Devolution, politics and social poilicy

In recent years, two apparently contradictory but, in fact, complementary socio-political phenomena have reinforced each other in the European urban realm: the re-scaling of nation-states through “devolution” and the emergence of two opposed versions of “nationalism” (i.e., ethnic, non-metropolitanised, state-centric, exclusive, and right-wing populist nationalism and civic, metropolitanised, stateless, inclusive and progressivist-emancipatory-social democratic nationalism). In light of these intertwined phenomena, this paper shows how an ongoing, pervasive, and uneven “metropolitanisation effect” is increasingly shaping city-regional political responses by overlapping metropolitan, city-regional, and national political scales and agendas. This effect is clear in three European cases driven by “civic nationalism” that are altering their referential nation-states’ uniformity through “devolution”. This paper compares three metropolitan (and city-regional) cases in the UK and in Spain, namely, Glasgow (Scotland), Barcelona (Catalonia), and Bilbao (Basque Country), by benchmarking their policy implementation and the tensions produced in reference to their nation-states. Fieldwork was conducted from January 2015 to June 2017 through in-depth interviews with stakeholders in the three locations. Despite the so-called pluri-national and federal dilemmas, this paper contributes to the examination of the side effects of “metropolitanisation” by considering three arguments based on geo-economics (“prosperous competitiveness”), geo-politics (“smart devolution”), and geo-democratics (“right to decide”). Finally, this paper adds to the existing research on metropolitan and city-regional politics by demonstrating why “devolution” matters and why it must be considered seriously. The “metropolitanisation effect” is key to understanding and transforming the current configurations of nation-states, such as the UK and Spain (as we currently know them), beyond internal discord around pluri-nationality and quasi-federalism. This paper concludes by suggesting the term “smart devolution” to promote more imaginative and entrepreneurial approaches to metropolitan and city-regional politics, policies, and experimental democracy within these nation-states. These approaches can identify and pursue “smart” avenues of timely, subtle, and innovative political strategies for change in the ongoing re-scaling devolution processes occurring in the UK and in Spain and in the consequent changes in the prospects for the refoundational momentum in the EU.

Point Blank with a Continental Drifter. 

Hey why don't you take a ride.  And while you're at it take a hard look at the ethical gray areas of life's highways.  Why don't you question the limits of individual free will and plot the moral high ground.  Gather 'round and haggle with the hegemons of sex, death, and truth.

So get in the car.

According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA 2001), rapid increase in population as has been witnessed in Nairobi since independence, has led to unprecedented sprawl of informal settlements; outstripped the city’s delivery of social services i.e. education, healthcare, water supply and sanitation; increased the motorization rate (both personal and public service vehicles) and attendant air pollution; and increased poverty levels within the city.

Life in the slums differs greatly to that in the developed urbanized estates where the high and middle income earners dwell. In the slums life is different and palatable only to the low income earning society.

Therefore, this paper on mortality trends and variations will look at the change of deaths of the population per 1000 per year in relation to the general movement and instance of change.

Mortality trends and variations in Kenya’s capital are drawn from a wider angle as there are both the developed urbanized zones and the lowly developed slum areas, the zones of the urban poor. With this differential zonal locality, mortality trends and variations are influenced by a range of factors that are varied in space and time. The recent census carried out has indicated that the urban poor population is growing at a faster rate than those in the developed urbanized zones.

'Postindependence' book aims to summarise the most relevant conclusions of a three-year research project on Regional and Social Innovation Studies carried out at the University of Oxford.

In Europe, milestone changes are taking place in which the right for territories to decide their own future and democratic choices for devolution and independence are becoming issues. This book aims to visualize the Basque Country from the outside, from an international point of view by proposing its real choices and contradictions in a constructive, transformational and entrepreneurial manner.

And what if we were an independent country? What if, starting today, we began to think about independence the very next day and started on a plan of action? That is what PostIndependence is. To that end, the author believes that it is essential that relations with other countries and projects should be bolstered, a place that we would like in the world, to start working on a united strategic action.

