Assignment Task (Assignment Number: UA509)

PPA 122 Midterm Examination – Fall 2021
Open Book Format, Read, research and respond to each of the questions asked.
Submit your responses via D2L no later than 11 pm October 8th, 2021

1. For each of the following terms, a) define their relevance to politics and local government
   and b) explain their strengths and weaknesses in so far as the study of the politics of local
   government is concerned. Provide examples from the text, course readings, literature and
   media to support your answers. Answers should be no longer than 300 words. Use
   appropriate citations where necessary. (5 marks each)
   a. Supra Regional District
   b. Community Power
   c. Neo-Marxist
   d. City Healthy Movement
   e. Urban Sprawl
   f. Inter Municipal Agencies and Agreements
   g. Municipal Restructuring
   h. The Administration
2. Engage each of the following statements in the form of an essay. Use proper essay format –
   thesis, paragraph structure, sentence design, grammar and spelling. Each essay should be no
   longer than 1,500 words. Use appropriate citations from the course readings and your own
   review of the literature where necessary. (30 marks each)
   a. Canada’s medium sized municipalities are growing at too fast a pace for the province
   to manage. In light of NPM principles, provincial governments should force them to
   amalgamate in order to reduce the size and cost of local government. Defend or
   Refute
   b. In order for municipalities to become more accountable and profiled in public policy,
   candidates for municipal elections should be active members of political parties.
   Defend or Refute

Assignment Solution/Sample Answer

a)

This paper analyses the concept of supra-regional district heating networks (SR-DHNs) connecting a large number of actors in line with electricity transmission networks.

A SR-DHN is expected to exist through a back-cast approach, and therefore challenges to implementation like economic feasibility and energy losses are avoided in the initial stage (but are analysed in the discourse).

The study then analyses the technical, operational, economic and legal issues that should be resolved in an interdisciplinary qualitative manner and supported by case study.

Results demonstrate that SR-DHN is the backbone of the heat transmission network.

b)

Power in the community

Power in a community is the capacity of community or watershed communities to influence the process of decision-making and use of public and private resources. The ability to make change is simply Power.

Often negative reactions dominate when people identify words associated with power.

c)

political relevance

Marxism, named after Karl Marx, is a social, political, and economic philosophy. It looks at the impact that capitalism will have on labour, productivity, and economic development and calls for a workers’ revolution in favour of communism to overthrow capitalism.

Strengths and weakness

It argues that free education, free health and state-owned services are socially beneficial — benefits that can be achieved through an economy that is unlikely to embrace marxism.

Negative, though, is the fact that marxism leads to state tyranny, which is a major weakness.

D)political relevance

The historical evidence reviewed here leads to the conclusion that social movements and political mobilizations have in the past and are still considerable sources of energy and motivation for continuing challenges (Office of the Legislative Counsel, 2018).

They probably will go on for much longer than among the most important drivers of improving public health, as it seems indisputable that social movements and collective political activities have real power, frequently for good.

E)

political relevance

Other policies which currently contribute to the spread include tax policies which promote the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development ownership and infrastructure (HUD).

‘2 1 These policies encourage people to sell home and move into the suburbs.

Strengths and weakness

Some positive effects of urban expansion include increased economic output, increased employment opportunities, better opportunities and services that create better living conditions and better lifestyles.

Although it may be argued by some that there is a great deal to be gained from the urban spread, such as creating economic growth locally, urban spread is having many adverse effects on residents and the environment, such as higher water and air pollution (Office of the Legislative Counsel, 2018).

F)

Municipal interagencies and conventions

Intensified partnerships, collaboration and regionalization efforts are being sought by municipalities and utilities to reduce costs, increase their efficiency and improve the use of resources for their components and fee payers.

The services and resources of cooperation agencies can be optimised by common service agreements.

Inter-community agreements can offer a long-term legal basis Community framework in which customers and residents are better served.

Walden has tried to conclude these agreements between dozens of government agencies and service providers, thus saving tax payers and fee payers millions of dollars in cost.

