ipl-logo

Summary Of If Mayors Ruled The World By Benjamin Barber

1373 Words6 Pages

In “If Mayors Ruled the World,” Benjamin Barber argues that the present-day nation-state has become obsolete in overcoming the increasingly complex and problematic hurdles that the world is currently facing (Derbyshire, 2013; Florida, 2012). Furthermore, that because citizens are more enthusiastic about participating in local government and because the municipal process is more spontaneous and less politically divisive, it is truly the mayors of local government who should be calling the shots when it comes to national and international issues such as terrorism, drugs, and poverty. Barber (2013) entertains the notion that nation-states have become too large for their own good—producing a government that is not only out of touch with the people that it represents, but a government that discourages citizens from participating in the political process. This work makes an extremely compelling argument for a bottom-up style of governing, citing numerous …show more content…

This includes Michael Bloomberg of New York, Boris Johnson of London, and Lee Kuan Yew and Tony Tan of Singapore. He notes that while these men are in control of some of the most densely populated and influential cities of the world, they manage to maintain public trust, cooperation, and are extremely effective in reaching the goals they set out to accomplish (Walters, 2013). According to Barber (2013), this is because mayors are inclined to collaboration and bipartisanship-- setting aside ethnic, religious, and racial differences to directly improve the lives of the people they govern. Mayors, unlike federal or state officials, are forced to face the real life problems of their constituents head on; hence, increasing the power of mayors and creating a “cosmopolis,” or a body of mayors to manage national and international issues, would largely eliminate national sovereignty and gridlock within and between

Show More
Related
1193 Words | 5 Pages

In, We Have Taken a City, by H. Leon Prather Sr., we learn of the violence that occurred in Wilmington, North Carolina on November 10, 1898. Throughout the paper, Prather writes about the different aspects that ultimately caused the racial massacre. Prather makes an important claim in his short introduction about the events in Wilmington in 1898. He also makes several key points throughout the paper, one being that the racial massacre would not have occurred if it would not have been for the white supremacy campaign. He provides key information in his paper that supports the claim.

Read More
1106 Words | 5 Pages

Interactions amid the provinces and the federal government, from constitutional issues to the most irresistible topics bang up-to-date in the country, are indemnified beneath the umbrella of “Federalism”. Authorities are shared so that on some matters, the state governments are decision-holders, whereas on the other matters, national government grasps the autonomy. In last twenty-five years, the upsurge of federal fiats on both governments, local and state, has shifted the power amongst state and national governments. Now, the national government is beginning to have more governance over the state’s engagements.

Read More
1677 Words | 7 Pages

The Primary objective of all leaders should be to control citizens. A society that allows authority to be challenged will never succeed. This source depicts an authoritarian or totalitarian view of what a governing body should look like. The author suggests that the primary objective of government should be the “control of the citizens”, and therefore that the individuals should entirely obey said government.

Read More
1716 Words | 7 Pages

Todd, Please grant me a moment of your time to express my disappointment over this event and provide further insight. And I am sharing this now as a friend (hence the reason for using my personal email), since you called me a friend on the phone the other night, and I 'm honored to be your friend and appreciate that you feel we can be friends. As a friend, please forgive the short novel. But we still hardly know each other and maybe its time I shared.

Read More
1612 Words | 7 Pages

Urban Studies Capstone Course Question: Immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa residing in New York City have often complained about the lack of social support systems available to them. Is this because they cannot access them, they do not know about them, or they are nonexistent? Table of Contents: A. Introduction B. Background of Selected Immigrant Groups C. Thesis Statement D. Literature Review E. Methodological Overview F. Findings G. Contribution to the field H. Conclusion A.

Read More
483 Words | 2 Pages

By pursuing a similar agenda to that set by the centre, Manchester and in particular its leaders have been seen as a “natural ally by national governments” (Harding et al., 2010:990). However, it has not always been this way; before the mid to late 1980s the city was against the centre and indeed in opposition with each other (SOURCE). The Thatcher government reduced budgets and autonomy over local authorities, which made the Labour-led metropolitan regions hostile towards the centre. But now, almost thirty years later, there has been a categorical change in the relationship between Manchester and Whitehall. Especially in the context of this current devolution agenda, the city “finds itself championed as a model of pragmatism and an exemplar

Read More
1108 Words | 5 Pages

Also, he needs to defend peoples’ rights like he mentions a story about an innocent man who got shot by the police and no one punished this officer. Instead, he is getting a raise every year. Harmond believes that No one is above the law and if he became a mayor, even the police misconduct will never be rewarded and all the people will follow the

Read More
1517 Words | 7 Pages

Maintain status quo. According to a survey of mayors, most of them expressed desire for higher housing values. For them, the ideal neighborhood is “older areas that have maintained housing values.” In light with economic imperatives and logic, mayors need to prioritize economic growth.

