Home rule in the United States relates to the authority of a constituent part of a U.S. state
to exercise powers of governance (i.e., whether such powers must be
specifically delegated to it by the state—typically by legislative
action—or are generally implicitly allowed unless specifically denied by
state-level action). Forty of the fifty states apply some form of the
principle known as Dillon's Rule,
which says that local governments may exercise only powers that the
state specifically grants to them, to determine the bounds of a
municipal government's legal authority.
In some states, known as home rule states, the state's constitution grants municipalities and/or counties
the ability to pass various types of laws to govern themselves (so long
as the laws do not conflict with the state and federal constitutions).
In other states, known as Dillon's Rule states, only limited
authority has been granted to local governments by passage of statutes
in the state legislature. In these states, a city or county must obtain
permission from the state legislature if it wishes to pass a law or
ordinance not specifically permitted under existing state legislation.
Most states have a mix; for example, allowing home rule for
municipalities with a minimum number of residents.
The National League of Cities
identifies 31 Dillon's Rule states, 10 home rule states, 8 states that
apply Dillon's Rule only to certain municipalities, and one state
(Florida) that applies home rule to everything except taxation. Each state defines for itself what powers it will grant to local
governments. Within the local sphere, there are four categories in which
the state may allow discretionary authority:
Structural – power to choose the form of government, charter and enact charter revisions,
Functional – power to exercise local self government in a broad or limited manner,
Fiscal – authority to determine revenue sources, set tax rates, borrow funds and other related financial activities,
Personnel – authority to set employment rules, remuneration rates, employment conditions and collective bargaining.
Many states have different provisions regarding home rule for counties than for municipalities. The National Association of Counties
says in 14 states all counties (or county equivalents) operate under
Dillon's Rule, while 13 states allow all counties home rule authority
and 21 states have a mix of home rule and Dillon's Rule. Connecticut and Rhode Island do not have independent county governments.
Home rule and Dillon's Rule states
The
following chart indicates which of the 50 U.S. states are home rule
states and which states obey the legal principle of Dillon's Rule for
determining local government authority. A state in this chart with "Limited" home rule may grant home rule to
particular cities and municipalities individually but has no
constitutional provision guaranteeing home rule. A state that is both a
home rule state and a Dillon's Rule state applies Dillon's Rule to
matters or governmental units not accounted for in the constitutional
provision or statute that grants home rule.
Limited home rule granted to cities and towns in Article XII,
Sections 220-28 of the Alabama constitution. Counties are not delegated
even a general grant of power under Dillon's Rule and must seek "local
legislation" from the state legislature.
Cities that have not adopted a charter are organized by state law.
Such a city is called a "general law city" (or a "code city"), which
will be managed by a five-member city council. As of January 21, 2020,
125 of California's 478 cities were charter cities.
Home rule applies to all cities, some villages, and two counties. Cities may be chartered with home rule status pursuant to the Home Rule City Act. Dillon's rule applies to all townships.
The Nebraska Constitution was amended in 1912 to allow cities with a
population of more than 5,000 inhabitants to form a government under
home rule. See Article XI, Section 2
Lincoln and Omaha are Nebraska's only home rule cities as of 2020.[17]Grand Island
adopted a home rule charter in 1928; it was repealed by the voters on
April 2, 1963. The city council subsequently repealed the charter on
April 17, 1963, with Ordinance 3990.
Home rule legislation SB29 took effect July 2015, and gave more
power to county commissioners. However, local government including
general improvement districts, special districts, fire districts, and
school districts were not affected by this change.[18]
Cities may adopt home rule once their population exceeds 5,000 and
the voters adopt a city charter, the provisions of which cannot be
inconsistent with either the Texas Constitution
or "the general laws of the state." If the population subsequently
falls below 5,000, the charter remains in force and may be amended. Otherwise, cities with populations of 5,000 or less are governed by the general laws only. School districts are generally governed by the general laws; a district may adopt a home rule charter, but no district has chosen to do so. Counties and "special districts" (other special-purpose governmental
entities besides cities and school districts) are governed solely by the
general laws and prohibited from adopting home rule.
All cities, which must have at least 5,000 residents and are independent from counties, and towns, which are not, are required to have a charter, although Dillon's Rule applies. See administrative divisions of Virginia.
Dillon's Rule was effectively abolished in the 1969 Municipal Code,
§7, Article 1. Home rule was introduced in a pilot program in 2007 and
made permanent in 2019.
In the United States, a home rule city, charter city, or home rule charter city is a city in which the governing system is defined by its own municipal charter document rather than solely by state statute (general law).
