Strategic Planning in Local Governments in Europe: 'Where Do We Go Now'?

This paper is part of a larger inquiry aiming to investigate the current results published in the scientifi c literature with respect to strategy development in local governments. The geographical area of interest consists of European Union (EU). The preliminary results of a systematic literature review are reported below. These results suggest that the efforts to analyze the strategy development in local governments are primarily associated to the urban planning fi eld and to a lower extent to public administration journals

Selected Factors Determining the Adoption and Use of Participatory Budgeting in Central and Eastern Europe

This is a summary article of the SJPS thematic issue on participatory budgeting in the Central and Eastern European region. Its authors provide an overview of the diffusion of participatory budgeting, and they classify relevant countries in terms of the pace of this diffusion into four different groups: frontrunners, early majority, later majority, and lagging adopters. In addition, they uncover various diffusion mechanisms that have been used. Since the research articles included in this thematic issue unpack various factors that influence the diffusion of the innovative practice of participatory budgeting in the specific settings of Central and Eastern Europe, the main goal of this article is to sum up their crucial findings and formulate several conclusions, including a few avenues for further research. A clear majority of countries in the region have already collected a relevant amount of experience with the adoption and further use of participatory budgeting. An analysis of the individual experiences reveals that the position and characteristics of mayors, organizational resources, and available capacities, as well as the quality of public trust, are likely to be important factors that determine the adoption and use of participatory budgeting in the region

Factors influencing alcohol and illicit drug use amongst first year medical students

The aims of this study were a) to investigate patterns of alcohol, smoking and illicit drug use and b) evaluate the relationship between substance abuse and personality factors in a cohort of 267 first year medical students. 12.3 % (men) and 11.8% (female) medical students reported to be drinking above the “low risk” level of alcohol. Illicit drug use was present amongst the students surveyed, with 12.4% having experimented with cannabis at some stage during their life. A significant proportion of the students (44.1%) suffered from anxiety. There are personality characteristics like extraversion and openness that influence the drug taking and drinking habits of students, suggesting that such individuals may still pursue these habits although they know these are not healthy habits. Considering these, it may be prudent to consider the promotion of harm reduction and safer use of drugs and alcohol in medical student

General Issues Concerning Needs Analysis in Local Public Institutions

Needs assessment in local public institutions was not very present so far in a systematic manner in Romanian specialized literature on administrative reform. Current study uses interviews with candidates for a public administration master program to investigate civil servants motivation of pursuing graduatelevel studies and their perception on current needs of the work in local public institutions. Motivation for pursuing graduate studies is located mainly on the need to update and diversify their professional knowledge, and not as much on promotion-related reasons. The perceived needs are related to management of public institutions, structure of information system, legislation and European integration, human resource management and public relations.</p