Township Government Research Articles

Political trust as rational belief: Evidence from Chinese village elections

Democratic governance is believed to improve government responsiveness to citizens’ demand for public goods. In China, villagers’ committee elections represent a major progress in China’s development toward good governance. We develop a rational model to explain villagers’ participation. Utilizing a national survey of rural residents in 2005, this paper tests the insights of the model. Two findings are of interest to the students of voting and elections. First, there is disagreement over the causal relationship between political trust and voting. This paper offers a rational interpretation of political trust by emphasizing the informational aspect of the concept. Second, voting is generally theorized as a process of overcoming various costs. The prospect of benefits figures more prominently in Chinese village elections. Our findings highlight the pivotal role of township governments in China’s rural politics and reveal the inner dilemma of democratization in China.

The Hollow State: Rural Governance in China

AbstractOver the last decade, rural township governments have been subjected to intensive streamlining and rationalization programmes. This article examines which ongoing reforms and processes are causing township governments to become “hollow shells,” and explores the effects of “hollowing out” on township government leaders, staff and rural residents. While the aim of local government reform was to transform extractive township governments into “service-oriented” agencies, this article finds that the current logic of rural governance has produced township governments which are squeezed from above and below. From above, township leaders face the political imperatives of inspections, annual assessments, the need to attract industrial investment and an ongoing process of “soft centralization” by higher levels of government. From below, township staff are drawn out to the villages to enforce family planning policies and maintain social stability. Unprecedented numbers are working as “sent-down cadres” in villages where their capacity to deliver services has been weakened by village amalgamations and the lifting of agricultural taxes and fees. Despite significant boosts to rural health and education investment, rural residents still face a level of government that regards them as problems to be dealt with, rather than citizens to be served.

Township Government's Control and The Administrative Tendency of Villagers' Committee in the Operation Process of Villagers' Self-Government

Township Government's Control and The Administrative Tendency of Villagers' Committee in the Operation Process of Villagers' Self-Government

Local government responses to urban river pollution in late medieval England

This article examines the local responses to medieval urban river pollution in three leading English towns—Coventry, Norwich, and York—during the late fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. The case studies reveal the extent to which local governments became involved in river upkeep. Interventions by the town governments were twofold: (1) preventative actions in the form of regulations and regulatory enforcement and (2) responsive actions to physically remove materials that had already accumulated in the rivers. Previous histories have not treated pollution regulations and regular river upkeep activities such as scouring and dredging as part of the same toolbox for responding to urban river pollution, yet these two seemingly separate activities were indeed connected during the medieval period. Both legislative action and scouring projects were responses to filth and waste accumulation in urban waterways. By overlooking the connection between pollution legislation and river cleansing, historians have underappreciated the extent of involvement by local town governments in controlling and responding to pollution in the riverine landscape.

What is New in the “New Rural Co-operative Medical System”? An Assessment in One Kazak County of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

In 2002, the Chinese leadership announced a change in national welfare policy: Voluntary medical schemes at county level, called the "New Rural Co-operative Medical System" should cover all counties by 2010. This article addresses the main characteristics of this system, analyses the introduction of local schemes based on our own field studies in one Kazak county of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region since 2006, and argues that the fast progressing of the local scheme and the flexibility shown by local administrators in considering structural and procedural adjustments are not the result of central directives but of local initiatives. Recentralization from the township governments to functional departments in the provincial and the central state administration is only one aspect of current rural governance. Complementary forms of locally embedded responsiveness to the needs of health care recipients are crucial in restructuring the administration and discharge of health care. These new modes of governance are different from the hierarchical control and institutionalized representation of interests of the local population.

Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation , and: The Making of the American Republic, 1763–1815 (review)

Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation. By Ray Raphael. (New York: The New Press, 2009. Pp. 608. Cloth, $35.00.)The Making of the American Republic, 1763-1815. By Paul A. Gilje. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005. Pp. 352. Paper, $53.80.)Reviewed by Ryan PetersenRay Raphael's Founders and Paul Gilje's The Making of the American Republic both cover roughly the same period of early American history. Raphael begins in 1754 with Washington's ill-fated mission to the Ohio country and essentially ends with the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791. As indicated in the title, Gilje's narrative starts approximately a decade later, after the end of the French and Indian War (though he draws on earlier events), and continues through to the conclusion of the War of 1812. Despite the similarity in scope, these are two very different books, with decidedly different approaches, different emphases, and very different target audiences.As with two of his previous books, Raphael once again approaches a familiar subject from a slightly different angle than that usually presented in historical narratives targeted at general audiences.1 Rather than focusing solely on well-known political and military figures, Founders presents Revolutionary America as viewed through the experiences of seven individuals and underscores five themes. Providing something of a representative sample, his cast of characters includes George Washington, Joseph Plumb Martin, Mercy Otis Warren, Robert Morris, Timothy Bigelow, Henry Laurens, and Thomas Young. Throughout the book (and consistent with his earlier work), Raphael focuses on the themes of popular sovereignty, inclusion and exclusion, exchanges of power, constraining authority, and expansion.Though Raphael ostensibly begins in 1754, and the title of his book (at least to this political scientist) seems to convey an emphasis on the events surrounding the Constitutional Convention and ratification debates, he is clearly most interested in the events leading up to and during the Revolutionary War. Sixteen of twenty chapters focus on the period between 1765 and 1783. Events before 1765 are covered in a single chapter, as are both the immediate aftermath of the Revolutionary War and the Constitutional Convention, with one chapter dedicated to each. The final chapter, Lives and Legacies, completes the stories of the seven individuals Raphael follows throughout the book and reflects on their place in the retelling of the Revolutionary story.Continuing in the theme of A People's History and The First American Revolution, Raphael clearly sees class struggle as a key element of the Revolution, and he likes to call attention to both the role of common people and the leveling effect of the within the Revolution on American society. Whether describing the formation of the American Political Society in Worcester, Massachusetts (and its subsequent takeover of the town government), the drafting of the radical Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, or the difficulties faced by pro-Revolution elites as they were forced to come to grips with the democratizing effects of the Revolution, Raphael seems most at home when exploring and emphasizing these themes.Raphael is a fine writer and does an outstanding job of interweaving his themes with the lives of the individuals he follows (as well those immediately surrounding them) into a coherent narrative. Though his book is obviously targeted at a mass audience, Raphael has written a serious history based on extensive research and a reliance on primarysource documents. As popular history, Raphael's book certainly succeeds. His relatively unique approach is such that nonspecialists will learn a great deal about Revolutionary America. Particularly noteworthy is his bringing to light the centrality of Robert Morris to the Revolutionary cause. Even for specialists, Founders warrants attention. While few will encounter any new material on George Washington or Joseph Plumb Martin, many will learn a considerable amount about Henry Laurens, Robert Morris, and Mercy Otis Warren. …

Дьяки и подьячие городов Среднего Поволжья в Смуту начала XVII века

Дьяки и подьячие городов Среднего Поволжья в Смуту начала XVII века

Социальная дифференциация и местное самоуправление в сельских поселениях и малых городах России: итоги двадцати постсоветских лет (рук. — А. М. Никулин)

Социальная дифференциация и местное самоуправление в сельских поселениях и малых городах России: итоги двадцати постсоветских лет (рук. — А. М. Никулин)

Grassroots Democracy and Local Governance: Evidence from Rural China

This paper studies the impacts of village elections on the accountability of the village committee, local fiscal sharing, and state taxation in rural China using data of 48 villages for the period of 1986–2002. Elections are found to substantially increase the share of public expenditures in the village budget, but reduce the shares of administrative costs and income handed to the township government. Those findings suggest that elections have enhanced the accountability of the village committee, but weakened local fiscal sharing and the state's grip. No strong evidence is found that state taxation is affected by elections, nor it is found that the role of a more competitive election is different from that of a closed election.

