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1.
After a worldwide financial crisis in the early 1980s, many states decided to implement new public management strategies. These strategies consist of private sector management practices that aim to reduce the cost of public services. The US and the UK first adopted the new public management model and other states soon followed. The Norwegian state was initially reluctant to adopt private management practices, but it eventually implemented modified reforms that suited the Norwegian socio-political context. This article investigates the ways in which the Norwegian state and Norwegian employers shape the labor force in Norwegian nursing homes through new public management strategies, and the tools that foreign-born nurses use to challenge these structures. The Norwegian state shapes the labor force through labor market policies and the rescaling of public services to local governments, and Norwegian employers reinforce the neoliberal values of the state in their hiring practices and daily operations in the workplace. In particular, this article analyzes the interweaving neoliberal institutional and personal factors that influence the working experiences of Polish nurses in a semi-private nursing home in Oslo. The city of Oslo created a unique public–private partnership with a city-owned company that manages three nursing homes in Oslo. The findings of this study indicate that Polish nurses in one of these nursing homes were negatively affected by the new public management strategies. They improved some of their working conditions over time but structural barriers still persist despite high demand for their skills.  相似文献   

2.
This article focuses on the arguments used to support private sector participation (PSP) in the provision of water and sanitation services (WSS) since the 1980s. It addresses the following questions: what was the historical evidence informing the claim that promoting PSP would be the best instrument for reducing water poverty? What are the principles that provided the foundation for this claim? And, what has been the empirical record of the resulting WSS policies? It argues that early neoliberal WSS policies since the 1980s were not intended to expand services to the poor. A pro-poor rhetoric was added to these policies since the 1990s, probably as a result of increasing citizen unrest in developing countries and the failure of privatized WSS projects in the Americas and Europe. However, the claim that PSP can provide the solution to public sector failure in extending coverage of essential WSS to the poor has little ground both in the theoretical literature and in the historical record. As could have been expected from the accumulated knowledge about the relationship between market-driven WSS and the poor, the recent experience with PSP projects has been disappointing. In practice these policies not only have failed to extend these essential services to the poor but have also contributed to deepening existing inequalities of power resulting in the weakening of state, local government, and civil society capacities to exercise democratic control over private water monopolies in most developing countries. Reversing this imbalance is one of the crucial challenges ahead in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. However, the article argues that the inertial forces set in motion by the neoliberal model of water policy based on market-centred governance of water and WSS remains the crucial obstacle for the achievement of the goals.  相似文献   

3.
Modern, small-scale renewable energy technology has the potential to enable and sustain rural livelihoods, particularly in developing countries remote locations without access to the grid. Yet, the provision of rural energy to isolated communities might not achieve the desired long-term result unless its development is part of wider national policy geared to sustainable development and social equity. This article shows how a combination of technology and policy targeted at the improvement of livelihoods in rural areas is the best solution for maximising the capacity of renewable energy to deliver services. It pinpoints the transforming processes and the institutions participating in the delivery of energy technology. This work draws on the Cuban experience of renewable energy technology, that country’s efforts to improve quality of life for remote populations, and its pledge to promote environmental sustainability. Using a sustainable livelihoods approach, the results of a survey in a rural community are analysed in the framework of existing assets and policies. The article describes how it is not only local users who benefit from a comprehensive technical, social and environmental energy approach. The same governmental administration that promotes such services has much to gain from technology that works well, benefits the poor in remote locations and protects the environment within its larger policy promoting sustainable and egalitarian society.  相似文献   

4.
This paper seeks to contribute to the theme of institutional geographies by exploring how the prevailing socio-spatial order is recreated and legitimated in the ways in which public rented housing is managed and delivered by housing associations and local authorities in the UK. The public rented sector has been increasingly catering for the most vulnerable sections of the population who are dependent on state benefits and cannot afford any other form of housing. As a result, housing staffs have found themselves having to take on a welfare role which entails controlling and policing social tenants who are seen to be causing disorder in society. This paper shows how a dominant housing management discourse reproduced by policies and staff at both front-line and management levels is that of an emerging ‘underclass’ promoted by right wing politicians and the media since the 1980s. According to dominant housing management discourse the members of this underclass are disrupting traditional patriarchal and capitalist institutions and values. Tenants’ houses and gardens not conforming to culturally and socially acceptable standards of cleanliness and tidiness symbolises tenants’ lack of conformity to the prevailing institutional order. Drawing on in-depth interviews with housing officers and managers, and observations of interviews between staff and tenants in six housing organisations, this paper analyses the ways in which housing organisations seek to control social tenants through the imposition of certain norms of cleanliness over their houses and gardens.  相似文献   

