Local Bureaucrats Research Articles

Temporary Leaders and Stable Institutions: How Local Bureaucratic Entrepreneurs Institutionalize China's Low-Carbon Policy Experiments

AbstractTraditional analysis of China's policy experimentation has focused on the role of central–local relations and rotating leaders in shaping the local agenda-setting process. Less is known about the role of less mobile mid-level local bureaucrats who serve as bridges in the implementation process. This paper examines why some cities have performed better than others at implementing and maintaining low-carbon policy experiments. Drawing on a comparison of four case cities and over 100 expert interviews, I argue that the availability of bureaucratic entrepreneurs and their resource mobilization capacity determine the level of local engagement in climate policy experimentation. This study shows that the institutionalization of local policy experiments is not only driven by the central government or rotating top local leaders but also by bureaucratic entrepreneurs who help policy experiments survive periodic changes in the bureaucracy. The findings have important implications for the fulfilment of China's 2060 carbon neutrality pledge.

Politics of urban cultural preservation and regeneration: the case of South Korea and Taiwan

ABSTRACT This paper compares the cases of Seoul, Taipei and Keelung to illustrate the dynamics of the local state in leading the process of cultural preservation. We argue that political ambitions of local leaders, driven by economic and political incentives to boost local development, create policy networks centered around local bureaucracies. Various actors, such as local political elites, local bureaucracies, civic groups and developers, are involved in the process of political and economic entangling. The cultural preservation projects are thus the reflection of the political interpretation of memory, as well as the realization of local state power to implement innovative goals of urban rebranding and regeneration. The Korean and Taiwanese cases demonstrate that political functions, such as regime legitimacy and the formation of new identities, have been instrumental in the process of urban regeneration. This paper brings the “politics” back into local developmentalism in the democratic societies of South Korea and Taiwan. This paper also argues that central-local relationship matters as well. The local developmental states are not totally isolated from political entanglements at the central level. Policy supports from the central level are mainly out of political concerns to legitimize ongoing efforts of historical reconstruction and re-interpretation.

HASİP AHMET AYTUNA’NIN RAPORU IŞIĞINDA 20 ARALIK 1942 ERBAA-NİKSAR DEPREMİ VE TOKAT’TAKİ GELİŞMELER

İkinci Dünya Savaşı, Türkiye’de tek partili bir yönetimin egemen olduğu, yakın tarihin ülke ve insan kaynaklarında yarattığı tahribatın rehabilite edilmeye çalışıldığı bir süreçte, etkili olmuştur. Savaşın toplum yaşamı üzerindeki etkileri, Erzincan ve Erbaa’da meydana gelen büyük ölçekli depremler; merkezi yönetimin geniş kapsamlı organizasyon, bunu etkin biçimde toplumsallaştıracak mâlî kapasite ve insan kaynakları, altyapı ve ulaşım, organizasyonların uygulanmasında aktif rol oynayan personelin denetimi gibi ölçütler çerçevesinde sınandığı bir zamansallığı oluşturmuştur. Depremin akabinde Şükrü Saraçoğlu Hükümeti yaşanan felâketin, Erbaa, Niksar bölgesinde yarattığı olumsuzlukları gidermeye yönelik uygulama ve düzenlemeleri hayata geçirmiştir. Bu bağlamda ilkyardım, arama-kurtarma, iâşe, barınma, tedavi, vergilendirme, yeniden inşaa ve üretim alanlarında bölge sakinlerinin durumlarını iyileştirmeyi amaçlayan adımlar atılmıştır. VI. Dönem CHP Tokat Milletvekili Hasip Ahmet Aytuna 1942 Erbaa Depremi’nden sonra 1-10 Ocak 1943’te felâketin yaşandığı yerleşim yerlerini kapsayan bir inceleme gezisi gerçekleştirerek, hükümetin afet bölgesindeki olumsuzlukları rehabilite etmeye yönelik girişimleri ve sonuçlarını gözlemleme fırsatı bulmuştur. Tokat, Erbaa, Niksar ve Zile’de yurttaşlarla görüşen Aytuna, bir yandan felâketin boyutlarına tanıklık etmiş öte yandan sorunların önemli bir bölümünün savaş koşullarından kaynaklandığını saptamıştır. Aytuna yaptığı incelemeleri, görüşmeleri, gözlemleri ve değerlendirmelerini bir rapor haline getirerek Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi Genel Sekreterliği’ne sunmuştur. Rapor, yaşanan afetin ardından ortaya çıkan yıkımın istatistiki verilerini, iktidar ile yerel bürokrasinin aldığı önlemleri, bunların sahadaki etkilerini, eksikliklerini, tarımsal üretimdeki problemleri, vergilendirme politikasının yerel düzlemdeki yansımalarını, yolsuzlukları ve bunlara ilişkin olarak kendi değerlendirmelerini içermiştir. Aytuna’nın 21 sayfadan oluşan ayrıntılı raporu, savaşın belirleyici olduğu bir toplumsal çerçevede yaşanan doğal bir afet ekseninde; merkezi yönetim, yerel bürokrasi ve halk arasındaki ilişkileri anlamamızı sağlayan bir zemin yaratmıştır.

