Policy Instrument Choices for Growth Management and Land Use Regulation

What factors account for local government land use practices and their choices among specific growth management policy instruments? We apply the political market framework to examine how land use policy choices in Florida are shaped by institutional features of county governments and the demands of organizations and interests in a community. Local policy decisions reflect a balance of the conflicting interests and responses to economic and political pressures. The results demonstrate that county government structure and election rules play critical roles in the adoption of urban service boundaries, incentive zoning, and transfer of development rights programs. We report evidence consistent with the argument that these “second‐generation” growth management policies are motivated by exclusionary goals.     

Leveraging city officials’ professional and social Identities to facilitate affordable housing

Housing affordability is an acute problem in many developed economies. It is rooted, inter alia, in a conflict of interests across levels of government. Policies that seek to increase the supply of housing and lower their purchase price are popular among the general electorate, yet local governments deploy urban planning regulations to restrict densification and development of affordable housing within their jurisdictions. Moves to address this conflict would benefit from unpacking city officials' policy preferences and their variation. This paper compares the positions of local-government politicians vs. those of unelected bureaucrats in Israeli cities, drawing on survey and interview data. Our findings confirm the conflicts of interest between levels of government even within Israel's unitary, centralized context. However, we show that career bureaucrats, given their relative freedom from electoral pressures and commitment to professional values, are more amenable to citizens' and central government's shared interest in densification and affordable housing. We also highlight city officials' place of residence—within vs. outside the city—and their social identification with citizens and residents as antecedents of their urban-planning preferences. We draw on these findings to delineate directions for more effective central–local government collaboration in seeking affordable housing solutions.     

Policy Diffusion and Strategies for Promoting Policy Change: Evidence From California Local Gun Control Ordinances

Recent research efforts on policy innovation and diffusion largely have focused upon policymaking at the state government level. In this article we seek to develop an understanding of the ways momentum for policy change can be generated among receptive local governments. We use gun control policymaking within California to illustrate how local government characteristics, the presence of regional associations, and the establishment of interest groups may lead to policy development and diffusion. We also identify linkages between interest groups, focusing events, and the successful use of a new image of gun violence as a public health problem, yielding insights into strategies that may be used successfully to promote policy change.     

Government institutions and the dynamics of urban growth in China

Economic growth in China in recent decades has largely rested on the dynamism of its cities. High economic growth has coincided with measures aimed at improving the efficiency of local governments and with a mounting political drive to curb corruption. Yet the connection between government institutions and urban growth in China remains poorly understood. This paper is the first to look into the link between government efficiency and corruption, on the one hand, and urban growth in China, on the other hand and to assess what is the role of institutions relative to more traditional factors for economic growth in Chinese cities. Using panel data for 283 cities over the period between 2003 and 2014, the results show that the urban growth in China is a consequence of a combination of favorable human capital, innovation, density, local conditions, foreign direct investment, and city‐level government institutions. Both government quality—especially for those cities with the best governments—and the fight against corruption at the city level have a direct effect on urban growth. Measures to tackle corruption at the provincial level matter in a more indirect way, by raising or lowering the returns of other growth‐inducing factors.     

THE IMPACT OF LOCAL DECENTRALIZATION ON ECONOMIC GROWTH: EVIDENCE FROM U.S. COUNTIES*

ABSTRACT We analyze the impact of fiscal decentralization on U.S. county population, employment, and real income growth. Our findings suggest that government organization matters for local economic growth, but that the impacts vary by government unit and by economic indicator. We find that single‐purpose governments per square mile have a positive impact on metropolitan population and employment growth, but no significant impact on nonmetropolitan counties. In contrast, the fragmentation of general‐purpose governments per capita has a negative impact on employment and population growth in nonmetropolitan counties. Our results suggest that local government decentralization matters differently for metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties.     

Experimentalist Governance with Interactive Central–Local Relations: Making New Pension Policies in China

Although regional policy experimentation has become a global trend, the distinct features of experimentalist governance in a given country, such as China, remains to be investigated. This article extends policy process theory by proposing the framework of experimentalist governance with interactive central–local relations or Chinese‐style experimentalist governance, which combines three features. First, policy goals and instruments are formed separately and interactively by the central and local governments. Second, the central government is burdened with its own concerns about policy performance for maintaining authority and legitimacy. Third, the evaluation of policy pilots relies primarily on the responses of local governments. We further conceptualize three new patterns of experimentalist governance in China, namely, “comparative trial,” “selective recognition,” and “adaptive reconciliation,” in addition to “hierarchical experimentation.” These patterns are illustrated with case studies on four pension policies in China, which are for public sector employees, urban employees, rural residents, and migrant workers.     

