Intergovernmental Conflict Research Articles

Federalism and the Market: Intergovernmental Conflict and Economic Reform in the Developing World

Federalism and the Market: Intergovernmental Conflict and Economic Reform in the Developing World. By Erik Wibbels. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 276p. $85.00.In this book, Erik Wibbels explores the “federal collective action problem” (pp. 47, 62). Because in federal countries national and regional leaders answer to different constituencies, their electoral interests and preferences toward socially costly reforms might conflict. Market economic reforms constitute one type of such measures. As Wibbels argues, in crisis-ridden federations, “economic reforms takes [sic] on the quality of a public good requiring the individual regions to cooperate, whereas it is more rational for each career-oriented politician to avoid the costs associated with austerity” (p. 27). National leaders concerned with macroeconomic stability want market economic reforms implemented in the regions, but regional leaders have an incentive to free-ride and adopt fiscally expansionary policies. The book suggests that “many market reform policies are a function of a constant process of bargaining between national and regional leaders struggling for political survival” (p. 5). Moreover, it argues that “[t]he degree to which the two sets of actors [national and regional leaders] conflict depends on four crucial factors: the electoral interests that each brings to the game, a shared intergovernmental fiscal system, the manner in which regional interests are represented in national policy making, and the levers of partisan influence national leaders have over subnational politicians” (pp. 5–6). The author proposes that fiscally autonomous regions with competitive party systems are more likely to converge with the national government's interests on market economic reforms; and that national electoral coattails are a more effective means for disciplining regional leaders than partisan harmony through centrally dispensed carrots and sticks (pp. 38–39).

Book Review: Federalism and the Market: Intergovernmental Conflict and Economic Reform in the Developing World

Book Review: Federalism and the Market: Intergovernmental Conflict and Economic Reform in the Developing World

From Inter-Governmental Conflicts To Administrative And Political Incompetence: A Summary Report Of The Streptococcus Suis Outbreak In Sichuan, People Republic Of China

This article examines the recent outbreak of Streptococcus suis in Sichuan province, China and its impact on the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Drawing on primary sources in both Chinese and English languages, it investigates the scale, patterns and impacts of this public health crisis. Through a chronological discussion of the crisis, this study discusses the reasons for the frequent outbreaks of epidemics in China, the medical and crisis management strategies in China and Hong Kong, as well as the problems of public health surveillance in both places.

The Politics of Decentralization in a Centralized Party System: The Case of Democratic Spain

William H. Riker argued that most distinctive aspect of federalism is the consti tutionally assured potential for local governments to disrupt.1 Taken too far, inter governmental conflicts could make policymaking unresponsive and inefficient. Riker argued that such disharmony, when not effectively eliminated by (^cen tralization of administrative structure of state, can be mediated by central ization of political party system. His argument focused on two dimensions of party system: distribution of partisan loyalties between central and subnational government and tendency of locally elected politicians to articulate local inter ests. According to Riker, first dimension of disharmony is more likely to be con trolled where same party or alliance controls national government and most or all of subnational units. This argument assumes that national parties are disciplined around partisan brokers who reside at national level. These conditions are also crucial in reducing tendency of subnational politicians to articulate local interests to detriment of their affiliations. Therefore, centralized, disciplined parties with high degrees of concordance in partisan loyalties across national-subnational divide are able to limit intergovernmental conflict. Riker's theory directly influenced more recent comparative studies of decentral ization that follow his notion that party system structures are key independent variables in explaining nature of intergovernmental relations. Most recently, seminal work by Eliza Willis, Christopher Garman, and Stephan Haggard focuses on location of party brokers, party leaders who shape careers of politicians on national and subnational levels through control over nominations and placement on electoral lists.2 In party systems in which these leaders are located in subnational government, state is more likely to be decentralized in its policy responsibilities, revenue-raising powers, and expenditures since these resources will flow to cen ters of power that shape political interests of national policymakers.3 There is an ongoing tension between national and subnational politicians in which national par tisans, especially those in government, prefer to limit autonomy of subnational governments in order to maximize their own capacity to distribute resources across a country based on criteria of need and expected political payoffs.4 Closed elec toral lists empower party leaders who control not only nomination of candidates but

A Step Backwards or a Step Forwards? The Politics and Policies of Decentralization under the Governments of the Partido Popular*

This article analyses the extent to which the centralist and unitary perceptions of Spanish national identity, historically linked to right-wing state-wide parties, guided the policy choices on political decentralization made by the governments of the Partido Popular (PP) (1996–2004), especially those related to the participation of the Autonomous Communities within state-wide politics and policy processes. Using data on intergovernmental conflicts, it finds that although the PP governments did actively neglect the political role of the Autonomous Communities at the state level, this behaviour was as much related to their adherence to the traditional right-wing attitude towards political decentralization itself as to their desire to prevent the Autonomous Communities acting as a political opposition.

