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The World Bank has been collaborating with parliamentary finance, budget, and public accounts committees in the Western Balkans as part of a knowledge partnership focusing on strengthening financial oversight practices. Many parliaments recognize the critical role they play approving the budget and ensuring it achieves its stated goals in an efficient and effective manner consistent with parliament's appropriations. A gap persists between the international standards that touch upon the role of the parliament in the budget process - which have been developed by the global public finance community - and parliamentary assessment frameworks that speak to the performance of parliament, generally. The World Bank used international financial management standards and parliamentary assessment frameworks as the starting point for a multi-year initiative aimed at distilling and building consensus around financial oversight practices, reforms, successes, and challenges within the Western Balkans.

Governance --- National Governance --- Parliamentary Government --- Public Sector Development

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For eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors such as Burke, Constant, and Mill, a powerful representative assembly that freely deliberated and controlled the executive was the defining institution of a liberal state. Yet these figures also feared that representative assemblies were susceptible to usurpation, gridlock, and corruption. Parliamentarism was their answer to this dilemma: a constitutional model that enabled a nation to be truly governed by a representative assembly. Offering novel interpretations of canonical liberal authors, this history of liberal political ideas suggests a new paradigm for interpreting the development of modern political thought, inspiring fresh perspectives on historical issues from the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. In doing so, Selinger suggests the wider significance of parliament and the theory of parliamentarism in the development of European political thought, revealing how contemporary democratic theory, and indeed the challenges facing representative government today, are historically indebted to classical parliamentarism.

Representative government and representation --- Cabinet system --- Gobierno representativo --- Cabinet government --- Parliamentary government --- Political science --- History. --- Historia

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Cabinet system --- Cabinet system. --- Cabinet government --- Parliamentary government --- Political science --- Representative government and representation --- Gouvernement (science politique)

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This volume explores the politics of minority government. Approximately one-third of parliamentary democracies are or are typically ruled by a minority government-a situation where the party or parties represented at cabinet do not between them hold a majority of seats in the national legislature. Minority governments are particularly interesting in parliamentary systems, where the government is politically responsible to parliament, can be removed by it, and needs (majority) support in the parliament to legislate. The volume analyzes the formation, functioning, and performance of minority governments, what we term the why, how, and how well of minority governments. Beginning with an overview of the concept of and puzzles surrounding minority governments in parliamentary systems, establishing the current terms of the debate, the volume presents thirteen in-depth case studies by leading country experts that provide rich, contextualized analyses of minority governments in different settings-covering Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The concluding chapter draws broader, comparative-based conclusions from the country studies that pushes the literature forward and, we hope, sets a path for subsequent research on minority governments.

Cabinet system --- Coalition governments --- Comparative government --- Coalitions --- Cabinet government --- Parliamentary government --- Political science --- Representative government and representation --- Minorities --- Political activity

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Stakeholder dialogue, as an alternative institutional strategy for environmentally and socially sustainable development, has received little attention from researchers and practitioners in developing countries such as China, even though the dialogue strategy can potentially lead public governance to a more efficient level. This paper first discusses the potential of stakeholder dialogue as an institutional tool for promoting sustainable development in China, and then presents a pilot program of stakeholder dialogue recently developed in China-the community environmental roundtables. Community leaders organize roundtable dialogues where representatives from government agencies, companies and the local residents exchange their views toward certain environmental issues they are facing and discuss possible ways to resolve the issues. Informal agreements are reached during the dialogues and implemented after them. This community roundtable dialogue strategy has been piloted in dozens of Chinese municipalities, addressing various environmental issues. A survey of dialogue participants shows that significant impacts have been generated on environmental protection, community management, as well as social and institutional development at the community level. Mutual understanding and trust among the government, companies, and local citizens are enhanced, environmental and social conflicts are reduced, and the public performance of various parties has been improved. This approach is expected to help solve other conflicts and public governance issues in China as well. The potential challenges of institutionalizing such a program in China are also discussed in the paper.

Civil Society --- Energy --- Environment --- Environmental Economics & Policies --- Environmental Protection --- Governance Indicators --- National Governance --- Parliamentary Government --- Social Conflict --- Stakeholder Dialogue --- China