Syposium comment: Improving economic development strategies

There is an old bromide, often associated with former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, that says “all politics is local.” The papers under review here implicitly raise the question of whether all (or at least a good portion) of economic development is local, and what sort of strategies state and local governments should pursue in fostering healthy economic development.     

Managing rural development in Botswana

Rural development in Botswana has proceeded using a non-directive approach. During the period 1973–1979 sectoral programmes for promoting development in rural areas have been administered by executive ministries, but, in addition, there has been non-executive machinery devoted to achieving a co-ordinated approach to development in rural areas. The emphasis in the work of the non-executive rural development unit was to promote communication and co-operation, and the success of the programme so far is partly attributed to this approach. The article points to additional lessons to be learnt from the experience of using this approach.     

Managing local development: lessons from Spain

This paper analyzes an operational method that regional government agencies can use to enable locally-based firms to compete effectively in their industries. This method, which emerged in southern Spain after the transition to democracy, embodies many precepts found in the contemporary public management literature. The paper begins the task of cumulating the clinical knowledge needed to translate action plan precepts into specific managerial decisions.     

Managing economic reform: An alternative perspective on structural adjustment policies

The structural adjustment policies of international development organizations have been undermined in many developing countries by weaknesses in administrative capacity to manage economic reforms. If economic reform policies are to be implemented more effectively in the future, international organizations must take a broader view of the development process and assess more carefully the administrative and political capacity of the state to guide the decisions of public and private organizations toward development goals in four policy arenas. The experience of developing countries that were more successful at economic and social development during the 1970s and early 1980s, indicates the characteristics of development administration that policy analysts must assess in order to determine governments' capacity to implement economic reform policies effectively.     

Coping with economic integration: Corporatist strategies in Germany and Austria in the 1990s

While Germany is facing the wholesale disorganisation of sectoral collective bargaining, the Austrian social partnership has gained new strength in the 1990s. Comparatively, Austro‐corporatism proved able to undergo a process of skilful adaptation. This divergence in performance poses a puzzle, given Germany's commanding presence both in international markets and in the European Union, and given Austria's traditional hostility to modernisation. This article explains German—Austrian differences in the performance and resilience of corporatist governance in the face of modernisation and market integration in terms of (i) the organisational differences between German and Austrian corporatism (sectoral concentration versus vertical centralisation and little horizontal formalisation); (ii) the long term policy strategies employed by labour unions in either system (co‐determination versus macro‐level policy influence); and (Hi) by the different responses to modernisation chosen by German and Austrian corporatist actors (internal organisational reforms verus becoming modernisation brokers).     

Managing development policy in Botswana: Implementing reforms for rapid change

In recent years, Botswana's international reputation as a nation with sound development management has been slightly tarnished and the country's government has become increasingly concerned about the declining performance of its development management machinery. This concern of the government has been translated into a series of reform measures designed to bring about rapid change. This article discusses and analyses those reform measures and their potential impact on the development management process in Botswana. It was determined that the reform measures were, for the most part, carefully crafted and are being purposefully implemented, showing the nation, once again, to be one with good governance.     

Sustaining economic development in South Korea: Lessons from Japan

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, culture has come to be recognized as a significant regional development resource in China. This paper raises the question of whether cultural strategies of development have ameliorated or exacerbated the government's increasing inability to provide for the public's basic needs. Specifically, it asks: what are the implications of China's cultural strategies of regional development for local-level governance? Three case study villages in Guizhou are examined, each revealing different ways that villages have engaged state development strategies, each with different outcomes. I argue that cultural strategies of development in China introduce a capital logic that greatly influences village governance. Cultural strategies create economic value where none before existed and thus initiate new struggles over ownership among villagers, state actors and entrepreneurs. The privatization of cultural resources has presented new challenges to village governance even while it has been promoted as both an answer to the fiscal challenges faced by many rural communities and a key to the establishment of a new kind of rural citizen.     

Rents and economic development: the perspective of Why Nations Fail

Public Choice - We present the approach to comparative economic development of Why Nations Fail. Economic prosperity requires inclusive economic institutions—those which create broad based...     