More info please contact: info@translokal.com

Nation-states are facing constant re-scaling and devolution demands from the strongest city-regional economies, whereas welfare policies are weakening due to the austerity policy implemented by national governments. However, nation-states, as international actors, depict difficulties to cope with this uncertain equilibrium between self-determination demands from the nationalists and a clear contestation to the political economic severe austerity policy. It is in this context where pervasive but disruptive political innovations could be taking place in some city-regional small nations, even beyond their nation-states.
Generally speaking, the nature of the nation-states has been understood so far as a static and presumably homogeneous entity, which requires an updated ‘smart’ comprehensive agenda of power relationships, shared sovereignty and policy implementation between nation-states and city-regional small nations. Such ‘smartness’ now involves being able to proceed with
devolution between the two counterparts that play in the international arena. As a general trend, devolution is being increasingly included in the EU multilevel policy agenda, or at least, in the political debate of many member states, such as the UK, Spain, and Germany, among others.
Nevertheless, there are remarkable differences not only in the way nation-states assume this current geopolitical trend, but also the strategies of city-regions aiming for more autonomy, devolution and independence. These are the cases of the UK and Spain, and also Scotland, Catalonia and the Basque Country.
This paper aims to explore two aspects: 1) the notion of what we mean when we talk about the Age of Devolution in the European context and 2) the evidence-based facts of the Political Innovation in selected cases of smart city-regional governance.
Therefore, this paper will present a comparative analysis of the Political Innovation ‘smartness’ in the three city-regional small nations of Scotland, Catalonia and the Basque Country.

This study sought to; determine levels of income generated from Solid Waste Management (SWM) practices, assess contribution of the income to participating households’ (HHs) socio-economics and make policy recommendations to exploit existing potential in SWM practices. 121 HHs were surveyed from five phases of Dandora, Kenya. Respondents were selected through systematic sampling by phase. Relationships between SWM practices and household socioeconomic factors were established through descriptive analysis and correlations. Findings showed SWM practices had positive influence on socioeconomic lives of participants. Mean monthly income from SWM practices (Collection and Disposal, Recycling, and Minimization) were KShs 15941.28/=, KShs 16170.45/= and KShs 9467.50/= per household respectively. Total income of KShs 102,481,259/= per month from SWM Practices for the 6800HHs under study, contributed 82.47% of the total HH socioeconomic expenditure which included but not limited to education, food, health and housing expenses. These expenses constituted 55%, 21%, 18%, and 5% of total income respectively implying that HHs had other sources of income to supplement income from SWM practices. Correlation between total income and total expenses revealed a weak but positive correlation (r=0.389, at p=0.01) that was significant. The researcher recommends separation of waste at household level for easier collection, disposal and recycling; regular waste collection to avoid creation of mini-dumps in residential areas; and support for research and popularization of adoption of appropriate and low cost SWM technologies locally available to reduce handling cost of recyclable waste. Due to pollution of water supplied to HHs by leachate water from waste dumps, a separate cell should be provided at the sanitary landfill for the ashes of incinerated hazardous wastes and composting of solid waste at household level especially by those farming to generate organic manure for organic farming. The government should develop and implement policies that outline practical approaches to SWM practices.

This edited collection ‘Our Changing Land: Revisiting Gender, Class and Identity in Contemporary Wales’ is structured around the central theme of revisiting. The manuscript sets out to revisit seminal writings about Wales and Welsh life from the 1990s reflexively exploring the changes and continuities in the nation across this temporal space. The last two decades have seen big changes within a small nation; and the distinctiveness of Wales, in terms of its political life and culture, has grown considerably. Nevertheless, beneath the imagery of the definitive nation, Wales remains a complex and divided land and the collection will explore the themes of continuity, change, unity and division that actively contribute to the making of contemporary Wales.

In order to revisit, the collection will be drawing from two key sources, namely early editions of the journal Contemporary Wales (Journal Editors - Paul Chaney and Erin Royles - University of Wales Press) and the edited book Our Sister’s Land: the changing identities of women in Wales (Book Editors Jane Aaron, Teresa Rees Sandra Betts and Moira Vincentelli). Started in 1987, Contemporary Wales is an annual English-language journal containing academic articles and reviews relating to politics, history and current affairs it is arguably the leading journal of modern Welsh public and private lives; and the current collection will revisit carefully selected articles published around the early 1990s. Our Sister’s Land (1994) argued for a focus on Welsh women because of their increasingly importance to the world of paid work; while retaining their roles and responsibilities in the home. The book demonstrated the ways in which women's lives are very diverse, and at the time of its publication the changing identity of Welsh women as they managed the balance between private and public lives had been relatively uncharted. For this reason the text was ground-breaking in bringing together a collection of interdisciplinary research papers on the changing identity of women in Wales.


