The Core Plan or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Central City: Shifting Control of Regional Mass Transit to the Central City

[Excerpt] “Mass transit in the United States is moribund: it plays a meaningful transportation role in only a handful of American regions. It is clear that the status quo—where state-created special-purpose districts (SPDs) provide limited regional mass transit options and new mass transit construction progresses at a glacial pace—is a colossal failure. This failure necessitates a new model of mass transit ownership and management. It is time for the region’s central city to own and operate the region’s mass transit system extraterritorially, free from significant control by the outer cities (the suburbs) and the state. This article calls this arrangement the “Core Plan.” The key advantages of the Core Plan are: (1) the re-politicization of the mass transit planning process via the heavily politicized central city, allowing the public to effectively express its policy desires while reinvigorating the mass transit debate; (2) the central city’s significant institutional competence concerning regional transportation operations, as shown by the central city’s ownership of large international airports and systems of airports that serve entire regions; and (3) the faster pace at which the central city will be able to build mass transit versus the status quo of SPDs. The Core Plan reflects and integrates the United States’ long history of municipal extraterritorial powers, where cities own property and operate businesses beyond their territorial limits, including regional transportation operations (international airports). The Core Plan returns power over the region’s mass transit to the local level, while dramatically speeding up the mass transit construction and integration process.

Insurgent participation: consensus and contestation in planning the redevelopment of Berlin-Tempelhof airport

Despite decades of debate, participatory planning continues to be contested. More recently, research has revealed a relationship between participation and neoliberalism, in which participation works as a post-political tool—a means to depoliticize planning and legitimize neoliberal policy-making. This article argues that such accounts lack attention to the opportunities for opposing neoliberal planning that may be inherent within participatory processes. In order to further an understanding of the workings of resistance within planning, it suggests the notion of insurgent participation—a mode of contentious intervention in participatory approaches. It develops this concept through the analysis of various participatory approaches launched to regenerate the former airport Berlin-Tempelhof. A critical reading of participation in Tempelhof reveals a contradictory process. Although participatory methods worked to mobilize support for predefined agendas, their insurgent participation also allowed participants to criticize and shape the possibilities of engagement, challenge planning approaches and envision alternatives to capitalist imperatives

Allocating State Authority Over Charitable Nonprofit Organizations

This Essay considers the allocation of state authority to enforce the legal obligations particular to charities and their leaders among state officials, including attorneys general, judges, and legislators, and private parties. It first describes the existing allocation. It then reviews the most common criticisms of this allocation, which primarily focus on two concerns: politicization and lack of sufficient enforcement. Finally, it evaluates the most notable proposals for reallocating this authority, including the reallocation of this authority in part to private parties. This Essay concludes that reform proposals have two fundamental flaws. First, proposals aimed at countering the political nature of state attorney general decisions fail to consider both the advantages of that nature and the existing restraints placed on it by state courts and resource limitations. Second, proposals aimed at addressing the admittedly low level of oversight provided by state attorneys general assume that there is significant undiscovered malfeasance at charities, the countering of which would justify the burdens these proposals would place on all charities, even though empirical data supporting this assumption are lacking. That said, this Essay supports more modest reforms. These are: requiring all attorney general negotiated settlements to be submitted to state courts for approval; permitting derivative suits by current fiduciaries, as is the law in most states, and by a significant proportion of members, as is the law in some states; and modestly expanding donor standing to allow substantial donors (but not their successors or heirs) to enforce explicit written terms on substantial gifts. These reforms would strengthen existing state oversight while being unlikely to significantly burden most charities

MARKET TYPOLOGY, CONCENTRATION, AND COMPETITION OF NATIONAL MEDIA CONGLOMERATE IN INDONESIA

The economic practices of media industry in Indonesia are inseparable from the pattern of oligopolistic market competition and control. This trend is seen from further centralized market control of media, particularly advertising media in a number of media corporate groups. Media corporate groups apply practices of conglomeration in market control with horizontal, vertical, or diagonal integrated strategy. Criticism on these practices is often expressed, but there is no assessment based on the empirical evidence on the business behavior of media conglomeration. This paper explores the characteristics of media conglomerate by reconstructing the typology of media conglomeration introduced by Richard Bounce: Concentric Conglomerates and Diversified Conglomerates, and three models by Graham Murdock: Industrial Conglomerates, Services Conglomerates and Communications Conglomerates. Six typology models of conglomerate are formed, namely (1) Industrial-Concentric; (2) Industrial-Diversified; (3) Services-Concentric; (4) Services-Diversified; (5) Communications-Concentric; (6) Communications-Diversified. The economic performance of each conglomerate group regarding market concentration and market competition in constructing the market structure of media industry is studied based on the typologies. The study finds a new typology model of media conglomerate and manages to prove that national media conglomerate still dominates the media market in Indonesia.

Time Sharing at Leisure Facility Centres: Analysis of Sales Performance Indicators

The changing cultural paradigms in Latin America have influenced variety of leisure activities and significant implications for development of leisure services. Leisure spending behaviour prompts sequential relationship among customers intending to perform family celebrations in a different environment and gaining higher satisfaction through the customized services, recreational attractions and brand value. This study focuses qualitative dimensions associated with the sales people and managerial efforts made to augment the outcome performance in sales in reference to the time sharing proposals at leisure facility centres in Mexico. The leisure facility centres are used by individual and institutional customers for organizing leisure events, parties and family gatherings. The study reveals that the leisure facility centre developer firms function with team sales strategy and the performance of sale teams is linked with their contributions to the profit of the firm.Team sales, customer satisfaction, sales performance, leisure property, brand image, returns on assets

For What it’s Worth: The Political Construction of Quality in French and Italian Wine Markets

At the heart of political organization, we find weak and atomized individuals who aggregate their power to challenge concentrated power. Wine politics show us that within market economies we find the same political movements. Markets, like politics, consist of institutions that differentially embed, codify and distribute power. In the case of France, small, individually weak wine producers became powerful in the aggregate; unified French grape growers came together to force a deal with the economically dominant wine merchants. Their joint political power was institutionalized in power-sharing, state-backed corporatist producer organizations. In contrast, small Italian producers failed to cooperate systematically and aggregate their power. Stronger organization enabled the construction of an institutional comparative advantage and higher prices for regulated French terroir wines. Economic sociologists claim markets are ‘socially embedded’. This article demonstrates markets are ‘politically embedded’: French market dominance results from effective power sharing mechanisms across the supply chain.1. Introduction 2. Information and power: previous literature on quality signaling, supply chain structure and producer organization 3. Data and methods 4. A comparison of the French and Italian wine markets 5. Market failures in the supply chain 6. French wine: the politics of value construction 7. Italian wine politics 8. Conclusions Footnotes Acknowledgements Reference

Governance in Spanish Savings Banks. A Historical Perspective

During the previous three decades, mutual financial firms have been experiencing a process of demutualization, and some of the non-for-profit banks have become publicly listed companies. Hence, the persistence of the Spanish Savings Banks constitutes an interesting case study. In line with recent literature, this paper attempts to reach a better understanding of the factors that have contributed to the persistence of these entities in the long run and to the maintenance of a very specific model of corporate governance. Regulatory influences, politics and political institutions have proved to be key elements of a model which has proved capable of delivering successful outcomes in increasingly competitive conditions. Nonetheless, the financial crisis would seem to have exacerbated the stresses and strains within this model and, in combination with the pressure of increasingly globalized markets, the Spanish Savings Banks find themselves in a new scenario.corporate governance; stakeholder regime; savings banks