Andrew Coulson
Biographic Data
| ID | 156322 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Andrew Coulson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Andrew |
| FAMILY NAME | Coulson |
| SIGNATURE | COULSON A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Birmingham |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5643-392X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 170 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Improvement and change in rural Tanzania
The reviewed book is a collection of studies of rural villages in Tanzania over periods of 20 years or more. Many of the villages changed dramatically in that period, and many of the villagers were able to improve their lives. However, the ways that assets in rural areas are treated in both Household Budget Surveys and GDP figures does not fully reflect these changes, leading, all too easily, to underestimations of the potentials for improvement …
Cotton and textiles industries in Tanzania: The failures of liberalisation
This article uses the story of cotton cultivation in Tanzania to analyse critically the processes of liberalisation and expose the failure of markets to reward quality production. It starts by summarising the technological requirements to grow the crop. It then shows how cotton was central to industrialisation, in Britain and elsewhere. In Tanzania, cotton is grown on small farms and so the article then summarises how small farmers make choices a…
Chris Himsworth, The European Charter of Local Self-Government: A Treaty for Local Democracy
Chris Himsworth, The European Charter of Local Self-Government: a treaty for local democracy." Local Government Studies, 42(2), pp. 354–355
Symphony Hall: A Dream Realised
Symphony Hall: A Dream Realised." Local Government Studies, 41(1), pp. 180–181 Notes1. For the history of Brindleyplace, see Coulson and Wright (Citation2013
The Agrarian question: The scholarship of David Mitrany revisited
This paper reassesses aspects of the scholarship of David Mitrany, who first in the 1920s and then in the late 1940s approached the 'agrarian question' - whether and if so how socialism is possible in a state where there is only a small manufacturing sector and therefore no significant industrial proletariat - from the perspective of countries in Central and Eastern Europe where, between the two World Wars, political parties representing small-sc…
The Arusha Declaration
The Arusha Declaration of February 1967 committed Tanzania to ‘socialism and self-reliance’. Socialism meant a belief in democracy and equality, enshrined in five ‘leadership conditions’ requiring that leaders do not own shares or directorships in private companies, or houses for rent, or receive two or more salaries. It also prescribed an active role for the state—nationalization of the banks, the most important manufacturing plants, and the sis…
The German Colony
Bismarck was at first ambivalent about colonies, fearing they would bring trouble and expense. However, he eventually realized that without colonies Germany risked being excluded from trade with West Africa. But once they had made the claim for ‘German East Africa’ the Germans moved fast. They built railways, roads, schools, hospitals, mapped the country, prospected for minerals, introduced new crops, and by insisting on the use of Kiswahili in c…
The Peaceful Transition
In December 1959, Governor Turnbull agreed that a majority of ministers should be elected Members of Parliament. A general election was held in August 1960, and TANU won seventy out of seventy one seats. It was agreed that Tanganyika would be independent from December 1961. Meanwhile the British commissioned a series of reports which would guide the new country on the economy (especially agriculture and industry), on trade, on the civil service, …
The German Conquest
The Germans faced over fifty revolts against their rule. Bwana Heri surrendered because of hunger, not defeat, just when he had united most of the inland tribes to fight the Germans. In 1891, Mkwawa ambushed a column of Germans at Lugalo near the Ruaha Gorge and he continued fighting until 1898. The biggest revolt, the Maji Maji rebellion, 1905-8, also ended with famine, not least because the Germans destroyed sources of food. These years were ac…
Non-Industrialization
In 1921 there were just forty nine factories in Tanganyika, most of which were no more than small workshops, the majority Asian-owned. Self-reliance had been much greater during the First World War, when the country had been forced to exist with only its own resources. Tanganyika became part of a customs union with Kenya, which had a much wider range of industries, and was prepared to grant protective tariffs. A few factories processed agricultur…
Production and Income Distribution
The 1970s saw a sharp deterioration in Tanzania’s trade balance, met by reductions in reserves and support from the IMF and World Bank. Inflation averaged 2.1% per annum between 1961 and 1971, but 22.5% between 1971 and 1977. Meanwhile government income was buoyant, as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product. This deterioration was greatly exacerbated by the rise in world oil prices in 1973—there was little compensating rise in the prices of T…
Nyerere’s Tanzania