<em>Typhoid in Uppingham: Analysis of a Victorian Town and School in Crisis, 1875-77</em>, by Nigel Richardson

Reviewed by: Typhoid in Uppingham: Analysis of a Victorian Town and School in Crisis, 1875–77 Michael Worboys (bio) Typhoid in Uppingham: Analysis of a Victorian Town and School in Crisis, 1875–77, by Nigel Richardson; pp. xix + 268. London and Brookfield: Pickering & Chatto, 2008, £60.00, $99.00. In the early months of 2010, British newspapers reported that the independent schools’ Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC), sensing dissatisfaction with university standards, were thinking of establishing an elite private university on the American liberal arts model. They proposed to name the university after Edward Thring, the nineteenth-century educationalist who founded the HMC and was the headmaster of Uppingham School from 1853 to 1887. He is known today for transforming Uppingham from a local school to an important national institution and for his widely emulated curriculum and pedagogic innovations. Indeed, it is now accepted that he had greater influence on independent school education than the more famous Thomas Arnold of Rugby, who was immortalised in Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857). In his lifetime, however, Thring was best known for an extraordinary episode in 1876, when he relocated boys, staff, and equipment some two hundred miles from Uppingham in Rutland in the east Midlands to Borth on the west Wales coast, to escape persistent outbreaks of typhoid fever in the school and town. Nigel Richardson’s new book is an exemplary history of this episode, meticulously researched and carefully analysed from the exceptionally rich records of the school, personal papers (including Thring’s diaries), and the files of local and central government. His narrative certainly throws new light on Thring and independent schools in the Victorian era, but its great novelty is that it provides the first history of English public health reform that is about rural rather than urban sanitation. Although his book is focused on a single small town over three years, Richardson’s great achievement is that he manages to illuminate the wider picture of medicine and public health in rural England in the mid-Victorian period. In the 1870s Uppingham was a small town of some two and a half thousand people in Rutland, England’s smallest county. It was unusual in being dominated by Thring’s school, which by the 1870s contributed significantly to the local economy. This was welcomed by the community, yet there was also resentment that local children no longer had access and that Thring often acted as though he was head of the town as well as the school. Matters came to a head in 1875 in disputes around two outbreaks of [End Page 642] typhoid fever. Richardson sets the scene for this in the first three chapters, which detail the economic and social history of the town, the structure and operation of its local government, and the character of its medical community. The book is worth reading for these alone, for what they reveal about the complexities of small town governance and its crowded medical market place. Typhoid fever was a major challenge to doctors and public health officials at this time; its outbreaks were sporadic, mortality could be high, and though there was a consensus that the best preventive was to improve water supplies and waste removal, its spread was capricious. Once the disease developed, isolation of sufferers was recommended, for while direct person-to-person contagion was infrequent, medical officials thought it prudent to be inclusive in their approach. Outbreaks of epidemic diseases had occurred regularly in the town and school, but in 1875 typhoid fever was concentrated in the school, and its spread in the autumn caused alarm amongst staff and parents. Medically the questions concerned the cause of the outbreak and the proper actions to take, but in Uppingham they became focused on who was to blame and whose responsibility it was to take action. Thring pointed to the poor condition of the town’s sewers, water supply, and streets, and to the inaction over many years of the Poor Law Guardians. The town’s officials pointed to the school, its rapid expansion without adequate infrastructure, and the laxity of its medical officer, Thomas Bell. Outbreaks continued over the winter of 1875 to 1876, and the dispute...

Using Photovoice to Investigate Environment and Health in a Hungarian Romani (GYPSY) Community

Kl´ra: Everyone dumps their trash next to our neighborhood. The town government says that we're dumping it ourselves. That might be true in some cases, but if you really look at these piles, there's packaging for brands that people in our neighborhood don't use.

Disputing legal privilege: civic relations with the Church in late medieval England

This article explores how provincial town governments sought to bolster civic authority in the period from c.1350 to c.1500. It focuses on royal boroughs, such as York, Chester and Norwich, which had a strong sense of lay civic identity and political pride. In these places, the king was the direct overlord, but the power of civic government was nonetheless frequently challenged by the franchises of local abbeys and convents, cathedral chapters, bishops' palaces, areas of sanctuary and the estates of local nobles. The main case study is urban relations with the Church, in particular disputes with local religious houses and rivalry between the Church and borough courts. How town leaders sought to deal with rival authorities provides an insight into the creation and assertion of lay urban identity in the late medieval period, and illuminates broader themes of how power was legitimised and enforced in post-Black Death society.