Read More
764 Words | 4 Pages

Urbanization from 1850 to 1910 went from about 10% to 40% (Historical Statistics). The rise in urbanization led to the increasing need for industrialization. When industrialization came to urban places, it brought many social and economic problems. Jane Addams and Andrew Carnegie were two different people who were around during industrialization and had different responses of the economic and social issues that came with it. "The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life," Jane Addams.

Read More
487 Words | 2 Pages

Why Somaliland Municipalities should only be a Primary Concern by the President-Elect? In this brief article I am going to shift the attention of the public at large and the president-elect to the importance of steering the wheel of the municipalities in wing-wing drive model for a sustainable development in which the new government is expected to achieve by the course of its term, the Somaliland people have a drastic concerns over the disabled way that our local governments have survived for many years in action, whereby a endless recommendations have always been provided for the officials as part of fast trucking the requirements they needed to assume and carry on within the sphere of their own local authorities Obviously, we know that our local governments still remain fragile to some extent they seem to be unable to render the services intended, collect the taxes properly and maintain the systems in place to sustain the daily routines of development achievements. What is more is that our municipalities are only and least confined to the

Read More
1052 Words | 5 Pages

In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville provides an analysis and critique of American civic life. During his travels across the country, he discovered how different America was from Europe, particularly France. While the majority of Europe consisted of aristocratic countries with hundreds of years of history, America was a young democratic country. Most notably, he observed that America was growing in equality. The growing equality becomes a presupposition of individualism and isolation, but despite this inevitable growth of equality, individualism and isolation can be minimized.

Read More
966 Words | 4 Pages

Oppression has always been prevalent throughout history, and as a response to this, the exploited often revolt, in turn, causing inciteful change. However, when the revolution only seeks revenge, it fosters more violence and creates a more oppressed society. The French Revolution while successful in the sense that it overthrew the government, has one dangerous aspect in common with oppression: violence. This revolution is depicted in A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens, where the persecuted peasants of France start a rebellion to try and achieve revenge government. However, by using violence as the primary method to abolish the government and boasting about the dominance of the revolution through the Carmagnole, the revolutionaries discredit themselves.

Read More
981 Words | 4 Pages

In The Just City, Susan Fainstein begins to “to develop an urban theory of justice and to use it to evaluate existing and potential institutions and programs” in New York, London, and Amsterdam (p. 5). She wants to make “justice the first evaluative criterion used in policy making” (p. 6). While her book centers on idealism as a way to combat inequity and issues of justice in policy and planning, some may say that this is an unrealistic perspective. Throughout this book she explains the relationship between “democratic processes and just outcomes” (p. 24) which involve equity, diversity and democracy which are the main concepts of this book. Fainstein stresses that these things are important in public policy and urban planning because policy

Read More
871 Words | 4 Pages

Kingsley Davis, who is said to have pioneered the study of historical urban demography wrote his “The Urbanization of the Human population” in 1965. In his essay, he states that the history of the world is in fact the history of urbanization and then begins with description of how tiny European settlements grew slowly through the Middle Ages and the early modern period. According to him, urbanization occurred mainly because of rural-urban migration and not the other factors that people believe. He discusses how the production levels of this time period, due to the feudal system, used to favor an agrarian culture and then how the process of urbanization intensified during the 1900s, especially in Great Britain. He then clarifies the difference between urbanization, which he describes as the process of a society becoming more urban-focused, and the growth of cities i.e. the expansion of their boundaries.

Read More
1164 Words | 5 Pages

Urbanization To what extent is urbanization a critical driver of social instability, failure of infrastructure, water crises & the spread of infectious diseases? Urbanization is basically the gradual increase in the proportion of people living in the urban areas or a specific area, and the ways in how the society adapts to it. Urbanization can be a good impact to a country and has the ability to improve its economy and the life of people but it also has the ability to destroy the country and the life of all the people that exist there. GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE:

Read More

More about Summary Of If Mayors Ruled The World By Benjamin Barber

Related Topics

Open Document