“借口”:中国城市资本高度集聚的政治经济学分析框架

面对改革开放以来中国快速城市化现象,本文从中国投资拉动的经济增长模式出发,发现中国城市存在着高度积累,特别是行政级别高的城市持续投资增长的现象,在分析投资、投资效率与大型事件关系的基础上,提出了官员晋升竞标赛和财政分权预算约束条件下的制度机会主义行为假设,认为大型事件不过是政府构建的一个有利于在城市体系下,通过打破传统的政府预算约束,实现资本高度集中促进经济持续增长的制度机会主义行为。"借口"模式旨在揭示大型事件现象背后的政治与经济激励,并以2010年广州举办亚运会为例,按政府构建—突破约束—官员晋升的结构,分析了广州市政府构建全社会共识,举办亚运会带来巨额投资促进城市发展实现政治与经济激励的事实,为"借口"模式提供了实证的案例。最后,对"借口"模式的未来趋势进行了探讨。     

政府空间治理与地方产业发展响应——以重庆市电子信息产业为例

政府空间治理对地方发展具有深刻影响。西方学界在解释国家治理时有三个重要学说:非马克思主义理论、马克思主义理论和福柯学说,但并不能完全解释我国的政府治理结构。中国治理结构包含中央政府和地方政府等多个层次,各层次的行为能力和权力空间有所不同。改革开放以来,中央政府允许地方政府通过调节财税杠杆、土地、劳动力等要素进行地方治理模式创新。同时,地方政府积极争取成为由中央政府批准的特殊经济区,对本地制度环境进行改革和创新,以促进地方产业发展。本文以重庆市为例,结合6次深入调研,探讨政府如何通过财税、土地等多项改革,提升空间治理能力,创造差异化治理环境,以带动地方产业发展的积极响应。     

Managerial Friction and Land-Use Policy Punctuations in the Fragmented Metropolis

Despite the portrayal of bureaucratic organizations as resistant to change, public managers have some ability to strategically move land-use processes out of incrementalism, even when bureaucratic lethargy acts as a drag. This article examines managerial influence in land-use policy by synthesizing theories of political markets and punctuated equilibrium. An information-processing logic is developed to explain why local government managers shift from “inward” to “outward” land-use management strategies in periods of environmental change. "Managerial friction” is defined as a strategic managerial adjustment producing punctuated land-use policy change in the face of environmental changing conditions. Hypotheses are tested using data on Florida local government comprehensive plan amendments and a Bayesian methodological approach. The evidence suggests managerial friction can be distinguished from the effects of environmental and political complexity as well as other forms of institutional friction, including management turnover, legislative institutions, and bureaucratic structure.     

Transcending the fixity of jurisdictional scale

In this commentary I argue that the case study of the Hanford Reservation illustrates that local interests are not coterminous with the scale of local government. Hanford is an example of a decentralized land-use decision-making process, whereby multiple government jurisdictions and diverse interest groups are involved in the negotiations. While the governments are fixed by scale, the other actors are not, and their interests are fluid across scales. Interest groups are most concerned with land-use outcomes, whereas Morrill presents local governments as most interested in their authority over land use. Analysis of land-use conflicts, therefore, must involve examination of both scale-bounded government autonomy as well as the power struggles and cross-scale alliances of the multiple interests and social identities expressing concern about the outcome.     

Big data analytics for mitigating carbon emissions in smart cities: opportunities and challenges

The paper addresses the growing scepticism around big data use in the context of smart cities. Big data is said to transform city governments into being more efficient, effective and evidence-based. However, critics point towards the limited capacity of government to overcome the siloed structure of data storage and manage the diverse stakeholders involved in setting up a data ecosystem. On the basis of this, the paper investigates the challenges city governments face when dealing with big data in the context of carbon emission reduction. Through the lens of the evidence-based policy and policy capacity literature, the cities of Copenhagen (Denmark), London (UK), Malmö (Sweden), Oxford (UK) and Vienna (Austria) are analysed. The cases reveal that the institutional complexity underlying big data integration limits local government capacity to set up data management structures that would allow further utilization of big data and that current solutions focus on local pilot sites and outsourcing of data analytics.     

Counting eyeballs,soundbites and ‘plings’: arts participation,strategic instrumentalism and the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad

This article examines cultural participation, its metrics and ‘drivers’ as they are defined through cultural programming for the London 2012 Olympics. The meanings and interpretation of these terms are considered by examining the development of an evaluation framework for the We Play programme in the North West of England, an initiative funded by Legacy Trust UK and part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. It argues that in spite of the dissonance between arts and sports within Olympics programmes and claims of the deleterious impact on arts funding, particular within the regions, London 2012 has engendered creative programming which strategically deploys the Cultural Olympiad to satisfy local cultural policy objectives as well as meeting broader interests in ‘legacy’ from the Games. Such ambitions require the development of appropriate methodologies for understanding arts participation and engagement for the purpose of evaluation and evidence-based policy making, a particular challenge for such a complex range of activities, sites and settings for arts participation.     

