The Green Energy Transition and Peripheral City Development in China: Towards a Local Eco-developmental State

The green energy transition is recognized for its inherent environmental contributions. This article illustrates how it can also reshape the economic landscape and create the conditions for a peripheral city to develop. Drawing on the politics of accelerating low-carbon transition and focusing on the role that local governments play in this process, the authors illustrate how the green energy transition has commercialized wind and solar resources and constructed a new resource control system in northwest China. The Gobi Desert has extensive wind and solar energy resources; having the authority to grant access to preferential sites to exploit these resources empowers local governments to combine their interests with those of other stakeholders to build local capacity and achieve developmental goals. Governments are also able to manipulate renewable energy curtailments to promote infrastructure investment, technological progress, and the grid-parity model. The green energy transition can therefore play a role in upgrading industrial structures, alleviating local poverty, narrowing regional development gaps, and contributing to national environmental improvement. This study provides a theoretical contribution to our understanding of how the local eco-developmental state configures new energy spaces and restructures local governance, and argues that green industrial policies are sometimes actively nurtured by local rather than central governments.     

Libertarian Paternalism as a Tool to Explore Strategic Sub-Regional Planning in England?

Across Europe, a series of revisions and realignments are currently taking place in sub-national governance structures. In England, this involves the creation of a new scalar construct through the dismantling of the regional tier and the creation of new sub-regional institutions. Through focusing on the move towards subsidiarity, this article considers the extent to which libertarian paternalism—or “don't do anything unless you have to”—and the adoption of some of these key principles by the UK government—can help to illuminate and explain such contemporary processes of restructuring and rescaling of governance. In turn, the article considers (i) the form, process and outcomes of planning practices within this restructuring; and (ii) the implications arising in respect of the democratic accountability and strategic efficiency of the new arrangements, and the interests that are being privileged therein.     

Governing Regional Development Through Culture and Creativity: The Case of the Veneto Region

This article has adopted a focus on culture and creativity in order to reflect on existing policies for the governance of large polycentric territories. Two trends, namely the increasing importance of regions in the urban planning field of study and culture as a strategic factor for territorial development, are combined to see how culture can be used as a strategic element within processes of regional development. Culture-led strategies are found to be instrumental to regional development, especially in territories undergoing a moment of inertia. The case of the Veneto Region shows that this momentum has now evidently also arrived in Italy. At a time in which the whole country is experiencing economic crisis, the Veneto region seems to be trapped in a transition stage between its successful past and the uncertainty of these days. While the Regione del Veneto is only somewhat trying to include culture and creativity in its official regional planning documents, some bottom-up initiatives have highlighted culture as a strategic factor for governing large territories and for their all-embracing development. In this context, culture and creativity can be seen as tools for governing territories that do not follow the policy orientation given by Regione del Veneto, but rather have a new understanding of regional governance taken forward by the private sector working together with the local administrations.     

Global energy governance: do the BRICs have the energy to drive reform?

It is widely accepted that the rising power of the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—has the potential to re‐shape the international system. However, little attention has been given to the BRICs’ role in a growing area of strategic importance: global energy governance. While global governance scholars now argue that the international energy architecture requires substantive reform to keep pace with the rapid transformations in global energy markets, largely driven by the BRICs, it is not clear what role these countries will play in future governance arrangements. Drawing on recent scholarship in global governance and international negotiations, interviews with G20 energy officials, and the observations of the author, a past delegate to G20 negotiations, this article examines whether the BRICs as a coalition have the capacity and willingness to drive substantive global energy governance reform. In doing so, it highlights the problems with the BRICs as a coalition on energy and considers the prospects for energy reform in light of China's increasing engagement with energy governance ahead of it hosting the G20 Summit in 2016.     

