This book provides a new institutional economics perspective on alternative models of local governance, offering a comprehensive view of local government organization and finance in the developing ...world. The experiences of ten developing/transition economies are reviewed to draw lessons of general interest in strengthening responsive, responsible, and accountable local governance. The book is written in simple user friendly language to facilitate a wider readership by policy makers and practitioners in addition to students and scholars of public finance, economics and politics.
China Experiments Florini, Ann M; Lai, Hairong; Tan, Yeling
01/2012
eBook
All societies face a key question: how to empower governments to perform essential governmental functions while constraining the arbitrary exercise of power. This balance, always in flux, is ...particularly fluid in today's China. This insightful book examines the changing relationship between that state and its society, as demonstrated by numerous experiments in governance at subnational levels, and explores the implications for China's future political trajectory.
Ann Florini, Hairong Lai, and Yeling Tan set their analysis at the level of townships and counties, investigating the striking diversity of China's exploration into different governance tools and comparing these experiments with developments and debates elsewhere in the world. China Experiments draws on multiple cases of innovation to show how local authorities are breaking down traditional models of governance in responding to the challenges posed by the rapid transformations taking place across China's economy and society. The book thus differs from others on China that focus on dynamics taking place at the elite level in Beijing, and is unique in its broad but detailed, empirically grounded analysis.
The introduction examines China's changing governance architecture and raises key overarching questions. It addresses the motivations behind the wide variety of experiments underway by which authorities are trying to adapt local governance structures to meet new demands. Chapters 2-5 then explore each type of innovation in detail, from administrative streamlining and elections to partnerships in civil society and transparency measures. Each chapter explains the importance of the experiment in terms of implications for governance and draws upon specific case studies. The final chapter considers what these growing numbers of experiments add up to, whether China is headed towards a stronger more resilient authoritarianism or evolving towards its own version of democracy, and suggests a series of criteria by which China's political trajectory can be assessed.
Contents
1. China at a Crossroads
2. Streamlining the State
3. The Evolution of Voting Mechanisms
4. Civil Society
5. From Local Experiments to National Rules: China Lets the Sunshine In
6. Where is China Going?
Seeks to develop understanding of the notion of multi‐level governance through a critical exploration of its definitions and applications by scholars with very different concerns within the broad ...discipline of Political Studies. Despite the different concerns of different authors, four common strands emerge that provide a parsimonious definition of multi‐level governance that raises clear hypotheses for future research. First, that decision‐making at various territorial levels is characterized by the increased participation of non‐state actors. Second, that the identification of discrete or nested territorial levels of decision‐making is becoming more difficult in the context of complex overlapping networks. Third, that in this changing context, the role of the state is being transformed as state actors develop new strategies of coordination, steering and networking that may protect and, in some cases, enhance state autonomy. Fourth, that in this changing context, the nature of democratic accountability has been challenged and need to be rethought or at least reviewed. The book concludes that future research on multi‐level governance should pay particular attention to the implications for democracy of empirical developments and, related to this, to the design of frameworks of accountability that adopt a positive‐sum gain in relation to the accountability versus efficiency debate.
The past quarter of a century has seen extensive change throughout Europe. There have been significant changes in local government, and the European Union has come to play an increasing role in ...relation to municipal government.
This book offers a comparative analysis of recent developments in intergovernmental relations in twelve countries across Europe. Using the framework for analysis from Page and Goldsmith's 1987 Central and Local Government Relations, each chapter examines changes in central-local relations in their respective country over the past 20 years. This book extends the coverage to include, for the first time, both federal systems and Eastern European countries. Offering detailed empirical studies, it assesses how far there have been changes in the functions, access and discretion of local government.
The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of local government, urban politics, EU studies and public administration.
Local governments do not stand alone—they find themselves in new relationships not only with state and federal government, but often with a widening spectrum of other public and private organizations ...as well. The result of this re-forming of local governments calls for new collaborations and managerial responses that occur in addition to governmental and bureaucratic processes-as-usual, bringing locally generated strategies or what the authors call "jurisdiction-based management" into play. Based on an extensive study of 237 cities within five states, Collaborative Public Management provides an in-depth look at how city officials work with other governments and organizations to develop their city economies and what makes these collaborations work. Exploring the more complex nature of collaboration across jurisdictions, governments, and sectors, Agranoff and McGuire illustrate how public managers address complex problems through strategic partnerships, networks, contractual relationships, alliances, committees, coalitions, consortia, and councils as they function together to meet public demands through other government agencies, nonprofit associations, for-profit entities, and many other types of nongovernmental organizations. Beyond the "how" and "why," Collaborative Public Management identifies the importance of different managerial approaches by breaking them down into parts and sequences, and describing the many kinds of collaborative activities and processes that allow local governments to function in new ways to address the most nettlesome public challenges.
