县域政府治理绩效的实证研究：公众满意度的视角--基于佛山市 A 区的治理实践

以佛山市 A 区为个案,对如何测量中国县（区）层级的政府治理绩效进行实证探索。在借鉴世界治理指标（WGI)的基础上,构建了一个本土化的地方政府治理绩效指标体系,对 A 区政府的治理绩效水平进行量化评估,并且通过构建一个多元回归模型深入挖掘影响其总体治理水平的相关因素。结果表明：公众对于 A 区政府的总体治理水平处于“一般”到“比较满意”之间;在六个维度的治理绩效中,公众满意度最低的是“腐败控制”和“法治”,最高的是“政府稳定和暴力避免”和“政府有效性”;除了“管制质量”和“政府稳定与暴力避免”之外,其他四个维度的治理绩效对 A 区政府的总体治理水平都具有显著影响,其中,“政府有效性”对总体治理水平的影响最大。     

文化动力：一种解释城市发展与转型的新思维

城市发展动力问题一直备受社会和学界关注。新型城镇化背景下,以人为本的思路要求城市发展模式从规模粗放型向质量集约型转变、从增量扩能向做优存量调整。因为单纯依赖土地、劳动力、资金和管理效率等要素的“传统模式”,很难维持城市的可持续发展。在新背景下,大城市如何进一步发展,提升内涵与质量？文化动力模式作为一种新的发展路径,是对该问题的学术回应。文化动力中的“文化”,并不是指那种模糊的、抽象的、无所不包的文化,而是指那些与本地居民生活息息相关的生活文化设施、多样性组织、各种文化实践等构成的城市场景,以及场景中隐藏的自我表达、超凡魅力和时尚等价值观与生活方式。这些因素能对创意阶层产生吸引作用,并影响该群体的城市流动和新兴公司选址等。从这个角度来说,文化动力模式作为一种全新思维,重塑着城市发展与转型的后工业路径。     

国家治理现代化视阈下的法律、道德与组织规范关系

国家治理现代化须以系统完备、科学规范、运行有效的规范体系为基础。而法律、道德和"组织规范"共同构成现代社会的规范体系。因而,高度重视"组织规范"并正确处理好它与法律道德的关系,就显得十分重要。"组织规范"具有民间性、自主和自治性,有权制定并实施"组织规范",约束组织本身及其成员的相关行为。这些"组织规范"上承法律下接道德,但又不是照抄照搬,而是依"法无禁止即可为"原则独立存在。在中国继续深化改革和努力实现国家治理现代化的背景下,有必要重新认识三大基础规范的关系,从而有效发挥"组织规范"的作用,构建良好社会秩序。     

Poverty amid plenty: structural violence and local governance in western Congo

The protracted conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has drawn sharp criticism regarding the model of liberal peacebuilding employed in the country. Critics emphasise the importance of local ownership of peacebuilding mechanisms at sub-national as well as national levels. This raises questions in relation to the popular legitimacy and efficacy of local mechanisms. Drawing on field research conducted in the relatively affluent province of Bas-Congo in Western Congo, this article highlights a lack of popular legitimacy for provincial-level political authority within the province stemming from an acute marginalisation of the population from local structures of power and wealth. The article also demonstrates the inefficacy of more local, village and neighbourhood-based political structures which, aimed at conflict mitigation rather than transformation, ignore the structural roots of local conflicts and do little to counteract the growing social distrust, conflict and disintegration within local communities.     

Promoting empowerment? The World Bank's Village Investment Project in Kyrgyzstan

This article examines the extent to which the World Bank's community-driven Village Investment Project empowered people to influence the choice of local investments (micro-projects) and to exact accountability from their leaders. It is based on qualitative interviews and group discussions in 16 rural communities. The research demonstrates that the project provided an effective mechanism for responsive infrastructure delivery to address local priority needs. However, it did not improve accountability either within or outside the micro-project boundaries. The project's bottom-up development model was not by itself sufficient to enable people to exercise power over local government officials and informal leaders in the absence of effective horizontal accountability institutions within the state.     

