Fiscal Decentralization,Flat Administrative Structure,and Local Government Size: Evidence and Lessons from China

This paper examines the effects of fiscal decentralization and flat administrative structure on local budget size and program outlays. We test three related theoretical hypotheses in China's adoption of province‐over‐county scheme of financial administration. We provide evidence that both decentralization of expenditure and decentralization of revenue increase the size of local budgets; that the impact of the former far outweighs that of the latter with local budgets on a rising trajectory; and that discretion grants localities more means to increase their budget. These results show that as China's reform deepens the proportion of local outlay on administration declines because of more local discretion from eliminating the prefecture bypass between the province and counties. But neither decentralization nor increased local discretion has allocated more local resources for education, and both contribute to increasing outlay on economic development. The paper formulates tentative policy recommendations that carry potential application for other countries. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Secrecy jurisdictions and economic development in Africa: the role of sovereign spaces of exception in producing private wealth and public poverty

Abstract

This paper reviews the scope and function of secrecy jurisdictions and includes new research data on their extensive use by development finance institutions in delivering official development assistance. In order to establish what these empirical data mean in terms of economic development, the paper builds a theoretical model of secrecy jurisdictions as constructed spaces of exception and exemption. It then reviews how different economic paradigms explain, analyse and assign normative values to secrecy jurisdictions/tax havens, noting that the neoliberal account proffers ideological assumptions which cannot be empirically verified. This paper argues that the most robust evidence available indicates that secrecy jurisdictions lower ‘onshore’ rewards to national stakeholders, and critically shrink the fiscal base required for sustainable economic development. Further, the paper argues that the extensive use of secrecy jurisdictions by development finance institutions sponsors an elite financial class in recipient countries, but otherwise undermines broad-based development embedded in economic justice.     

How (Not) to Form a Progressive Alliance: Lessons from the History of Left Cooperation

Britain’s political parties can be divided into two blocs: a ‘progressive bloc’ of parties on the left/centre‐left, and a ‘reactionary bloc’ of those on the right/centre‐right. In three of the last four general elections, the progressive bloc won an appreciably larger share of the popular vote than its reactionary rival. Yet its greater internal fragmentation has been repeatedly punished under first past the post, leading to what is now over a decade of Conservative‐led governments. This has prompted growing pressure to form a ‘progressive alliance’ between Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens, and their Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish nationalist competitors. This article sheds a historical and international light on these demands, examining the difficulties other similar efforts at progressive cooperation have faced across the world. It considers how progressive alliances have previously sought to overcome geographical, ideological, and social divides between their constituent members, and draws some salutary lessons for British progressives today.     

Risk,politics, and development: Lessons from the UK's democracy aid

Political risks are inescapable in development. Donors keep them in check with a range of tools, but existing options provide little guidance about how political forms of risk can—or should—shape programme design. This paper presents a novel framework that offers practical guidance on how to think about and manage some of these risks. This is based on a review of programmes delivered by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, which provides a specific type of aid: democracy assistance. Political forms of risk have a strong influence on that aid, so it provides a valuable example. Our framework centres on two trade‐offs inherent in the provision of aid for democracy support. The first relates to the type of approach employed in a programme; should it focus on a thematic issue or a specific event, or should it focus primarily on an institution and its processes? The second concerns the scope of a programme in terms of who it includes. Understanding the costs and benefits of these trade‐offs will help development practitioners to make decisions about political risks in a more rigorous and transparent way and, potentially, to shift from a culture of risk aversion, to one of informed risk‐taking.     

科学发展观与民主政治的内在联系

按照马克思主义世界是普遍联系的观点,科学发展观与社会主义民主政治有着紧密的内在联系,二者相互促进,不可分割.弄清楚二者之间的联系,对于建设物质文明、政治文明、精神文明、科学发展民主政治意义重大.     