The mainland of Tanzania became independent in 1961, under the leadership of a politician and philosopher called Julius Nyerere. This book is about the events leading up to this and what followed in the first twenty years of Independence. There were many paradoxes, not least that a country whose slogan was ‘Socialism and Self-Reliance’ should be so attractive to Western governments that it became one of the main recipients of financial support on…
The Nationalists
Zanzibar
The British governed Zanzibar through the Arab sultans. They left, rather abruptly, in December 1963. Africans had been largely excluded from political and economic power. They were divided between the hadimu or indigenous population, squatters most of whom were freed slaves or their descendants, and those who had come as migrant labourers from the mainland. Most of the clove trees on Zanzibar were owned by a few wealthy Arab families. Most of th…
The Interior
Before 1900 communities in present-day Tanzania were largely self-sufficient. There were many tribes, headed by chiefs, who taxed the people and in return provided protection and leadership. Chieftainship was often associated with economically useful skills: iron working, weather forecasting, or special skills in hunting. The areas where it was easiest to produce food surpluses were in the mountains, but in other areas it was possible to prosper …
Zanzibar and the Coast
By the end of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese controlled the Indian Ocean. But in 1650 Muscat, the capital of Oman, broke free and gradually established control over the other ports on the East African coast. In 1828, they effectively colonized Zanzibar, and in 1840 they made it their capital and the basis of their trade in ivory and slaves. However, trade in ivory and textiles was more important and one reason why the Sultans of Zanzibar w…
Parastatals and Workers
The years after the Arusha Declaration saw a proliferation of parastatals, or government corporations, in almost every sector, including industry, agriculture, banking, trade, transport and housing. The Government negotiated compensation with the owners of the banks and large factories that were nationalized, and run as parastatals––Government-owned arms-length bodies. Many new factories depended on protection provided by tariffs on imports. But …
The Independence ‘Struggle’
The campaign for Independence quickly gained momentum. There was much in TANU’s favour: the growing group of educated Tanganyikans realized that the colonial state was holding them back, and the co-operative movement, the trade unions, societies such as the African Association (reinforced after the War by former soldiers who had fought in India and elsewhere with the King’s African Rifles), gave them the opportunity to organize an effective polit…
Tanzania: A Political Economy
Tanzania in the 1970s was at the forefront of policy innovation. Near-universal primary education, access to health services and supplies of clean water subsequently became mainstream ambitions in Africa and elsewhere. But its policies towards agricultural and industrial production failed and left the country in a particularly weak position when it faced the demands of structural adjustment in the 1980s. This book, originally published in 1982, h…
Brindleyplace, Birmingham: Creating an Inner City Mixed-use Development in Times of Recession
This article tells the story of Brindleyplace, a pioneering mixed-use development in Birmingham, UK. It describes how the development was delivered according to a masterplan and pioneering ‘partnering arrangements whereby contractors were involved with architects in designing the buildings. The scheme created new commercial squares, brought activity to historic canalsides, and included the first private housing development of any significance in …
Scrutiny in English Local Government and the Role of Councillors
Overview and Scrutiny Committees were introduced in England and Wales in the Local Government Act 2000 that ended the role the full council and its committees as the locus of decision‐making for most local authorities. Overview and scrutiny committees composed of councillors not on small decision‐making executives were tasked with holding these to account. The performance of scrutiny committees is variable. Generally they work best where they con…
Targets and Terror: Government by Performance Indicators
Institutional Thickness: Local Governance and Economic Development in Birmingham, England
This article uses the concept of institutional thickness to describe key features of the local governance of economic development. For this purpose, a methodology for the empirical assessment of institutional thickness is developed and applied to the case of Birmingham, England. The results from this empirical analysis are threefold. First, they make it possible to draw some conclusions on the role that local governments can play to promote local…
Local government in central and Eastern Europe: Introduction
Into the mainstream: Local democracy in Central and Eastern Europe
When the newly liberated countries of Central and Eastern Europe created, as one of their first actions, genuinely elected local government, they were reacting against the centralisation of communist rule. They were also asserting a European identity, in line with the European Charter of Local Self-Government, in a system of multi-level governance. This article explores these themes, discussing the provision of services (the delivery of the welfa…
