区域合作中地方利益冲突的治理模式:比较与启示

利益冲突与协调,始终是区域合作与区域一体化的主题。地方利益冲突的治理模式,涵盖治理主体、治理客体与治理机制等内容。根据国内外区域治理的理论与实践,地方利益冲突的协调模式归纳为科层制、市场机制、社群治理以及网络治理等四种类型。每种模式均有其优缺点,都有独特的生长环境与制度空间,不同治理模式下的治理绩效各异。中国区域合作中的利益协调,属于以政府为主导的、市场与社会共同参与的科层制模式。针对当前区域利益治理模式的存在问题,需要在区域治理方面进行制度创新。     

推进地方政府治理现代化的探析

党的十八届三中全会明确提出,要推进国家治理体系和治理能力现代化。地方政府治理作为推进国家治理体系和治理能力现代化的重要组成部分,是国家行政管理的中间和基础环节。然而,推进地方政府治理现代化还面临一些困难和问题。为此,立足推进地方政府治理现代化的动力机制,通过再造地方政府治理体系、提升地方政府治理能力、大力发展公民组织和加强地方电子政府建设,以期实现地方政府治理现代化。     

我国转型时期地方政府政策制定:冲突治理与政策设计

在经济体制转型的基础上,我国社会政治体制、社会观念也面临着深刻的变革.地方政府作为公共政策的主要制定者,其政策制定要以公共权力、公民权利、利益协调为核心要素,逐步形成科学化规范化的冲突治理与政策设计模式.转型时期以地方政府为代表的公共利益与市场经济发展的局部利益的冲突成为政策制定的主要困境.需要完善权力运行体制和决策机制.扩大社会各方的广泛参与和促进有效的政策沟通.     

政策经纪人在政策变迁中的作用与机理

政策经纪人是公共政策活动过程中一种特殊的角色,在推动政策变迁方面发挥着重要的作用,尤其当各方主体因无法自动调和的分歧致使政策变迁陷入僵局时,政策经纪人便成为跳出僵局、推动变迁的重要力量和途径。通过透视过去若干年中国新一轮医疗卫生政策变迁的过程,可以识别出权威决策者、专家学者、政策子系统中的一线行动者等三种政策经纪人角色,且每一角色都有其独特的推动政策变迁的机制:权威决策者通过价值选择、决策规则确定、资源分配与利益整合等方式,发挥政治性调和作用;专家学者通过信息对称、知识解析以及因果关系推理等方式,发挥理论性调和作用;一线行动者通过现实状态揭示、现实行动逻辑解析以及现实效果预测等方式,发挥经验性调和作用。     

模式、特色与趋势:中国地方治理中的政府与社会

地方治理理论强调地方政府、社会与市场组织和公民自组织的良好合作,具有十分明显的西方社会话语特征,但在我国特殊的历史条件和体制环境中,地方治理更倾向于强势一方的地方政府的治理,形成了强政府治理的苏南模式和市场先行、社会参与的浙江模式两种典型的地方政府治理模式,反映了西方话语特征的地方治理理论在中国有其自身的适应和发展空间,具有明显的地方政府主导色彩,社会的参与治理也依赖于地方政府的推进。正是由于地方政府的主导与推进,使我国地方政府治理模式正朝向构建多中心治理结构、深化服务理念和由"善政"走向"善治"的趋势变革。     

地方政府治理现代化的实现机制探寻

在治理现代化这一宏大叙事中,地方政府治理现代化占据着微观却重要的位置,在某种程度上甚至影响着治理现代化的整体走向。有藉于此,地方政府治理现代化的实现机制的探寻尤显意义重大。地方政府治理现代化的有效实现应遵循民主、参与、公正和科学等指导原则,其具体实现机制应由参与主体遴选机制、方案制定评议机制、政策绩效评价监督机制、评估意见反馈机制和信息沟通传递机制等五个子机制与一个技术支持平台共同组成。这一机制是立足于决策体制基本要素,紧密依照公共政策制定流程,以民主为核心主旨,兼顾责任、合作、科学和效率等现代化治理理念构建而成的理论框架,还有待在实践中进一步修改和完善。     

中国地方人大的三重属性与变迁模式北大核心CSSCI

在中国人大制度研究中,早期的国内学者倾向于在宏观层面上进行规范定位,较为忽视地方人大的独特属性;国外学者更为关注中国地方人大的现实变迁,但常常将西方的经验投射于中国,同样没有注意到地方人大的特殊之处。后来的研究虽然认识到了地方人大作为国家意志执行保证者的角色,但仍停留在规范层面。在发展历程中,中国的地方人大内含了三重属性,即国家意志的执行保证机关、地方党委领导下的工作机关和地方民意的代表机关。这三重属性的具体组合,既构成了中国地方人大制度变迁的内在动力机制,也设定了地方人大制度变迁的基本路径和地方人大的行为模式。对于中国地方人大三重属性的区分,在理论上有利于清晰定位中国地方人大的制度坐标,在现实中也为国家治理体系和治理能力现代化改革提供了新的思路。     