State law may require general-law cities to have a five-member city
council, for example, as in California, but a city organized under a
charter may choose a different system, including the "strong mayor" or "city manager" forms of government. These cities may be administered predominantly by residents or through a
third-party management structure, because a charter gives a city the
flexibility to choose novel types of government structure. Depending on
the state, all cities, no cities, or some cities may be charter cities.
A city-state is an independent sovereign city that serves as the primary hub of political, economic, and cultural life within its contiguous territory. This concept stands in contrast to that of a regular state or country, which typically encompasses a capital city
and additional urban centers, in addition to the countryside.
Throughout history, numerous city-states have emerged in various regions
of the world, including prominent examples such as Rome, Carthage, Athens, and Sparta, as well as the Italian city-states that flourished during the Medieval and Renaissance periods, such as Florence, Venice, Genoa, and Milan.
With the rise of nation states worldwide, there remains some disagreement on the number of modern city-states that still exist; Singapore, Monaco and Vatican City
are the candidates most commonly discussed. Out of these, Singapore is
the largest and most populous city-state in the world, with full
sovereignty, international borders, its own currency, a robust military, and substantial international influence in its own right. The Economist refers to it as the "world's only fully functioning city-state".
Several non-sovereign cities enjoy a high degree of autonomy and are often considered to be city-states, such as Hong Kong and Macau. Cities of the United Arab Emirates, most notably Dubai, have been cited in similar terms.Additionally, certain non-sovereign overseas territories, such as Gibraltar, are also sometimes called city-states.
In Cyprus, the Phoenician settlement of Kition (in present-day Larnaca) was a city-state that existed from around 800 BC until the end of the 4th century BC.
Some of the most well-known examples of city-state culture in human history are the ancient Greek city-states and the merchant city-states of Renaissance Italy, which organised themselves as independent centers. The success of regional units coexisting as autonomous actors in loose geographical and cultural unity, as in Italy and Greece, often prevented their amalgamation into larger national units. However, such small political entities often survived only for short
periods because they lacked the resources to defend themselves against
incursions by larger states (such as Roman conquest of Greece). Thus
they inevitably gave way to larger organisations of society, including
the empire and the nation-state.
In Northern and Central Italy
during the medieval and Renaissance periods, city-states — with various
amounts of associated land — became the standard form of polity. Some
of them, despite being de facto independent states, were formally part of the Holy Roman Empire.
The era of the Italian states, in particular from the 11th to the 15th
centuries, featured remarkable economic development, trade, manufacture,
and mercantile capitalism, together with increasing urbanization, with
remarkable influence throughout much of the Mediterranean world and
Europe as a whole. During this time, most of the Italian city-states
were ruled by one person, such as the Signoria or by a dynasty, such as the House of Gonzaga and the House of Sforza.
Examples of Italian city-states during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
In the history of Mainland Southeast Asia,
aristocratic groups, Buddhist leaders, and others organized settlements
into autonomous or semi-autonomous city-states. These were referred to
as mueang, and were usually related in a tributary relationship now described as mandala or as over-lapping sovereignty,
in which smaller city-states paid tribute to larger ones that paid
tribute to still larger ones—until reaching the apex in cities like Ayutthaya, Bagan, Bangkok and others that served as centers of Southeast Asian royalty. The system existed until the 19th century, when colonization by European powers occurred. Siam,
a regional power at the time, needed to define their territories for
negotiation with the European powers so the Siamese government
established a nation-state system, incorporated their tributary cities (Lan Xang, Cambodia and some Malay cities) into their territory and abolished the mueang and the tributary system.
In early Philippine history, the barangay was a complex sociopolitical unit which scholars have historically considered the dominant organizational pattern among the various peoples of the Philippine archipelago. These sociopolitical units were sometimes also referred to as barangay
states, but are more properly referred to using the technical term polity. Evidence suggests a considerable degree of independence as city states ruled by Datus, Rajahs and Sultans. Early chroniclers record that the name evolved from the term balangay,
which refers to a plank boat widely used by various cultures of the
Philippine archipelago prior to the arrival of European colonizers.
20th-century cities under international supervision
The Free City of Danzig was a semi-autonomous city-state that existed between 1920 and 1939, consisting of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) and nearly 200 towns in the surrounding areas. It was created on 15 November 1920 under the terms of Article 100 (Section XI of Part III) of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles after the end of World War I.