Seeing like a shadow state: an ethnography of homeless street outreach in the USA

ABSTRACT How do street outreach workers (SOWs) help govern homelessness? I present an ethnography from the USA to answer this question. Biopolitics is a mode of governance that manipulates fertility, morbidity, and/or mortality rates. The biopolitical turn in U.S. homeless policy obliges federally contracted SOWs – components of the shadow state – to perform morbidity assessments so local bureaucrats can manage exits from homelessness. Routine displacement of unhoused individuals generates surveillance gaps that SOWs fill by recruiting stakeholders with spatial information into their governing coalition. After finding a homeless contact, SOWs assess their morbidity in public spaces and upload this information to a centralized database that system managers use to monitor and manipulate population trends. Homeless contacts who cannot be located are uncounted, misclassified, and/or deprioritized for permanent housing assistance. The centrality of standardized health assessment highlights the salience of biopolitics to SOWs who enable local bureaucrats to see homeless subpopulations.

Bureaucratic connections and local development: A study of Palwal district in India

ABSTRACT Numerous countries have established local elected governments to improve public goods delivery and reduce information asymmetry between the state and citizens. These governments remain dependent on upper levels for funding which has been found to be influenced by patronage politics and partisan alignment. In this paper, we show that the networks of locally elected officials and bureaucrats determine the allocation of discretionary funds and resources to local governments. Villages whose elected heads reported stronger connections with local bureaucrats were more likely to win a one-time inter-village competition for funds organized by the district administration of Palwal - a district in the North Indian state of Haryana. Locally elected officials in the district also report that bureaucratic connections are at least as necessary as political ties with higher-level politicians to obtain funds for their villages. This centrality of bureaucratic connections can be partly attributed to the institutional design in India.

Organizing for the Smart African City: Leveraging the urban commons for exerting the right to the city

To accommodate the need for community engagement and place-based approaches in smart city agendas in Africa, we build on the literature on smart cities, southern urbanism and the urban commons to develop a conceptual framework for urban commoning in Africa. We argue that commoning, as an organizing process, establishes institutions for urban commons that account for different urban dwellers’ needs, perspectives and knowledges thereby strengthening inclusion and producing knowledge-intensive smart city development. We explain how the proposed conceptual framework is particularly suited to the African context, as it can mitigate the formal-informal divide and enable marginalized citizens to meaningfully express their right to the city. By enabling citizens’ voice in planning and distributing urban resources, commoning helps redefine local bureaucracies, rendering them more open and inclusive while limiting the enclosure and marketization of cities, which is often a source of contestation in the development of smart cities.

Frightened Mandarins: The Adverse Effects of Fighting Corruption on Local Bureaucracy

Canonical theories of bureaucracy demonstrate the need for enhanced monitoring in government hierarchies. I argue that intensive top-down monitoring may reduce the productivity of bureaucrats by frightening them away from the informal practices that they would otherwise rely on when completing daily tasks. Utilizing a unique dataset of sub-provincial inspections in China’s recent anti-corruption campaign, I identify this “chilling effect” by exploiting variation in the timing of inspections from 2012 to 2017. I show that these anti-corruption activities lower the area of land development projects proposed by bureaucrats. Causal mediation analyses with investigation data and original measures of corruption potential reveal that these effects are unlikely driven by reduction of actual corruption. Extension analyses suggest similar consequences on revenue collection and environmental regulation. Although scholars of state-building equate low corruption with effective bureaucracy, these findings present a paradox where intensive state-led efforts to lower corruption may further undermine bureaucrats’ productivity.

Do the Poor Benefit from the Right to Information Act?

I investigate to what extent India’s Right to Information Act is useful for poor households. Drawing on empirical data from central Uttar Pradesh, I study two categories of poor households—urban and rural—possessing Below Poverty Line cards. These cards entitle their holders to several subsidies, but they are poorly targeted: certain communities receive more cards, while most of the deserving poor do not receive them. The Act is meant to create space for democratization, enabling the poor to challenge local power holders; but there are obstacles to their taking advantage of it. They are scarcely educated, and unaware of the Act, and they get no support from government agencies responsible for implementing it. This has encouraged the use of manipulative tactics by local representatives and government bureaucrats seeking power, control, and domination. But the poor do find ways to receive their entitlements.

