Birds of a feather or by note? Ideological nationalization of local electoral manifestos in Belgium

Until now, scholars trying to unravel the phenomenon of nationalization have seldom considered the local policy layer or the ideological dimension as their main subject. This paper, however, studies the ideological nationalization of Flemish local party branches. It applies the method of content analysis of electoral manifestos to the local elections and examines the programmatic overlaps between the party headquarter and its local branches. An innovative nationalization measure is introduced and subsequently included in an explanatory regression model. The results show that ideological similarities are ubiquitous and especially prevailing among leftist parties, in majority-participating party branches and in large municipalities

Revisiting the 'Missing Middle' in English Sub-National Governance

In the light of the new Coalition Government’s proposed ‘rescaling’ of sub-national governance away from the regional level, it is an opportune time to re-consider the strength and weaknesses of the city or sub-regional approach to economic development and to search, once more, for the ‘missing middle’ in English Governance. In this context, the article initially assesses the case for city or sub regions as tiers of economic governance, before examining the lessons to be learnt from the experiences of the existing city regions in the North East of England. It argues that while contemporary plans to develop Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) can be usefully considered within the context of the emerging city regional developments under the previous Labour Governments, a number of important challenges remain, particularly in relation to ensuring accountable structures of governance, a range of appropriate functions, adequate funding, and comprehensive coverage across a variety of sub-regional contexts. While the proposals of the new Government create the necessary ‘space’ to develop sub-regional bodies and offer genuine opportunities for both city and county LEPs, the scale of the sub-regional challenge should not be underestimated, particularly given the context of economic recession and major reductions in the public sector

New nomads: the dispossession of the consumer in social housing

With the advent of flexible tenancies, marketised rents, the abolition of a consumer-focused regulator and the disbanding of the National Tenant Voice, three decades of efforts to induce consumer pressure in the English social housing sector have been abandoned by the Coalition Government. It appears social housing tenants in England are no longer to be considered as consumers and have been returned instead to their stigmatised identity as welfare dependents. While these twin identities have long characterised the position of tenants in the social housing sector, the promise of liberty and equality inherent in the role of the consumer has been the basis through which the quality of the offer of social housing has been maintained and through which claims on social citizenship have been launched. This paper analyses the mechanisms by which a consumer identity has been mobilised to ensure the resilience of the social housing sector in the face of continuous governmental erosion. Drawing on a detailed positioning analysis of discussions in tenants’ organisations, it investigates the use of a consumer identity in collective mobilisations to defend the quality of the sector and, inspired by the work of Deleuze and Guattari, and Hardt and Negri, it provides a theoretical framework through which to consider the potential for future claims on social citizenship on the margins of housing policy

The £8bn question: would local councils be better off outside the EU?

Local authorities are due to receive £8bn in EU funding between 2014 and 2020. But would leaving the EU free up money to be spent more wisely and with fewer administrative obstacles? Dominic Leigh (left) and Ben Ramanauskas, both of Localis, make the cases to Remain and Leave on behalf of local government

Towards strategic-decision quality in Flemish municipalities: the importance of strategic planning and stakeholder participation

Legislation put forth by the Flemish government mandated Flemish municipalities to adopt strategic planning for their 2014-2019 policy cycle. The government’s assumption is that strategic planning’s approach to decision-making results in strategic-decision quality. Despite this assumption, it remains unclear whether and how strategic planning actually contributes to municipal decision-making. This study elucidates this issue. Drawing on survey data from 271 informants within 89 Flemish municipalities, we find that the systematic dimension of formal strategic planning and the participation of both core and peripheral stakeholders contribute to strategic-decision quality. However, the analytic dimension of formal strategic planning offers no significant contribution