The Europeanisation of intergovernmental cooperation and conflict resolution in Belgium: The case of agriculture

This article analyses the genesis of formal procedures and institutional conditions within the agriculture policy domain in federal Belgium. Our process tracing starts in 1988 when a small number of agriculture competencies were handed over to the regions and ends in 2002 with the almost complete de‐federalisation of agriculture. In particular we argue that the fourth Belgian state reform in combination with the change of TEU‐article 146 (current article 203) (both in 1992) has set the institutional parameters for the almost complete de‐federalization of the agriculture policy‐domain in 2002. The case of agricultural policy demonstrates how sectoral changes are embedded within a more general process of institutional change and how, more in particular, domestic reform and European adaptation or Europeanisation evolves through a concatenated set of small incremental, at first hand seemingly unrelated, steps which may lock‐in actors into a specific set of institutional choices. With respect to the Belgian case, we demonstrate that Europe mitigates or softens the dual nature of Belgian federalism and that it stimulates cooperative forms of governance.1

The Shadow of Sharia Over Nigerian Federalism

The sentencing under Sharia law in Nigeria's northern state of Katsina in 2002 of a 31-year-old woman, Amina Lawal, to be stoned to death for adultery highlighted the rising religious conflict and violence that has occurred since the resumption of civilian democratic governance in 1999. Although the practice of Sharia in personal and civil matters had been accommodated by the British and by Nigeria's various constitutions, what was new in 1999 was the extension of Sharia from civil to criminal matters, thus producing such punishments as decapitation, amputation, and stoning to death, threatening the well-being of non-Muslims, endangering fundamental rights protected by Nigeria's federal Constitution, and posing significant challenges to elected officials and federal courts. The extension of Sharia to criminal law in 12 northern states also has increased intercommunal and intergovernmental conflict, threatening the fabric of Nigerian federalism.

Vulnerability Reduction and Political Responsiveness: Explaining Executive Decisions in U.S. Disaster Policy during the Ford and Carter Administrations*

Decision-making by elected executives on disaster policy reflects comprehensive vulnerability management, political responsiveness to the media, political negotiation, and intergovernmental conflict. If vulnerability reduction is a significant influence, executive decisions should reflect political and social vulnerability and self-sufficiency. If political responsiveness influences disaster decisions, executive decisions should also reflect media coverage, proximity to elections, and decisions at other levels of government. The data set included 293 major disaster requests between 1974 and 1981. The analysis used multiple regression and logistic regression. Vulnerability reduction had an impact on aid decisions. Political responsiveness affected most decisions on disaster relief. The Ford administration was more sensitive to both responsiveness and vulnerability than the Carter administration. Overall, nationalization of disaster assistance has made the achievement of vulnerability management more difficult. The absence of minimum criteria has increased the discretion of executive choice.

DECENTRALIZING PUBLIC SECTOR COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AND THE CONTRADICTIONS OF FEDERAL PRACTICE IN NIGERIA

Economic reforms and the quest for efficiency in public administration call for the decentralization of collective bargaining and wages in the public sector in Nigeria. But the effort to decentralize has translated into both a protracted industrial relations crisis and intergovernmental conflict. This situation is traced to the failed effort at institutionalising collective bargaining and the consolidation of the unified wage structure in the public sector by the resort to ad hoc wages commissions. The distorted fiscal federalism and intergovern- mental relations under the military in Nigeria complicated the situation, such that resolving the federal question has become critical to returning stability to Nigeria's industrial relations system.

Precarious Values: Organizations, Politics and Labour Market Policy in Ontario

The global economy and technological changes have dramatically altered the nature of labour markets. In this context, sub-national governments play an increasingly important role in labour market policy. In Canada, for instance, provinces have extensive powers to help the unemployed and those on social assistance to move into the labour market. Precarious Values analyses the efforts of three Ontario governments in the 1980s and 1990s, led by three different political parties, to design organizations and policies to help the unemployed acquire vocational skills. Thomas Klassen focuses on the birth, life, and eventual decline of two sizeable organizations created to develop strategic labour market policy for the province. The first was a traditional government department, while the second was an ambitious agency that gave business and labour groups control of a budget of over half a billion dollars. Both organizations faced fundamental disagreements over the role of the state, as well as intergovernmental conflicts and animosity between stakeholders.

