Is there such a thing as a Muslim vote?

This contribution explores to what extent there is such a thing as a distinct Muslim vote in flexible proportional list systems. We test in a new and reliable way whether the religious belonging and behavioural dimension of Muslim voters play a role in their decision-making process when casting preferential votes in a secular democracy. To achieve this, voter and candidate characteristics are modelled simultaneously in cross-classified multilevel analyses where the decision-making process of voters (the demand side) is studied while taking into account the list composition in terms of individual candidates (the supply side). We use data of an exit poll related to the local elections of 2018 in Belgium, especially at oversampled locations. The analyses show that voters who belong to Muslim faith are more likely to vote for Muslim candidates. Contrary, the behaviour dimension of Muslim voters – measured in mosque attendance - has no effect on voting primarily for Muslim candidates.     

全球经济进入"低增长陷阱"背景下的中国财税改革研究

随着全球经济进入低增长阶段,政府宏观政策的多样化和有效性在经济周期中的调控作用不断提高.政府进行的新一轮财税制度改革既是应对全球经济低增长、国内经济换挡、中美贸易战等的重要举措,也是延续分税制改革、缓解土地财政压力和降低地方债务风险的必然结果.新一轮财税制度改革通过维持增值税"五五分享"比例以稳定和调整增值税留抵退税分担机制,后移消费税征收环节并稳步下划地方以保障地方财政收入和提高地方财政支出能力,减税降费以刺激企业创新,合理化收入分配制度以扩大内需,最终实现经济的稳定增长.新一轮财税制度改革取得预期效果,还需要完善转移支付制度、预算管理制度、债务管理制度、信息披露制度等,保障政策落到实处.     

行政程序地方先行立法的主体、模式与规范

行政程序地方先行立法具有试验性。作为试验立法,需探讨立法主体、模式和运作规范三个问题。行政程序应该属于中央立法事项,按照“试验立法权逐级下放”原则,应由地方性法规先行立法,地方政府规章先行立法有越权之嫌。试验立法的对象是实体与程序法律规范,不是法的表达形式,选择立法模式应综合考虑可操作性、立法效率与评估可能性等因素。据此,“法典模式”虽备受关注,但未必是最妥帖的方式,行政程序地方先行立法的恰当模式应当是“类行为法模式”。行政程序地方先行立法的自主、自发性在一定程度上导致了无序性,将来可在鼓励地方自主自发立法的基础上,围绕立法计划,由全国人大及其常委会和国务院有计划地安排和推进,并建立相应的运作规范。     

Managing revenue collection outsourcing in Tanzania’s local government authorities: a case study of Iringa Municipal Council

Due to their critical role in development and governance, local governments need adequate financial resources to deliver the many developmental functions. However, such financial resources are either not available or inadequate. One way of rising to this challenge has been scaling up revenue collection from local revenue sources. This is done through either in-house collection or outsourcing revenue collection. Extant research has focused on the benefits and challenges of outsourcing. This paper expands this body of knowledge by studying how local governments manage private collectors to maximise benefits of outsourcing. From interviews conducted with Iringa Municipality officials and staff, the paper shows that revenue collection outsourcing can be an effective tax administration strategy if properly managed.     

An Era of Continuing Change: Reflections on Local Government in England 1974–2014

Abstract

This article sets the current position of local government in a longer historical perspective. It begins with a discussion of the 1974 local government reorganisation and argues that many of the principles and assumptions determining the ways of working of local authorities remained unchanged after this reorganisation. However, the next 40 years were ones of continuing change, much of it imposed by central government, and the article discusses the often piecemeal implementation of individual changes and the resulting atmosphere of uncertainty and instability. This is followed by an analysis of the cumulative impact of the changes and identifying key problems, and the article concludes by drawing on this analysis to set out the challenges that have to be met if the full potential of the local government is to be realised in the future.     

Sales Tax Competition among State–Local Governments: Evidence from the US Counties

This article estimates tax reaction function of local governments competing with other governments to provide the insight for tax policy decision makers. Employing a panel of county-level data in all the states from 1970 to 2006, this article analyzes sales tax competition between county governments. In addition to a static model, this article pays more attention to dynamics in tax reaction function estimated by general methods of moments containing lagged dependent variables in the reaction function. Focusing on county governments, this article finds evidence for strategic interaction, an interaction that has positive effects on the setting of tax rates in a county.     

Analyzing decentralized resource regimes from a polycentric perspective

This article seeks to shed new light on the study of decentralized natural resource governance by applying institutional theories of polycentricity—the relationships among multiple authorities with overlapping jurisdictions. The emphasis on multi-level dynamics has not penetrated empirical studies of environmental policy reforms in non-industrial countries. On the contrary, many of today’s decentralization proponents seem to be infatuated with the local sphere, expecting that local actors are always able and willing to govern their natural resources effectively. Existing studies in this area often focus exclusively on characteristics and performance of local institutions. While we certainly do not deny the importance of local institutions, we argue that institutional arrangements operating at other governance scales—such as national government agencies, international organizations, NGOs at multiple scales, and private associations—also often have critical roles to play in natural resource governance regimes, including self-organized regimes.

Subnational participation in extra-national policy solutions: Kitakyushu City as an intermediate agent in policy coordination

The growing challenges of environment and sustainable development stretch across scales of geographic space and require action at multiple levels of jurisdictions, such as individual level, community level, national level, and global level. Multilevel governance and cross-scale coordination will open up opportunities for a variety of stakeholders to participate in decision-making. While potentially increasing the capacity of governance, the cross-scale and multilevel approaches may face a difficulty in policy coordination created by the plurality of stakeholders and be attended with organizational complexity. This article will examine the potential of subnational participation to make a policy choice, mediated by local governments, to be congruent with global strategies and national mandates in a consistent way. To this end, it will bring a new perspective to Kitakyushu City's experience in Japan as a heuristic test case study. My claim is that subnational actors occupy a strategic position to straddle the division between state and society, between the center and the periphery, and between the domestic and the foreign so they can act as an intermediate agent in reconnecting local action with national policy and turning global strategies into local action for problem solving.     

The 2016 Local Government Elections in KwaZulu-Natal,South Africa: Is Jesus on His Way?

Post-1994, the African National Congress (ANC) has increasingly allied itself to traditional authorities in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). Part of the reason for this has been to undermine the support base of the Inkatha Freedom Party. In more recent times, the alliance between chiefs and the ANC has seen them linked to mining interests, often running roughshod over local forms of resistance. In addition, the August 2016 local government elections showed a weakening of ANC support in some of these rural hotspots of KZN, thus creating the possibilities for activists to build alliances anew.     

Local candidates and voter mobilization: Evidence from historical two-round elections in Norway

What effect do candidates with local ties have on voter turnout and party support? A considerable challenge within the existing literature on the personal vote, including that part which derives from local ties, is disentangling it from the party vote using observational data. We exploit the unique institutional context of Norway’s historical two-round system, and data measured at the municipality level, to evaluate the mobilizational impact of voter attachment to parties versus (local) candidates. Under this system, entry into the second round was unrestricted, with the number and identity of candidates determined by elite coordination decisions. In municipalities where coordination at the district level between rounds resulted in the withdrawal of a candidate with local ties, we document a strong negative effect on both turnout and party support, which highlights the value of the personal vote for mobilization, and the potential trade-offs that confront parties and coalitions in nomination decisions.