With creative partnerships and effective agreements, Walden can help you achieve more.

Municipal Contraction means governmental permits issued by, and franchises and agreements between the Company or its subsidiaries and, as the same may be changed from time to time, any municipal or other governmental entity issued to the Company or to any of its subsidiaries.

E) Municipal Restructuring

Furthermore, unprecedented turmoil and change in the bond market and the near disappearance of the bond insurance industry have interrupted the reliable access of capital in recent years.

Increased pension and post-employment benefit costs combined with generally flat, or slightly higher income were major challenges for many communities.

A deterioration in credit has unravelled certain transactions, especially those involving variable debt and/or interest rate swaps, on the part of both municipalities and financial counterparties.

Faced with this pressure, municipalities might have to take extreme measures, including signatures. Our municipal stress practise has been at the forefront of addressing these challenges by successfully completing restructurings in several municipalities both within Chapter 9 and outside Chapter 9, including handling the Chapter 9 high-profile failures in Vallejo and Stockton towns (Office of the Legislative Counsel, 2018).

Municipal restructuring is a change designed to address the needs and residents of communities.

Changes in the restructuring of municipalities can include: (status changes)

Merging 2 or more municipalities to adjust municipal borders (amalgamations) (annexations).

G) The Administration

weakness

• U.S. economy dependent (1/2 of FDI stock, car integration of both countries) and energy prices.

• Low productivity loss of competition in manufacturing enterprises.

• Inadequate research and development spending.

Strengths

• Business support: Entrepreneurship is supported by the Canadian government.

• Niche market growth: Canada has seen profit increase by exporting to niche markets, especially the ice-wine industry, including development of diamonds from Canada.

• Canada’s medium sized municipalities are growing at too fast a pace for the province to manage. In light of NPM principles, provincial governments should force them to amalgamate in order to reduce the size and cost of local government.

Municipal combinations are frequently taken into account to make local governments more efficient and effective in delivering their services.

The consolidation of municipalities is viewed as a way to ensure that municipalities are large enough to provide a wide range of services, technical and financial.

A variety of services are charged.

The objective in more broad terms is to ensure that cities can not only benefit economically but also socially from savings, but to coordinate the delivery of services throughout (expanded) their jurisdiction and also to share the costs and to reduce (even eliminate) spills. These objectives are reasonable and may show that larger, unified governments deliver more results than small, independent governments.

Many countries have addressed these problems vertically, whether they have added new units to existing ones or have moved services to a higher standard.

Instead of horizontally increasing municipal boundaries.

For instance, these tactics are being employed as small governments play a major role in ensuring adequate local voice and accountability (Office of the Legislative Counsel, 2018).

The challenges have been studied primarily with respect to the government of metropolitan regions in other countries, but there is no solution for all of them.

For example, the principle of decentralisation implies that the most effective delivery of services requires decision-making at the government level closest to the individual person, so as to distribute resources in the most efficient way.

All important factors are efficiency, accountability, and responsiveness.

In case of regional variations inThere is significant efficiency gain from delivery of services both in terms of taste and price in as many languages as possible, as dispersed as possible.

Smaller, more fragmented, government-wide institutions may also encourage local governments to compete for mobile individuals and tax bases and encourage them to provide the best possible tax and service mix.

When smaller and more fragmented local government bodies, they seem to be more easily accessible and are largely responsible for the people’s access to local governments through public meetings, audiences, elections, and direct interactions with officials.

Groups of special interest are more likely to dominate public participation as the size of the city authorities increases.

To Merge or Not to Merge

A single governmental entity makes the decisions on taxing and spending in the metropolitan area in a one-tier organisation.

But services must not even be offered uniformly throughout the metro region within a unified metropolitan administration.

When a single-tier municipality consists of fusioning municipalities, differential services and service The existing levels can occasionally survive prior to the founding of the single government.

For example, rural residents do not always have access to all the services provided by urban residents.

If the establishment of jurisdiction covering the entire city-region is one of the reasons for amalgamation, such disparities in service delivery and in tax levels should probably be eliminated within the short transition period.