Aadhaar and social assistance programming: local bureaucracies as critical intermediary

ABSTRACT Digital identity platforms are a recent e-governance innovation for improving social assistance programming in the development context, the most well-known of which is India's Aadhaar. While a significant number of studies have accumulated on Aadhaar, so far under-researched is the importance of local government practices and processes in shaping usage of the platform to support social assistance programming. In this paper we theorize how local government intermediation on digital identity platforms can improve social assistance programming through a case study of the Aadhaar-enabled Fertilizer Distribution System (AeFDS) in Andhra Pradesh. Our findings show how the relevance of the platform for low-income farmers depends crucially on the proactive adaptation of the technology by key local government intermediaries. From a policy perspective, this result emphasizes the importance of supporting efforts to acknowledge the role of responsive local government agencies in ensuring that centralized digital identity platforms remain relevant for implementing social assistance programming.

Legal, Political and Administrative Barriers to Citizen Participation in Local Governance: An Inquiry of Local Government Institutions

ABSTRACT This paper was designed to explore the Legal, Political, and Administrative barriers to Citizen Participation in Local governance. The paper explored both the subjective factors that include the role of stakeholders (local administrators, local political representatives, Civil Society Organizations and Citizens) and objective factors such as legal and administrative basis of Citizen Participation. The paper presented evidence from an inquiry of the local government institutions in Pakistan by employing qualitative research methods. The findings divulged manifold problems that contributed to the ineptitude of Citizen Participation in current development lexicon. First, mechanisms of direct Citizen Participation are faulty. The legal framework on Citizen Participation has a very high margin of manipulation. The main policy documents and laws can be easily interpreted and accommodated to different development discourses. In addition, local government administration, the provincial government, and political elites are not ready to disseminate their powers. Furthermore, local bureaucrats are more empowered than any other stakeholder, which is making Citizen Participation a distant reality. Overall, the findings suggested that it will be difficult to implement participatory governance effectively in Pakistan due to the low degree of Civil Society Organizations’ effectiveness, the truncated level of education regarding Citizen Participation, loopholes in the legal framework, and no mechanism for accountability.

Centralization or decentralization: Divergent paths of governing offshore wind between China and Japan

China and Japan have started to develop commercial offshore wind farms since the late 2000s and early 2010s. During the past decades, the gap in offshore wind capacity between the two countries widened. While China is poised to dominate the Asian offshore wind market, Japan remains at the initial stage of development. Combining the data from both semi-structured interviews and desk research, this paper conducts a comparative study of offshore wind policy mixes and analyzes underlying factors that affect the selection of national strategies and policy packages. It is argued that the selection of policy mixes for offshore wind energy reflects a careful balancing of facilitating and constraining factors including resource availability, technology maturity, and preexisting institutional structure and practices. These push and pull forces shape the policy landscape for offshore wind, which covers (1) resource surveys and national targets, (2) inter-ministerial coordination, (3) central-local relationship, and (4) feed-in-tariffs (FITs).It is found that the two countries had chosen different approaches for regulatory reform. China adopted a decentralized path, solving the problems of institutional inertia by turning local bureaucrats into entrepreneurial reformers, whereas Japan took a centralized approach, attempting to remove regulatory complexities by establishing an integrated administrative regime at the central level. A better understanding of the two approaches and their underlying factors might not only help policymakers capitalize on existing governing regimes but also devise new mechanisms to create a better policy environment for offshore wind energy.

Policing Terrorism in the Chinese Community: A Critical Analysis

AbstractAfter the 9/11 incidents, global counter-terrorism efforts have focused increasingly on community policing as a proactive and preventive approach to thwarting terrorism. This article explores the developments, tensions, and prospects of counter-terrorism community policing (“CTCP”) in China. By applying the concepts of police legitimacy and social capital to the normative and operational framework of CTCP, I argue that this vital counter-terrorism endeavour is fraught with problems, for both Chinese police to procure effective civic co-operation and the local community to develop its capacity as a self-reliant player in preventing terrorism. More specifically, community co-operation in China’s CTCP is largely an obligatory process in the form of forced mobilization by local bureaucracies that does not necessarily entail trust and support from citizens based on their legitimacy judgement. My analysis on social capital building in Chinese communities further suggests that both police and citizens are unable to form deep and meaningful partnerships for counter-terrorism. While an authoritarian regime like China is reluctant to cede substantial power and authority to people in most of all aspects of policing, the public has become apathetic towards and alienated from voluntary collaboration with police in formal community affairs—a dichotomy lies between reality and ideal in China’s CTCP.