Human rights and development: the case of local government transformation in South Africa

Local governments throughout the world are assuming a more important role in economic development of their communities as an increasing number of governments begin to decentralise powers and functions. As these lower levels of government seek sustainable local economic development (LED) strategies the human rights approach towards development becomes pertinent as globalisation accelerates. This article proposes an emphasis on socio‐economic rights as the basis for sustainable LED in developing countries. The article is based on the experience of South African local government in the period after 1994, leading up to the first democratic local government elections on 5 December 2000. Proceeding from the view that the promotion of human rights is necessary for the promotion of economic development, the article critically assesses the role of local government in the promotion of LED through a rights‐based approach. It is argued that the identification in the South African Constitution of local government with basic service provision (recently emphasised by a Constitutional court judgement) will place socio‐economic rights at the centre of LED strategies in South Africa. It is argued that this is indeed the most appropriate cornerstone of LED in South Africa. However, the transformation process that leads the country towards its progressive Constitution needs to be maintained and this article identifies five broad areas for transformation that may still be needed to entrench an adequate human rights culture within the sphere of local governance. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dimensions of political conflict and party positions in multi-level democracies: evidence from the Local Manifesto Project

Partisan conflicts have been frequently analysed in comparative political science research. Yet little is known about the dimensions of political conflict at the local level in multi-level democracies. This article contributes to the literature on the estimation and analysis of party positions by first presenting a new dataset of more than 800 local party manifestos in Germany that allows for a systematic analysis of the dimensions of political conflict at the German local level. Secondly, it is demonstrated that (semi-)automatic content analysis of these texts offers a promising approach for gaining new insights into local party positions. Thirdly, the empirical analysis of German local party manifestos shows that partisan conflicts are not only structured along the left–right dimension but also along a dimension which distinguishes between parties addressing ‘local’ and ‘national’ issues to a varying degree in their manifestos, due to the different behaviour of established and populist parties.     

婴儿情绪的发展:从基本情绪到情绪图式

人类生而便具备情绪能力,这些情绪能力称为基本情绪,它们先于认知而发生,有其独立的功能。它们会随着相应的认知与行为发展,形成一种动态的情绪——认知相互作用,这便为情绪图式。情绪图式可以作为一种文化基因被传播和复制,它的作用与认知的发展中认知图式所起的作用有许多共同之处。另外时常循环的一些相关的情绪图式可能被解释为气质或者人格特质。     

Aid to the enemy: linking development and peacebuilding on the Korean peninsula

This article discusses the link between development and peacebuilding to analyze South Korean aid activities in North Korea in the context of the Korean conflict, where there are deep-rooted cycles of conflict episodes, and to explore the possibility of aid for peace on the Korean peninsula in the future. The Korean conflict is a large part of what makes South Korean aid to North Korea ineffective. For the past 20 years, South Korean aid to North Korea has fluctuated greatly, due to the context of the Korean conflict. The Korean conflict, once seemingly on the way to resolution, appears to have reverted to a time before the end of the Cold War. Many people in both the North and the South still see each other as the enemy. Most of the South Korean aid projects in North Korea have been suspended indefinitely and the fluctuation of aid to North Korea caused serious debates within South Korean society. At one point, the debates grew so heated that they were called the ‘South–South conflict’. Building on the conceptual framework of conflict sensitive development and strategic peacebuilding, this article argues that, to overcome the current impasse, all stakeholders must better understand the context of the Korean conflict and the interaction between the context and themselves, and develop a comprehensive strategy together, to encompass the multiple issues raised by the Korean conflict, as strategic peacebuilding proposes.     

Cultural Policy and Governance: Reviewing Policies Related to Cultural and Creative Industries Implemented by the Central Government of Taiwan Between 2002 and 2012

Cultural and creative industries have exhibited rapid changes in recent years, and public sectors worldwide have expanded interest in policies related to these industries as a means of promoting culture, innovation, and economic vitality. This article argues that the cultural values promoted by and economic significance of cultural and creative sectors are essential to the formation of policy and to the development of new industries. This article offers insight into cultural policy that has governed regional and local development, and addresses academic debates about policy related to cultural and creative industries based on several cultural, economic, and geographical factors. In addition, this article presents the results of analyzing various theories and case studies, based on how the Central Government of Taiwan (CGT) has adopted policies to promote cultural and creative industries. The research results link areas of cultural and economic development with policies enacted by the CGT. Ideas concerning the cultural ministry, industrial development, civic boosterism, subsidies, regional development, creative clusters, tourists and tourism businesses, and export markets are areas of emphasis in this study.     