New Tourist Tax as a Tool for Municipalities in the Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is one of many states where the new legal regulation of tourist taxes was introduced to limit the shortcomings of the original regulation. The aim of this paper is to define the opportunities and threats of the new regulation in the Czech Republic in the area of tourist taxes. To achieve the purpose of this article, the tourist tax is defined and Czech legal regulation valid until the end of 2019 and since 2020 in the given area is analysed. The hypothesis that the new regulation is perfect and ideal for the tax administration and for the municipalities was confirmed only partially. While most of the critical issues were solved and the new tourist charge is a good step for both municipalities and the tax administration, the charge rate of 21 CZK in 2020, resp. 50 CZK in the following years is not adequate. With the new regulation, municipalities got new opportunities, primarily to increase their revenues. The single tourist charge makes the system easier for all stakeholders: for municipalities, for tourists, and for quartermasters. Issues arise especially concerning the simplified evidence and the non-chargeable long-term stays. Municipalities should be particularly careful when defining the exemptions and differentiating the charge rate for specific dates in the year, or specific parts of the municipality. The unequal treatment might be seen as discrimination or even unfair public incentive.Česká republika je jedním z mnoha států, kde byla zavedena nová právní úprava daní z cestovního ruchu s cílem omezit nedostatky původní úpravy. Cílem tohoto příspěvku je definovat příležitosti a hrozby nové regulace v České republice v oblasti turistických daní. Pro dosažení účelu tohoto článku je definována turistická daň a analyzována česká právní úprava platná do konce roku 2019 a od roku 2020 v dané oblasti. Hypotéza, že nová regulace je dokonalá a ideální pro správu daní a pro obce, se potvrdila jen částečně. Zatímco většina kritických otázek byla vyřešena a nový turistický poplatek je dobrým krokem jak pro obce, tak pro daňovou správu, sazba poplatku 21 Kč v roce 2020, resp. 50 Kč v následujících letech nestačí. Díky novému nařízení dostaly obce nové příležitosti, především ke zvýšení příjmů. Jednotný turistický poplatek usnadňuje systém pro všechny zúčastněné strany: pro obce, pro turisty a pro ubytovatele. Problémy vyvstávají zejména ve vztahu ke zjednodušené evidenci a k neupoplatněným dlouhodobým pobytům. Obce by měly být obzvláště opatrné při definování osvobození a rozlišování sazby poplatku pro konkrétní části roku nebo konkrétní části obce. Nerovné zacházení lze považovat za diskriminaci nebo dokonce za neoprávněnou veřejnou podporu.The Czech Republic is one of many states where the new legal regulation of tourist taxes was introduced to limit the shortcomings of the original regulation. The aim of this paper is to define the opportunities and threats of the new regulation in the Czech Republic in the area of tourist taxes. To achieve the purpose of this article, the tourist tax is defined and Czech legal regulation valid until the end of 2019 and since 2020 in the given area is analysed. The hypothesis that the new regulation is perfect and ideal for the tax administration and for the municipalities was confirmed only partially. While most of the critical issues were solved and the new tourist charge is a good step for both municipalities and the tax administration, the charge rate of 21 CZK in 2020, resp. 50 CZK in the following years is not adequate. With the new regulation, municipalities got new opportunities, primarily to increase their revenues. The single tourist charge makes the system easier for all stakeholders: for municipalities, for tourists, and for quartermasters. Issues arise especially concerning the simplified evidence and the non-chargeable long-term stays. Municipalities should be particularly careful when defining the exemptions and differentiating the charge rate for specific dates in the year, or specific parts of the municipality. The unequal treatment might be seen as discrimination or even unfair public incentive

Parallel Activation of Distributed Concepts: Who put the P in the PDP?

An investigation of the capacity of distributed systems to represent patterns of activation in parallel is presented. Connectionist models of lexical ambiguity have captured this capacity by activating the arithmetic mean of the vectors representing the relevant meanings to form a lexical blend. However, a more extreme test of this system occurs in a distributed model of lexical access in speech perception, which may require a lexical blend to represent transiently the meanings of hundreds of words. I show that there is a strict limit on the number of distributed patterns that can be represented effectively by a lexical blend. This limit is dependent to some extent on the structure and content of the distributed space, which in the case of lexical access corresponds to structure and content of the mental lexicon. This limitation implies that distributed models cannot be simple re-implementations of parallel localist models and offers a valuable opportunity to distinguish experimentally between localist and distributed models of cognitive processes

Pennington to Raymond Wilson, January 6, 1948

Pennington writing to Raymond Wilson, executive secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, commenting on the committee\u27s draft for legislative policy for 1948.https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/levi_pennington/1219/thumbnail.jp