Design strategies for theory testing: The efficient use of field experimentation in local level political research

Participatory budgeting is perhaps the most widespread and popular form of democratic innovation (DI). It is often identified as an appropriate tool to deepen the democracy at the local level. The text shows that this is not always the case, as some elected officials may use it as a innovation “façade” or its design suffers from various forms of imperfections leading to its failure to be implemented. The authors focus on the practice of participatory budgeting and its failures in the Czech Republic. Through the empirical testing of causal mechanism, the article reveals the main causes of that failure, in the case of its implementation in Prague 7 borough. The mechanism presented is based on the theory-testing minimal process-tracing design in which part of the findings of the previous research have been tested. It also attempts to support empirically only the significant steps of the mechanism between cause and outcome. In particular, the three scope conditions are tested: political support, sufficient funding for participatory budgeting and the existence of a source of know-how. Authors conclude that in the selected case, there was a domino effect of failure, with successive failures in all observed conditions, which ultimately led to a complete brake of causal mechanism and failure of participatory budgeting tool.

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Development of an Assessment Strategy for Urban Regeneration Projects in Historic City Centres in Iraq

Journal of Sustainable Development ◽

10.5539/jsd.v10n6p87 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 10 (6) ◽

pp. 87

Author(s):

Aqeel Q. Al-Mosawi

Keyword(s):

Urban Design ◽

Local Level ◽

Urban Regeneration ◽

Evaluation Process ◽

Performance Criteria ◽

Design Strategies ◽

Sustainable Solutions ◽

Assessment Strategy ◽

Academic Fields ◽

Development Objectives

In the Iraqi context the importance of urban regeneration in improving the conditions of the physical environment is still not recognized. Furthermore, the rise of urban regeneration initiatives in Iraq due to the deterioration of the physical urban heritage in Iraqi cities, leads to raising the questions about the level of success of these initiatives in finding sustainable solutions to the urban problems with regard to heritage conservation. The current study attempts to develop a suitable assessment strategy for local regeneration projects and to explore possible alternatives which can assist in reorienting urban design strategies towards more sustainability based on assessment of the urban design aspects against a set of performance criteria and indicators.The study argues that urban design is integral to the process of urban regeneration achievement and assessment; through identifying the relationship between urban design principles and sustainable development objectives in the regeneration practises. Based on that, indicators were identified to form the skeleton of the assessment strategy to measure the performance of urban regeneration at the local level. These indicators underwent a detailed evaluation process, with the help of local experts. The research methodology and findings would enrich the related academic fields and will help to strengthen the understanding of urban designers and local stakeholders on how to plan sustainable regeneration projects and create sustainable communities. To ensure that the derived strategy is theoretically and practically feasible, an urban regeneration project as case study was selected and assessed against individual indicators.

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Driving Strategic Change at The Junior League (B)

Kellogg School of Management Cases ◽

10.1108/case.kellogg.2016.000102 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 1-7

Author(s):

Michelle Shumate ◽

Liz Livingston Howard ◽

Sachin Waikar

Keyword(s):

Learning Community ◽

Strategic Change ◽

Local Level ◽

Implementation Strategies ◽

List Type ◽

Design Teams ◽

Design Strategies ◽

Successful Communication ◽

Strategies For Change ◽

Local Leaders

“Driving Strategic Change at the Junior League (A)” describes a troubled organizational environment. Challenges included a dissatisfied membership, declining membership numbers, a large diversity among local leagues, and limited resources to meet the organization's overall objectives. The case describes a “participatory roadmap” approach, drawing on the insights of comprehensive research, and highlights a strategic-change approach that focuses on participation and local-level flexibility.The (B) case examines how the Association of Junior Leagues International (AJLI) took initial steps to implement the participatory roadmap. Through a purposeful messaging strategy that involved many targets and various modes of communication, AJLI leaders sought to influence and inform active members, sustainers, and their local leaders. Further, through the use of design teams, AJLI gained deep insight into the ways that implementation might vary across local leagues. Finally, these design teams enabled AJLI to make initial gains in membership and develop a cross-league learning community.After reading and analyzing the (B) case, students should be able to: Identify successful communication strategies for change Appraise the level of readiness for organizational change and design strategies to address that level of readiness Describe the three implementation strategies (i.e., normative-reeducative, power-coercive, empirical-rational) and the circumstances under which each would be appropriate Develop an interactive process for encouraging feedback on the change process

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Do You Want to See the Tree? Ignore the Forest

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000240 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 61 (3) ◽

pp. 205-214 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Nicolas Poirel ◽

Claire Sara Krakowski ◽

Sabrina Sayah ◽

Arlette Pineau ◽

Olivier Houdé ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Visual Recognition ◽

Local Level ◽

Local Information ◽

Visual Environment ◽

Global Information ◽

Focus Attention ◽

Global Level ◽

Hierarchical Stimuli ◽

Priming Paradigm ◽

The One

The visual environment consists of global structures (e.g., a forest) made up of local parts (e.g., trees). When compound stimuli are presented (e.g., large global letters composed of arrangements of small local letters), the global unattended information slows responses to local targets. Using a negative priming paradigm, we investigated whether inhibition is required to process hierarchical stimuli when information at the local level is in conflict with the one at the global level. The results show that when local and global information is in conflict, global information must be inhibited to process local information, but that the reverse is not true. This finding has potential direct implications for brain models of visual recognition, by suggesting that when local information is conflicting with global information, inhibitory control reduces feedback activity from global information (e.g., inhibits the forest) which allows the visual system to process local information (e.g., to focus attention on a particular tree).

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