Empowerment Planning in Regional Development

In the planning literature, there is a tendency to contradict top-down and bottom-up policies, government and governance and instrumental and communicative planning. However, through extensive action research in regional development practice, we have learnt that there is a need for combining them in adequate planning models, and we have found strong arguments in philosophy and theory for this combination when we go to the debate on modernization and the arguments in favour of better balance between communicative and instrumental rationalities. This article is a theoretical discussion of a planning model that we have called empowerment planning. In this discussion, we regard empowerment in regional development as a combination of top-down and bottom-up processes with the variables context, mobilization, organization, implementation and learning. Planning is regarded as a combination of instrumental and communicative rationalities in an institution-building process based on Habermas' will-forming process with different discourses. We present how a planning approach with institutional, strategic, tactical and operative levels of planning can stimulate different development variables, contribute to the institution-building process and strengthen the legitimacy of the planning institution.     

From sustainable development to carbon control: eco-state restructuring and the politics of urban and regional development

The management of carbon emissions holds some prospect for challenging sustainable development as the organising principle of socio-environmental regulation. This paper explores the rise of a distinctive low-carbon polity as an ideological state project, and examines its potential ramifications for the regulation of economy–environment relations at the urban and regional scale. Carbon control would seem to introduce a new set of values into state regulation and this might open up possibilities for challenging mainstream modes of urban and regional development in a manner not possible under sustainable development. But low-carbon restructuring also portends intensified uneven development, new forms of state control and a socially uneven reworking of state–society relations. In order to explore these issues we start by setting out a framework for conceptualising environmental regulation based around the idea of eco-state restructuring. This idea is introduced to capture the conflicts, power struggles and strategic selectivities involved as governments seek to reconcile environmental protection with multiple other pressures and demands. Overall the paper seeks to make a distinctive contribution to theoretical work on state environmental regulation and the emerging spatial dimensions of climate policy.     

Soft balancing against the US ‘pivot to Asia’: China’s geostrategic rationale for establishing the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

The existing accounts about the China-led multilateral development bank—the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)—have focused on the USA’s policy concerns and the economic and commercial reasons for China having established it. Two deeper questions are left unaddressed: Was there any strategic rationale for China to initiate a new multilateral development bank and, if so, how effective is China’s strategy? From a neorealist balance-of-power perspective, this article argues that China has felt threatened by the Obama administration’s rebalance to the Asia-Pacific strategy. In response, China is opting for a soft-balancing policy to carve out a regional security space in Eurasia in order to mitigate the threat coming from its east. China’s material power, premised on the fact that the country is a huge domestic market and flush with cash, has proved irresistible for Asian states, with the exception of Japan, to be enticed away from the USA. On the one hand, this article adds weight to the claim that although the USA remains the pre-eminent military power in the Asia-Pacific, it has fallen into a relative decline in regional economic governance; on the other, China’s soft balancing has its own limitations in forming like-minded partnerships with, and offering security guarantees to, AIIB members. A China-led regional order is yet to have arrived, even with the AIIB.     

A cooperative spatial future for RheinRuhr

As is the case with other metropolitan regions, there are claims that the emerging functional urban region of RheinRuhr needs to develop a cooperative spatial future. This article explores the underlying difficulties in seeking to move forward in regional cooperation and strategic regional development for RheinRuhr. At present, no clear shift can be observed from traditional land use planning and local development approaches towards more strategic planning for the whole urban region. There are still many obstacles to be overcome. Nevertheless, strides have been taken in the direction of improved cooperation. A dense and functionally overlapping (sub)‐regional associationalism seems to be one step towards future city‐regional governance and possibly government. An evaluation is reported of two new innovative modes of structural and regional policies, namely the Regional Conferences and the IBA Emscher Park Planning Company; their impacts on regional policy‐making structures are reviewed. A discussion on more recent approaches to regional cooperation follows. It is argued that, in the long term, as a multi‐regionalized space, RheinRuhr requires some kind of coordinator and moderator and new practices of regional planning and management. The future development of a RheinRuhr metropolitan region requires further steps to be taken towards strategic planning by the Land government as well as a deepening of the level of institutionalization. Some ideas are put forward on how the elaboration of a spatial Leitbild for RheinRuhr could be initiated and supported.     

