Your paper explores a very interesting governing model of governance that pushes the boundaries of governance and the governed, but also presents some difficulties. It seems like participatory budgeting processes, as they are set up in many Brazilian municipals -- gives mayors a wide range of choices. It seems, first, like establishing a clear dependent variable of your study (maybe the clearest is level of delegation?) will help you structure your hypotheses and arguments more explicitly.
As well as examining some of the factors commenters mentioned today as indepedent variables-- 'strength' and party of mayor, possibly also key demands in communities (this is a bit difficult since they come out more clearly in those cases where delegation has happened, but it might also give insight to when mayors are more willing to delegate -- i.e., that they are more willing to do so when they know certain issues are likely to be addressed through PB...), you might also look at whether there is any conflict between the moves by the mayor you have listed under types of 'semi-commitments' in your draft: a mayor could send a signal by increasing the amount of investment to be allocated by PB, but would then have more incentive to delegate less -- is there a political calculation for the mayor about which signal (high allocation or high delegation) is most politically advantageous? In the cases you're examining, do these always go together?
It is less clear to me how you can bring 'success' in terms of large numbers of participants into your analysis. Clearly, they will only be present when delegation is high, and likely when they expect delegation to be real (actually to devolve some influence to them).
Your paper explores a very interesting governing model of governance that pushes the boundaries of governance and the governed, but also presents some difficulties. It seems like participatory budgeting processes, as they are set up in many Brazilian municipals -- gives mayors a wide range of choices. It seems, first, like establishing a clear dependent variable of your study (maybe the clearest is level of delegation?) will help you structure your hypotheses and arguments more explicitly.
ReplyDeleteAs well as examining some of the factors commenters mentioned today as indepedent variables-- 'strength' and party of mayor, possibly also key demands in communities (this is a bit difficult since they come out more clearly in those cases where delegation has happened, but it might also give insight to when mayors are more willing to delegate -- i.e., that they are more willing to do so when they know certain issues are likely to be addressed through PB...), you might also look at whether there is any conflict between the moves by the mayor you have listed under types of 'semi-commitments' in your draft: a mayor could send a signal by increasing the amount of investment to be allocated by PB, but would then have more incentive to delegate less -- is there a political calculation for the mayor about which signal (high allocation or high delegation) is most politically advantageous? In the cases you're examining, do these always go together?
It is less clear to me how you can bring 'success' in terms of large numbers of participants into your analysis. Clearly, they will only be present when delegation is high, and likely when they expect delegation to be real (actually to devolve some influence to them).