After a prolonged period where the city of Fiume enjoyed considerable autonomy under Habsburg rule (see Corpus separatum (Fiume)),
The Free State of Fiume was proclaimed as a fully independent free
state which existed between 1920 and 1924. Its territory of 28 km2 (11 sq mi) comprised the city of Fiume (now in Croatia and, since the end of World War II, known as Rijeka,
both names meaning "river" in the respective languages) and rural areas
to its north, with a corridor to its west connecting it to Italy.
The Klaipėda Region or Memel Territory was defined by the Treaty of Versailles in 1920 when it was put under the administration of the Council of Ambassadors. The Memel Territory was to remain under the control of the League of Nations
until a future day when the people of the region would be allowed to
vote on whether the land would return to Germany or not. The then
predominantly ethnic German Memel Territory (Prussian Lithuanians and Memellanders constituted the other ethnic groups), situated between the river and the town of that name, was occupied by Lithuania in the Klaipėda Revolt of 1923.
The international zone within the city of Tangier, in North Africa was approximately 373 km2
(144 sq mi). It was at first under the joint administration of France,
Spain, and the United Kingdom, plus later Portugal, Italy, Belgium, the
Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States. The international zone was
initially attached to Morocco. It then became a French-Spanish
protectorate from 1923 until 29 October 1956, when it was reintegrated
into the state of Morocco.
The Free Territory of Trieste was an independent territory situated
in Central Europe between northern Italy and Yugoslavia, facing the
north part of the Adriatic Sea, under direct responsibility of the United Nations Security Council in the aftermath of World War II, from 1947 to 1954.
West Berlin
In the 20th century West Berlin,
though lacking sovereignty, functioned from 1948 until 1990 as a state
legally not belonging to any other state, but ruled by the Western Allies.
They allowed – notwithstanding their overlordship as occupant powers –
its internal organisation as one state simultaneously being a city,
officially called Berlin (West). Though West Berlin maintained close
ties to the West German Federal Republic, it never legally formed a part of it.
Because he could not travel without effectively acknowledging the
authority of the king, Pius IX and his successors each claimed to be a "Prisoner in the Vatican", unable to leave the 0.49 km2 (0.19 sq mi) papal enclave once they had ascended the papal throne.
The Principality of Monaco is a very small independent city-state bordering France. Monaco-Ville (the ancient fortified city) and Monaco's well-known area Monte Carlo are districts of a continuous urban zone, not distinct cities, though they were three separate municipalities (communes)
until 1917. The Principality of Monaco and the City of Monaco (each
having specific powers) govern the same territory. Though they maintain a
small military, largely for ceremonial purposes, they would still have to rely on France for defence in the face of an aggressive power.
Singapore is an island city-state in Southeast Asia
bordering Malaysia to the north and Indonesia to the south. 6 million
people live and work within 728.3 square kilometres (281.2 sq mi), making Singapore the 2nd-most-densely populated country in the world after Monaco. Singapore was part of the Federation of Malaysia for two years before it seceded from the federation in 1965, becoming an independent republic, a city and a sovereign country. The Economist refers to the nation as the "world's only fully functioning city-state". In particular, it has its own currency, a large commercial airport, one of the busiest trans-shipment maritime ports in the world, and fully fledged armed forces to safeguard the nation's sovereignty against potential regional aggressors. Singapore is also referred to as the only island city-state in the world by WorldAtlas.
Contemporary non-sovereign city-states
The city of Hong Kong enjoys a high degree of autonomy, and is sometimes considered a city-state.
Some cities or urban areas, while not sovereign states, may nevertheless be constituent states of a federation,
or enjoy a high degree of autonomy. As such, they function as
"city-states" within the context of the sovereign state to which they
belong. Historian Mogens Herman Hansen
describes this aspect of self-government as: "The city-state is a
self-governing, but not necessarily independent, political unit." A city with more limited self-government may be referred to as an independent city.
Some non-sovereign cities which have a high degree of autonomy, and have been described as city-states, include:
Some cities that are constituent states in a federation, and as such
can be accurately described as non-sovereign city-states with a high
degree of autonomy, include:
A number of other small states share many of these characteristics, and are sometimes cited as modern city-states. Luxembourg, Djibouti, Qatar, Brunei, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Malta are each politically and economically centered on a single city; in the cases of Luxembourg, Djibouti and Kuwait, this primate city
is so dominant as to give its name to the country. These countries are
distinct from true city-states such as Singapore in that they comprise
both their primate city (such as Luxembourg City) and a number of peripheral cities and towns (such as Esch-sur-Alzette and ten other towns in Luxembourg) with autonomous municipal authorities, and may also include substantial rural areas (such as the sparsely populated Éislek forest of northern Luxembourg).
Occasionally, microstates with high population densities such as San Marino are cited as city-states, despite lacking a large urban centre.
