether individuals have the power to participate in any community of practice they might wish, and power as the licensing of an individual's participation in a community of practice. The author cited the commentary of Penelope Eckert and Étienne Wenger which states that power dynamics within a community of practice necessarily map onto an internal hierarchy that licenses or legitimates participation.

This paper examines the claim that community-based environmental management is fairer and more democratic than so-called ‘top-down’ approaches. The paper examines the experience of Australian indigenous peoples with a national, community-based environmental management programme. The analysis of the programme reveals systemic marginalization of indigenous peoples. The paper suggests that ‘bottom-up’ governance serves to magnify the importance of local material and symbolic contests in which indigenous groups are engaged. Community-based environmental management can fail precisely because of what many of its advocates take to be its more democratic quality: its localism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines participatory processes in an Asian Development Bank (ADB) technical assistance package in Thailand's water resource sector. The authors analyse various levels of social interaction in the local community, in meso-level stakeholder consultations, and in opposition to ADB's environment programmes expressed by civil society organisations. While participatory approaches are employed to promote more bottom-up management regimes in water resources, the authors find that local power and gender differences have been overlooked. Evolving institutions of resource governance are constituted by gender, reproducing gender inequalities such as regarding water intended for agricultural use as a 'male' resource. Finally, it is argued that understandings and practices of participation legitimise particular agendas in a politically polarised arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge and organizational learning are central concerns of contemporary organizations. Local knowledge is stored in the detailed operational practices, professional routines and grassroot ways of thinking in specific situations, which different agents employ in their organizational segments and niches. These sources of field insight are relevant in producing new competitive initiatives and in the creation of new strategy. This empirically graded paper illustrates how focused non financial management accounting measurement brings the controller closer to operational detail, stimulates horizontal debate, and leads to expert resistance. It suggests that non financial measurement, as an intrusive and controversial management accounting technology, can be perceived as being 'provocative'. Organizational actors react strongly to this focused measurement. However, 'provocative' non financial measurement assists the articulation of intriguing local knowledge in organizational discourse, providing new possibilities for the controller in locally situated processes of learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the author's comment on community leadership in a pluralistic society. Many years ago, the author directed a group in Syracuse, New York, that was known as the Community Seminar. It began under the auspices of the Department of Preventive Medicine of the State University of New York College of Medicine and continued under the sponsorship of the Continuing Education Division of Syracuse University during the 1950s and 960s. Some years after the Community Seminar had ceased functioning, the author served as a member of the Regional Health Advisory Committee for Region II of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare of the federal government. The goal of that committee was to help comprehensive health planning agencies become more effective. As chair of a subcommittee that explored ways of increasing representation of the poor and minorities in policy-making groups of community health agencies, the author drafted a position paper that was adopted and disseminated.

The study of community power-leadership decision making has been relatively intense only during the past decade. Investigations, usually conducted by political scientists or sociologists, vary in method and content and appear at first impression to lack continuity, comparability, and direction. This review of the literature seeks to note emerging trends with regard to method, identification of salient leadership structure characteristics, and relationships between leadership structures and other phenomena. Of heuristic value is a description and criticism of each of the main methods (positional, reputational, and decisional), a constructive typology summarizing those features of leadership structures which have attracted the most attention in previous research (and thus perhaps should be incorporated in future research), and a description of the types of phenomena of concern in comparative analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]