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.     

区域水资源共享冲突的网络治理模式创新

水资源是关系国计民生的重要战略性自然资源,具有多种属性。2009年世界水日的主题(跨界水:共享的水、共享的机遇)引发了各国对跨界水资源治理制度的关注。典型的市场治理或科层治理机制已经无法解决跨界水资源多维属性的复杂问题,其治理效果和效率在不断降低。本文从我国的水资源共享冲突区域现实及9+2合作区的构建出发,认为我国的区域水资源共享冲突治理需要借鉴西方的网络治理模式,以提高治理效率。西方学者提出的共享型治理、领导型网络治理和行政型网络治理三种不同的网络治理结构模式在我国不具备独立存在的环境,认为水资源的共享治理创新将涉及流域沿途的不同区域不同部门,以及同一区域不同层次的各部门。应该建立一种兼具领导型网络与行政型网络的复杂治理结构,即按照传统的自上而下层级结构建立纵向的权力层次,并按照新兴的各种利益集团组织建立横向的行动规则,形成区域公共物品或公共服务的共享供给和实施决策机制。     

作为国家治理工具的实体性治理单元

实体性治理单元是关于空间治理的一种分析概念,主要为行政区。其功能全面,边界清晰,管辖范围明确,管辖权力完整,通常为一级独立的财政。实体性治理单元在政治统治和行管理方面的功能不可替代,撤销、新设、扩大、合并、拆分、升格、改名等是实体性治理单元的治理手段。实体性治理单元存在导致地方政府间的恶性竞争、难以满足跨行政区公共管理要求和公共服务的需求、难以解决跨行政区环境污染和生态环境破坏问题、行政区变动成本高等问题。虚体性治理单元主要包括经济区、功能区等,其功能在于补充实体性治理单元的"短板"。由于虚体性治理单元具有独特的功能,可以实现实体性治理单元无法达到的目的。     

Liberalization as a Development Strategy: Network Governance in the Korean Mobile Telecom Market

This study analyzes Korea's often noted yet seldom studied spectacular rise to become one of the important global players in the mobile telecommunications industry. The Korean “leap frog” occurred in the context of liberalization under the worldwide liberal telecommunications regime. This article finds that network governance—the emphasis on the use of partnerships and network transactions with global firms as well as the local private sector—is the reason for Korea's success. It examines the origins of and driving forces acting upon the liberalization policy, and discusses how the state and telecom firms cooperated to develop the mobile market. It also assesses the new governance that is taking place in Korea's telecom market by focusing on the changing roles of the state in three major aspects: provision, regulation, and foreign entry barriers into the mobile market. While the Korean government promoted a market‐conforming telecom market and private ownership, this article argues, it formulated rather different governance principles from the U.S. model of liberal governance.     

Q Methodology as a Tool for Committee Governance Research

The allegiance of national bureaucratic elites to European, national, institutional and policy-specific identities or associations is the subject of a growing body of European integration literature. Reviewing the methods employed by committee governance research, Q methodology is suggested as an alternative mechanism for measuring bureaucrat norms, beliefs and values. Its application to research on European committee governance could therefore increase the robustness of the qualitative element of existing mixed methods approaches. This would provide further insight into policy-making processes at the international level.     

Governance as a Path to Government

During the 1970s, analyses of state and government in Western Europe were preoccupied with crises of governability and legitimacy. The early 1980s witnessed sharply differing responses to these crises, exemplified by the socialist experiment in France and Thatcherism in the UK. By the end of the 1980s, ‘governance’– in both national and European arenas – began to be regarded as the dominant institutional response to problems of governability. Considered from the perspective of comparative European government, the oft-claimed shift from government to governance appears overstated. Governance is less widespread and consequential both at national and European levels than its proponents suggest, as a survey of the propellants, conditions and national and European constellations of governance shows. Viewed historically, governance does not so much indicate a shift from government as towards government, as the core institutions of the state build up capacity to deal authoritatively and hierarchically with new governing challenges.     

Governance as a strategy in state-of-nature games

Public choice scholars routinely claim that coercion can be used to solve the social dilemma. However, while social contract theorists have frequently described state-of-nature societies using game theory, they have not used game theory to show how coercive action within such societies can improve outcomes. Here I operationalize the concepts of coercion and governance within a Prisoners’ Dilemma (PD) framework; governance is operationalized as coercion to compliance, and to adopt a coercive strategy is to impose a strategy choice upon another player. I show that, under certain conditions, adding governance strategies to a noncoercive one-shot PD game can improve outcomes.     

Governance Delegation Agreements: Shared Sovereignty as a Substitute for Limited Statehood

Governance delegation agreements—international treaties allowing external actors legal authority within host states for fixed terms—succeed in simple and, under certain conditions, complex state‐building tasks. These deals are well institutionalized and have input legitimacy because ratification requires sufficient domestic support from a ruling coalition. In order to obtain that input legitimacy, however, host states constrain external actors commensurate with their level of statehood: Stronger states delegate less legal authority. This article argues that these constraints, which produce joint rather than complete authority, require external actors to work within state structures rather than substituting for them, and thus make coordination of complex tasks more difficult. A quantitative overview of data on consent‐based peacekeeping missions complements a qualitative analysis focused on comparative case studies in Melanesia and Central America to test the theory. The results support the theory and suggest that these deals hold promise particularly for accomplishing complex tasks in especially weak states.     