Community environmental policing: Assessing new strategies of public participation in environmental regulation

This paper evaluates a new form of public participation in environmental monitoring and regulation advanced through local “bucket brigades,” which allow community members to sample air emissions near industrial facilities. These brigades represent a new form of community environmental policing, in which residents participate in collecting, analyzing, and deploying environmental information, and more importantly, in an array of public policy dialogues. Use of this sampling technology has had marked effects on local residents' perceptions and participation in emergency response and citizens' right‐to‐know. However, when viewed through the lens of the more developed literature on community policing, the bucket brigades are currently limited in their ability to encourage “co‐production” of environmental protection between citizens and the state. Means are examined to strengthen the bucket brigades and to more broadly support community participation in environmental regulation. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The first Marxist and Fascist economic strategies in comparative perspective

It has become traditional for commentators to characterize economic strategies as either of the ‘Left’ or the ‘Right.’ This has been particularly true in the case of Marxist and Fascist economic systems. This article reviews the history of the first Bolshevik and Fascist efforts in terms of their post-revolutionary economic policies. It considers their respective origins in revolutionary Marxism and proceeds to outline their subsequent economic undertakings. It is argued that a careful study of the logic of their respective rationales together with their subsequent economic strategies reveal a remarkable resemblance both in terms of their operational features and their intended results. How such a reality, generally unappreciated, should be dealt with in terms of present practice becomes both a classificatory as well as an intrinsically cognitive issue.     

Local economic strategies as industrial policy: a critical review of British developments in the 1980s

The proliferation of interventionist local authority strategies for employment and economic development has been widespread in Britain since the early 1980s. But much of the radical promise of these strategies has been slow to materialise, due in part to the abolition of the metropolitan authorities and to the election of a third Thatcher government. Moreover new and traditional forms of policy production have co-existed in an uneasy relationship within local authorities, and this threatens the strategic capacity of intervention. It is argued that the regeneration of strategic perspectives should be a priority for local authorities; at the same time flexible specialisation in manufacturing offers new political and tactical opportunities for strategic intervention in pursuit of both regeneration and accountability in the economic sphere.     

论经济法与可持续发展

可持续发展是当今世界发展的主旋律,可持续发展战略的实现需要法律的支持。本文认为,经济法的目的和使命决定了它与可持续发展战略有着天然的密切联系,经济法与可持续发展战略的结合是历史的必然。同时,本文通过经济法基本原则与民法基本原则、行政法基本原则的比较分析,阐述了经济法可持续发展原则的特有性。最后,文章还对可持续发展原则在我国经济法中的应用进行了研究。     

Managing Mass Fatalities during COVID-19: Lessons for Promoting Community Resilience during Global Pandemics

In the United States and around the world, COVID-19 represents a mass fatality incident, as there are more bodies than can be handled using existing resources. Although the management and disposition of bodies is distressing and heartrending, it is a task that local, state, and federal governments must plan for and respond to collaboratively with the private sector and faith-based community. When mass fatalities are mismanaged, there are grave emotional and mental health consequences that can delay recovery and undermine community resilience. Using insights from one author's mass fatality management research during the 2010 Haiti earthquake, this Viewpoint essay explores how mass fatalities are being managed in response to COVID-19. Based on the researcher's findings a decade ago, it is apparent that many lessons have not been learned. The essay concludes by providing governments with practical lessons on how to manage mass fatalities to facilitate and promote community resilience.     