The pattern of family life has continued to shift since these seminal publications and it is important to revisit and re-examine the lives of men and women in Wales, this is why Our Changing Land draws from both Contemporary Wales and Our Sister’s Land; allowing for a reflection on gender in a wider sense. Drawing from the work of both leading writers and emerging academics, in Welsh history, social policy, education, sociology, psychology and geography, this edited collection examines what is distinctive about Wales and Welshness in an interdisciplinary yet comprehensive manner.

The first elections of the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) held in September 2013 provided an important opportunity to test the utility of the Thirteenth Amendment in devolving power. Until then, the Northern Province was essentially under Central administration (through the Governor) for the larger part of its existence since the enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment. This policy brief studies devolution praxis in the NPC since the September 2013 elections. It highlights the impact of the former Governor upon the work of the Provincial Council; the central control over provincial finances; the effect of political rhetoric on the feasibility of devolution in the North, and judicial pronouncements that directly affected the NPC's power dynamics.

This article examines the devolution of social welfare services in the Philippines, focusing on its ideological underpinnings and implications for social welfare. It argues that the devolution resulted in a policy environment that allows for varying levels of social support across municipalities and, consequently, the fragmentation of Filipino citizenship.

This article contributes to debates about labour and working class politics in Scotland in the 1980s by examining the campaign of non-payment of the Community Charge, or ‘poll tax’ which was the largest act of civil disobedience in Scottish history in terms of the numbers directly involved. . The poll tax was central to the development of ‘civic Scotland’, the cross-party anti-Thatcher alliance in which the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) was a central component. But the policy was ultimately defeated by the non-payment campaign, organised and mobilised by a variety of community and socialist activists who effectively operated in opposition to Civic Scotland.

The analysis is based on archival materials from the Anti-Poll Tax Federation, which led the non-payment campaign, and the STUC’s All Scotland Anti-Poll Tax Committee which opposed non-payment, along with the testimonies of twelve activists, drawn from the major political trends within the non-payment campaign and the STUC committee. The impact of the 1980s on the anti-poll tax movement is analysed in terms of the creation of a division between working-class communities on Clydeside and the STUC and Labour Party which had traditionally represented them. The social consequences of deindustrialisation, community support for the 1984-5 miners’ strike and a fusion of national and class consciousness in Scotland are emphasised. The opportunity to mobilise this discontent in community struggles is counterpoised with the declining willingness of trade unions to enter industrial action following the defeat of the miners’ strike and a resultant political crisis of the left.

These divisions were heightened by the poll tax. The controversy over non-payment is analysed in the context of the debate on the relevance of the position of the labour movement in society. Differing conclusions drawn from the defeat of the miner strike were surfaced by the question of non-payment of the poll tax and the role of a campaign of grass roots militancy directed at opposing warrant sales versus winning over ‘broad forces’ and legitimacy through mobilising civic Scotland. The non-payment campaign is analysed as a political and physical clash between communities and the Labour controlled Strathclyde Regional Council which was legally and financially compelled to collect the poll tax. The non-payment campaign mobilised women and young unemployed men who were among those most adversely affected by Thatcherite welfare policies and deindustrialisation. However, Civic Scotland and the non-payment campaign are also understood as interacting dialectically. Although divisions between these political forces continued they also synthesised behind the anti-water privatisation referendum in 1994, whilst the poll tax contributed to growing support for devolution and enabled civic Scotland to deliver it with a popular mandate in the late 1990s.