地方政府协作治理模式:基于战略问题的类型学分析

国家治理体系和治理能力的现代化改革进程需要地方政府更好地处理与中央政府、其他地方政府、社会组织、企业和公众的多维度互动关系。地方政府协作治理能力的提升需要引入公共战略管理的思维。依据环境(动荡环境和常规环境)和协作取向(内部协作和外部协作)两个维度,地方政府需要应对重大自然及社会类危机事件、基础设施供给、重大经济及政治事件、跨行政区治理等四种类型的战略问题。面对差异化的战略问题,地方政府应采用动荡环境下的外部协作治理模式、常规环境下的外部协作治理模式、动荡环境下的内部协作治理模式和常规环境下的内部协作治理模式,做到分别应对。     

我国慈善捐赠政策的政策变迁与工具选择 ——基于中央层面的政策文本分析

慈善捐赠政策工具的有效使用是连接慈善目标与慈善结果的关键桥梁.采用内容分析法,对中央层面的慈善捐赠政策文本进行筛选、编码与分析,结果显示:受社会环境等多重因素影响,我国慈善捐赠政策呈现明显的阶段性特征;在基本政策工具维度上,慈善捐赠政策存在强制型工具偏多、混合型工具使用不均衡、自愿型工具短缺等特征;在慈善捐赠发展要素维度上,政策工具使用广泛,但不同领域、阶段应用程度不一.未来,政府应该优化政策工具结构,合理匹配政策工具,落实慈善捐赠管理,以完善慈善捐赠政策体系.     

Beyond Kyoto: Climate Change Policy in Multilevel Governance Systems

Climate change policy has commonly been framed as a matter of international governance for which global policy strategies can be readily employed. The decade of experience following the 1997 signing of the Kyoto Protocol suggests a far more complex process involving a wide range of policy options and varied engagement by multiple levels of governance systems. The respective experiences of the United States and Canada suggest that formal engagement in the international realm of policy is not a good indicator of domestic policy development or emissions reductions. The different contexts of intergovernmental relations, varied resources available to subnational governments for policy development and implementation, and role of subnational leaders in policy formation have emerged as important factors in explaining national differences between these North American neighbors. Consequently, climate change increasingly presents itself as a challenge not only of international relations but also of multilevel governance, thereby creating considerable opportunity to learn from domestic policy experimentation.     

Local Governance Versus Centralization: Connecticut Wetlands Governance as a Model

Scholars disagree whether local decision making is inherently more democratic and sustainable than centralized governance structures. While some maintain it is, due to the incorporation of local knowledge, citizen decision makers' closeness to the issues, and the benefits of participatory democracy, others find it as susceptible to issues of corruption and poor implementation as any other scale. We argue that with wetlands, a natural resource with critical local benefits, it is imperative to incorporate local governance, using the U.S. state of Connecticut as an example. Despite the American policy of No Net Loss, the local benefits of wetland resources cannot be aggregated on a national scale. Each local ecosystem needs wetland resources to ensure local ecological benefits such as flood control and pollution remission, as well as the substantial economic benefits of recreation. We illustrate the benefits of local control of wetlands with data from the American state of Connecticut, which consistently surpasses the federal wetland goal of No Net Loss due, we argue, to the governance structure of town‐level wetlands commissions. A national policy such as No Net Loss, where wetlands are saved or created in designated areas and destroyed in others, is insufficient when it ignores critical benefits for localities. The Connecticut system using local volunteers and unpaid appointees is a successful method for governing common‐pool wetland systems. In the case of Connecticut, we find that local decision making is not a “trap,” but instead an effective model of sustainable, democratic local governance.     

Policy Design and Nodal Governance: A Comparative Analysis of Determinants of Environmental Policy Change in a South African City

Abstract

This contribution focuses on a policy paradox, a failed attempt to introduce a Solar Water Heater bylaw in a South African city in spite of much initial support, both politically and professionally. The paper combines a policy design and a nodal governance perspective to explain why the law failed to materialise. It uses categories developed by the nodal governance approach to characterise the mentalities and technologies of the public agencies involved in the policy process, and explore how distinct policy cultures are nurtured by the networked relations and concomitant learning contexts of these agencies. The analysis shows how the agencies differ sharply on philosophical and practical grounds as to how they typically think about policy values and interventions. This tends to make the collaboration between them difficult as each of them experiences the other as seeking to frustrate rather to assist the policy process. The paper documents how “superstitious learning” became a predominant trait of the bylaw process, as each of the agencies tended to look for evidence in the actions of officials in the other department that confirmed their stereotypical view of them, and reinforced it during the process of interaction. Insufficient attention was given, early on in the bylaw process, to the fact that these departments would have to cooperate closely and that “buy-in” from both was a critical condition for success. Due to this, unfortunate policy design choices fed forward through the implementation process and disabled opportunities for co-learning and collective problem-solving.     