Private and public authority interactions and the functional quality of sustainability governance: Lessons from conservation and development initiatives in Tanzania

The changing shape of sustainability governance has been a key academic and policy concern in the past two decades, as part of a wider debate on the interactions between public and private authority in governing the economy, society, and the environment. In this article, we contribute to these debates by examining how these interactions operate locally and across jurisdictions in three conservation and development initiatives in Tanzania and what impact they have on the functional quality of sustainability governance. We find that clear division of responsibilities, coupled with material incentives for communities and equal and transparent distribution of benefits, are key positive contributors to functional quality. These factors underpin the complementary interactions (collaborative at the local level; institutional layering across jurisdictions) that are needed to successfully negotiate and implement the compromises needed to balance conservation and development goals. We also find that competitive dynamics are harmful to functional quality, especially those taking the form of local institutional duplication and of dominance by central government across jurisdictions. These tend to appear especially when sustainability initiatives involve multiple stakeholders with wide discrepancies in resources, interests, and power, which leads to compromises determined in a top-down manner.     

Impact of COVID-19 on Bangladesh's agriculture sector and the ways forward to recovery: An overview

The COVID-19 outbreak has left an indelible effect on Bangladesh's agriculture sector, like that of most developing countries. Considering that agriculture is the cornerstone of Bangladesh's economy, we made an effort to compile a detailed scenario of COVID-19's effect on it through a relevant literature review. Since no significant studies outlined a complete picture of the pandemic's impact on agriculture, our study ventured to reveal the circumstances of each sub-sector of agriculture. During the early phases of the pandemic, farmers engaged in agriculture production got poor prices, with the majority of them incurring losses. Labor shortages and input scarcity were the most prevailing hindrances across all the sub-sectors. The export volume seemed to shrink hugely, hurting the country's GDP. The supply chain for agricultural commodities was disrupted as a result of the lockdown and mobility restrictions, which resulted in the elimination of the majority of intermediaries. Unprecedented challenges occurred in the input and output markets, as well as in the agro-industries, exacerbating the situation. However, while the vegetables and poultry sub-sectors recovered utterly and the dairy sub-sector somehow managed to stabilize, other sub-sectors are still grieving. This study highlighted some policies that can mitigate the miseries of the agriculture sector and overcome further potential threats in Bangladesh and other agriculture-led developing countries.     

Institutionalising a National Approach to Performance Reporting: Lessons from Two Decades of Experience with the Report on Government Services

The Report on Government Services (RoGS) to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) is considered an exemplar of benchmarking in a federal system. Published annually since 1997, RoGS provides performance reporting in the form of cross jurisdictional benchmarking on an unprecedented scale and scope. This paper argues ROGS has institutionalised a national approach to performance measurement and reporting that is now at the centre of the COAG reform agenda. The paper examines the processes and institutional structures that explain how RoGS has transformed performance reporting for social infrastructure services. The final section provides a preliminary assessment of the impact of RoGS.     

Network of Networks: Preliminary Lessons from the Antwerp Port Authority on Crisis Management and Network Governance to Deal with the COVID-19 Pandemic

In this article, the authors describe and illustrate what they call a “network of networks” perspective and map the development of a lead network for the Antwerp Port Authority that governed organizations and networks in the port community before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. They find that setting a collective focus and selective integration are crucial in the creation and reproduction of an effective system to adequately deal with a wicked problem like the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings on crisis management and network governance are used to engage practitioners and public policy planners to revisit the current design and governance of organizational networks within organizational fields that have been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.     

坚持科学执政、民主执政、依法执政——兼论我国社会主义民主政治建设问题

坚持科学执政、民主执政、依法执政,是发展社会主义民主政治的必然要求和必要条件,也是推进国家治理体系和治理能力现代化的关键所在。为此,要把党的领导方式和执政方式嵌入到社会主义民主和法治的制度框架之中,把科学执政、民主执政、依法执政有机统一起来,把“为人民执政”和“靠人民执政”有机统一起来。其前提是澄清我国民主政治建设的一些重大理论和实践问题,在知行合一的前提下不失时机地推进社会主义民主政治建设。     

Effect of financial sector development and FDI inflow on employment rate in South Asia: New empirical evidence from ARDL approach

