Administrating Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegrestreet-level Officials and Organisational Preconditions

 El Partido de los Trabajadores (PT) desarrolló en Porto Alegre un régimen participativo de gasto, que permitió a los ciudadanos tener una voz sobre la inversión pública a nivel municipal. Éste ha sido aclamado como un modelo de participación en la toma de decisiones que aumenta la transparencia al nivel local. La mayoría de los académicos han mirado este régimen con un enfoque socio-céntrico, enfocándose en los encuentros participativos, y en el rol de la sociedad civil. Sin embargo, poca atención ha sido dada al diseño institucional, el rol crucial de la administración pública, y a los políticos del PT responsables de las mejoras en el servicio público y la infraestructura. Este artículo tiene un enfoque de políticas y redirige la atención hacia los funcionarios y políticos que estuvieron firmemente en el control y llevaron las riendas del régimen. La principal propuesta del artículo es que gran parte del éxito de la administración del PT en Porto Alegre dependió de dedicados militantes nombrados dentro de la administración municipal. Ellos fueron la encarnación del presupuesto participativo intermediado, el que fue un importante instrumento para la participación ciudadana, pero que contaba con una serie de debilidades estructurales, que los militantes del PT fueron capaces de superar durante varios años.The Workers' Party (PT) developed In Porto Alegre a participatory expenditure scheme which allowed citizens to have a say on public investments at municipal level. It has been hailed as a model for participatory decision-making that increases transparency at the local level. Most scholars so far have looked at this scheme with a society-centred approach focusing on the participatory meetings and the role of civil society. However, little attention has been given to the institutional design, the crucial role of the public administration, and PT politicians who were responsible for the increase in public services and infrastructure. This article has a policy approach and redirects the attention toward officials and politicians who were firmly in control and pulled the strings of the scheme. The article's main contention is that much of the success of the PT administration in Porto Alegre hinged upon dedicated partisan members appointed inside the municipal administration. They were the embodiment of the intermediary participatory budget as such was an important instrument for citizens' inclusion, but lacked the showed a number of structural weaknesses which these militant PT members were able to overcome during many years

Integrating ICT in Kenyan secondary schools: an exploratory case study of a professional development program

This study explores the introduction of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Kenyan secondary schools. Specifically, it is a case study of four schools with no previous access to ICT. The professional development program from which data for this study were drawn was designed to support teachers learning to integrate ICT in the curriculum. Using a mixed method research approach, we collected data from multiple sources and triangulated the views of various stakeholders: questionnaires with teachers, focus groups with teachers, school leaders and ICT coordinators, field observations and document analysis. While the broader program focused on the use of ICT, the results highlighted in this study focus on the development of the four schools with respect to 1) vision building, 2) leadership, 3) collaboration, 4) expertise, and 5) access to adequate resources. The discussion centers on the challenges and opportunities inherent in understanding how to prepare schools in developing countries to integrate ICT in education

Participatory Institutions and People’s Practices in India: An analysis of Decentralisation experiences in Kerala State

Institutions orient people towards a common goal. Institutions have a pertinent role in collective action. Participatory institutions have the potential to vitalize democracy by providing a pro active role to the citizens in decision making, planning and implementation of activities. In fact the performance of the institutions depends upon the practices of the people affiliated to them. The practices of the people are influenced by the field in which they are situated, and their habitus. Ultimately field (It is an objective historical relation between the positions in each realm of the society) and habitus(It is the way in which field enters in to an individual) are the decisive factors in people’s practices. Kerala’s decentralization experiments since the inception of the People’s Planning Campaign in 1996 have given more emphasis to participatory institutions. PPC viewed participatory institutions as forums for mobilizing different groups of people towards grassroots level democracy. This paper analyses the dynamics of institutions created by PPC in Kerala in light of their twelve years of functioning. The Paper also considers various factors that might have affected the functioning of institutions through a detailed analysis of Kerala’s political, economic,cultural and religious fieldsParticipatory institutions; habitus; people’s practices.