Tanzania: A Political Economy
Tanzania in the 1970s was at the forefront of policy innovation. Near-universal primary education, access to health services and supplies of clean water subsequently became mainstream ambitions in Africa and elsewhere. But its policies towards agricultural and industrial production failed and left the country in a particularly weak position when it faced the demands of structural adjustment in the 1980s. This book, originally published in 1982, h…
Agricultural policies in Mainland Tanzania
The years 1946–76 cover the last fifteen years of colonial rule in Tanganyika, and the first fifteen years of Independence. In that period Governments attempted a wide range of policies relating to agriculture. The more important of these are summarised in Table 1. This paper attempts to bring out the historical sequence to show how the perceived weaknesses in one set of policies led to the choice of the next. A general conclusion is that those w…
Peasants and bureaucrats
This account of the sequence of Ujamaa policy implementation from 1968 to 1974 is the second half of an article prepared in Tanzania which asked: ‘Can a government bureaucracy bring about development?’ It traces chronologically the rise and decline of the strategy of Ujamaa and self‐reliance, and complements Raikes' analysis, and Tabari's review
Into the mainstream: Local democracy in Central and Eastern Europe
When the newly liberated countries of Central and Eastern Europe created, as one of their first actions, genuinely elected local government, they were reacting against the centralisation of communist rule. They were also asserting a European identity, in line with the European Charter of Local Self-Government, in a system of multi-level governance. This article explores these themes, discussing the provision of services (the delivery of the welfa…
Local Politics, Central Power: The Future of Representative Local Government in England
When Labour took power in 1997, local government was battered and bruised, but it had survived, and indeed retained much of its vitality. What would happen next? Where the Conservatives had used the language of competition, New Labour promoted its policies around an ideology of modernisation, and rapidly introduced a new legal framework, new powers and strong incentives to improve performance. But by 2004, in the run-up to another general electio…
Business Partnerships and Regional Government
In the USA local partnerships (‘growth coalitions’) involving leading figures from the public and private sectors date from the years after World War II. But it was not until the early 1990s that the British government recognised the potential contribution to economic regeneration of partnerships involving local authorities, Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs), and Chambers of Commerce. Then in 1994 it set up ‘Government Offices’ in 10 region…
Targets and Terror: Government by Performance Indicators
Scrutiny in English Local Government and the Role of Councillors
Overview and Scrutiny Committees were introduced in England and Wales in the Local Government Act 2000 that ended the role the full council and its committees as the locus of decision‐making for most local authorities. Overview and scrutiny committees composed of councillors not on small decision‐making executives were tasked with holding these to account. The performance of scrutiny committees is variable. Generally they work best where they con…
Institutional Thickness: Local Governance and Economic Development in Birmingham, England
This article uses the concept of institutional thickness to describe key features of the local governance of economic development. For this purpose, a methodology for the empirical assessment of institutional thickness is developed and applied to the case of Birmingham, England. The results from this empirical analysis are threefold. First, they make it possible to draw some conclusions on the role that local governments can play to promote local…
New Labour and the Politics of Local Governance
2004). New Labour and the Politics of Local Governance. Local Government Studies: Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 108-115
Transaction cost economics’ and its implications for local governance
Oliver Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Anti‐Trust Implications (Free Press, 1975) Oliver Williamson, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting (Free Press, 1985), £14.95 pb. Oliver Williamson, The Mechanisms of Governance (Oxford University Press, 1996), pp.xii + 410, £30 hb
The Agrarian question: The scholarship of David Mitrany revisited
This paper reassesses aspects of the scholarship of David Mitrany, who first in the 1920s and then in the late 1940s approached the 'agrarian question' - whether and if so how socialism is possible in a state where there is only a small manufacturing sector and therefore no significant industrial proletariat - from the perspective of countries in Central and Eastern Europe where, between the two World Wars, political parties representing small-sc…
Local government in central and Eastern Europe: Introduction
Public-private Partnerships
Tanzania's Fertiliser Factory