Federal development in post-Franco Spain reaches far beyond familiar Basque/Catalan nationalistic struggles and includes the creation of an increasing number of intergovernmental networks by local ...governments, particularly municipalities, as they engage regional, central, and other local entities to operate programs and services in basic and emergent policy areas. By examining the intergovernmental networks in an increasingly federalized Spain, Robert Agranoff shows that local governments, although they occupy a strong position in legal and constitutional terms, are in practice subordinate to both central and regional governments and therefore lack adequate power and resources to deal with both the responsibilities assigned to them and those they'd like to assume. As a result, local governments are forced into a series of intergovernmental arrangements and transactions with governmental and nongovernmental organizations.
The economic and political rise of China and India will help define the twenty-first century. One out of three people on the planet is governed from Beijing or New Delhi. These two economies are ...likely to catch and surpass the United States and European Union in coming decades, and both countries are flexing their muscles in global affairs. The direction, shape, and speed of their rise will have enormous ramifications-particularly with economic turbulence and political transitions in both places.
Any corporation, investor, or entrepreneur serious about competing internationally must understand what makes these two nations tick. Many in the West still look at the two Asian giants as political monoliths, closely controlled by their national governments.Inside Out, India and Chinamakes clear how and why this notion is outdated, and why it matters so much.
William Antholis-managing director at Brookings and a former White House and State Department official-traveled with his wife and two daughters to eleven Indian states and nine Chinese provinces in five months, discovering and exploring their enormous diversity in business and governance. Antholis's travels, research, and conversations with hundreds of stakeholders make the unmistakable point that these nations are not the centrally directed dinosaurs of the past.
More and more, key policy decisions in India and China are formulated and implemented by local governments-states, provinces, and fastgrowing cities. Both economies have promoted entrepreneurship by the private sector as well as by local government officials. Antholis's gripping narratives of local innovation in governance and business illustrate why simply maintaining a presence in Beijing and New Delhi, or even Shanghai and Mumbai, is not enough to ensure success in China or India.
Each nation has as many people as the United States, Europe, and Latin America... combined. Both China and India are vibrant, innovative, diverse, and increasingly decentralized. Each has its own agricultural heartlands, high-tech corridors, resource-rich areas, and powerhouse manufacturing regions. But few people outside these countries can even name those places, let alone understand how they are shaping global futures. Governments, businesses, and other organizations need to adopt an inside-out strategy. In a compelling conclusion, Antholis lays out exactly what that requires.
Sevastopol, located in present-day Ukraine but still home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet and revered by Russians for its role in the Crimean War, was utterly destroyed by German forces during World ...War II. InFrom Ruins to Reconstruction, Karl D. Qualls tells the complex story of the city's rebuilding. Based on extensive research in archives in both Moscow and Sevastopol, architectural plans and drawings, interviews, and his own extensive experience in Sevastopol, Qualls tells a unique story in which the periphery "bests" the Stalinist center: the city's experience shows that local officials had considerable room to maneuver even during the peak years of Stalinist control.
Qualls first paints a vivid portrait of the ruined city and the sufferings of its surviving inhabitants. He then turns to Moscow's plans to remake the ancient city on the heroic socialist model prized by Stalin and visited upon most other postwar Soviet cities and towns. In Sevastopol, however, the architects and city planners sent out from the center "went native," deviating from Moscow's blueprints to collaborate with local officials and residents, who seized control of the planning process and rebuilt the city in a manner that celebrated its distinctive historical identity.
When completed, postwar Sevastopol resembled a nineteenth-century Russian city, with tree-lined boulevards; wide walkways; and buildings, street names, and memorials to its heroism in wars both long past and recent. Though visually Russian (and still containing a majority Russian-speaking population), Sevastopol was in 1954 joined to Ukraine, which in 1991 became an independent state. In his concluding chapter, Qualls explores how the "Russianness" of the city and the presence of the Russian fleet affect relations between Ukraine, Russia, and the West.
