Governance on the Ground

by McCarney, Patricia L.; Stren, Richard E.

• ISBN13: 9780801878510
• ISBN10: 0801878519
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-09-15
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

Governance on the Ground describes people at a local level working through municipal institutions to take more responsibility for their own lives and environment. This study reports what social scientists in eight local networks found when they chose their own subjects for a worldwide comparative study of institutional reform at the local level. Governance on the Ground is the culminating product of the Global Urban Research Initiative, a major 10-year research effort that created a worldwide network of some 400 social scientists. The topics these scholars cover include fiscal innovation, infrastructure projects, social development, housing, harbor development, and political party participation. Material comes from Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Sudan, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. All chapters present governance at a local level in a period characterized by decentralization and democratization, when many governments were improving local accountability and transparency and people were actively participating in public forums, especially through institutions of civil society. Many chapters show the close connection between social science and actual policy formation and implementation in the developing world.

Author Biography

Patricia McCarney is an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. Richard Stren is a professor of political science at the University of Toronto, where he has also been director of the Centre for Urban and Community Studies.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
1 Introduction: Toward the Comparative Study of Urban Governance	1	(30)
Richard E. Strep
2 Confronting Critical Disjunctures in the Governance of Cities	31	(25)
Patricia L. McCarney
3 Ethnographies of Governance: Urban Spaces and Actors in the Middle East	56	(27)
Seteney Shami
4 Bellavista: Local Political Activism in Defense of a Barrio	83	(28)
Lucy Winchester, Teresa Cáceres, and Alfredo Rodriguez
5 Democratic Governance and Participation: Tales of Tuvo Cities	111	(31)
Renato Raul Boschi
6 Fiscal Innovations and Urban Governance	142	(29)
Om Prakash Mathun
7 Rethinking the Enabling Strategy in Social Housing: State-Civil Society Dynamics in Southeast Asia	171	(23)
Emma Porfio
8 Reforming Governance in Dhaka, Bangladesh	194	(26)
Nazrul Islam with Mohammad Mohabbat Khan, Nunul Islam Nazem, and Mohammad Habibur Rahman
9 "My Soul I Can See": The Limits of Governing African Cities in a Context of Globalization and Complexity	220	(31)
Mark Swilling, AbdouMaliq Simone, and Firoz Khan
10 Governance and Municipal Management in Mexico and Colombia: Between Clientelist Practices and New Forms of Democratic Government	251	(24)
Emilio Duhau and Martha Schteingart
Contributors	275	(6)
Index	281