The London independence movement seeks a city-state separate from the United Kingdom.
Jerusalem
Some have proposed that Jerusalem could become an independent city state under United Nations or International protection. Jerusalem is a holy city for three major religions, Judaism,
Christianity and Islam creating religious tension. Israel and Palestine
both claim Jerusalem as their capital causing a conflict and dispute
over the city, most notably East Jerusalem. The UN partition plan for Palestine included provisions for a “Special international regime” to be established in Jerusalem known as Corpus separatum. However the plan was rejected by Palestinian leaders.
The Sovereign State of the Bektashi Order is a proposed city-state in Albanian capital of Tirana which will be established if approved by the Albanian Parliament and a national referendum. The state, which would be led by the Bektashi Order, is planned to be similar in structure to the Vatican City. The idea has been proposed by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and leader of the Bektashi Order Baba Mondi
in the hope that sovereignty would help promote moderate Muslim values
instead of radical ideologies. The Sovereign State of the Bektashi Order
would be surrounded by the suburbs of eastern Tirana and would be the smallest nation in the world.
Autodidacticism (also autodidactism) or self-education (also self-learning, self-study and self-teaching) is the practice of education without the guidance of teachers. Autodidacts are self-taught people who learn a subject through self-study. Autodidacticism may involve, complement, or be an alternative to formal education. Formal education itself may have a hidden curriculum that requires self-study for the uninitiated.
Generally, autodidacts choose the subject they will study, their
studying material, and the studying rhythm and time. Autodidacts may or
may not have formal education, and their study may be either a
complement or an alternative to formal education. Many notable contributions have been made by autodidacts.
Self-education techniques can include reading educational books or websites, watching educational videos and listening to educational audio recordings, or by visiting infoshops. One uses some space as a learning space, where one uses critical thinking to develop study skills within the broader learning environment until they've reached an academic comfort zone.
Various terms are used to describe self-education. One such is heutagogy, coined in 2000 by Stewart Hase and Chris Kenyon of Southern Cross University in Australia; others are self-directed learning and self-determined learning. In the heutagogy paradigm, a learner should be at the centre of their own learning. A truly self-determined learning approach also sees the heutagogic
learner exploring different approaches to knowledge in order to learn;
there is an element of experimentation underpinned by a personal
curiosity.
Andragogy "strive[s] for autonomy and self-direction in learning", while Heutagogy "identif[ies] the potential to learn from novel experiences as a matter of course [...] manage their own learning". Ubuntugogy is a type of cosmopolitanism that has a collectivist ethics of awareness concerning the African diaspora.
Modern era
Autodidacticism is sometimes a complement of modern formal education. As a complement to formal education, students would be encouraged to do more independent work.
Before the twentieth century, only a small minority of people received an advanced academic education. As stated by Joseph Whitworth in his influential report on industry and innovators dated from 1853, literacy rates were higher in the United States than in England. However, even in the U.S., most children were not completing high school.
High school education was necessary to become a teacher. In modern
times, a larger percentage of those completing high school also attended
college, usually to pursue a professional degree, such as law or
medicine, or a divinity degree.
Collegiate teaching was based on the classics (Latin, philosophy,
ancient history, theology) until the early nineteenth century. There
were few if any institutions of higher learning offering studies in
engineering or science before 1800. Institutions such as the Royal Society
did much to promote scientific learning, including public lectures. In
England, there were also itinerant lecturers offering their service,
typically for a fee.
Prior to the nineteenth century, there were many important
inventors working as millwrights or mechanics who, typically, had
received an elementary education and served an apprenticeship. Mechanics, instrument makers and surveyors had various mathematics training. James Watt was a surveyor and instrument maker and is described as being "largely self-educated". Watt, like some other autodidacts of the time, became a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the Lunar Society.
In the eighteenth century these societies often gave public lectures
and were instrumental in teaching chemistry and other sciences with
industrial applications which were neglected by traditional
universities. Academies also arose to provide scientific and technical
training.
Years of schooling in the United States began to increase sharply
in the early twentieth century. This phenomenon was seemingly related
to increasing mechanization displacing child labor.
The automated glass bottle-making machine is said to have done more for
education than child labor laws because boys were no longer needed to
assist. However, the number of boys employed in this particular industry was
not that large; it was mechanization in several sectors of industry that
displaced child labor toward education. For males in the U.S. born
1886–90, years of school averaged 7.86, while for those born in 1926–30,
years of school averaged 11.46.
