Book reviews

James A. Smith, The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite (New York: The Free Press, 1991), 313 pp. $24.95.

Dinesh D'Souza, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (New York: The Free Press, 1991)., 319 pp.

Michael Glennon, Constitutional Diplomacy and Constitutionalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 353 pp. $35.00.     

Civil society activism and political parties in Malaysia: differences over local representation

Despite their importance to democratic consolidation, relationships between civil society activists and political parties have often been problematic following the downfall of authoritarian regimes. In challenging authoritarian rule in Malaysia, though, these forces have increased cooperation and jointly committed at the 2008 elections to local government reform. This was especially important for middle-class non-governmental organization (NGO) activists seeking a transformation in the political culture of parties. Moreover, state government victories by reformist Pakatan Rakyat (PR) coalitions included Selangor and Penang where these NGOs are concentrated. Yet while local government reform followed, NGOs and parties placed differing emphases on elections, transcending ethnic-based representation, and checks and balances on local government power. Lacking substantial social and organizational bases, NGOs were outflanked by more powerful interests inside and outside PR parties, including those aligned with ethnic-based ideologies of representation and economic development models opposed by NGOs. NGO activists also advanced various democratic and technocratic rationales for local representation, indicating a complex ideological mix underlying their reform push. The study highlights interrelated structural and ideational factors likely to more generally constrain the capacity of middle-class NGOs to play a vanguard role in democratically transforming Malaysian political culture.     

列宁发展农业的思想探析

列宁在领导苏俄革命和建设过程中,高度重视农业问题,并在实践中形成了较为系统的发展农业的思想,即大力发展农业具有重要战略意义,发展农业的核心任务是提高生产率,发展农业必须从内部条件入手,通过国家帮助和工业支援为农业发展提供外部保障。重温和借鉴列宁的发展农业的思想,对我国当下的现代农业建设具有重要的现实指导意义。     

DIFFERENCES IN LEARNING PRACTICES AND VALUES IN NORTH–SOUTH CITY PARTNERSHIPS: TOWARDS A BROADER UNDERSTANDING OF MUTUALITY

This article addresses twinning between local governments in North and South, contributing to the past decade's discourse on institutional twinning in this journal. Local governments have increasingly become recognised as relevant actors in international development cooperation through city‐to‐city cooperation structures, which have been praised as an effective mechanism for local government capacity building. This article discusses the learning practices and the extent to which new knowledge is valued and adopted by twinning participants in both North and South and moreover whether learning benefits are mutual. In a study of three partnerships between Dutch municipalities and partner cities in Peru, South Africa and Nicaragua, 36 participants were interviewed. The findings reveal that learning in city‐to‐city partnerships is not mutual between North and South and that the benefits of ‘shared learning’—a rhetoric commonly used in the twinning discourse—are limited. Instead, other opportunities for mutuality arise for Northern municipalities from political and strategic benefits, such as staff loyalty and motivation. Mutuality in twinning hence deserves a broader interpretation than learning alone so that twinning benefits can be identified and maximised for both North and South, keeping cities interested and motivated. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

LOCAL GOVERNMENT DISCRETION AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN TURKEY

After ratification of the European Charter of Local Self‐Government in 1993, Turkey has witnessed major local government reform efforts in 2000s. The policy objectives of these reforms were granting more political, administrative and fiscal discretion to local governments along the principles of democratic decentralization and strengthening accountability linkages between citizens and local governments. We employ a diagnostic framework to analyse the impact of these reforms. We argue that reforms have achieved limited success in improving decision‐making autonomy and accountability of local governments. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Comment on Jack Goodman's “houses,apartments, and the incidence of property taxes”

Abstract

Goodman finds from his analysis of the 2001 Residential Finance Survey that multifamily housing bears a higher effective property tax rate (EPTR) than single‐family owner‐occupied housing and argues that much of the differential is associated with the lower average property value of apartments. We offer comments on how this important research can be enhanced and analyze the EPTR by using a different database, the Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) of the decennial census.

Like Goodman, we find from the PUMS that the EPTR of multifamily housing is high relative to that of single‐family detached housing and that lower‐value multifamily housing has a higher EPTR relative to that of higher‐value multifamily units. We offer preliminary findings from the PUMS on the implications of the EPTR for development patterns (it may discourage smart growth), equity (the poor and minorities bear a higher tax burden), and housing (high EPTRs challenge affordability).     

Re-Stating the problem of regulation and re-regulating the local state

In recent years a substantial body of literature has grown up around the application of the theorectical insights of regulation theory to the evolution of patterns of local governance and the structures of the local state (Geddes 1988: Goodwin, Duncan and Halford 1993; Painter 1991: Peck and Tickell 1992: Stocker 1989 inter alia). These new patterns of local governance are characteristically seen to be associated with the replacement of the formallly accountable, democracitcally elected structures of local government with a plethora of unaccountable and non-elected agencies involving public-private sector ‘part-nership’, Within this literature the emergence of new patterns of local governance is accounted for in terms of a response to the crisis of Fordism. In this article it is argued that regulation theory's principal analytical strength lies in its analysis of the internal contradictions and dynamics of modes of regulation, but that it has thus far failed to develop an adequate explanation of the transition between modes. As a consequence, existing accounts of the emergence of new modes of local governance couched in terms of the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism (or after-Fjordism) have tended to fail to reveal the complex mechanisms and processes linking global economic dynamics and the transformation of the structures of the national and local state. By interrogating the concept of ‘crisis’ in regulation theory and by considering the processing of the failures of Foprdism through the state at national and local level as a condition of any response to crisis, it is hoped to begin to develop a theory of the transition between modes of regulation. Such a theory, as it is hoped to demonstrate, might provide the basis for a more nuanced understanding of the complex process and mechanism resulting in the transformation of political and economic structures at the local level.     

地方政府投融资平台运营模式问题研究

在我国现代化、工业化和城镇化建设过程中,地方政府投融资平台发挥了基础性的作用,有力地推动了地方经济社会的跨越式发展,但同时也暴露了诸如举债融资规模膨胀过快、制度缺失、机制运行不够规范等问题。在已有的研究成果中,对地方政府投融资平台运营模式的研究相对较少,文章通过对当前主要模式存在的问题和成因进行梳理,基于“多中心场域治理”的理论基础,构建了“地方政府投融资平台多中心合作型运营模式”。     

新农村建设中的地方政府学习:动因、模式与效果

近年来,在新农村建设中各级地方政府开展了广泛的、各式各样的学习活动。虽然地方政府学习的重要意义已经得到人们的普遍认识,但是地方政府学习的动因、模式和效果等问题仍有待于进一步的研究。本文研究发现,地方政府面临的制度环境、政治体制、竞争压力是学习的首要原因,上级政府、科研机构等思想库、其他地区的实践、本地的试验是地方政府的主要学习源,环境的相似性、学习能力与偏好、政策项目特征等是影响地方政府学习效果的重要因素。地方政府通过学习提高了政府绩效,却也造成了负面的社会效果,需要通过改革和多种激励措施推动地方政府学习、提高地方政府学习能力,从而在根本上提高地方政府学习的社会效果。