This article empirically investigates the effects of administrative monitoring on the misuse of funds by local governments and provides a representative model of fiscal decentralization with political centralization, where administrative monitoring relies on the top‐down hierarchy of the bureaucratic system in China based on a unique data set from audit programs. We show a double effect between distance and monitoring in local China. The incentive for misusing public funds can be strengthened if the county (a) is governed by a leader whose tenure is longer than 3 years, (b) is governed by a politician from outside the county, or (c) receives more transfer payments. These findings suggest that the administrative monitoring of local governments can be vital to remedying the misuse of public funds. 相似文献
In the last few years, Graham Allison’s “Thucydides’ Trap” has stimulated much discussion within International Relations (IR). Most IR scholars understand Thucydides’ Trap as a shorthand for power transition theory, and view it as highly inadequate for analyzing China-US relations. This article seeks to offer an alternative, tragic, understanding of Thucydides’ Trap that may have more purchase on the analysis of the dynamic of China-US relations. It first argues that while Thucydides’ Trap shares power transition theory’s focus on the shifting balance of power, it is also different from the latter in its emphasis on the emotional implications of changes in the balance of power. This article then explores a tragic understanding of Thucydides’ Trap. Economic success often encourages a rising power to display ambition, confidence and enhanced sense of self (what Allison calls “rising power syndrome”), which leads to loosened restraint, overextension, and strategic blunder; meanwhile, its assertive and ambitious moves spark a ruling power’s fear, insecurity and even paranoia (what Allison calls “ruling power syndrome”), which prompts it to take “preventive” actions in response to the rising power’s assertiveness. This article finally looks at China-US relations through this tragic lens. It suggests that this tragic understanding of Thucydides’ Trap can illuminate the emotional aspect of China-US relations, and also argues that the Thucydides Trap Research Project should henceforth develop an emotional line of inquiry into interaction between the great powers.