5.
Scarcity of water, particularly in towns situated along the Mediterranean coast where the main aquifers are in karstic carbonate rocks, necessitates more thoroughness in exploiting and protecting the groundwater resources. Geomorphological and hydrogeological studies have revealed large quantities of the input and throughput features, such as sinkholes, dolines, uvalas and poljes in the recharge areas of many karst aquifers in Turkey. Naturally, recharge areas are generally located at higher elevations and regions remote from the urbanized areas. These features lead the local authorities and persons to utilize the karst features for their own purposes. Dolines and ponors are commonly utilized as injection points for wastewater, while uvalas and poljes are used as solid waste disposal sites. When doing this, the people are unconscious of the connection of such sites with the wells or springs that provide water for their supply. A number of occurrences in Turkey have demonstrated that, no matter how perfect the efficiency of the technical work, protection of the water resources is primarily related to the consciousness of the local authorities. They must either take proper measures to protect the resources or to educate the public in this issue. To achieve this aim, it is very important to involve the public administrative sector and the technical sector in preparing guidelines for integrated environmental evaluation of karst water resources. The main phase of a study should include locating appropriate sites for disposal of wastewater and various liquid and solid wastes that will satisfy requirements by the administrators as well as providing a water supply of good quality for the public. This paper discusses the issue of how to overcome the public awareness problem. Some examples demonstrate how the technical achievements failed to be effective and applicable due to the lack of contribution on the part of the local authorities and the public. Some suggestions are made concerning a revision of the currently insufficient regulations.  相似文献   

6.
This paper examines the evolving role of volunteers and the voluntary sector in shaping community responses to structural change in health care systems. It contributes to the emerging understanding of the different forms voluntarism can take within and among places, including as a space of resistance to contemporary restructuring initiatives such as regionalization. Within the geographies of voluntarism literature, however, little attention has been directed towards interrogating the local dynamics of such voluntarism, especially as it is reflected in public discourse. We address this deficiency through a media-based case study of public reaction to the recent implementation of Ontario’s Local Health Integration Networks (a type of regional health authority). Specifically, we examine a decade of newspaper coverage in a mid-size Canadian city region to document and characterize how the activities of volunteers and voluntary sector organizations in the community are portrayed in light of the structural imperatives to integrate health care services and regionalize health care governance. The media findings reveal a suite of public concerns and related activities, with the voluntary sector called upon in various ways to defend the autonomy of the community against the perceived threats to local services, employment and vulnerable populations. We interpret the evident complexity of voluntary sector resistance as a form of ‘defensive localism’ and discuss implications for developing informed policy on health care restructuring and for advancing knowledge on the local geographies of voluntarism.  相似文献   

7.
Local groundwater management in Yemen and the means by which stakeholders can work together to improve water governance are discussed. In the last few decades the discourse on groundwater management in Yemen has increasingly been cast in terms of crisis, triggered by rapidly declining water tables around cities and in the main agricultural areas. However, in some places in Yemen, communities have responded by implementing local rules that have reduced conflict and provided more reliable and equitable access to water. This trend towards development of local groundwater governance is described, and could make a major contribution in realizing the goals of national water-sector policies and strategies. Twenty-four cases have been identified from different parts of the country and five cases are presented in detail. The article discusses how the process of local management could be nurtured and how it could contribute to rebalancing water use in several parts of Yemen.  相似文献   

