The Band or the Baton: What Drives China’s Local Governments to Pursue Growth?

Geographies of local government

A Study of Local Government in Africa through Participatory Action Research (PAR)

The impact analysis of media attention on local environmental governance based on four-party evolutionary game

How does central-local interaction affect local environmental governance? Insights from the transformation of central environmental protection inspection in China

Purpose: This paper critically examines opportunities and problems confronting the Nigerian local government system. To assess why the practice of complete local government autonomy and governance is difficult in Nigeria and suggest measures that may help improve the collaboration between the federal, state, and local government authorities in Nigeria. Research methodology: 300 questionnaires were administered to the staff of the Nkanu-West Local Government Area in Enugu State, and 276 were returned giving a response rate of 92 percent. The Marxist theory was adopted as the theoretical framework. Results: Results show that state interference in local affairs contributes to a lack of local government autonomy and governance, and the constitutional provisions portend intractable inter-government problems which make the local government a whipping child and less autonomous. Limitations: Nkanu-West local government is the only local government covered by the study. Contribution: The outcome of the study will be a contribution to the existing literature in the area of local government autonomy and governance.

The Routledge handbook of international local government

With the increasing attention paid to environmental protection and sustainable development in various countries worldwide, the relationship between local government competition and environmental governance has become more subtle and complex. This paper provides new insight into their relationship based on public value theory and media sentiment perspective. Utilizing panel data from 2012 to 2019 in 216 cities in China, this study integrated Data Envelopment Analysis, Conflicting Attitudes Model, Computer-Aided Text Analysis, and machine learning-based sentiment analysis, as well as nonlinear mediation model to empirically test the relationships among local governments’ competition pressure, public value conflict, media sentiments, and environmental governance performance. The study found that: (1) Competition pressure and environmental governance performance exist in a “U-curved” relationship. (2) The core mechanism of the above relationship lies in the mediating role of public value conflict. Within a specific range, the public value conflict faced by local governments increases as competition pressure increases. This conflict would push local governments into a dilemma and induce them to commit misconduct. However, when competition pressure exceeds this range, the public value conflict faced by local governments will be weakened, leading environmental governance performance to rebound. (3) Negative media sentiments significantly alleviate the negative impact of public value conflict on environmental governance performance. This study helps researchers and policymakers recognize government competition’s influence on environmental governance from a public value perspective, with further exploration and confirmation of the moderating role of media sentiments. It also provides theoretical and policy enlightenment for rethinking the behavior logic of local government and solving the dilemma of local government environmental governance.

With the development of Internet technology, multisource big data can collect and analyze information so as to provide people with a good vision. In the process of governance, local governments will have problems of incomplete information. With the development of big data, multisource and big data will have advanced nature. Therefore, based on multisource big data, this paper analyzes the multisource big data algorithm in detail and establishes a local government governance model based on multisource big data. Then, the proposed model is applied to the local government governance process of Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Tianjin, and the local governance situation of each city is compared and analyzed so as to provide some reference for the optimization of the local government governance path. The experimental results show that the local governance model based on multisource big data can optimize the local government governance path and point out the direction for the local government governance path.

Accelerating the construction of modern fiscal and tax system helps not only free local governments from the shackle of the “competition for growth” development model, but also improve the governance capacity of local governments and realize the good governance of the country in the long term. Firstly, based on the typical fact of Chinese-style fiscal decentralization, this paper theoretically interprets the multiple channels and influencing mechanisms among vertical fiscal imbalance, transfer payment and local government governance. Secondly, it constructs a comprehensive index system to measure the governance capacity of local governments. The result shows that local government governance is relatively low in capacity and slow in improvement, and displays obvious regional heterogeneity. Then, the paper chooses structure and scale of transfer payment as mediator to construct the panel simultaneous equation model, and uses the three-stage least squares estimation (3SLS) for empirical investigation. The study finds that first, both the scale and structure of transfer payment may significantly affect local government governance, but the direction of the effects is opposite; second, the intensified vertical fiscal imbalance and the increase of transfer payment in scale can significantly inhibit local government governance, but the optimization of transfer payment in structure can significantly improve the governance; third, vertical fiscal imbalance not only directly inhibits the improvement of local government governance, but indirectly impedes it through the scale and structure of transfer payment.