Relocating Participation within a Radical Politics of Development

In response to (and in sympathy with) many of the critical points that have been lodged against participatory approaches to development and governance within international development, this article seeks to relocate participation within a radical politics of development. We argue that participation needs to be theoretically and strategically informed by a radical notion of ‘citizenship’, and be located within the ‘critical modernist’ approach to development. Using empirical evidence drawn from a range of contemporary approaches to participation, the article shows that participatory approaches are most likely to succeed: (i) where they are pursued as part of a wider radical political project; (ii) where they are aimed specifically at securing citizenship rights and participation for marginal and subordinate groups; and (iii) when they seek to engage with development as an underlying process of social change rather than in the form of discrete technocratic interventions — although we do not use these findings to argue against using participatory methods where these conditions are not met. Finally, we consider the implications of this relocation for participation in both theoretical and strategic terms.     

Regional governance and legitimacy in South America: the meaning of UNASUR

Over the last decade, rapid changes to development models and market rules have led—yet again—to a revision of the meaning of regionalism, bringing to the fore the role of regional organizations in anchoring democracy and supporting progressive social policies. This is particularly the case in South America, where the presence of regional organizations in public policy‐making is a subject of increasing scrutiny. This article examines new forms of politically sensitive regional governance in South America, focusing in particular on the case of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). It shows how contemporary South American regionalism bypasses the questions of trade and investment that dominated earlier schemes of regionalism in order to focus on shoring up democracy and managing the regional social deficit. The article explores UNASUR's actions in two policy areas: supporting the regional democratic norm and health policy. UNASUR, this article argues, is developing a hybrid form of output‐focused legitimacy that rests on a combination of credible commitments to welfare promotion, especially for the poor, and the pursuit of collective public goods, alongside a robust defence of quite minimal but uncontroversial standards of procedural democracy across the region. The analysis challenges the view that regionalism has failed in South America and identifies instead the emergence of a new sort of highly political regionalism. We call for UNASUR to be taken more seriously in the literature on comparative regionalism and, indeed, for a revision of how regionalism more widely is understood in Latin America.     

After Neoliberalism? Community Activism and Local Partnerships in Aotearoa New Zealand

In Aotearoa New Zealand, as elsewhere, partnership programmes overtly targeted to the strengthening of local communities are developing in a range of institutional sites. This development, it is claimed by some, moves social governance well beyond the narrow, market‐oriented, contractualism of earlier forms of neoliberalism, and into a new era of joined up, inclusive governance. Here we highlight the emergent role of "strategic brokers" who do the grounded joining up of governance in this new partnering ethos. Drawing on the findings of a large project on local partnerships in Aotearoa New Zealand, we show how community activists have played a distinctive historical role in shaping the form that local partnerships take. We then turn our attention to the current context, examining the rise of mandatory partnership working and the implications of this for community activists. We highlight key aspects of new forms of gendered professionalism, including the need to have both knowledge of and knowledge about communities. In outlining the historical development and current scope of strategic broker roles, we ask what we can learn about the nature of would‐be "post‐neoliberal" social governance.     

西域屯田预期嬗变的历史动因分析

屯田西域事关国家安全和发展的大局。从汉代至清代西域屯田的发展历程,国家对屯田西域的预期收益有一个嬗变过程：从最初经略西域的军事供给,到其后边疆安全与地区经济发展并重,以至于通过移民屯田与边疆经济开发保障边疆安全和社会稳定成为最重要的目标。国家作为实现屯田预期目标的主体,其综合实力和对西域的战略定位决定着屯田目标的实现程度。因此从国家战略、屯田形式和屯田区域等方面分析屯田西域预期嬗变的动因,对今天的国家西部发展战略有着借鉴意义。     