Democracy and Education: The Philosophy of Theorist Carl D. Glickman

Dr. Carl D. Glickman started in education as a Teacher Corps intern in the south. He went on to become a principal and university professor. Over his career, Glickman has won many awards including the faculty career award from the University of Georgia. He has served in a leadership capacity on many university, state, and national organizations focused on improving education. He founded The Georgia League of Professional Schools and has served on the National Commission on Service Learning. Among his accomplishments he has authored numerous books and articles on educational renewal and school leadership (Glickman, 1993). Glickman’s life and career have been concentrated on the democratic and moral imperative of education and educational leadership. He described himself as a progressive constructivist with a focus on the democratization of classrooms and schools (Glickman, 1991). This paper is an overview of Dr. Carl Glickman’s philosophy and vision of democracy and education and how the two are dependent upon each other

Managerial Role In Implementing The Duties And Functions Of The Regional Secretary Of Pasaman Regency

According to Law No. 23 of 2014, the duties and obligations of the regional secretary are to assist the heads in formulating policies and coordinating the implementation and administrative services of the apparatus. The managerial problems are the regent's policies outside the annual activity plan of the district, coordination between heads, and determination of the Regional Apparatus Organization (RAO) head. Therefore, this study aims to determine the managerial role in carrying out the duties and functions of the Regional Secretary in Pasaman Regency using qualitative method. It also uses purposive sampling technique for data sources with certain considerations. The primary data sources used are field observations and interviews with all elements related to the research problem. Meanwhile, the secondary data were obtained from library documents from the Pasaman Regency Government. This study divided the four basic management functions according to George R. Terry and processed analyzers and creators for Planning, facilitators and navigators for Organizing, mentors, coordinators for Actuating, and auditors and evaluators for Controlling. The results show that the problems faced by the local government can be solved by the managerial role in planning activities, managing the organization, organizing and supervising activities. The regional secretary can carry out the role of the analyzer, creator, facilitator, navigator, mentor, coordinator, auditor, and evaluator in conducting the main duties, powers, and functions

The Effect of Inter-institutional Rules on the Division of Power in the European Parliament: Allocation of Consultation versus Codecision Reports

Studies on the internal organization of the European Parliament (EP) have largely overlooked the impact of its inter-institutional context. Addressing the gap, this paper examines how the different inter-institutional balance of power under the consultation and codecision legislative procedures affects the intra-parliamentary allocation of consultation and codecision reports. The analysis of reports allocated during 2004-2007 shows that the higher competition for codecision reports left unchecked by the informal rules of report allocation has produced clear winners and losers. Disloyal party group members are ‘punished’ by group coordinators in the allocation of any reports. Furthermore, members of the centre-right party group coalition are privileged in the allocation of codecision reports, while legislators with outlying special interests and experts are given systematic access only to drafting consultation reports. Thus, the main mechanisms driving report allocation appear to be promoting party group cohesion and majority formation

Territorial-Administrative Decentralisation and Ethnocultural Diversity in Ukraine: Addressing Hungarian Autonomy Claims in Zakarpattya

The paper argues firstly that, since there is no obvious separatist movement within Zakarpattya, the Ukrainian state should seek as far as possible to accommodate Hungarian identity claims within the region (and those of other smaller minority communities living within the state) as part of a normative and instrumental strategy of promoting ‘unity in diversity’. Secondly, it argues that Ukraine’s current concept of decentralization offers space to realise the non-territorial vision of cultural autonomy, provided that sufficient attention is also given to maintaining pre-existing territorially-based provisions with regard to minority language use and political representation for Hungarians at both regional and national level

Who participates? : civil society and the new democratic politics in São Paulo, Brazil

This paper explores the participation of collective civil society actors in institutional spaces for direct citizen participation in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. The data was produced by a unique survey of civil society actors who work for, or with, sectors of the lower-middle class, the working class, and the urban poor. The paper identifies factors that influence the propensity of civil society actors to participate in three types of institutions: the participatory budget, the constitutionally mandated policy councils, and other local participatory councils and programmes. Many political leaders, policy-makers and researchers believe that such forms of direct citizen participation can help democratise and rationalise the state, as well as provide politically marginalised populations with a say in policy. Whether these hopes materialise depends in part on the answer(s) to a question the literatures on civil society, citizen participation and empowered participation have not addressed – Who Participates? Contrary to the focus on autonomy in much of the work on civil society, the statistical findings support the claim that collective actors with relations to institutional actors, and the Workers’ Party and State actors in particular, have the highest propensity to participate. The findings also support the idea that the institutional design of participatory policy-making spaces has a significant impact on who participates, and that this impact varies by type of civil society actor. Unlike what has been found in research on individual citizen participation, there is no evidence that the “wealth” of collective actors influences participation