Balance Between Local Economic Development and Environmental Sustainability: A Multi-level Governance Perspective

This study seeks to explain why U.S. local governments utilize environmental sustainability to promote economic development. Economic development and environmental protection need not be competing objectives, but rather, environmental protection can enhance local economic competitiveness. Using data from the ICMA Economic Development Survey, this study tests an empirical model that includes state sustainability initiatives, participation in climate protection networks, and political attitudes toward economic development as predictors of local policy decisions. The findings reinforce a multi-level governance perspective on explaining the balance cities seek to achieve between environmental protection and economic growth.     

Organizing teachers in Pennsylvania, 1935–1941

ABSTRACT

By eliminating mandatory agency fees, the US Supreme Court’s Janus decision has created an opportunity for the American teachers’ unions to renew their commitment to organizing teachers. This article returns us to the pre-agency fee era, when on-the-ground organizational work was essential for building teachers’ unions. Drawing from archival documents, it shows how dedicated activists from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh reached out to Pennsylvania’s classroom teachers to draw them into the AFT during the later Depression years. It details the changes in their organizational strategy, the challenges organizers faced in the field, their successes and failures, and the work accomplished by a paid AFT organizer – Vivian Dahl – in 1938. Above all, it documents both the dividends of face-to-face interactions between organizers and prospective unionists and the difficulties of such work in an ideologically polarized political environment, among a group of workers dominated by the hierarchical ethos of professionalism.     

Coming out of the shadow? Studies of local governments in Central and Eastern Europe in European academic research

This article is an analysis of the changing role of research on local governments in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) within mainstream European studies. It refers to dependency theory (Wallerstein, Prebish) as applied to scientific research. It classifies CEE as being in the semi-periphery of academic research. The empirical analysis consists of two parts: (1) qualitative review of the most important of the comparative studies of European local governments. It includes a discussion on the role of local governments and researchers from CEE in these studies; (2) quantitative based on an analysis of articles published in international journals and citations for those articles in Scopus. The analysis covers 14 countries (all new member states who joined the EU from 2004 onwards, plus the Balkan countries: Albania, Macedonia, and Serbia).     

Cooperation,not cost savings: explaining duration of shared service agreements

Among local governments, inter-municipal cooperation is the growing reform; but the literature is silent regarding the determinants of longer-term shared service agreements. We conducted a survey of all local governments in New York State in 2013 to assess the level of sharing across 29 public services. The duration of shared service agreements varies from 1 to 80 years. What explains this difference? Our hierarchical linear model shows that service sharing agreements fall along a cooperation continuum, where cost savings are a determinant of shorter agreements, while the public values of service quality and cross-jurisdictional coordination explain longer-term agreements. We also find that positive past experience with sharing partners increases the duration of sharing agreements. Our analysis lays the foundation for new theories of shared services that build directly from the benefits of improved regional coordination, inter-municipal reciprocity and service quality, not from theories based solely on competition and costs.     

If territorial fragmentation is a problem,is amalgamation a solution? – Ten years later

ABSTRACT

Over the last decade, municipal territorial amalgamation has occurred in 15 European countries. The same period has seen spectacular progress in research on the relationship between municipal size and the functioning of local governments, as well as the impacts of territorial reforms on economic performance and local democracy. Quasi-experimental designs treating territorial reforms as specific “research laboratories” have constituted an important part of that trend. However, there are still important gaps in the knowledge and the study results are often inconclusive. These observations call for a research agenda for the future.     

Big change,little change? Punctuation,increments and multi-layer institutional change for English local authorities under austerity

This paper draws on new institutionalist theories to consider how we might characterise the process and outcomes of change occurring in English local government as a result of the UK’s austerity policies. It uses national and local empirical data to argue that changes are best understood as multi-layer processes, whereby radical ‘punctuated’ shifts in national funding can be mitigated to incremental adjustments in service delivery at a local level. However, the paper also suggests that the incremental appearance of change may be temporary, and that diminishing institutional resilience and emergent discursive shifts potentially prefigure a paradigm change in local governance.     

朝鲜族乡村社会的集中村建设及其社会共同体的质变

城镇化进程将导致传统村落共同体的解体与巨大社会变迁.引导乡村社区的整合与重构,摸索乡村社会可持续发展模式是必要的.朝鲜族乡村社会在城市化进程中经历了巨大社会变迁.为了克服社会变迁带来的阵痛,朝鲜族社会自发组织起集中村建设运动,通过集中村的形式实现就地城镇化的道路.尊重经济结构形式与社会共同体形式之间关系的规律,成为城镇化背景下乡村社区重构的关键因素.集中村建设经验对于处于社会转型期的中国乡村社会,具有启示性的意义.     

论中央与地方关系法治化的实践和理论误区

目前,我国中央与地方关系的法治化在立法、司法方面成就与不足并存,在行政方面法治化程度最低。加快中央与地方行政关系的法治化是解决当前我国诸多重大问题的客观需要,是当前我国行政管理体制改革的必然要求。中央与地方关系的法治化问题在实质上就是国家结构形式的完善问题,在推进中央与地方关系法治化的过程中,应当注意走出国家结构形式的几个理论误区:我国的国家结构形式是单一制;联邦制奉行的是"双重主权"原则;单一制与联邦制相比,中央更具权威;完善国家结构形式,我们必须坚持单一制。     

地方政府竞争中的制度创新及异化分析

我国地方政府在政府竞争的压力之下,起着政治企业家的作用,进行了诸如产权制度变革、行政审批制度改革以及地方公共物品供给制度改革等制度创新行为。但行政性分权的非制度性和非稳定性,法律约束机制的缺失以及中央政府宏观调控式微等制度安排中的缺陷导致了地方政府制度创新中的悖论,地方政府在政府竞争中以曲解规则、补充文件等异化的制度创新行为和方式来理解和贯彻国家的法律法规和上级要求实施的制度规则,以求满足自身利益的最大化。     

浅谈电子政务建设与政府管理体制创新

电子政务是信息时代的产物,它的出现给政府管理改革带来了深刻的影响与冲击。加快建设电子政务,对推动政府管理体制创新对于提高行政效率、节约行政成本,提升政务管理信息化水平,增强政府反应力和社会回应力等方面都具有十分重要的意义。