Management strategy for economic and social development: Part I

The new and rapidly changing environment of development administrators includes (1) the emergence of a world society of interdependent nations, (2) a rapid and confusing technological and scientific revolution, (3) the expansion of service societies in industrialized countries, (4) new major alternatives for war, neocolonialism, despotism and materialism, and (5) development problems of ascending complexity and difficulty.Post-industrial beginnings in modern management arise from a background of management thought and technique in agriculturla epochs and the more recent industrial revolution. They encompass computer technology; operations research; systems approaches, including systems engineering, management information systems, and general systems research; cost-effectiveness analysis and PPBS; social indicators; and futurecasting. Their development has contributed to a growing gulf between technique and capability, to a triumph of technique over strategy and a retreat from human values.Attention is directed to specific strategies and tactics of introducing modern management techniques in developing nations. The efforts to do this during the 1960 Development Decade are reviewed. The prospects for the 1970's are previewed, and suggestions offered for problem area task forces and the expansion of U.N. activities in advancing, not merely diffusing, the current state of the art.Since the most significant modern management advances have been tactical, a dozen principles of strategic decisionmaking are suggested: (1) responsible decisionmaking, (2) the conflict essence of problems, (3) selectivity, (4) total system appreciation, (5) relative proportions, (6) sequential model-using, (7) problem interrelationships, (8) jointed incrementalism, (9) organized and unorganized interests, (10) the emotional basis of rational action, (11) investment in future capabilities, and (12) power mobilization and use.The paper ends by raising vital questions on the improvement of managerial values. This is done by specific proposals for a code of managerial ethics and the formulation of more humanistic management goals.     

Religion,liberty and economic development: An empirical investigation

The empirical investigations conducted for this paper show that one can not accept the null hypothesis that religion and liberty are not related to development. Judeo-Christianity in particular appears to an important determinant of economic development. This is explained in part by its fostering of the private ownership of property. Nations with the Judeo-Christian values are more likely to have political democracies that are conductive to economic development. Capitalist economies with Judeo-Christian democracy are more likely to have higher levels of economic development.     

Management strategy for economic and social development: Part II

The new and rapidly changing environment of development administrators includes (1) the emergence of a world society of interdependent nations, (2) a rapid and confusing technological and scientific revolution, (3) the expansion of service societies in industrialized countries, (4) new major alternatives for war, neocolonialism, despotism and materialism, and (5) development problems of ascending complexity and difficulty.Post-industrial beginnings in modern management arise from a background of management thought and technique in agricultural epochs and the more recent industrial revolution. They encompass computer technology; operations research; systems approaches, including systems engineering, management information systems, and general systems research; cost-effectiveness analysis and PPBS; social indicators; and future-casting. Their development has contributed to a growing gulf between technique and capability, to a triumph of technique over strategy and a retreat from human values.Attention is directed to specific strategies and tactics of introducing modern management techniques in developing nations. The efforts to do this during the 1960 Development Decade are reviewed. The prospects for the 1970's are previewed, and suggestions offered for problem area task forces and the expansion of U.N. activities in advancing, not merely diffusing, the current state of the art.Since the most significant modern management advances have been tactical, a dozen principles of strategic decisionmaking are suggested: (1) responsible decisionmaking, (2) the conflict essence of problems, (3) selectivity, (4) total system appreciation, (5) relative proportions, (6) sequential model-using, (7) problem interrelationships, (8) jointed incrementalism, (9) organized and unorganized interests, (10) the emotional basis of rational action, (11) investment in future capabilities, and (12) power mobilization and use.The paper ends by raising vital questions on the improvement of managerial values. This is done by specific proposals for a code of managerial ethics and the formulation of more humanistic management goals.     

Underlying patterns in a current economic development model

Public officials may subjectively use a variety of elements, including economic characteristics and political considerations, in their selection of locations and allocation of resources for economic development. Policy capture is a method that determines the impartial weighting of a broad number of elements which influence these decision makers as they operationalize programs. Non-political criteria that may influence the selection of sites for local economic development provide the basis of the analysis conducted in this paper. Public officials at various levels of responsibility assessed the chances of creating jobs for disadvantaged residents (employment success) for a variety of hypothetical areas chosen as an enterprise zone. Their responses give insight into policy decisions. There is a comparison of both individual responses and groups of respondents to the hypothetical data as well as to actual zones that were recently selected. Concluding remarks will discuss these results and the application of this method for enterprise zones and other policy analyses.We wish to acknowledge the extensive helpful suggestions of the editor and two anonymous reviewers.