Los Ayuntamientos de los pueblos indígenas de Chiapas en el siglo XIX y su relación con los asuntos de justicia

After the promulgation of the gaditanian Constitution in 1812, the formation of town governments, accompanied by new liberal ideologies and the political changes in newly independent Mexico directed to define the new State-Nation, impacted in the way politics and justice were practiced in the indigenous townships of Chiapas. This article analyzes the way how the town halls intervened in judicial affairs that were part of their jurisdiction, but as well as in some other cases as the accused. During the 19th century, the town governments in the indigenous townships resulted to be a competitive space in which power and authority were constantly restructured; a space much more diversified then with respect to ethnic composition, complemented by a constantly growing number of “ladinos”, shaping political and judicial processes.

Political participation of local elites in the government of Castilian towns during the Late Middle Ages. Factions and conflict of interests (Paredes de Nava, end of the 14th century-beginning of the 15th century)

This article approaches to the forms of political participation into the government of the Crown of Castile by the municipal elites during the Late Middle Ages. We have chosen as object of research for this purpose the struggle between urban factions for the counciliar government happened in Paredes de Nava, a seigniorial town upon the infante Fernando of Antequera, in 1401-1403. In base of this case, we can observe a great number of factors whom influenced the alignment of these elites throughout these conflicts, beyond the existence of more or less formalized structures able to channel urban political concurrence.

INTERTEMPORAL CHOICE AND DEVELOPMENT POLICY: NEW EVIDENCE ON TIME‐VARYING DISCOUNT RATES FROM VIETNAM AND RUSSIA

Assuming that individual discount rates are constant over time has important implications for policies and programs that involve intertemporal decision making. Using original data from Vietnam and Russia, we find evidence that discount rates do change over time for many individuals, implying that preferences for savings and credit might not be intertemporally consistent. We find that commonly held beliefs about gender and age influences do not hold once having children and location are controlled for. Within countries, however, residency does matter. Rural Vietnamese populations have higher discount rates, and living in a Russian trading town is associated with significantly higher discount rates and present bias than living in a government town. We argue that these behaviors are particularly likely to influence resource allocation in developing economies because there are fewer formal institutions and competitive markets to temper their effects.

Not Fade Away: Adapting History and Trauma in Laszlo Krasznahorkai's The Melancholy of Resistance and Bela Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies

In his 1989 novel The Melancholy of Resistance, Hungarian author Laszlo Krasznahorkai deploys postmodernist techniques to relate the tale of a small Hungarian town that falls briefly under the spell of a mysterious circus performer known as The Prince, only to have that spell broken in brutal fashion by a newly reconstituted town government. While many have interpreted the novel simply as a fable addressing humankind’s frailties and susceptibility to manipulation, I propose to read the text in a new way: as an allusive and slyly allegorical attempt to contend with the twin specters haunting modern Hungarian history, those being complicity with Nazi Germany during World War II and the subsequent capitulation to/collaboration with the Soviet Union. Through suggestive and symbolically freighted language, Krasznahorkai is able to reflect on these “unrepresentable” traumas and begin the process of healing Hungary's psychic scars. Filmmaker Bela Tarr, in his 2000 cinematic adaptation of the novel entitled Werckmeister Harmonies, continues the process begun by Krasznahorkai, concentrating in particular on the role played by Hungary in the Holocaust. Infusing Krasznahorkai's story with the kind of visceral and affective impact only film can provide, Tarr takes another step toward the “mourning work” necessary for Hungary to overcome its past and move into the future free from history's debilitating effects.

Immigration as Local Politics: Re‐Bordering Immigration and Multiculturalism through Deterrence and Incapacitation