Jahn and Lin argued in their key study that one-star consolidated governments offered increased fiscal capacity, better integration of services, more accurate accountability, simplified decision making and improved efficiency. The enhanced ability of a single-tier government to borrow and collect capital and operational costs via user charges improves.

Jahn and Lin stated in their major study that single-tier consolidated governments provide better fiscal capacity, better integration of services, clearer accountability, easier decision-making and increased efficiency.

A simplified one-tier government’s improved fiscal power enhances its ability to borrow and repay the capital and cost of operations with user fees. Since the cost of services benefiting taxpayers across the region is increased by the tax base, services may be payed more uniformly.

In terms of service delivery, large single-stage governments can benefit from economies of scale.

Municipal fusions can also internalise externalities: Rural citizens, for example, may suddenly be obliged to pay the municipal infrastructure beyond their original municipal borders.

Candidates for municipal elections should be active members of the political parties in order to become more accountable and profiled in public policy.

Concepts and contexts

Local remains a vital point of interaction between state and citizens, which usually exchanges public services and regulates the everyday lives of local norms and by-laws: their homes, the streets, the districts and the towns.

Although the jurisdiction and responsibilities of municipalities differ from situation to situation, the good governance in municipal authorities is crucial to maintaining a healthy relationship with the state.

Whilst a re-emergency and increased synergy between local authorities and their citizens has occurred in many local governments, corruption has increased in the form of clientelism, state capture and illegal rent-take-out.

The quality of government services and confidence in these areas has also fallen as have negative indicators of development.

Many countries today differ greatly in the quality of governance at the national and local levels.

• Accountable “is if one person or body is subject to another’s monitoring, direction, or requests that they produce information or cause their actions and perform tasks or functions by that individual or body,” according to online sources. According to online sources.
• Specific, delimited accountability techniques in order to secure the democratic control of public institutions, avoid bribery, and abuse of power and boost the public confidence in government are local government accountability mechanisms.
• Exact responsibility at the local level usually involves four components:
• establishing benchmarks
• obtaining information regarding acts
• making appropriateness judgments and penalising bad performance

Reporting mechanisms are frequently identified in literature, depending on whether individuals are “invited” or “independent.”

“Invited spaces” are government-run or institutionalised backed-up systems, sometimes called “top-down spaces.”

City hotlines and participatory budgeting are examples of actions requiring government intervention.

Social involvement and collective action mechanisms are referred to as “autonomous spaces” or “bottom-up spaces.”

This does not require state involvement, but it does require state actors to respond to the input of citizens.

Establishing local authority integrity presents a number of challenges.

As already mentioned, local government institutions and processes dictate the terms in which the citizen’ s input is sought and responded to, as well as the capacity and incentives to be met.

The integrity of local authorities is one of the most difficult aspects, because they differ widely in terms of a wide variety of features, powers and tasks. First, local governments exist at different levels depending on national and regional circumstances.

In certain circumstances, local and national governments may, while in other cases, state and federal governments may, under certain circumstances, be separated from one or more thirds of provincial, state and regional and district governments;

With increasing levels, people who want to hold authorities accountable can become confused, as ambiguous competences and duties can lead to authorities defering their own responsibilities to other levels.

References

•  “Municipal Government Act”. Office of the Legislative Counsel, Nova Scotia House of Assembly,Crown in right of Nova S,Created . February 28, 2018. Retrieved -08-22.
• Branch, Legislative Services. “Consolidated federal laws of canada, Access to Information Act”. laws-lois.justice.gc.ca.
• Canada, Government of Canada, Infrastructure. “Infrastructure Canada – Building Canada Fund”. www.infrastructure.gc.ca.
• Chapter 7 : Special report: local government in CanadaArchived 2008-09-08 at the Wayback Machine. Government of canada. Retrieved May 24, 2020.
• Local Government: The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved May 24, 2019.
•  Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. Example of council structure. Retrieved May 24, 2019.