Download or read book Boosting Competitiveness Through Decentralization written by Aylin Topal and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decentralization is accepted as one of the defining features of the third wave of democratic transitions in Latin America and commonly understood as an index and an agent of democratization. This rather optimistic perspective is inherent in the literature which is dominated by two theories. The liberal-individualist approach, especially as advocated by the World Bank, promotes decentralization policies on the premise of their efficiency, equity, and responsiveness to local demands. Similarly, the statist approach claims that decentralization can be the route to greater accountability, transparency and participation in governance; they add that this path should be guided by political elites and institutions. These dominant views nevertheless understate the extent to which certain decentralization policies have been implemented in lockstep with neoliberalization. This book examines the relationship between global economic processes and decentralization. It argues that through decentralization policies, the imperatives of neoliberal rules of competitiveness have been diffused into local governments and economies, generating different local development models. Whether decentralization produces democratic opening at the local level is contingent on how the local economy is integrated into global economic processes, and which social and economic groups are empowered, and disempowered, in that transition.
Download or read book Boosting Competitiveness Through Decentralization written by Aylin Topal and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decentralization is accepted as one of the defining features of the third wave of democratic transitions in Latin America and commonly understood as an index and an agent of democratization. This rather optimistic perspective is inherent in the literature which is dominated by two theories. The liberal-individualist approach, especially as advocated by the World Bank, promotes decentralization policies on the premise of their efficiency, equity, and responsiveness to local demands. Similarly, the statist approach claims that decentralization can be the route to greater accountability, transparency and participation in governance; they add that this path should be guided by political elites and institutions. These dominant views nevertheless understate the extent to which certain decentralization policies have been implemented in lockstep with neoliberalization. This book examines the relationship between global economic processes and decentralization. It argues that through decentralization policies, the imperatives of neoliberal rules of competitiveness have been diffused into local governments and economies, generating different local development models. Whether decentralization produces democratic opening at the local level is contingent on how the local economy is integrated into global economic processes, and which social and economic groups are empowered, and disempowered, in that transition.
Download or read book The Role of Local Political Elites in East Central Europe written by Roxana Marin and published by Verlag Barbara Budrich. This book was released on 2021-03-29 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does the elite continue to affect the evolution of local communities in the developing region of former Sovietized Europe? This book is concerned with the issue of local leadership in the countries of East-Central Europe. It is an attempt to examine, with a comparative method, the profile and the role of the local political elites (members of the Municipal Councils) in six towns in six transitional democracies of the region.
Download or read book Cities and Partnerships for Sustainable Urban Development written by Peter Karl Kresl and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2015-07-31 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past two decades, sustainability has become a principal concern for city administrators. It is more than just an environmental issue entailing economic, demographic, governance, social, and amenity aspects. After a short introduction to some t
Download or read book The Political Economy of Financial Transformation in Turkey written by Galip Yalman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides a comprehensive study of Turkey’s financial transformation into one of the most dynamic, if not trouble-free, emerging capitalisms. While this financial evolution has underwritten Turkey’s dramatic economic growth, it has done so without ameliorating the persistently exploitative and unequal social structures that characterize neoliberalism today. This edited volume, written by an interdisciplinary range of political economists, critically examines Turkey’s financial transformation, contributing to debates on the nature of peripheral financialization. Eschewing economistic interpretations, The Political Economy of Financial Transformation in Turkey underscores both the quantitative significance of exponential growth in financial flows and investments, and the qualitative importance of the state’s institutional restructuring around financial imperatives. The book presents today’s reality as historically rooted. By understanding the choices made under the new Republic (from 1923 onwards), one can better locate the changes launched as a newly liberalizing society (since 1980). Likewise, the decisions made in response to Turkey’s 2001 financial crisis spurred a tectonic break in state–market–society financial relations. The waves of change have reached far and wide: from corporate strategies of accumulation and growth to small- and medium-sized enterprises’ strategies of financial survival; from how finance has penetrated the provisioning of housing to how households have become financialized. Put together, one grasps the complexity and historicity of the power of contemporary finance. One also sees that the changes made have not been class-neutral, but have entailed elevating the interests of major capital groups, particularly financial capital, above the interests of the poor and workers in Turkey. Nor are these changes constrained to its national borders, as what transpires domestically contributes to the making of a financialized world market. Through this ‘Made in Turkey’ approach the contributions in this volume thus challenge dominant understandings of financialization, which are derived from the advanced capitalisms, by sharing the specificity of emerging capitalisms such as Turkey.