Democracy,development and chieftaincy along South Africa's ‘Platinum Highway’: some emerging issues

South Africa's ‘Platinum Highway’ (Generally referred to as ‘the platinum belt’.) – ‘a 150?km continuation of platinum group metals (PGM)-bearing reefs’ [Havenstein, R. (2004). “The Platinum Highway – Where Does It Lead?” Accessed May 10, 2011. http://web.up.ac.za/sitefiles/file/EBIT-Innovate/The_Platinum_Highway-where_does_it.pdf, 1] – has ushered in a new era of considerable accumulation of mineral revenues by a few traditional authorities on whose communal lands platinum ore is extracted. The Royal Bafokeng community in the North West province stands as an epitome of this phenomenon. However, not much is known about the relationships at local governance level, particularly the interface of mineral wealth and community development. Adopting the Bafokeng community as an empirical case in this article, I argue that, despite some observed benefits, vast mineral wealth is likely to deepen tensions between local power holders within the sphere of rural local governance, thus paradoxically hampering development, particularly in a context where traditional authorities are the architects and champions of resource-engendered community development.     

Uncertainty at the EU's borders: narratives of EU external relations in the revised European Neighbourhood Policy towards the southern borderlands

This article analyses the role of narratives in European Union (EU) external relations in the revised European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and systematically explores how they operate in practice in the context of the EU's border management practices vis-à-vis the “southern borderlands”, in particular with respect to their inclusionary and exclusionary potential. Key EU documents and statements by EU agents, released throughout the first three years of Arab uprisings and pertaining to the revised ENP, will be subjected to a thorough examination which highlights four observations: first, in spite of the fact that the revised ENP is rooted in several narratives, some nevertheless dominate over others; second, the simultaneous presence of and recourse to different narratives contribute to an increase, rather than a decrease, of uncertainty in the EU's southern borderlands; third, despite a multitude of narratives which serve to legitimize EU action in the framework of the revised ENP, the latter perpetuates the logics of its predecessor by generating benefits mainly for the EU itself; fourth, that the first three years of the revised ENP have in practice demonstrated that an imbalance exists between on the one hand the original acceptance of the narratives by EU stakeholders and on the other hand their willingness to abide by them and fill them with life.     

Conclusion: agency,context and emergent post-uprising regimes

This conclusion summarizes the evidence explaining the divergent trajectories taken by post Arab uprising states in terms of multiple variables, each illustrated by an iconic case, namely: State Failure and Competitive governance (Syria), Regime Restoration and Hybrid Governance (Egypt) and Polyarchic Governance (Tunisia). Factors include the starting point: levels of opposition mobilization and regimes' resilience – a function of their patrimonial-bureaucratic balance; whether or not a transition coalition forms is crucial for democratization prospects. Context also matters for democratization, particularly political economic factors, such as a balance of class power and a productive economy; political culture (level of societal identity cleavages) and a minimum of international intervention. Finally, the balance of agency between democracy movements, Islamists, the military and workers shapes democratization prospects.     

The Politics of Jurisdiction

Jurisdiction is a central concept in the framing of the legal world but it has received short shrift in mainstream legal theory. This article examines the prevailing conceptual forms of jurisdiction in order to retrieve space for the political. The study of jurisdiction is also the study of the political community that it invokes and authorises. The first part of the article examines the three forms that jurisdiction takes in contemporary scholarship (territory, community, governance) to show that each form overlooks some implication of the political community that is tethered to jurisdiction. The second part of the article flips the inquiry to demonstrate the oversight of jurisdiction in theories of sovereign exception. The emergent understanding of jurisdiction as political provides an anchor for the study of jurisdiction going forward and highlights the potential role for jurisdictional arrangements in contemporary public law and constitutional law settings.     

Federal Dynamics of Changing Governance Arrangements in Education: A Comparative Perspective on Australia,Canada and Germany

Abstract

Education policy is a highly interesting field from the point of view of governance, given the substantial changes that have been made throughout the world to the governance of such policy over the last 30 years or so. Western governments in particular have made significant changes in the governance arrangements of their education policy in order to achieve two fundamental goals: increased efficiency and greater accountability. In this process, the role of governments has changed but not diminished. This paper explores such developments by comparing the trajectories of governance reforms in three federal countries (Australia, Canada and Germany). What emerges is that the role of governments is key to all governance mixes modelled by the reform processes in the three analysed countries, and that there is greater “national” coordination than before, but also significant differences in the strategies adopted and in the content of reform, due to the differing nature of such countries’ federal dynamics.