The current analysis aims to explore the empirical nexus between financial development, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow, and employment rate. To attain this aim, we collect 30 years of annual data over the period 1990 to 2019 from South Asian economies and employ the autoregressive dynamic least square (ARDL) model for regression analysis. The implication of the ARDL model was subject to the mixed stationarity status of the series as assessed by unit root testing. The robustness of the analysis was checked by employing the fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS) models. The statistical analysis infers that both financial development and FDI inflow enhance the employment rate in the South Asia region. In addition, the empirical analysis infers that the gross capital formation, economic growth, and export volume have a positive while the population growth rate has a negative effect on the employment rate. The impact of underlying explanatory variables was found significant only in long run. The estimated coefficient values in the case of FMOLS and DOLS models support the direction of the relationship between explanatory variables and employment rate, implying the robustness of the analysis. The findings of the current analysis can be used to devise efficient economic policies to cope with the encroaching issue of unemployment in the South Asia region. This study offers the robustness to existing literature and complements the literature by exploring the underlying arrangement of study to the whole South Asia group.     

Turnout in Germany in the course of time: Life cycle and cohort effects on electoral turnout from 1953 to 2049

The steadily rising share of older voters could lead to them gaining an ever increasing level of political representation compared to younger voters not only because of the imbalance of numbers between the young and the old, but also because turnout rates among the old have always been above-average. The latter argument only applies if the so-called life cycle effect is assumed to be dominant. However, diverse socialisation backgrounds, captured by the cohort effect, also have to be taken into account. It is also unclear what the interplay of these two effects of time implies for future aggregate turnout. Focusing on the German case, we base our analyses on the Repräsentative Wahlstatistik (Representative Electoral Statistic, RES) and population forecasts to estimate consequences of the demographic shifts for all federal elections from 1953 until today, as well as for future elections. First, we calculate life cycle, cohort and period effects on turnout for previous elections by using cohort analysis; second, we apply these net effects to the future age distribution under certain assumptions concerning life cycle and cohort effects. Our results show that the recent decline in turnout is in particular due to negative period effects and (in West Germany) to a minor extent also due to consequences of cohort replacement, whereas changes in the age structure have had a positive effect on turnout since 1990 in both parts of Germany. Additionally, our forecasts suggest that turnout rates will decline and that the over-representation of the old will continue until around 2030 and diminish afterwards in a 'greying' population.     

Opportunities to enhance relational wellbeing through the National Disability Insurance Scheme: Implications from research on relationships and a content analysis of NDIS documentation

Interpersonal relationships are critically important to ensuring that people with disability can access the benefits of individual funding models such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). The NDIS aims to enhance participants’ self‐determination of supports and social and economic participation, but the emerging evidence indicates that achieving these policy outcomes requires stronger recognition of participants’ relational context, even in a system focused on individual choice and control. This paper reports on a content analysis of the NDIS Act, NDIS Rules, Operational Guidelines, and Price Guide to examine the extent to which the scheme's conceptual foundations and funded supports in individual plans enable it to support relationships. Implications are drawn from this analysis and theory and evidence about the importance of relationships for disability policy and practice. The paper outlines three areas where the approach of the NDIS to relationships is limited and can be improved: first, by conceptualizing relationships as relationships rather than simply sources of informal support; second, through provisions to actively support relationships; and third, by considering the relational appropriateness of support provided by family, carers, and friends. It concludes with suggestions for how relational considerations can be enhanced, including implications for government in administering the scheme.     

市委书记个人特征与GDP增长关系的实证分析——基于GDP百强市10年1000份市委书记样本的数据分析

当前,经济发展面临较大的下行压力,各地GDP发展动能成为各方关注的焦点。GDP百强市何以傲视群雄,实现GDP高质高量的发展?除了传统的经济发展影响因素外,地方领导与地方经济发展是否存在一定关系?通过对2017年GDP百强市2008-2017年间1000份市委书记个人特征和GDP增长的平衡面板数据进行实证分析发现:市委书记晋升途径和GDP增长呈显著相关关系;市委书记年龄和任职市数量均与GDP增长呈“倒U型”变动关系,其中最佳任职年龄是54.68岁,最佳任职市数量是2.787个;市委书记的性别、学位、本科学校性质、基层工作经历与GDP增幅没有表现出显著相关关系。结合实证结果,提出了领导者选拔任用的政策取向。