An underdeveloped country wishing to establish a fertiliser industry ought surely to begin by examining the locally available raw materials. In Tanzania, for example, a report in 1961 drew attention to an anhydrite deposit at Kilwa which could have been used to produce cement, gypsum, and sulphuric acid.2 The latter if combined with ammonia from the oil refinery would have given ammonium sulphate, the fertiliser most commonly used in Tanzania. Th…
Cotton and textiles industries in Tanzania: The failures of liberalisation
This article uses the story of cotton cultivation in Tanzania to analyse critically the processes of liberalisation and expose the failure of markets to reward quality production. It starts by summarising the technological requirements to grow the crop. It then shows how cotton was central to industrialisation, in Britain and elsewhere. In Tanzania, cotton is grown on small farms and so the article then summarises how small farmers make choices a…
Local Democratic Renewal: An Introduction
2004). Local Democratic Renewal: An Introduction. Local Government Studies: Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 459-466
Local Business Representation: Can We Afford TECs And Chambers
Partnership Overload in North West Birmingham
The possible adverse consequences of many regeneration partnerships in a single area was raised by Peck and Tickell in 1994 and the Audit Commission in 1998 and again in 2005. This paper illustrates some of the issues through a study of four regeneration partnerships active in North West Birmingham. They operate in an area which has some of the highest unemployment in Britain, and has participated in almost every government-funded regeneration in…
Developing the representational role of elected members: Local involvement, local action in a Birmingham ward
This article focuses on the developing representational role of elected members in Birmingham as part of the wider modernisation agenda. It describes and analyses ‘Local Involvement, Local Action’, a local authority initiative to enhance democratic participation that was set up just prior to the publication of new political management arrangements. This initiative is typical of many local authority approaches, combining a desire to enhance the co…
Economic development — The metropolitan counties 1974–86
Peasants and bureaucrats
This account of the sequence of Ujamaa policy implementation from 1968 to 1974 is the second half of an article prepared in Tanzania which asked: ‘Can a government bureaucracy bring about development?’ It traces chronologically the rise and decline of the strategy of Ujamaa and self‐reliance, and complements Raikes' analysis, and Tabari's review
Agricultural policies in Mainland Tanzania
The years 1946–76 cover the last fifteen years of colonial rule in Tanganyika, and the first fifteen years of Independence. In that period Governments attempted a wide range of policies relating to agriculture. The more important of these are summarised in Table 1. This paper attempts to bring out the historical sequence to show how the perceived weaknesses in one set of policies led to the choice of the next. A general conclusion is that those w…
Tanzania's Fertiliser Factory
An underdeveloped country wishing to establish a fertiliser industry ought surely to begin by examining the locally available raw materials. In Tanzania, for example, a report in 1961 drew attention to an anhydrite deposit at Kilwa which could have been used to produce cement, gypsum, and sulphuric acid.2 The latter if combined with ammonia from the oil refinery would have given ammonium sulphate, the fertiliser most commonly used in Tanzania. Th…
Agricultural Policies in Mainland Tanzania, 1946–76
Government is taking an ever-increasing part in stimulating development; the old idea that Colonial governments exist solely to maintain law and order with the addition of social services is fast giving way to a more active conception ... John Wakefield, Planner of the Groundnuts Scheme (1946)
Book notes
Local Government: Politicians, Professionals and the Public in Local Authorities, Howard Elcock, Methuen, 2nd ed, 1986, pp.338, £7.50 paperback. Management of Local Public Works, Sam M. Cristofano and W. S. Foster (eds), published in co‐operation with the American Public Works Association by the International City Management Association, Washington DC, pp.402, 1986, $37.95. Policy Management and Policy Assessment: Developments in Central Governme…
Book notes
Annuaire des Collectivités Locales 1987, L'Année 1986 de l'Administration Locale, Communes, Départements, Régions, CNRS/GRAL, Librairies Techniques, 1987, pp.398, Fr300. Good Council Guide: Wandsworth 1978–1987, P. Beresford, Centre for Policy Studies, 1987, pp.73, £4.60. Policing Prostitution: A Multi‐agency Approach, Roger Matthews, Paper 1, Centre for Criminology, Middlesex Polytechnic, 1986, pp.31, £1.95
Feasible planning in a poor country: A Utopian postscript to a country case study
Economic development — The metropolitan counties 1974–86
Transaction cost economics’ and its implications for local governance
Oliver Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Anti‐Trust Implications (Free Press, 1975) Oliver Williamson, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting (Free Press, 1985), £14.95 pb. Oliver Williamson, The Mechanisms of Governance (Oxford University Press, 1996), pp.xii + 410, £30 hb