Nel mese di settembre del 2014 la Gran Bretagna dovrà affrontare le conseguenze del referendum sull’indipendenza scozzese. Alla guida del fronte indipendentista spicca lo storico Scottish National Party fondato nel 1935 e passato nel corso del XX secolo da un approccio principalmente autonomista ad uno autenticamente separatista. Le ragioni di un’evoluzione politica di questa portata vanno ricercate nella storia recente del nazionalismo stesso. Il caso scozzese, difatti, dimostra come le combattive correnti indipendentiste, spesso orientate a sinistra, siano riuscite ad esercitare sullo Scottish National Party, e sull’universo nazionalista, una forte influenza capace di modificarne l’orientamento politico (adozione del modello economico socialdemocratico) e gli obiettivi finali (indipendenza da Londra). Il paper si propone di indagare in chiave comparativa l’evoluzione dell’indipendentismo all’interno del nazionalismo scozzese e di quello gallese.
Storicamente rappresentate dallo Scottish National Party e dal Plaid Cymru, le rivendicazioni autonomistiche di scozzesi e gallesi hanno subito, nella seconda metà del secolo scorso, l’influenza di movimenti indipendentisti numericamente ridotti ma spesso capaci di condizionarne considerevolmente l’evoluzione politica. Alla luce di ciò ci interrogheremo su quali fattori abbiano contribuito a sancire il successo del nazionalismo in Scozia più che in Galles, e sulla reale incidenza del contesto socio-economico e delle pulsioni indipendentiste sulla storia recente del nazionalismo periferico nel Regno Unito. La nascita di correnti radicali in seno al nazionalismo storico in entrambe le “nazioni senza stato”, infatti, ha certamente contribuito al revival indipendentista di questi ultimi anni. Che si trattasse di correnti radicali nate in seno ai due partiti tradizionali – come il Mudiad Gweriniaethol Cymru (Movimento Repubblicano Gallese) e il 79 Group in Scozia – o di formazioni nate al di fuori dell’alveo del nazionalismo storico – il Free Wales Army e il Patriotic Front in Galles o l’Army of Provisional Government e il Workers’ Party of Scotland Marxist-Leninist in Scozia – questi gruppi riuscirono a rilanciare il dibattito sull’indipendenza, sui processi d’integrazione europea e sullo stesso orientamento politico del nazionalismo. Ripercorrendone la storia, e focalizzando l’attenzione sul rapporto dialettico intercorso tra le diverse anime del nazionalismo, cercheremo di ricostruire le ragioni del recente successo riscosso dai partiti nazionalisti in entrambi i contesti, le specifiche condizioni che ne hanno favorito l’ascesa e le possibili ricadute sull’assetto politico dell’Unione Europea.

At independence in 1963, Kenya inherited a highly centralised bureaucracy from the colonial
administration which was chiefly sustained through the institution of provincial administration to
facilitate direct rule and govern alongside civil service. This system termed ‘majimbo’ failed later because
it was not based on a sound principle of political governance among other problems including financial
independence. Kenya afterwards adopted the system of Local Government which was the country’s most
substantive experience with devolution prior to the promulgation of a new Constitution on 27th August
2010. This Constitution came at a time when Kenya was mature and prepared for a radical change from
the centralised systems the colonialists had nurtured. The Constitution designed an impeccable
devolution structure that was primarily to ensure power was brought nearer to the people who would
in return exercise that power for the development of their own good. But devolution was being
implemented all over again and the transition process has been problematic. So far therefore, devolution
has been facing a number of challenges that has been the sole reason for under optimisation of its
performance. The fact that it is to its extent nascent, it has been subject to intergovernmental,
administrative, legislative, policy, institutional among other conflicts. The discourse that follows seeks
to address these challenges vis-à-vis other countries especially how they have addressed such challenges
and how their devolution structures is distinguishes itself from the Kenyan system. To prevent
devolution from collapsing just as those of the yesteryears, it calls for a proper investigation on these
issues and how such issues may be addressed. So far, a number of legislative, policy and institutional
measures have been put in place to address these issues including the formation of a taskforce to address
the attendant pitfalls on devolution so far, the previous numerous devolution bills that were yet to be
enacted have been passed as law and various forums to sensitize the citizens on devolution have been
steered.

This book is the first in-depth study of the debates over devolution in the four nations of the UK in the period up to 1939. It explores divergent trends and attitudes towards the principle of devolution at both local and national (UK) levels, explains the limitations of devolution as a political ideal and the inherent contradictions in the debates over devolution which were unresolvable in the period under study.

The book also demonstrates the enduring potency of an all-British context and of the influence and power of those who wished to defend the status quo. It investigates the role of national - and Imperial - identities in the debates over devolution, highlighting the continuing value and importance of ‘Britishness’ and British identity as vital factors in moulding popular opinion and support for established systems of governance. In so doing, the book offers fresh perspectives on the development of nationalisms in the ‘Celtic fringe’ during this period and demonstrates the problems and limitations of such identities as ways of mobilizing political opposition.