低碳旅游:旅游产业生态化的战略选择

在旅游业中发展低碳经济与旅游产业生态化其本质是一致的,核心是旅游产业系统的生态化;构造旅游产业生态系统并形成物质、能源输入输出平衡的旅游产业价值链的全程生态化;旅游产业生态化是一个渐进和反生态性特征日趋削弱、生态性特征逐渐加强的过程。"低碳旅游"的核心是通过在旅游业内发展低碳经济、创新低碳技,术,改变发展模式,最大限度减少二氧化碳排放,是一种缓解旅游生态环境压力的新技术经济范式,是促进旅游产业生态化的战略选择和重要途径。需要因势利导地利用产品导向、环境管理、延伸生产者责任、环境伦理导向、应用科学技术等的策略促进旅游产业生态化发展。     

Community resistance and the role of justice in shale gas development in the United Kingdom

Global energy policies embracing a transition to unconventional oil and gas development are hallmarks of many developed nations. Among these, the United Kingdom has framed the development of shale gas as one means to transition from high-carbon fossil-fuel consumption to low-carbon alternatives. Yet the introduction of this industry and recent legislation associated with it have not been without controversy. Communities throughout the United Kingdom are engaged in sustained debates concerning climate change, health, the scale of extraction footprints, securitisation, and governance. Places such as Kirby Misperton, the focus of this article, are representative of many villages where questions abound about the role of justice at all stages and scales of governmental decision-making. Using a legal geographic lens, this article examines narratives among local residents who are actively resisting the arrival of unconventional gas. I consider how the relationships between and among energy transition, policy, and justice have been interpreted by communities and argue for inequity and risk to be addressed in more transparent ways. I contend that highlighting counter-narratives remains essential if powerful arguments by governments and others are to be negated. Fundamentally, true justice can only prevail when all stakeholders are considered legitimate and their opinions valid.     

Strategic Alliances in Action: Toward a Theory of Evolution

The popularity and prevalence of strategic alliances for problem solving has been well documented in research on the corporate sector and public policy. However, there has been limited work to date on building a comprehensive theory about the evolutionary process of alliances. The purpose of this article is to synthesize current research on alliance development in order to develop a model of strategic alliance evolution. The theoretical model is built with ideas from prior research as well as findings from our own recent research on alliances in education. We conducted a national study of strategic alliances in charter schools focused on uncovering the process of evolution—including how alliances are initiated, operated, and evaluated—and the various internal and external factors that influence alliance development and progress. Our findings offer a model of strategic alliance evolution and provide direction for future research.     

Internationalisation of the Chinese subnational state and capital: the case of Yunnan and the Greater Mekong Subregion

This article examines the participation of China's Yunnan Province in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) in order to understand the dynamics behind the regionalisation and internationalisation strategies adopted by a Chinese subnational state. It argues that the Yunnan case demonstrates the outflow of state capital—both national and provincially based—to have been instrumental in harnessing Beijing's and Kunming's political support for programs of subregional economic cooperation. This political support has led to a state capital alliance underpinning the economic expansion of provincial state capital into the GMS. It also argues that subregional governance arrangements, such as those featuring in the GMS, embed the competitive advantage of state capital through new forms of extra-territorial governance that ostensibly de-emphasises the political dimensions of state capital. The internationalisation of Yunnan subnational state is reflected in its political strategy of subregional governance. These changes point to complex rescaling of not just national state but also subnational states in Asia that find expression in variegated regional and subregional political projects.     