8.
This article contributes an empirically rich account of a social enterprise project embedded in local urban economies of Nairobi, Kenya. The confluence of rapid, unplanned urbanisation and economic liberalisation has led to growing formations of informal settlements and a vibrant informal sector across post-colonial cities. These “slum” neighbourhoods, housing the majority of the urban population on a fraction of the city’s land, are often ignored and marginalized by the state and municipal authorities, particularly with regards to basic service provision. At the same time, slum economies provide entry-points for various enterprise-led development schemes seeking to commercially engage both entrepreneurial individuals and their existing customer base in order to scale access to unmet needs. The discussion is based on an ethnographic study in one of Nairobi’s largest informal settlements, which focused on the everyday practices of a local micro-franchise called “Community Cleaning Services”. The article illustrates how waste workers and self-proclaimed “hustlers” were turned into micro-franchisee entrepreneurs providing a sanitation service to residential customers, through their engagement with Community Cleaning Services. This ethnographic account raises two potentially contradictory but inter-related debates that are rarely considered alongside one another in the existing literature on corporate involvement in low-income markets. First, it reframes the critiques of enterprise-led initiatives to “poverty alleviation” by focusing on the implications of commercialising “basic” services and on the logistical and cultural challenges of turning social needs into market demands. Second, it emphasises the often-invisible role of grassroots informal economies in enabling access to vital services in the absence of an adequately resourced and responsive municipality. The article concludes with a broader reflection on the effects and limitations of corporate-led development schemes targeting the urban poor and points to the contrasting logics of grassroots entrepreneurial urbanism and corporate—albeit “socially responsible”—parameters of success.  相似文献   

9.
Based on empirical evidence, the article looks at the implications of private sector participation (PSP) for the delivery of water supply and sanitation to the urban and peri-urban poor in developing countries, with particular reference to Africa and Latin America. More precisely, the article addresses the impact produced by multinational companies’ (MNCs) strategies, in light of the pursuit of profitability, on the extension of connections to the pipeline network. It does so by questioning the assumptions that greater private sector efficiency and innovation, together with contract design, will enable the sustainable extension of service coverage to low income dwellers. The strategies of the major water MNCs are considered both in relation to the global expansion of their operations and the adjustment of local strategies to commercial considerations. The latter might result in identifying profitable markets, modifying contractual provisions, attempting to reduce costs and increase income, reducing risks and exiting from non-performing contracts. The evidence reviewed allows for re-assessing the relative roles of the public and private sectors in extending and delivering water services to the poor. First, the most far reaching innovative approaches to extending connections are more likely to come from communities, public authorities and political activity than from MNCs. Secondly, whenever MNCs are liable to exit from non-profitable contracts, the public sector has no other option than to deal with external risks affecting continuity of provision. Finally, market limitations affecting MNCs’ ability to serve marginal populations and access cheap capital do not apply to well-organised, politically led public sector undertakings.  相似文献   

10.
In Zambia’s Copperbelt as in most of the developing world, the water sector is undergoing reforms targeted at promoting an active participation of the private sector. Conventional wisdom suggests that the private sector will be better able to achieve universal access as opposed to the public sector which hitherto has failed to deliver. Using archival materials from the Copperbelt Province, this paper however argues that in countries like Zambia where economic enterprise was driven by private capital, access to water has always been tied to an active involvement of the private sector. The full story of failure to provide universal access to potable water cannot be told without examining this historical role of the private sector and its relationship with the public sector. At the same time, contemporary policy debates can benefit from the resonance of historical debates around economic efficiency, demand management, health and access in the production and consumption of water.  相似文献   

11.
刘荣梅  缪谨励  赵林林 《地质通报》2015,34(8):1562-1569
欧盟空间信息基础设施(INSPIRE)是欧洲空间信息基础设施建设法令。目的是建立欧盟统一的空间信息基础设施,实现有关环境空间信息在统一的框架下全欧盟范围内的共享,便于跨区域的政策决策及应用。通过近7年的实施,INSPIRE完成了欧盟层面的立法和各参与国层面具有法律效力的执行规则,制定了一系列技术规范和技术指南,并在各参与国中执行实施。总结分析欧盟空间信息基础设施(INSPIRE)的目的与意义、组织管理体系、实施方案、空间信息的融合与互操作、统一架构与相关规范等方面的相关经验,提出了对中国地学信息化的几点启示。  相似文献   

12.
This paper reports the results of an analysis of service sector employment trends in Merseyside. The main data source was the Census of Employment covering the period 1971–1975; comparisons are made between Merseyside and national trends. The paper contains analyses of changes in industrial and male and female employment, tertiary and quaternary sector services, growth and declining industries, public and private sector employment, office employment and the components of employment change. Particular attention is paid to differences between the Inner City and Outer Areas of Merseyside. Employment decline was widespread in the service sector, as was also the case in manufacturing. Employment decline is likely to continue because of a number of adverse factors affecting the local economy. The paper concludes by describing a number of initiatives the public sector could take in association with private sector interests to promote the further development of service industries which are already established in Merseyside.  相似文献   