AbstractSmall town governments in North America have, in recent years, posed the most aggressive challenge to national immigration policy and multiculturalism. Immigration‐related municipal ordinances were introduced by local officials to defend the rights of local residents from the adverse effects of (unauthorized) immigration. Municipal measures proposed to control im/migrants not only present a constitutional challenge to the federal pre‐emption in matters of immigration law (which ineptitude they purport to redress), they expand on what Didier Bigo called a ‘governmentality of unease’, where migration is increasingly rationalized as a security problem. Municipal measures are re‐bordering the inclusion/exclusion of (unauthorized) migrants by expanding the territorial and political rationality of immigration control from the border to the interior, and by imposing and dispersing new mechanisms of control into the everyday spaces and practices of im/migrants regarded as ‘illegal’ and undesirable. This article examines two immigration‐related municipal measures (Hazleton, PA and Hérouxville, QC) which impose a logic of immigration control and identity protection through deterrence and incapacitation strategies, and thus erode civil rights of im/migrants.Résumé Certaines petites municipalités nord‐américaines ont récemment bousculé les politiques d'immigration nationales et le multiculturalisme. Les autorités locales en question ont fait voter des arrêtés municipaux liés à l'immigration afin de défendre les droits de leurs concitoyens contre les perceptions néfastes de l'immigration (irrégulière). Tout en représentant un défi constitutionnel à l'égard de la préemption fédérale en matière de législation sur l'immigration (dont l'inadéquation est censée être corrigée), les propositions municipales de contrôler les (im)migrants prolongent ce que Didier Bigo a appelé une ‘gouvernementalité du malaise’ qui voit de plus en plus la migration comme un problème de sécurité. Les mesures municipales redessinent les limites de l'inclusion‐exclusion des migrants (irréguliers) en amenant, de la frontière jusqu'à l'intérieur, la logique territoriale et politique propre au contrôle de l'immigration, tout en imposant et en diffusant de nouveaux mécanismes de contrôle dans les pratiques et espaces quotidiens des (im)migrants jugés ‘illégaux’ et indésirables. L'article étudie deux mesures municipales liées à l'immigration (à Hazleton en Pennsylvanie et à Hérouxville au Québec), lesquelles dictent une logique de contrôle de l'immigration et de protection identitaire au travers de stratégies de dissuasion et de création d'incapacités; ce faisant, ces dispositions amoindrissent les droits civils des (im)migrants.

A comparison of curricular practices in Chinese kindergartens: The influence of curriculum reform

China launched a top-down curriculum reform in kindergartens in the 1980s. In order to examine the influence of this reform, this study compared the similarities and differences in curricular practices in kindergartens with different sponsoring bodies in Shanxi province. Altogether, 26 principals and 95 teachers in 50 classrooms from 26 kindergartens participated in the study. Principals and teachers completed questionnaires and were interviewed and kindergartens were observed. Results indicated that kindergartens in Shanxi have made great progress in the arrangement of indoor space, arranging the schedule and allocating attention to individual needs. Kindergartens under local education bureaux and work units were significantly better than kindergartens under town governments in these aspects. But kindergartens with different sponsoring bodies still have not attained the reform objectives in terms of teacher-child interactions and the organization of curricular activities. There was a relation between resource availability and curricular practice and the influences of the macro culture and educational institutions on curricular practice are discussed.

Township government: A tale of one state

Township government: A tale of one state

Negotiation and Noncooperation: Debating Michigan's Conditional Land Transfer Agreement

Local governments in Michigan have at their disposal a mechanism for cooperation on land transfer. Through the Conditional Land Transfer Act (P.A. 42 5 of 1984), local governments negotiate shared jurisdiction for a piece of property for a set period of time for the purpose of econom ic development (Taylor, Harvey, and Shields 2004; Bassett 2006; Harvey and Qui?ones 1996). Like annexation, conditional land trans fer agreements, popularly known as P.A. 425 agreements, can be used to permanently transfer land from one jurisdiction to another. Unlike in annexation, jurisdictions negotiate conditions for the property, includ ing property tax sharing and negotiated provi sion of urban services. Michigan has a strong tradition of township government (Browne and VerBurg 1995, 300; Stephens 1989), and township officials often resist annexation ef forts. Townships are frequently cast as the losers in annexation battles while cities gain territory, expand their tax bases, and impose their land-use preferences. Conditional land transfer agreements provide an opportunity for cities and townships to negotiate these tensions. Understanding the negotiation of conditional land transfers is important because the use of these agreements has increased over time (Taylor, Harvey, and Shields 2004). This study asks two questions about the negotia tion process: Do existing intergovernmental connections in other policy areas foster the development of conditional land transfers, and is land use identified as a critical point of discussion in successful and unsuccessful