Institutional Arrangements and Political Mobilization in the New Italian Regionalism: The Role of Spatial Policies in the Piedmont Region

The paper focuses on the resurgence of the regions as protagonists of the process of the state rescaling in many European countries. In the EU countries this process can be seen as a result of a mix of economic and institutional factors, which have been producing an increasing competition between the central governments and the regional authorities. The rise of the multi-level governance and of the so-called Euroregionalism has reinforced the role of the regional scale in the territorial development: on one hand, with new actors like agencies and organizations engaged in the economic development (FDI attraction, place marketing, innovation and learning), on the other hand by the resurgence of “old” actors, such as the regions, in many cases empowered by processes of institutional devolution. The literature has investigated this re-composition of the political space with regard to the “hollowing out” and the “rescaling” of the state. On the base of these theoretical underpinnings, we discuss some empirical evidence from the Italian experience, in order to show whether and how the regional structures are not only “spaces for policies”, but also “spaces for politics”. Over the last decade, the changes in legal framework, the external inputs from supranational levels of government—the European Commission—and the re-territorialization processes have introduced many elements of innovation in the role of the regions. By illustrating the case of the Piedmont Region, we try to demonstrate that the transition towards the region as an active space of politics can be mediated by the sphere of the policies, especially the spatial ones.     

Towards an Energy Politics In‐Against‐and‐Beyond the State: Berlin's Struggle for Energy Democracy

Social movements in struggle around energy are currently developing an imaginary of “energy democracy” to signify the emancipatory energy transitions they desire. Deploying a scholar‐activist perspective, this paper contributes to debates around the concretisation of the energy democracy imaginary by exploring the relationship of energy democracy movements to the state. To do so, I focus on the experiences of the Berliner Energietisch campaign, which in 2013 forced (and lost) a referendum aiming to extend—and democratise—the local state's role in Berlin's energy governance. Drawing on relational theories of the state, I argue that it is productive to read Berliner Energietisch as enacting an energy politics in‐against‐and‐beyond the state. In making this argument, I draw out implications for theoretical and strategic debates around the commons and the state.     

Legitimacy of Informal Strategic Urban Planning—Observations from Finland,Sweden and Norway

In Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian cities and urban regions, strategic approaches in urban planning have been developed by introducing different kinds of informal strategic plans. The means of improving the strategic quality of urban and regional planning have thus been searched from outside the statutory land use planning system, determined by the national planning laws. Similar development has also taken place elsewhere. When strategic plans are prepared outside the statutory planning system, these processes also lack the legal guarantee for openness, fairness and accountability. This is a serious legitimacy problem. In this article, the problem is examined theoretically and conceptually by combining democracy- and governance-theoretical perspectives. With this framework, four different approaches to legitimacy are derived: accountability, inclusiveness, liberty and fairness. The article concludes that strategic urban planning must find a balance between the four approaches to legitimacy. Concerning political processes, this requires agonistic acknowledgement of different democracy models, excluding neither deliberative nor liberalist arguments. Concerning administrative processes, it requires acknowledgement of the interdependence of statutory and informal planning instruments and the necessity of developing planning methods for their mutual complementarity—thus avoiding the detachment of informal strategic planning into a parallel planning “system”.     

Renewable Energy Innovation and Governance in Wales: A Regional Innovation System Approach

This paper draws on research commissioned to investigate the regional innovation system of Wales on green innovation, focusing on the renewable energy sub-sectors of wind, solar and biomass. It shows how many innovative firms operate within regional networks, cooperating and interacting not only with other firms such as suppliers, customers and competitors, but also with research and technology resource organizations, innovation support agencies, venture capital funds, and local and regional government bodies. The paper argues that within the region there is the presence of various renewable energy production platforms, usually based on core technologies (wind, solar, biomass, marine, etc.) at different levels of development. They involve a mix of established energy utilities and new sustainable energy businesses that are positioned at different levels within the renewable energy supply chain. The research shows that the regional government is playing an important role in supporting the renewable energy industry; nevertheless, more needs to be done to facilitate planning control, provide skills and create new demands for renewable energy that will further foster business growth and further strengthen the existing manufacturing base and innovation in Wales. The paper identifies some weaknesses in the Welsh energy innovation system, not least that energy is not a devolved responsibility and it argues that there is some scope for the Welsh Assembly Government to further investigate gaps within the green innovation supply chain and act on strengthening regional capabilities within the industry but also to support and investigate further opportunities for inward investment.