Local democracy in Ukrainian cities: civic participation and responsiveness of local authorities

This article examines local democracy in Ukrainian cities from the perspective of the local population, with a focus on citizen participation and city authorities' responsiveness to the concerns of local inhabitants. It draws on a survey of 2000 urban residents in 20 Ukrainian cities with a diversity of population size, administrative status, and geographic location. Correspondence analysis is used to show how different groups of the population are distributed along the two dimensions of responsiveness of local authorities and citizen participation. A typology of four ideal-types of city residents is elaborated: “alienated,” “protesters,” “compliant,” and “interactive.” The data reveal remarkably large differences among cities: from four to six of the cities are associated with each of the four typology categories based on the clustering patterns along the two dimensions. The main policy implication of the study is that general measures for local government reform should be combined with targeted measures directed at the various types of challenges experienced in different Ukrainian cities.     

超大社会视角的中央与地方关系

超大社会是中国最大国情。以超大社会的视角研究中央与地方关系,具有重要的理论价值与现实意义。中国历朝各代的兴衰,当今世界其他主要大型社会的集权与分权的权衡,为构建适合超大社会发展要求的中央与地方关系提供了足以借鉴的智慧。随着各项改革的不断深入,中央与地方关系需要进行相应的调整,以实现中央与地方权限的集分平衡。     

Market-Oriented Urban Planning – Constraining Citizen Participation

Urban planning in Norway can be characterised as market oriented, with responsibilities for the formulation of planning largely delegated to private developers. Even though the principle of citizen participation has a strong and longstanding tradition in Norway, the market-oriented practices challenge the ability of citizens to influence their spatial surroundings. Based on broad surveys and qualitative case studies, this article maps the attitudes of developers, councillors and planners towards citizen participation and studies the strategies of local community associations. Our analysis shows that developers value citizen participation to a much lesser degree than councillors and planners, which can explain the lack of participatory channels in early phases. Official avenues for participation occur later, primarily through hearings. Local associations find this to be too late, characterising urban planning as a path dependent process; as a consequence, local associations attempt to influence planning processes in a more informal way by contacting councillors directly.     

论广西地方政府在发展低碳经济中的责任

低碳经济以其独特优势和巨大市场已逐步成为世界经济发展的趋势,广西作为中国对外开放与区域经济合作的新一极,正以崭新的姿态与积极的步伐迎接低碳时代的到来。广西地方政府在发展低碳经济中应做好战略规划,建立政策法规体系、企业监督体系、战略同盟体系、科技支持体系,发展高新低碳技术产业、低碳文化和教育事业,构建广西地方政府发展低碳经济的责任体系。     

Contracting out local public services in Slovakia

In our paper, we focus on how local self-governments perform in the delivery of local public services to citizen. The paper is based on concrete data, collected from 200l to 2008 by our research team, including following services--waste collection and disposal, street maintenance, public green, public lighting, cemeteries. Local self-governments are responsible for a large number of public services and their share in total public expenditures is almost 7%. However, our concrete data for evaluated services clearly show that large decentralization did not deliver immediate results and much remains to be done to improve the processes of local service delivery. The problems are not so much connected with existing legislation, but the core issue is the quality and effectiveness of functioning of all involved institutions. Outsourcing decisions are not well ex-ante reviewed, neither ex-post comprehensively evaluated for their outcomes and results. In many cases, competitive tendering is not used to get the best bid. The main purposes for such situation are lack of accountability and compliance control, the most important corrective measures are proposed in the last part of the paper.     

情势变更原则刍议

情势变更原则虽然在我国合同法中没有明确规定,但在司法实践中却有运用情势变更原则裁决合同纠纷的案例。随着我国社会主义市场经济的建立和逐渐完善,情势变更原则在合同法中的重要性日益凸显。探讨如何在司法实践中适用情势变更原则,使审判工作达到法律效果与社会效果的统一具有十分重要的理论意义和现实意义。     

河北民营经济缘何发展不快

全面建设小康社会,就必须大力发展民营经济。从我省的实际工作来看,民营经济多年发展不快,一个主要的原因是政府职能部门工作落实不到位,存在落实难问题。要解决这一问题就必须营造高效精干的政务环境;转变作风,搞好服务;完善行政立法,加大依法行政力度。     

弱化与强化：地方政府公信力缺失的理论剖析

当前,重构地方政府的公信力,一方面中央要通过完善转移支付制度充分保证地方的有限能力;另一方面,地方政府要合理定位自己的角色,树立正确的政绩考察体系和激励结构,不断提高政府官员的政治素养和官德意识,明晰并强化地方政府的职责。只有这样,才能挽救政府的信誉,保持社会的稳定和长远发展。     

中国地方政府制度创新研究综述

地方政府是一个国家政治制度的重要组成部分,地方政府制度创新因其与民众息息相关的地位而日显重要。随着新制度主义经济学对政治学、行政学的渗透,运用新制度主义的方法对地方政府制度创新的研究迅速发展并取得了一定成果。目前地方政府制度创新的研究主要集中在地方政府制度创新的内涵、主体地位、作用意义、角色内容、动因、悖论及其克服等方面,但在研究中还存在不足。     

Direct and non-linear innovation effects of demographic shifts

A varied set of pressures drive organizational innovation. Among these pressures, demographic shifts seem to boost innovation, as the public sector responds to the arrival of migrants and to community changes in race and ethnic composition. However, we know little about innovation by governments in response to expected population decline. In particular, studies have under-examined how anticipated demographic pressures prompt public organizations to innovate. This study undertakes this task by arguing that innovation is more visible in municipalities facing greater anticipated demographic decline. However, we also argue for a non-linear relationship in which too strong and/or too weak expected demographic declines lead to less visible innovation (inverted U-shape effect). These propositions were tested with a data set of Japanese municipalities and employing a dose–response model. Findings show that anticipated demographic declines directly boost innovation visibility. However, too strong and/or too weak unexpected demographic declines make innovation less visible.