Policy Entrepreneurship and Institutional Change: Multilevel Governance of Central Banking Reform

Recent studies on institutional theory and the public policy field called for efforts to pry open the black box of institutional and policy change. This article offers a response to this call. It demonstrates that historical and discursive institutionalist approaches are complementary to explain how and why institutional change occurs. In addition, it shows how these approaches can add value to and benefit from the public policy and administration fields that seek to explain policy change and success. In particular, it emphasizes the interactions between structure and agency that contribute to the change. The empirical finding is based on qualitative analysis of central banking reform in Turkey. It suggests that institutional and policy change is more likely to occur when policy entrepreneurs, with joint membership in domestic and transnational policy communities, mediate various ideas and discourse within and among these communities in a punctuated institutional equilibrium.     

Institutional Geography and Regime Governance - The Case of Local Rail Transport Policy

Despite the growth and diversification of the student population, many British universities are still organised to cater for young students without caring responsibilities. Drawing on feminist frameworks of gender equality, this paper explores the ways in which governmental discourse of equal opportunities is articulated, sustained and resisted by staff and studying parents in a 1960s university. While many respondents attempt to comply with the prevailing learner norms entrenched in government policy, some also articulate an alternative discourse justifying the ‘special treatment’ of non-traditional students. However, this paper extends a third narrative that attempts to re-imagine university as an inclusive space.     

Western Wildfires: A Policy Change Perspective

My research objective in this article is to analyze policy change affecting wildfire suppression programs administered by the United States Forest Service and the United States Department of the Interior. Using a variant of the punctuated equilibrium approach, a content analysis of New York Times stories dealing with wildfires over the past two decades was examined in relation to both administrative and legislative policy changes. I conclude by suggesting that administrative shifts were undertaken by federal land administrators in response to crises and media attention to protect decisional autonomy as well as forest resources, while the architect of legislative change was a president taking advantage of the combined effects of increasingly intense wildfire seasons, demographic shifts involving the movement of people and structures to the high‐risk wildland urban interface areas, greater media scrutiny, and pressure to act from wildfire weary constituencies.     

Governance by Proxy: A Comparative Policy Analysis of the Mainstreaming of Immigrant Integration Governance

Abstract

This paper assesses mainstreaming as a governance strategy that potentially addresses the call for a more integral governance response to wicked policy problems. Our comparative qualitative policy analysis of the mainstreaming of immigrant integration governance contributes to the governance and mainstreaming literature by emphasizing the importance of strong horizontal and vertical coordination mechanisms and the distinction between universal and proxy targeting in mainstreaming. Although policy programmes indeed seem to broaden to a universal mainstreamed approach, in practice they often operate by “proxy”. Furthermore, horizontal coordination structures tend to be weak or not in place at all, again obstructing the embedding of immigrant integration as a mainstreamed cross-cutting governance issue.     

Climate Change Policy Implementation: A Cross-Sectional Analysis

Why would countries invest resources to protect the global atmosphere, a global common‐pool resource? After all, this is an open‐access resource with no restrictions on appropriating its benefits. Furthermore, why would they do so under the aegis of a weak global regime (the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC) that has virtually no provisions for sanctioning noncompliance and when the largest contributor to the problem is not participating in the regime? This article examines why a number of countries have implemented the UNFCCC. I hypothesize that countries implement UNFCCC because they corner domestic environmental benefits, namely reduction in local pollution. In my empirical analysis of 127 countries, employing an ordinal logistic regression model, I find that local air pollution is associated with higher levels of implementation of the UNFCCC. Thus, I conclude that the incentives to implement a relatively weak global regime can be found in the domestic political economy.     

Institutional Change in the International Governance of Agriculture: A Revised Account

This article traces the evolution of the international governance of agriculture as a sequential process, in which the negotiation of new trading and enforcement rules interacts with legal disputes over the interpretation of existing rules. The interaction between negotiation and litigation has produced a governance trajectory from vague to precise commitments and a strengthened dispute settlement process. We contest standard histories, which identify the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture as the singular event that established agriculture for the first time under the auspices of the World Trade Organization and which claim this represents the legalization of the agricultural trade regime. The case of agriculture contains important lessons for broader debates on international governance by articulating: (1) dynamic feedback processes, challenging the view that bargaining and enforcement aspects of international agreements are concluded simultaneously, and (2) key mechanisms underlying the greater precision of institutional commitments that tend to emerge over time.