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals Requires Transdisciplinary Innovation at the Local Scale

Í þessari grein eru kynntar niðurstöður rannsóknar þar sem markmiðið var að varpa ljósi á viðhorf og reynslu skólastjóra leik- og grunnskóla af stuðningi við þá af hálfu fræðsluyfirvalda sveitarfélaga sem og annarra, bæði í starfi og til að sækja meistaranám í skólastjórnun. Gagna var aflað með viðtölum við 14 skólastjóra sem höfðu samtals starfað sem skólastjórar í um 14 sveitarfélögum. Niðurstöður benda til þess að sá stuðningur sem skólastjórarnir fengu skipti þá miklu máli. Hann hafði áhrif á það hvernig þeir upplifðu starfið og hvernig þeim fannst sér ganga að sinna því og vinna samkvæmt eigin sannfæringu og þekkingu. Stuðningur fræðsluyfirvalda sveitarfélaga var skólastjórum einna mikilvægastur en hann var breytilegur. Skólastjórarnir túlkuðu stuðning fræðsluyfirvalda aðallega út frá því að hvaða marki þeir upplifðu velvilja og skilning af hálfu sveitarfélaganna gagnvart sér og skólastarfinu. Skólastjórarnir töldu þó að fræðsluyfirvöld þyrftu yfirhöfuð að taka meiri ábyrgð á stuðningi við þá og skólana, og að stuðningur þyrfti að vera meiri, markvissari og betur lagaður að þeirra eigin aðstæðum. Jafnframt komu fram vísbendingar um að huga þyrfti sérstaklega að stuðningi við skólastjóra sem koma að sameiningarferli skóla. Niðurstöður benda til þess að stuðningur fræðsluyfirvalda sveitarfélaga sé fremur lítill þegar kemur að meistaranámi í skólastjórnun og virðist vera litið á slíkt nám sem einkamál skólastjóra (og kennara). Annars sóttu skólastjórar helst stuðning í eigið tengslanet, til maka, aðstoðarskólastjóra og stjórnendateymis, auk annarra skólastjóra.

Clarifying the rational choice strategy of local governments and enterprises is crucial for promoting control on the failure of taxis and online car-hailing service companies to fulfill their social responsibilities. The local government can reduce the negative externalities and irresponsibility of such companies by improving the regulatory system; thus, it is important to build a governance model that bridges tradition and modernity. This paper, on the basis of summarizing the achievements of the predecessors, builds a mixed dynamic game model among the local government, online car-hailing service companies, and taxi companies; analyzes the relationship between local government preference, execution, and governance of irresponsible enterprise behaviors; and analyzes the equilibrium solution between local government and duopoly enterprises behavior game deeply. The results show that the key to governance irresponsible companies is to make the punishment cost higher than the cost savings for irresponsible behaviors; no matter what the preference of the local government no-governance of online car-hailing service companies’ irresponsible behaviors may persist; and local government ambivalence when regulating irresponsible companies is derived from the complex relationship between social benefits and company interests. Finally, through the analysis of the equilibrium results for the above model, this paper provides suggestions on regulatory policies so as to provide theoretical support and a decision-making basis for establishing scientific, universal, and feasible governance policies and offering responsible methods of urban transportation.