Business Partnerships and Regional Government
In the USA local partnerships (‘growth coalitions’) involving leading figures from the public and private sectors date from the years after World War II. But it was not until the early 1990s that the British government recognised the potential contribution to economic regeneration of partnerships involving local authorities, Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs), and Chambers of Commerce. Then in 1994 it set up ‘Government Offices’ in 10 region…
Decentralisation and Democracy: The Neglected Potential of Parish Councils
Local Business Representation: Can We Afford TECs And Chambers
Developing the representational role of elected members: Local involvement, local action in a Birmingham ward
This article focuses on the developing representational role of elected members in Birmingham as part of the wider modernisation agenda. It describes and analyses ‘Local Involvement, Local Action’, a local authority initiative to enhance democratic participation that was set up just prior to the publication of new political management arrangements. This initiative is typical of many local authority approaches, combining a desire to enhance the co…
Regeneration, partnerships and communities: Towards an ideology for the third way
Cities for the Many Not the Few. Ash Amin, Doreen Massey and Nigel Thrift, The Policy Press, 2000. Pp.48. £6.99 pb. Urban Regeneration Through Partnership: A Study in Nine Urban Regions in England, Scotland and Wales. Michael Carley, Mike Chapman, Annette Hastings, Karryn Kirk and Raymond Young. The Policy Press, 2000. Pp.77. £14.95 pb. Regional Agencies and Area‐based Regeneration. Brian Robson, Jamie Peck and Adam Holden. The Policy Press, 2000…
Land-use planning and community influence: A study of Selly Oak, Birmingham
(2003). Land-use planning and community influence: a study of Selly Oak, Birmingham. Planning Practice & Research: Vol. 18, No. 2-3, pp. 179-195
Local Democratic Renewal: An Introduction
2004). Local Democratic Renewal: An Introduction. Local Government Studies: Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 459-466
New Labour and the Politics of Local Governance
2004). New Labour and the Politics of Local Governance. Local Government Studies: Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 108-115
Local Politics, Central Power: The Future of Representative Local Government in England
When Labour took power in 1997, local government was battered and bruised, but it had survived, and indeed retained much of its vitality. What would happen next? Where the Conservatives had used the language of competition, New Labour promoted its policies around an ideology of modernisation, and rapidly introduced a new legal framework, new powers and strong incentives to improve performance. But by 2004, in the run-up to another general electio…
Public-private Partnerships
Partnership Overload in North West Birmingham
The possible adverse consequences of many regeneration partnerships in a single area was raised by Peck and Tickell in 1994 and the Audit Commission in 1998 and again in 2005. This paper illustrates some of the issues through a study of four regeneration partnerships active in North West Birmingham. They operate in an area which has some of the highest unemployment in Britain, and has participated in almost every government-funded regeneration in…
Local government in central and Eastern Europe: Introduction
Into the mainstream: Local democracy in Central and Eastern Europe
When the newly liberated countries of Central and Eastern Europe created, as one of their first actions, genuinely elected local government, they were reacting against the centralisation of communist rule. They were also asserting a European identity, in line with the European Charter of Local Self-Government, in a system of multi-level governance. This article explores these themes, discussing the provision of services (the delivery of the welfa…
Institutional Thickness: Local Governance and Economic Development in Birmingham, England
This article uses the concept of institutional thickness to describe key features of the local governance of economic development. For this purpose, a methodology for the empirical assessment of institutional thickness is developed and applied to the case of Birmingham, England. The results from this empirical analysis are threefold. First, they make it possible to draw some conclusions on the role that local governments can play to promote local…
Targets and Terror: Government by Performance Indicators
Scrutiny in English Local Government and the Role of Councillors
Overview and Scrutiny Committees were introduced in England and Wales in the Local Government Act 2000 that ended the role the full council and its committees as the locus of decision‐making for most local authorities. Overview and scrutiny committees composed of councillors not on small decision‐making executives were tasked with holding these to account. The performance of scrutiny committees is variable. Generally they work best where they con…
Political science (33 works) · Economics (28 works) · Law (20 works) · Geography (17 works) · Public Administration (17 works) · Politics (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · African history and culture studies (13 works) · Business (13 works) · Law (12 works)