Riding on the power of the masses? How different modes of mass mobilization shape local elite bargaining in China

When local bureaucrats in China disagree with their superiors, official channels for achieving a policy revision are limited and generally ineffective. However, if the stakes involved are high, they may turn to the power of the masses and draw on public pressure to enhance their negotiating position. In such informal inter-bureaucratic bargaining, local officials might intentionally facilitate popular protest and lead to a situation we call ‘mobilized instability.’ More commonly, they borrow power from ‘consent instability,’ that is, they discreetly leak insider information and instruct their police forces to be exceptionally tolerant. In this article, we use the redistricting case in Changxing county, Zhejiang province as well as other incidents to show how local officials can strategically exploit public pressure, in the mode of ‘consent instability,’ to extract policy concessions. We introduce the concept of ‘mobilized instability’ through an examination of jurisdictional restructuring conflict in Daye county, Hubei province. This analysis suggests that reckless intermediaries might over-mobilize and radicalize the masses, thereby undermining intentions and leading to serious consequences for the public officials. The article concludes that the power of the masses may serve as a credible bargaining chip during informal elite bargaining, but it can also be risky for those who handle it poorly.

The Politics of Decentralization: Competition in Land Administration and Management in Ghana

Decentralization policy forms part of a broader global ideology and effort of the international donor community in favor of subsidiarity and local participation, and represents a paradigm shift from top-down command-and-control systems. Since 2003, the formalization of property rights through titling became an integral component of decentralized land administration efforts in Ghana. The creation of new forms of local government structures and the related changes in the distribution of responsibilities between different levels of government have an impact on natural resource management, the allocation of rights, and the unequal distribution of powers. This paper aims to understand how decentralization reforms modify the balance of power between public administration, customary authorities, and resource end-users in Ghana. Decentralization’s impact is analyzed based on two case studies. Relying on purposive and snowball sampling techniques, and mixed methods, we conducted 8 key informant interviews with local government bureaucrats in land administration, 16 semi-structured interviews with allodial landholders, 20 biographic interviews and 8 focus group discussions with small-scale farmers. The interviews analyzed the institutions and the roles of actors in land administration. Our case studies show that decentralization has the tendency to increase local competition in land administration where there are no clear distribution of power and obligation to local actors. Local competition and elitism in land administration impact the ability of small-scale farmers to regularize or formalize land rights. Thus, the paper concludes that local competition and the elitism within the land administration domain in Ghana could be the main obstacles towards decentralization reforms.

Decentralization and development of small cites: Evidence from county-to-city upgrading in China

This paper examines how decentralization of administrative and fiscal authority affects the development of small cities by exploiting a unique reform of county-to-city upgrading (chexiansheshi) in China. Based on a comprehensive county-level dataset and difference-in-difference approach, I evaluate the overall as well as heterogenous effect of upgrading policy between 1993 and 1997 on local economic development. The policy impacts are most pronounced in eastern regions and counties with higher initial agglomeration level. While the effect on economic development is insignificant in middle and western regions, it greatly expanded local bureaucracy size in these areas. I discuss the potential channels of policy effects under a simple decentralization framework with heterogeneous regions. These findings suggest that decentralization might generate entirely different consequences, relying on the level of local development potential. For this reason, it is important for the policy makers to fully take into account regional heterogeneity in optimizing decentralization policy.

Money Talks: Cross-ethnic Patronage and Ethnic Conflict in China

AbstractElites within a particular minority out-group in autocracies typically exhibit fairly heterogeneous reactions to the ethnic group in power. The usual result is intra-group variations in the propensity to participate in ethnic conflict. To explain these within-group differences, I highlight the importance of cross-ethnic patronage, which refers to patronage allocated by the ethnic group in power to minority out-group elites. The state can use cross-ethnic patronage to mitigate the risk of ethnic conflicts through two mechanisms. First, the sharing of government spoils at stakes gives minority elites disincentives to initiate anti-regime mobilizations, and second, this co-optation approach effectively enlists cooperative minority elites to strengthen social control. I examine my theory using original county-level fiscal and personnel data of China's Xinjiang region, including annual payrolls and the ethnic composition of over 220,000 local bureaucrats. Findings based on a dataset of ethnic conflicts in Xinjiang from 1980 to 1995 support my theoretical arguments.