One of the most recent trends in education is that the classroom
environment should cater towards students' individual needs, goals, and
interests. This model adopts the idea of inquiry-based learning
where students are presented with scenarios to identify their own
research, questions and knowledge regarding the area. As a form of discovery learning,
students in today's classrooms are being provided with more opportunity
to "experience and interact" with knowledge, which has its roots in
autodidacticism.
Successful self-teaching can require self-discipline and
reflective capability. Some research suggests that the ability to
regulate one's own learning may need to be modeled to some students so
that they become active learners, while others learn dynamically via a
process outside conscious control. To interact with the environment, a framework has been identified to
determine the components of any learning system: a reward function,
incremental action value functions and action selection methods. Rewards work best in motivating learning when they are specifically
chosen on an individual student basis. New knowledge must be
incorporated into previously existing information as its value is to be
assessed. Ultimately, these scaffolding techniques, as described by Vygotsky (1978) and problem solving methods are a result of dynamic decision making.
In his book Deschooling Society, philosopher Ivan Illich
strongly criticized 20th-century educational culture and the
institutionalization of knowledge and learning - arguing that
institutional schooling as such is an irretrievably flawed model of
education - advocating instead ad-hoc co-operative networks through
which autodidacts could find others interested in teaching themselves a
given skill or about a given topic, supporting one another by pooling
resources, materials, and knowledge.
Secular and modern societies have given foundations for new systems of education and new kinds of autodidacts. As Internet access has become more widespread the World Wide Web (explored using search engines such as Google) in general, and websites such as Wikipedia (including parts of it that were included in a book or referenced in a reading list), YouTube, Udemy, Udacity and Khan Academy
in particular, have developed as learning centers for many people to
actively and freely learn together. Organizations like The Alliance for
Self-Directed Education (ASDE) have been formed to publicize and provide
guidance for self-directed education. Entrepreneurs like Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates are considered influential self-teachers.
The first philosophical claim supporting an autodidactic program to the study of nature and God was in the philosophical novelHayy ibn Yaqdhan (Alive son of the Vigilant), whose titular hero is considered the archetypal autodidact. The story is a medieval autodidactic utopia, a philosophical treatise
in a literary form, which was written by the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Tufail in the 1160s in Marrakesh.
It is a story about a feral boy, an autodidact prodigy who masters
nature through instruments and reason, discovers laws of nature by
practical exploration and experiments, and gains summum bonum through a mystical mediation and communion with God. The hero rises from his initial state of tabula rasa
to a mystical or direct experience of God after passing through the
necessary natural experiences. The focal point of the story is that
human reason, unaided by society and its conventions or by religion, can
achieve scientific knowledge, preparing the way to the mystical or
highest form of human knowledge.
Commonly translated as "The Self-Taught Philosopher" or "The Improvement of Human Reason", Ibn-Tufayl's story Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan
inspired debates about autodidacticism in a range of historical fields
from classical Islamic philosophy through Renaissance humanism and the
European Enlightenment. In his book Reading Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan: a Cross-Cultural History of Autodidacticism,Avner Ben-Zaken
showed how the text traveled from late medieval Andalusia to early
modern Europe and demonstrated the intricate ways in which
autodidacticism was contested in and adapted to diverse cultural
settings.
Autodidacticism apparently intertwined with struggles over Sufism in twelfth-century Marrakesh; controversies about the role of philosophy in pedagogy in fourteenth-century Barcelona; quarrels concerning astrology in RenaissanceFlorence in which Pico della Mirandola
pleads for autodidacticism against the strong authority of intellectual
establishment notions of predestination; and debates pertaining to experimentalism
in seventeenth-century Oxford. Pleas for autodidacticism echoed not
only within close philosophical discussions; they surfaced in struggles
for control between individuals and establishments.
In the story of Black American self-education, Heather Andrea Williams presents a historical account to examine Black American's relationship to literacy during slavery, the Civil War and the first decades of freedom. Many of the personal accounts tell of individuals who have had to teach themselves due to racial discrimination in education.
Future role
The
role of self-directed learning continues to be investigated in learning
approaches, along with other important goals of education, such as
content knowledge, epistemic practices and collaboration. As colleges and universities offer distance learning degree programs and secondary schools provide cyber school
options for K–12 students, technology provides numerous resources that
enable individuals to have a self-directed learning experience. Several
studies show these programs function most effectively when the "teacher"
or facilitator is a full owner of virtual space to encourage a broad
range of experiences to come together in an online format. This allows self-directed learning to encompass both a chosen path of
information inquiry, self-regulation methods and reflective discussion
among experts as well as novices in a given area. Furthermore, massive open online courses (MOOCs) make autodidacticism easier and thus more common.
