村民自治的历史嬗变--传统文化传承视角下的村民自治审视

传统乡村自治文化是在长期生存过程中对乡村居民生存境域进行深刻认识和对其生活经验进行系统总结后逐步形成的，蕴含着丰富的生存论方面的认识价值和实践方面的参考价值，对生存问题终极思考的永恒性使得传统和现代可以进行超越时空的对话。正是基于这样的原因，传统乡村自治文化中长期积聚的认识和经验在现代社会依然可以得到延续。通过对乡村自治文化进行历史审视和对其内涵做简要分析，发现传统乡村自治不仅出自乡村自我管理的现实需求，也源于教化及文化传承的精神需要，这就使得传统乡村自治文化在现代社会的超越性发展有了前提和基础，因此，深度挖掘传统村民自治中的优秀文化资源，积极探索其和现代村民自治的有效衔接途径，具有非常重要的现实意义。     

地方政府环境监管的失衡与平衡

日益频发的环境事故反映了我国地方政府环境监管失衡的现状,包括环境监管体制不健全,传统政绩考核观的局限,环保问责制度流于形式,环境保护基本制度没有得到根本落实以及环保部门的执法权限欠缺,对违法企业的处罚力度不够导致了我国环境监管的失衡等等.因此,改革地方政府环境监管体制,实行环保政绩考核,加强对政府第一责任人的问责,建立绿色GDP的国民经济核算体系以及落实环保基本法律制度等是完善我国地方政府环境监管职责的重要途径.     

Place Management at the City of Swan – A Whole‐of‐City Approach

Local government often consists of a diverse array of local communities, but remains ideally placed to work with communities in responding to challenges at a local ‘place’ level, as well as broader regional issues. The City of Swan, Western Australian (WA) recognised that it required a more adaptable and place focussed approach to the planning and delivery of services to its large and diverse communities. This has led to the adoption of a place management approach at the City, including the division of the City into five smaller place management areas, based around communities of shared interest. This article highlights the application of place management as it has been applied across the City of Swan, including lessons learnt to date.     

革命地方实践与妇女解放问题:兼评丛小平《革命中国的婚姻、法律与性别,1940-1960》

1939年《陕甘宁边区婚姻条例》颁布后,边区法院做出了系列司法修改和调整。丛小平的近期研究《革命中国的婚姻、法律与性别,1940-1960》详细考察了这一过程及其背景和影响。她指出,边区政府在施行婚姻法改革的过程中积极考量、吸纳了地方风俗和司法实践经验,出现了从婚姻"自由"到"自主"的核心法制理念的变化。这一立法司法建制过程体现了中共革命"从群众中来、到群众中去"的根本路线,激发并肯定了农村妇女的"自主"能动性,并没有背弃其妇女解放的承诺。这一研究回应和修正了20世纪80年代英文学界关于社会主义革命和妇女解放的主流观点,体现了新世纪以来中外学界关于社会主义革命和妇女解放问题研究的新趋势,具有鲜明的方法论意义。     

清代台湾滨海的海埔产权纠纷及其官民应对策略——以乾隆年间海埔纠纷为例

台湾岛西南内海区域在河川、风灾、水灾等因素的影响下,大量泥沙淤积而形成新的海埔地,这些尚未纳入租税体制却有利可图的土地成为各类人群争夺的目标,不同生计模式的人群对这片土地产权归属有着不同的认知,他们各自的权益伸张导致当地官司连年。举凡乾隆二十四年(1759)、五十三年(1788)、五十七年(1792)一连串“海坪”霸占争议案件,皆由此而来;而乾隆三十五年(1770)的禁垦海埔与盐场废地以及乾隆五十六年(1791)的晒丁械斗杀人事件,亦是源于对盐场周遭海埔地的产权纠纷。不同利益群体的权益伸张以及官府的判定原则始终取决于当地复杂的人际网络与利益分配关系,这也决定着海埔地的产权归属。     

Local Expenditure Interaction in Italian Municipalities: Do Local Council Partnerships Make a Difference?

This paper investigates interdependence among local councils in Italy in their public spending and distinguishes between possible sources of this interdependence. We find significant positive interaction among neighbouring local councils in regard to both spending at the level of total expenditure and spending on different sub-categories. Attempts to identify the source of this horizontal interaction seem to reject the yardstick competition hypothesis. Addressing the role that local council partnerships may play in internalising fiscal externalities, we suggest that expenditure interaction may be driven by spill-over.     

A ‘Fruitless Obsession with Accuracy’: The Uses of Sensemaking in Public Sector Performance Management

Sensemaking provides a framework for understanding and interpreting managers' working lives, based on a thorough critique of rational choice models. It refutes rational choice, and aims not to predict, prove or control but simply to explain: the making of sense. This article, based on the author's original prizewinning MBA thesis, presents research undertaken in 2005–2006 on the uses of sensemaking in understanding local government organisations' contrasting experiences of performance management systems: an internal system in Canadian city government, and an externally-imposed system in the form of the now abandoned Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) in British local government. Key literature utilised includes social and organisational psychologist Karl Weick, British complexity theorists such as Ralph Stacey, and a literature on the politics of organisational behaviour (such as Guy Peters et al.). A critique of rational choice and summary of sensemaking precedes an account of phenomenological case study research across two countries, undertaken using ethnographic field methods. The author argues that using sensemaking to understand performance management systems provides a further imperfect means of making sense of inherent organisational equivocality. These systems are radically interpreted as devices for making sense of experience in organisations in which human behaviour cannot be expected to be forever accurately predicted and controlled. Conclusions with enduring relevance for practising managers are presented on the personal, tactical, methodological and philosophical ‘uses’ of sensemaking in managers' working lives.     

Local Government Reforms in (Seven) European Countries: Between Convergent and Divergent,Conflicting and Complementary Developments

In selecting the United Kingdom/England, Germany, Sweden, France, Italy, Spain and Hungary as comparative cases, and in focusing on three institutional tracks (local leadership, internal administration and external operation), this article first discusses, on the one hand, whether local government has been institutionally strengthened, and on the other, whether governance-type actor networks have expanded in the countries under consideration and whether, across-countries, this developments has shown convergence or divergence. Secondly, it addresses the question of whether the two currents (strengthening of traditional local government and expansion of local governance networks) are conflicting or complementary.     

Entrepreneurship and Participation in Public Management Reforms at the Local Level

This article seeks to discuss who the policy entrepreneurs are and who participates in the policy-making process of public management reforms at the local level. In order to answer the research questions, a multi-unit and multi-case research study was carried out in three municipal governments: Barcelona, Boston and Turin. The subjects of the study were 15 innovations in management implemented between 1992 and 2007. The first conclusion is that politicians predominantly take the entrepreneurial role in introducing innovations in public management, regardless of the technicality of the innovation. As far as political participation is concerned, public management reforms are still dealt with as in-house matters, even when public managers want to be recognised as promoting the positive values of political participation.     

Interorganisational Relations and Goal Consensus: An Exploratory Study in Two Local Dutch Service Delivery Networks

The present study explores how similarity in policy preferences within pairs of organisations in service delivery networks (that is, goal consensus) is related to existing bilateral interorganisational relations. We distinguish between different types of interorganisational relations and hypothesise that stronger relations are positively associated with goal consensus. A social network analysis is performed using data on 546 ties in two complete service delivery networks in a medium-sized city in the Netherlands. Results indicate that the strongest association is between goal consensus and types of interorganisational relations that imply more strategic information exchange between members of the organisations – especially managerial interaction.