The networks of circulation of local policy elites in large metropolises

ABSTRACT The government of large metropolises has become increasingly complex during what many authors have characterized as a transition from government to governance. This paper tackles an unexplored facet of this complexity, namely the circulation of local policy elites within government structures through time in different institutional and political contexts. We analyse the networks created within the state by the circulation of individuals between the top positions of local governmental agencies in three large cities: Sao Paulo, Paris and Milan. The cases demonstrate dense networks in each city connecting policy sectors, administrations and government levels. Contrary to accounts maintaining that governance has reduced government structures, all cities showed constant increases in network size and connectivity, mirroring the expansion and specialization of local bureaucracies. The cases also indicate the resilient salience of the politics of political parties, policy fields and – especially in Paris – different government levels. This suggests that governance involves a reorganization of government functions and increased policy specialization, but this is not done by reducing the role of politics or the state itself. Lastly, in all three cities we find a greater centrality of the same kind of agencies more strongly associated with urban infrastructure and planning.

Direct and Indirect Testing for Accountability of Regional Financial Management and Trust Level of Public-Stakeholders in Local Government

Every organization wants to be trusted by public-stakeholders. Their trust is a form of recognition for results, performance, and achievements. The authority of the central government to regional governments regarding financial management is a demand for improvement in all areas in order to achieve a goal and target from the central government, one of which is that all parties trust. Therefore, this study tries to connect several factors that can be used as indicators to achieve public trust, including the presentation and accessibility of regional financial reports, control activities carried out by local governments, and accountability of financial reports prepared by local governments. This study used a quantitative approach by distributing questionnaires to the 160 local bureaucracies (Indonesian: OPD which stands for Organisasi Perangkat Daerah) in Semarang. This study used structural equation modeling (SEM) with smart PLS. This study found that the presentation of financial reports, accessibility of financial reports, and control activities had a positive effect on the accountability of regional financial management. Besides, this research also found that the presentation of financial reports, accessibility of financial reports, control activities and accountability of regional financial management had a positive effect on public stakeholder trust. Furthermore, the accountability of regional financial management fully mediates the relationship between the presentation of financial statements, the accessibility of financial reports, and control activities on public-stakeholder trust.

Recognizing and mediating bureaucratic barriers: increasing access to care through small private providers in Kenya

Background: Equitable access to health services can be constrained in countries where private practitioners make up a large portion of primary care providers, making affordability a challenge. Expanding purchasing arrangements in many countries has helped integrate private providers into government-supported payment schemes and reduced financial barriers to care. However, private providers often must go through an onerous accreditation process to enroll in government-supported financing arrangements. The difficulties of this process can be exacerbated where health policy is changed often and low-level bureaucrats must navigate these shifts at their own discretion, effectively re-interpreting or re-making policy in practice. This paper analyzes one initiative to increase private provider accreditation with social health insurance (SHI) in Kenya by creating an intermediary between providers and SHI officials. Methods: This paper draws on 126 semi-structured interviews about SHI accreditation experience with private providers who were members of a franchise network in Kenya. It also draws on four focus group discussions conducted with franchise representatives who provided accreditation support to the providers and served as liaisons between the franchised providers and local SHI offices. There was a total of 20 participants across all four focus groups. Results: In a regulatory environment where regulations are weak and impermanent, officials created an accreditation process that was inconsistent and opaque: applying rules unevenly, requesting bribes, and minimizing communication with providers. The support provided by the implementing organizations clarified rules, reduced the power of local bureaucrats to apply regulations at their own discretion, gave providers greater confidence in the system, and helped to standardize the accreditation process. Conclusions: We conclude that intermediary organizations can mitigate institutional weaknesses, reduce barriers to effective care expansion caused by street-level bureaucrats, and facilitate the adoption of systems which reduce rent-seeking practices that might otherwise delay or derail initiatives to reach universal health coverage.

Turnover Intention and Productivity of Local Bureaucrats: Focusing on Influences of Local Politicians Intervention, Central Government Control, and Citizen Compliance

Among the external environment factors faced by local officials are intervention by local council politicians, central government control and citizen policy non-compliance. These factors, together with organizational management factors and individual factors, affect the turnover intentions and productivity of local government bureaucrats in various ways. An empirical analysis of the Local Bureaucrats Perception Survey shows that intervention by politicians has a negative effect on individual and organizational turnover intention and productivity. Central government has no significant effect on individual turnover intention but increases organizational turnover intention and productivity. Citizen policy compliance has a negative effect on individual turnover intention and no significant effect on productivity. The most harmful effect on local bureaucrats is the negative intervention of local congressman because they increase turnover intention but decrease productivity. Turnover intention and Productivity are also important in that these factors improve organizational competitiveness.