Download or read book Urban Grassroots Movements in Central and Eastern Europe written by Kerstin Jacobsson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can we learn about collective action across Central and Eastern Europe by focusing on activism within urban spaces? This volume argues that the recent resurgence of urban grassroots mobilisation represents a new phase in the development of post-socialist civil societies and that these civil societies have significantly more vitality than is commonly perceived. The case studies here reflect the diversity and complexity of post-socialist urban movements, capturing also the extent to which the laboratory of urban politics is richly illustrative of the complex nexus of state-society-market relations within post-socialism. The grassroots campaigns and actions reflect the new social cleavages and increased polarisation as a consequence of neoliberal urbanisation and global integration, as well as the transformation of state power and authority in the region. Studying urban activism in Central and Eastern Europe is instructive for urban movements scholars generally, as it forces us to acknowledge the variety of forms that contention can take and the usefulness of embedding the study of urban movements within a larger understanding of civil society.
Download or read book Everyday Life in the Gentrifying City written by Tone Huse and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Oslo, Everyday Life in the Gentrifying City offers an examination of gentrification from below, exploring the effects of this process upon city neighbourhoods and those that inhabit them, whether residents, business owners and their customers, or local activists. Engaging with recent debates surrounding immigration and the inclusion of ethnic minorities in the city, the book takes up the question of ethnicity and gentrification. It argues for an urban policy that gives up the preoccupation with policies concerning the residential mix and place transformation in favour of empowering its citizens. A lively and engaging analysis, in which theoretical rigour is illuminated with rich interviews and empirical content in order to shed light on the relationship between gentrification, displacement, and integration, Everyday Life in the Gentrifying City will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, geography, anthropology and urban studies.
Download or read book Uneven Real Estate Development in Romania at the Intersection of Deindustrialization and Financialization written by Enikő Vincze and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-19 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the progression of real estate development within the deindustrialization-financialization nexus. It explores the roles it has in semi-peripheral contexts such as Romania, where it overlaps with the process of the transformation of state socialism into neoliberal capitalism, viewed at the intersection of global, national, and local forces. The book focuses on real estate development in Romania as a product and a driver of capitalism. It contributes to ongoing debates in critical urban theories and Marxist perspectives in urban sociology. Focusing on the under-researched East European region, it decenters social research and fine-tunes the political economy theory about state and economic restructuring. The book contains methodological and theoretical insights that are useful in other contexts beyond Romania and Central and Eastern Europe, especially in other (semi)peripheral emerging markets. The focus of critical inquiry into capitalist transformations adopted in this book can also support political activism. It uncovers the varieties of the deindustrialization-financialization nexus in real estate built on the dismantled pre-1990 socialist industrial plants. The chapters describe the advancement of real estate investments across second and third-tier cities, displaying uneven development and subordinate financialization at the intersection of local and global processes and political and economic actors. It will be of interest to researchers and students of urban sociology, economic sociology, political economy, human geography, and political geography.
Download or read book Enhancing China s Competitiveness Through Lifelong Learning written by Carl J. Dahlman and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2007 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses the issues and steps involved in building a lifelong learning system in China, including: a coherent policy framework, a sound incentive and institutional framework, a sound regulatory environment, a coordinated governance process, a timely and reliable management information system, a dynamic link with the evolving global system, and the optimal use of limited resources.
Download or read book Social Mobility and Neighbourhood Choice written by Christine Barwick and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-17 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the consequences of staying in or moving out of a socioeconomically disadvantaged neighbourhood? In European urban sociology, research has mostly focused either on lower class ethnic minorities, or on white ethnic majority middle classes. By contrast, studies on upwardly mobile ethnic minorities are scarce, a gap that this book fills by looking at upwardly mobile Turkish-Germans living in Berlin. Those Turkish-Germans in Berlin, who decide to move out of a low status neighbourhood, mostly in order to find a better educational infrastructure for their children, show various strategies to keep ties back to their old neighbourhood. Moreover, the movers now living in neighbourhoods with a high share of native-German residents, where they stand out as the other, keep ties to other people with a Turkish background, not only through socializing with co-ethnics, but also through various forms of voluntary involvement. Hence, a move presents a spatial withdrawal from a socioeconomically weak and ethnically diverse neighbourhood, but it does not imply that this neighbourhood no longer plays a role in Turkish-Germans’ daily practices or as somewhere with which to continuously identify. Barwick’s sophisticated study shows that moving and staying are both active decisions and they both have positive and negative consequences. Thus, movers and stayers alike develop coping strategies for their respective situation, and develop particular daily practices and forms of identification with place.