An Analysis of the Joint Board or County Model as the Structural Basis for Effective Australian Local Governance

Australian policy‐makers continue to rely on municipal amalgamation as the main engine of structural reform in local government, despite strong evidence that it diminishes participation and representation without improving service efficiency. Several promising, but neglected alternative models of structural reform have been developed, including ad hoc resource sharing models, Regional Organisations of Councils, virtual local government, and agency models. In an encouraging response to the recent policy of enforced council amalgamations in NSW, the Shires Association of NSW (2004) has recently proposed a ‘Joint Board model’ of local governance and invited comment on this model. This article takes up this challenge and seeks to place the Joint Board model in conceptual context and evaluate its characteristics and simulated cost savings.     

Improving Partnership Governance: Using a Network Approach to Evaluate Partnerships in Victoria

Partnerships of various kinds are now widespread, but evaluating them is complicated. This article examines the usefulness of a network approach for analysing partnership effectiveness, where the central concern is governance. The approach is based on interviews, and for this evaluation they were conducted with 120 people from 10 different partnerships in Victoria. A detailed examination of network structures uncovers important features of partnerships, yielding crucial information about them as governing entities, and providing feedback to partners on where effort needs to be spent on relationship building. This article adds to the existing knowledge about what makes partnerships effective, and to the toolkit available for evaluating them.     

The European Commission as a Network Organization

The 1996 Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), Maastricht II,was intended to focus on the effectiveness of the policies andinstitutions of the European Union. It should not be deflectedfrom its primary purpose. The EU has a management deficit thatis at least as important as its democratic deficit. In orderto improve the effectiveness of European governance, the EuropeanCommission should be reinvented as a network organization withthe mission of designing and developing multilevel, intergovernmentalnetworks for managing European Union policies. The reasons forredefining the role of the EC is that European integration ison a pluralistic trajectory of federation among nations ratherthan amalgamation into a European federal state. The effectivenessof this mode of integration depends on building and strengtheninginterorganizational networks. The task of the Commission, asa network organization, is to strengthen collaborative advantage—theorganizational capacities to manage interdependence—ratherthan seek to impose central control. Acting as a network organizationrequires three-core competency for: (1) constructing regimes;(2) designing administrative partnerships; and (3) developingcoordination capacities.     

网络破碎、治理失灵与食品安全供给

日益增加的食品安全问题表明我们需要从新的视角来重新审视食品安全供给制度,而网络治理途径则为此提供了较为适宜的分析途径。食品安全问题本身所具有的认知差异、目标冲突与相互依赖等特性赋予了其“恶劣问题”的属性。而对此类问题的解决通常需要引入网络治理的思路。与其将食品安全供给主体的缺失视为食品安全治理失灵的主要障碍。还不如将食品安全供给主体各自为阵、缺乏有效整合看作是导致食品安全问题频发的主要诱因。从网络治理途径出发,当前的食品安全供给网络呈现出“碎片化”特征,正是这种“碎片化”迷失了食品安全供给主体的角色,使他们错判了自身应该承担的食品安全供给责任。而认知差异、分割式协调、互动障碍以及有效网络管理的缺失则可以视为导致这种“碎片化”的重要因素。因此,食品安全的有效供给将取决于能否通过创新性的思维方式实现从破碎的网络向无缝隙网络的转变,以整体一致的方式来提高食品安全供给的质量。     

网络治理：公共管理的新框架

近年来,网络治理是西方国家公共管理研究的一个前沿课题,网络治理的理论主张、治理结构和治理机制是文章的研究中心.在疏理和整合当前网络治理研究的基础上,文章指出,政策网络理论与治理理论的结合,促成了行动者中心制度主义和管理复杂网络两种流派的形成,倡导网络治理作为一种新的治理模式,致力于实现主体间良性互动和互利互补的合作;网络治理的治理结构是不同于市场(自愿)与科层(强制)的复杂结构,网络是一个有着共同价值诉求的自组织系统,它不同于市场中自愿的个体行为,又不同于科层的命令服从体系;网络治理的治理机制在于信任机制和协调机制的培育,信任机制是网络的运作基础,其地位类似于市场的价格机制或科层的权威机制,而信任机制的落实,又需要回到协调机制的构建上,只有在价值协同、信息共享以及诱导与动员等方面建立起良好协调机制的基础上,才能真正地培育起成员间的信任关系以及成员与集体之间的信任关系,最终实现互利互惠的合作.     

Reconstructing Citizens as Consumers: Implications for New Modes of Governance

This article examines the relationship between government and the public within a producer–consumer market exchange. Four conceptual problems are identified in relation to the application of market models to the relationship between government and citizen. These types of models fail to account for the essentially political engagement between government and citizens, the collective responsibilities of government, the absence of markets in many areas of government service delivery and the complexity of relations between government and citizens.     

联体与联动：作为社会治理制度的在线调解创新

在线调解是将信息和通信技术与调解制度相结合的技术创新与制度创新。在线调解不仅创新地将各类调解制度联体起来,实现了党的十九届四中全会提出的完善人民调解、行政调解、司法调解联动工作体系的要求,而且开拓性地将调解制度与相关的社会治理制度联动起来,成为多元化解矛盾纠纷的综合性平台。比较分析莆田调解和浙化平台两个在线调解平台后发现,二者在各自功能定位的基础上,依托各自牵头组织的优势,分别采用了制度联体和制度联动两种方式,实现了社会治理制度共建共享共治,提升了在线调解的制度效能,推动了矛盾化解在基层,促进了社会稳定和谐。