Decentralizing Democracy: Spain and Brazil in Comparative Perspective

Does decentralization of the state enhance democratic rule?' Does democratization make decentralization more manageable? The key intervening variable governing decentralization with democratization is the coherence of the central state. Following a path-dependent logic, studies of democratization argue that an array of factors present in society, that is, in the domain of political parties and parliamentary alliances, determines the coherence of the central state.2 The stronger political society is, and the greater the coherence of central authority is, then the more likely it will be that decentralization and democratization will reinforce each other. According to this argument, Spain's well-developed political society played a key role in enhancing national authority by controlling the content and pace of state reform and regime change. In Brazil these factors were anemic or missing, thereby weakening the state in ways that allowed decentralization to endanger democracy. The emphasis on political society in studies of democratization favors static factors that fail to account for the dynamic character of decentralization and democratization. The relationship between decentralization and democratization in Spain and Brazil was shaped by intergovernmental conflicts that were never fully under the control of either national states or political society. In both cases these conflicts challenged institutional arrangements in political society that studies of democratization credit with enhancing state cohesion. Efforts to resolve the conflicts in both countries depended upon ad hoc and transitory measures that were not imposed by a coherent national state. These dynamics challenged the Spanish central government's ability to govern the expanding authorities of the regions, exacerbating emerging divisions within the ruling Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Obrera Espanol, PSOE). In Brazil runaway spending by the states was impeded by a partial reequilibration of authority and resources in the central state during Fernando Henrique Cardoso's administration (1995-present). Explanation of these dynamics requires a focus on the bargaining process among levels of government. This process is mediated by two factors: the open-endedness of institutions governing the distribution of intergovernmental authorities and resources and the political leverage wielded by central and subnational governments. Where federal institutions are open-ended, subnational governments are more likely

After Decentralization: Patterns of Intergovernmental Conflict in Argentina, Brazil, Spain, and Mexico

Recent scholarship on the political determinants of decentralization has been useful for explaining initial decisions by national elites to decentralize, but the electoral independent variables favored by these analyses are insufficient to explain the complex process of decentralization over time. Distributional conflicts involving national chief executives and subnational governments occurring after decentralization is initiated shape the process in ways that alter initial conditions. This study assesses change in the degree, pattern, and pace of decentralization in four countries: Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Spain.

Governing Interregional Conflicts: The Planning Approach to Managing Spillovers of Extended Metropolitan Pusan, Korea

A perennial problem of urban industrial growth is spillovers into adjacent governmental jurisdictions. The resulting intergovernmental conflicts provide a window, as a part of urban governance, into conflict management. This paper focuses on such conflicts and the several ways of resolving them that have been attempted in southeastern Korea, centred on the country's major port of Pusan. In one way or another, conflicts with neighbouring Kyungnam Province have been festering since the administrative separation of Pusan as a metropolis, coequal in rank with the province of which it had been the capital. Three approaches of solving the region's problem were tried, all involving the central government in Seoul: aggressive annexations by Pusan of Kyungnam territories; a bland form of nonbinding mediation through an administrative device called ‘association’, and, most recently, a tripartite collaborative form of interregional planning involving Pusan, Kyungnam Province, and the national Ministry of Construction and Transportation. Based on enabling legislation, the collaborative planning approach appears to be working and has been adopted by a number of other conflicted regions in Korea.

Delayed Decentralization and Incomplete Consolidation of Democracy: The Case of Korean Local Autonomy

Abstract: This paper explores the processes and problems of decentralization in Korea since 1987, when democratic transition began. It also examines the basic institutional structures of Korean local autonomy, the dynamics of political processes at the local level, and diverse inter-governmental conflicts. In this paper, I argue that the current system of Korean local autonomy is inherently contradictory and restrictive because centralism continues to prevail over democracy especially at the local level. It is peculiar in that the chiefs of local government are popularly elected, whereas most important authorities and resources are controlled by the central government. Therefore, it is inevitable that tensions and conflicts arise between the central and local governments. In this sense, decentralization has been delayed since the democratic opening in 1987; democratic consolidation is thus incomplete in Korea. In order to avoid such a troublesome situation and to be faithful to the spirit of democracy, I suggest that a drastic decentralization along the line of federalism is necessary.