13.
The global sourcing of services from developing countries has made human capital a key local asset for attracting foreign direct investment. This paper analyses to what extent individual companies engage in linkages and collaborations with universities and how the education sector responds to the new demands of the knowledge economy. Offshore services are generally recognised as ‘footloose’ investments with limited local linkages. A case study of industry-academe linkages in the growing business process outsourcing sector in the Philippines finds that foreign investors engage in active embedding and develop linkages with human resource providers, leading to increased territorial embeddedness. This paper investigates the kind of linkages created, which actors engage in them and their motivations, to understand the resulting implications for local economic development. Interviews with foreign investors and higher education institutions reveal that most collaboration is initiated by large call centre companies and focuses on entry-level skills development for their operations. I argue that multinational corporations have been able to capture local institutions and introduce changes in the education system to supply mainly lower-end skills. While increasing the available talent pool and raising the competitiveness for further investments, this presents challenges for upgrading into higher value-added services and potentially transforms the country into a dependent market economy.  相似文献   

14.
Economic instruments are being promoted as a desirable alternative to public sector action in the allocation and management of natural resources. A wide body of literature has developed that critically analyzes this phenomenon as part of a wider project of ‘neoliberalization of nature’, trying to uncover the underlying rationale and commonalities of geographically specific phenomena. The case of water is at the vanguard of these processes and is proving to be particularly contentious. In the European Union water policies are increasingly emphasizing the application of economic instruments to improve the allocative equity and economic efficiency in the use of scarce resources. However, there are few analyses of how these instruments are really working on the ground and whether they are meeting their objectives. This paper aims to contribute to this debate by critically analyzing the experience with water markets in Spain, the only country in the European Union where they are operative. It looks at water permit sales during the 2005–2008 drought period using the Tajo–Segura transfer infrastructure. The paper describes how the institutional process of mercantilización of water works in practice in Spain. It shows that the use of markets requires an intense process of institutional development to facilitate and encourage their operation. These institutions tend to favor the interests of clearly identifiable elites, instead of the public interest they supposedly promote.  相似文献   

15.
Sylvy Jaglin 《Geoforum》2008,(6):1897-1906
The central focus of this paper is on the differentiation of basic urban trading services in middle income cities and its role in service provision for the poor. Most studies dedicated to service delivery to the poor emphasize the inequalities pertaining from a growing differentiation in provision and take up some of the arguments of the splintering urbanism thesis. The paper examines some of the main claims made in this debate through a case study of Cape Town (South Africa). It illustrates how differentiation is implemented through service levels and tariffs and suggests that it is a pragmatic way of accommodating social and spatial disparities in a highly polarized city, while making progressive steps in favour of the poor. The main argument is that, in Cape Town like in many middle income cities, urban diversity restricts the relevance of conventional social policies and the scope of local solidarity with regard to service delivery. The differentiation of provision is thus a strategy to bring the diversity within the public service, and hence to preserve an institutional and financial public capacity of delivering subsidized services to the poor.  相似文献   

16.
Water management in the Andarax river basin (Almeria, Spain) is a multi-objective, multi-participant, long-term decision-making problem that faces several challenges. Adequate water allocation needs informed decisions to meet increasing socio-economic demands while respecting the environmental integrity of this basin. Key players in the Andarax water sector include the municipality of Almeria, the irrigators involved in the intensive greenhouse agricultural sector, and booming second residences. A decision support system (DSS) is developed to rank different sustainable planning and management alternatives according to their socio-economic and environmental performance. The DSS is intimately linked to sustainability indicators and is designed through a public participation process. Indicators are linked to criteria reflecting stakeholders concerns in the 2005 field survey, such as fulfilling water demand, water price, technical and economical efficiency, social and environmental impacts. Indicators can be partly quantified after simulating the operation of the groundwater reservoir over a 20-year planning period and partly through a parallel expert evaluation process. To predict the impact of future water demand in the catchment, several development scenarios are designed to be evaluated in the DSS. The successive multi-criteria analysis of the performance indicators permits the ranking of the different management alternatives according to the multiple objectives formulated by the different sectors/participants. This allows more informed and transparent decision-making processes for the Andarax river basin, recognizing both the socio-economic and environmental dimensions of water resources management.  相似文献   