Download or read book Creating the Unequal City written by Talja Blokland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cities can be seen as geographical imaginaries: places have meanings attributed so that they are perceived, represented and interpreted in a particular way. We may therefore speak of cityness rather than 'the city': the city is always in the making. It cannot be grasped as a fixed structure in which people find their lives, and is never stable, through agents designing courses of interactions with geographical imaginations. This theoretical perspective on cities is currently reshaping the field of urban studies, requiring new forms of theory, comparisons and methods. Meanwhile, mainstream urban studies approaches neighbourhoods as fixed social-spatial units, producing effects on groups of residents. Yet they have not convincingly shown empirically that the neighbourhood is an entity generating effects, rather than being the statistical aggregate where effects can be measured. This book challenges this common understanding, and argues for an approach that sees neighbourhood effects as the outcome of processes of marginalisation and exclusion that find spatial expressions in the city elsewhere. It does so through a comparative study of an unusual kind: Sub-Saharan Africans, second generation Turkish and Lebanese girls, and alcohol and drug consumers, some of them homeless, arguably some of the most disadvantaged categories in the German capital, Berlin, in inner city neighbourhoods, and middle class families in owner-occupied housing. This book analyses urban inequalities through the lens of the city in the making, where neighbourhood comes to play a role, at some times, in some practices, and at some moments, but is not the point of departure.
Download or read book Rapid Modelling for Increasing Competitiveness written by Gerald Reiner and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-06-13 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Perspective on Two Decades of Rapid Modeling It is an honor for me to be asked to write a foreword to the Proceedings of the 1st Rapid Modeling Conference. In 1987, when I coined the term “Rapid Modeling” to denote queuing modeling of manufacturing systems, I never imagined that two decades later there would be an international conference devoted to this topic! I am delighted to see that there will be around 40 presentations at the conference by leading researchers from aroundthe world, and about half of these presentationsare represented by written papers published in this book. I congratulate the conference organizers and program committee on the success of their efforts to hold the ?rst ever conference on Rapid Modeling. Attendees at this conferencemight?nd it interesting to learn about the history of the term Rapid Modeling in the context it is used here. During the fall of 1986 I was invited to a meeting at the Headquarters of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) in Dearborn, Michigan. By that time I had successfully demonstrated s- eral industry applications of queuing network models at leading manufacturers in the USA. Although in principle the use of queuing networks to model manufact- ing systems was well known in the OR/MS community and many papers had been published,the actual use of suchmodelsby manufacturingprofessionalswas almost nonexistent.
Download or read book OECD Rural Studies Perspectives on Decentralisation and Rural Urban Linkages in Korea written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2021-03-04 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The economic development of Korea is widely considered as a success story. Yet, as the country joins the ranks of the world’s most advanced economies, its rapid pace of development has not fully reached every part of its territory. The pace of urbanisation, particularly around Seoul, has placed mounting pressure on the capital’s quality of life, while in rural regions the country’s success has felt distant.
Download or read book Perspectives on Global Development 2014 Boosting Productivity to Meet the Middle Income Challenge written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2014-07-02 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, competitiveness is viewed as a multifaceted concept comprising aspects of the economy and society needed to implement change and move toward sustainable convergence.
Download or read book Decentralized Governance and Accountability written by Jonathan A. Rodden and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reviews recent lessons about decentralized governance and implications for future development programs and policies.
Download or read book Decentralised Energy written by Christoph Burger and published by Ubiquity Press. This book was released on 2020-01-14 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The energy system is undergoing a fundamental transformation – from fossil to renewable energy, from central power plants to distributed, decentralised generation facilities such as rooftop solar panels or wind parks, from utilities to private residents as producers of energy, and from analogue to digital. This book looks at the energy transformation from two complementary angles: governance and business model innovation. On the one side, governance is a decisive factor for the success of the transformation because it can act as an accelerator, or it can delay the process. On the other side, entrepreneurs and corporate decision-makers provide new business models for a decentralised energy world. Based on best practices, country studies and interviews with CEOs and founders of startups from all over the world, the “Global Game Changer” suggests eight key principles for political decision-makers to successfully implement the transformation, and six core competencies for corporate decision-makers to thrive in the new marketplace.
Download or read book The Report Peru 2015 written by Oxford Business Group and published by Oxford Business Group. This book was released on 2015-01-12 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expanding at an average rate of 6.4% per annum since the mid-2000s, Peru’s economic growth has been remarkable, but also heavily dependent on one sector. Driven by a sharp rise in commodity prices, the mining industry spurred Peru’s economy to the fastest sustained growth rate in Latin America during much of the past decade.The end of the commodities supercycle however, saw economic growth slow down substantially over the course of 2014, with the central bank revising growth projections to 3.1% in mid-October. In a bid to stimulate growth, the government has intensified diversification efforts and introduced a series of measures aimed at promoting investment. The current economic slowdown, attributable in part to delays in some major mining developments, is generally seen as a temporary one, and growth is expected to pick up again in 2015. While mining will remain the backbone of the Peruvian economy - in particular from 2016 and beyond as several large-scale copper projects come on-line - other sectors, including industry and tourism, should begin to play increasingly important roles.