Intergovernmental Conflict over Emergency Planning: The Politics of the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant

The 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant led to increased contention over nuclear policy in the United States, pitting federal agencies committed to promoting the use of atomic energy against citizens and state or local governments seeking to limit or eliminate its use. Those struggles can better be understood via the concept of decoupling, which focuses on the efforts of government agencies to maintain control over policy decisions by separating policymaking from meaningful citizen participation. Applying the concept to American politics requires two modifications to Claus Offe's original formulation. Offe analyzes the institutional and extra-institutional channels of citizen participation as well as the modes of discourse used to justify government decisions. His framework must be supplemented by attention to relations between the levels of government and also to indirect citizen participation through locally elected officials. The conflict over licensing the Shoreham nuclear pow...

French Center‐Periphery Relations and Science Park Development: Local Policy Initiatives and Intergovernmental Policymaking

This article focuses on new patterns of territorial governance in the aftermath of the 1982 decentralization reforms in France. The traditional “cross regulation” model developed by the Crozier school is wrong to assume culturally grounded stalemate and to suggest that local political power is nothing more than the informal access of local elites to national policymaking. Analyzing the policy of technopoles or science park development, both nationally and by way of detailed local case studies of Montpellier and Rennes, we demonstrate that, on the contray, French local and regional authorities have risen progressively to independent loci of governmental power and policymaking. Local policy initiatives are, however, embedded in a multi‐level institutional fabric ranging from the local to the European level. These developments in center‐periphery relations need to be placed into the context of the general decline of the traditional French public policy model, which has been stiffly challenged by the norms of market, Europe and subsidiarity. In conclusion, a comparative and interorganizational perspective suggests that France is moving toward a territorial system increasingly characterized by the dynamics of intergovernmental conflict and cooperation and best described as “quasi‐federalism in unitary disguise.”

Yucca Mountain: A Crisis for Policy: Prospects for America's High-Level Nuclear Waste Program

The federal government's attempts to site a permanent high-level radioactive waste repository have been frustrating and so far unsuccessful. Many of the problems were recognized more than a decade ago. In 1982, the US Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and established a program to site and develop an underground repository. By 1987, this program was widely considered to be a failure. It was plagued by public opposition, intergovernmental conflict, poor management, scientific questions and concerns, and substantial cost overruns. In December 1987 Congress amended the act and selected Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the only location to be studied as a potential repository. This halted further work on other potential sites in the western US, the eastern US sites for a second repository, and the monitored retrievable system facility that the US Department of Energy (DOE) wanted to locate in Tennessee. These amendments did not address the basic causes for the fail ures between 1983 and 1987. As a result, although the program was greatly simplified with only one site, it was beset by the same problems that created the original collapse. Now there are new and widespread calls for a congressional review and restructuring of the program from federal, state, and local officials, government agencies, industry, and public groups. This article examines the lessons from these two failed attempts and makes recommendations for devising a new policy.

Yucca Mountain: A Crisis for Policy: Prospects for America's High-Level Nuclear Waste Program

The federal government's attempts to site a permanent high-level radioactive waste repository have been frustrating and so far unsuccessful. Many of the problems were recognized more than a decade ago. In 1982, the US Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and established a program to site and develop an underground repository. By 1987, this program was widely considered to be a failure. It was plagued by public opposition, intergovernmental conflict, poor management, scientific questions and concerns, and substantial cost overruns. In December 1987 Congress amended the act and selected Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the only location to be studied as a potential repository. This halted further work on other potential sites in the western US, the eastern US sites for a second repository, and the monitored retrievable system facility that the US Department of Energy (DOE) wanted to locate in Tennessee. These amendments did not address the basic causes for the fail ures between 1983 and 1987. As a result, although the program was greatly simplified with only one site, it was beset by the same problems that created the original collapse. Now there are new and widespread calls for a congressional review and restructuring of the program from federal, state, and local officials, government agencies, industry, and public groups. This article examines the lessons from these two failed attempts and makes recommendations for devising a new policy.

Intergovernmental Conflict and Indian Water Rights: An Assessment of Negotiated Settlements

Intergovernmental Conflict and Indian Water Rights: An Assessment of Negotiated Settlements

Intergovernmental Conflict and Indian Water Rights: An Assessment of Negotiated Settlements

The states and Indian tribes have fought bitterly over water rightsfor nearly a century. Most of this conflict tookplace in courtrooms, but in recent years, states and tribes have been attempting to resolve their diferences through negotiated water settlements. This article utilizes the literature and theory on alternative dispute resolution to identify six advantages that are expected to accruefrom negotiations. It then assesses the extent to which Indian water settlements have produced these results.