At present, China’s environmental problem has become a problem that has to be solved on the road to the healthy development of the economy and society. Under the Chinese style of decentralization, performance evaluation becomes an important factor affecting the implementation of environmental policies. Based on the strategic interaction among local governments, this paper combines the theories of decentralization, administrative subcontract and political tournament, and puts forward relevant hypotheses: the greening of performance assessment helps make good competition between local governments in environmental governance; decentralization affects the relationship between performance appraisal and environmental governance strategic interaction among local governments. This paper uses the panel data of 272 prefecture-level cities in China between 2003 and 2014 to build the spatial Durbin model, and uses maximum likelihood estimation（MLE）to get the results after regression: reasonable performance evaluation index and decentralization system can make environmental governance develop in the direction of ‘benign competition’. As a whole, the environmental governance between local governments has a strategic interaction of ‘imitative competition’. Based on political tournament theory, this paper empirically studies the impact of performance assessment on the interaction of environmental governance strategies among cities in China. Results show that environmental performance indicators enhance the strategic interaction of race to the top” among cities, and economic performance indicators weaken the race to the top” strategic interaction among cities. Furthermore, based on the theories of political tournament” and administrative contract”, we examine the impact of the combination of performance appraisal and decentralization on the strategic interaction between local governments. Environmental performance indicators combined with higher authority can weaken the race to the bottom” strategic interaction, and enhance the race to the top” strategic interaction. If equipped with higher financial power, it will weaken the race to the bottom” strategic interaction. The combination of economic performance and higher authority enhances the competitive interaction strategy and weakens the race to the top” strategic interaction. If the financial power is bigger, it will enhance the race to the bottom” strategic interaction. Accordingly, policy implications are given as follows: to establish the linkage mechanism” of environmental governance, namely joint defense and joint control” is the way to effectively control the environment; how to set reasonable performance evaluation index by the central government to hold the nose of an ox of local government environmental governance is the priority among priorities; a reasonable set of performance evaluation indicators, accompanied by reasonable decentralization system, namely environmental performance indicators as hard constraints” with the property rights and power, will encourage local government environmental governance to benign competition, to make the implementation of environmental policies get twice the result with half the effort.

Background: Past changes in Polish local and regional governments’ financial autonomy give rise to the question whether local and regional governments in Poland still have sufficient finan­cial autonomy to perform in line with the requirements of the principle of subsidiarity. Dimen­sions of special concern are revenue as well as selected recent legislation changes’ potential future impact on Polish local and regional governments’ financial autonomy in terms of both revenue and expenditure. Research purpose: The main objective of the article is to reflect upon the notion of local and regional self-governance, and to critically assess the current degree of financial autonomy of local and regional governments in Poland. Methods: The article starts with a review of literature covering key concepts – subsidiarity, fiscal decentralisation, and local governments’ financial autonomy. Some of the approaches used to operationalise and measure financial autonomy are also highlighted and later used in the analysis and discussion. Conclusions: The article ends with a call for general debate on the future of local and regional governments in Poland as the past trends and expected future developments – in light of discussed legislation changes as well as the potential impacts of the covid-19 pandemic – demonstrate the gradual erosion of the local governance model, which was founded three decades ago on a prem­ise of strong financial autonomy.

In environmental governance, local governments are the main actors, and their behavioral preferences between economic growth competition (EGC) and environmental regulation (ER) affect the inputs and outputs of environmental governance. Most studies discuss the relationship between government behaviors and the environment from the fiscal decentralization perspective, with few studies from the fiscal pressure (FP) perspective. Importantly, the bidirectional interaction mechanism is easily ignored. This study measured local government FP, EGC, ER, and environmental governance efficiency (EGE) in China's Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region from 2000 to 2020. Moran's I index was used to identify the change characteristics of local government behavioral preferences. The interaction mechanism was analyzed by a panel vector autoregression (PVAR) model. The results show that (1) from 2000 to 2020, FP was generally strengthened. EGE generally showed fluctuating and rising change characteristics, with more obvious fluctuating and rising characteristics before 2012 and after 2012, respectively. Local governments shifted from a strong alternative preference to a weak synergistic preference. (2) FP had a self-reinforcing effect. EGC and ER had a self-weakening effect. EGE had not only a self-weakening effect but also a weak self-dependence. (3) There is a double negative interaction mechanism between FP and local government behavioral preferences. FP made local governments prefer to reduce EGC and relax ER, but in fact, EGC and ER were conducive to alleviating FP. (4) There is a negative transitive influence mechanism between FP, local government behavioral preferences and EGE. The negative effect of FP on EGE can be transmitted by reducing EGC and ER. This paper provides a scientific basis for improving EGE in the YRD region and understanding the behavioral logic of local governments' environmental governance and a reference for other rapidly industrializing and urbanizing regions.