17.
In many cities of the developing world, poor residents occupy land and build their dwellings before infrastructure is provided. Expanding the infrastructure networks for the poor is a long, expensive and complicated affair. Before the 1990s, the public sector was generally in charge of the basic services; but these services have been liberalized and, in many cases, privatized since then. In this new context, a relevant question is: have these reforms contributed to urban integration? Or, on the contrary, have they contributed to deepen urban fragmentation? This study presents the case of water and telecommunications services in Lima, Peru, the most contested and politically sensitive urban sectors. The objective is to test Graham and Marvin’s claims about the splintering of networked infrastructures expressed in Splintering Urbanism.The findings show that the reforms have improved the situation at aggregate level, but there is still no sustainable solution for the crucial dilemma of cities with high poverty restrictions: self-financed network expansions versus service affordability. The diverging paths of the utilities reform in Lima illustrate that privatization is not the main issue in the discussion to expand the networks for the poor. The main conclusion is that sensible policies complemented with carefully targeted subsidies and continuous regulation can successfully provide water for all. Good governance practices at the urban level help to achieve this goal. Water and telecommunications in Lima also show that are no general solutions for the universalization of the services; each city is different and some sectors are much more complex and problematic than others. This demands careful and continuous technical and political consideration of the local circumstances to reform the utilities.  相似文献   

18.
Adaptation to climate change, particularly flood risks, may come to pose large challenges in the future and will require cooperation among a range of stakeholders. However, there presently exists little research especially on the integration of the private sector in adaptation. In particular, recently developed state programs for adaptation have so far been focused on the public sector. Insurance providers may have much to contribute as they offer other parts of society services to appropriately identify, assess and reduce the financial impacts of climate change-induced risks. This study aims to explore how the institutional distribution of responsibility for flood risk is being renegotiated within the UK, Germany and Netherlands. Examining how the insurance industry and the public sector can coordinate their actions to promote climate change adaptation, the study discusses how layered natural hazard insurance systems may result from attempts to deal with increasing risks due to increasing incidences of extreme events and climate change. It illustrates that concerns over the risks from extreme natural events have prompted re-assessments of the current systems, with insurance requiring long-term legislative frameworks that defines the objectives and responsibilities of insurers and the different political authorities.  相似文献   

19.
Pamela D. McElwee 《Geoforum》2012,43(3):412-426
Recently in Vietnam, a coalition of international NGOs, donors and government officials have been promoting market-based forest conservation projects in the form of payments for environmental services (PES) as a win–win for both conservation and development objectives; Vietnam is now the first country in Southeast Asia with a national law on PES. This article provides a macro survey of how market-based instruments for forest conservation have expanded in Vietnam, particularly in relation to a long dominant state sector. Yet an assessment of Vietnam’s PES pilot projects indicates that they do not follow predicted orthodox “neoliberalization of nature” approaches in their use of market instruments, particularly in regards to privatization, retreat of the state, and capitalization of commodities. The article explores how it is that a strong state role in forest management can continue to dominate even in more market-oriented approaches. Finally, the article analyzes PES’s potential for success or failure in tackling the underlying causes for forest degradation. Ultimately, the article argues that PES is likely to be unable to tackle several of the key underlying causes for deforestation, namely, uneven land tenure and a lack of participation by local communities in conservation, given that PES is unlikely to be considerably different than past attempts at forest management.  相似文献   

20.
Water and poverty in the United States   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  
Contrary to reports of 100% access to safe water and sanitation in international surveys, the United States (US) has a complex landscape of low-income water problems. This paper begins with a critical international perspective on water and poverty in the US. It shows that the US had a declining role in international water programs during the late-20th century, which contributed to limited international awareness of low-income water programs in the US, and limited US awareness of low-income water issues. To address the first problem, we provide an overview of low-income water programs in the US with an emphasis on those that serve small communities. We then examine census data on inadequate water systems in Colorado, which indicate that severe plumbing deficiencies persist despite these public water programs. Inadequate plumbing rates are lower than income poverty rates, however, which indicate partially successful strategies for achieving low-income water services. Analysis of local data in urban, rural, and mountainous areas of the state shows that poverty and water problems are correlated in complex ways, which has implications for all nations striving for universal access to safe water and sanitation.  相似文献   

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