Governance,Policy Innovation,and Local Economic Development in North Carolina

This article examines the extent to which local governments in North Carolina embrace innovation in their economic development activities. The study makes a distinctive theoretical contribution by examining the relationship between innovation in how economic development policies are administered and implemented (using concepts associated with governance and NPM), and innovation in what is substantively done (policy innovation). An analysis of the results from a statewide survey of local governments in North Carolina finds that certain governance/management variables are significant determinants of economic development policy innovation. An implication of this finding is that new ways of doing economic development may go hand‐in‐hand with new ways of governing and managing. Many of the governance/management variables are also positively associated with the use of a greater number of traditional economic development strategies and tools. This suggests that local governments may find it helpful to be innovative in how they implement economic development irrespective of the substantive policy orientation of particular strategies and tools.     

Fast Activism: Resisting Mobile Policies

“Fast” urban policy is increasingly common as city leaders draw on globally mobile policy models to accelerate the policymaking process. Critics have responded with new types of “fast activism” strategies. Fast activists plan temporary and strategically timed campaigns, use relationally local messaging that jumps between global and local political critiques, and organise ideologically diverse coalitions to mobilise quickly against policy proposals. This was observed in protest campaigns against Olympic bids in Boston (USA) and Hamburg (Germany). Protesters successfully opposed mega‐event planning in both cities by combining all three tactics within a short period of time. The paper presents a comparative study of the Boston and Hamburg protests, drawing from qualitative fieldwork on the campaigns in both cities. The paper contributes by conceptualising an emerging mode of urban opposition, and by evaluating how this type of resistance changes local receptions of fast and mobile urban policy.     

European Union External Trade Policy: Multilevel Principal–Agent Relationships

This article examines the potential political influences on European Union (EU) external trade policymaking. Given the EU's volume of international trade and its extensive involvement in bilateral and multilateral trade arrangements, a better understanding of how the EU makes external trade policy is increasingly important. It is an extremely complex process—involving the EU public, the 25 member states' parliaments and governments, and the institutions of the EU, including the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament, and the European Commission. It is a system of multilevel governance with overlapping jurisdictions with numerous potential access points for societal interests to influence European external trade policy. In this article, we evaluate the probable political channels that societal interests could use to influence EU external trade policy. We employ the principal–agent (P–A) framework to examine five of the more important P–A relationships that are likely to influence EU external trade policymaking. We conclude that EU policymaking as it pertains to external trade is quite insulated from general public pressures. The primary institutions involved in external trade policymaking are the EU Council of Ministers and the Commission—both of which are largely insulated from the public. Future empirical work should focus on this relationship between the Council of Ministers and the Commission.     

Governmentality, subject-building, and the discourses and practices of devolution in the UK

This paper uses a Foucauldian governmentality framework to analyse and interrogate the discourses and strategies adopted by the state and sections of the business community in their attempts to shape and influence emerging agendas of governance in post-devolution Scotland. Much of the work on governmentality has examined the ways in which governments have developed particular techniques, rationales and mechanisms to enable the functioning of governance programmes. This paper expands upon such analyses by also looking at the ways in which particular interests may use similar procedures, discourses and practices to promote their own agendas and develop new forms of resistance, contestation and challenge to emerging policy frameworks. Using the example of business interest mobilization in post-devolution Scotland, it is argued that governments may seek to mobilize defined forms of expertise and knowledge, linking them to wider political debates. This, however, creates new opportunities for interests to shape and contest the discourses and practices of government. The governmentalization of politics can, therefore, be seen as more of a dialectical process of definition and contestation than is often apparent in existing Foucault-inspired writing.     

Scaling‐Up,Scaling‐Down,and Scaling‐Out: Local Planning Strategies for Sea‐Level Rise in New South Wales,Australia

Globally, sea‐level rise is expected to impact on many coastal regions and settlements. While mitigation of global greenhouse gas emissions remains an important task, adaptation is now seen as a critical component of the policy equation. Local government is a key player in adaptation planning and managing risk through their mandated role in land use planning and development control. Yet, managing the predicted impacts of climate change is proving to be a complex and difficult task for planners and policy makers. This paper reports on a case of local government deliberation on possible planning responses to address future sea‐level rise impacts in New South Wales, Australia. Using structured, expert opinion of planners and other technical experts engaged in a collaborative network in the Sydney region, we explore the feasibility of implementing planning and policy measures at the local and regional scales to respond to inundation risk as a result of sea‐level rise and storm surge events. Our research shows how local governments employ specific scale‐oriented strategies to engage private and public actors at different scales to manage legal, financial, and technical risks in coastal adaptation.     

Neoliberalism and Suburban Employment: Western Sydney in the 1990s

During the past 15 years metropolitan planning strategies of the NSW state government have done little to address the spatial distribution of either employment or labour market equity within the metropolis. In the fast‐growing outer western suburbs, the government has focused on attracting business investment to increase the stock of local jobs and to improve employment ‘self‐sufficiency’— a dominantly neoliberal policy framework. This paper explores a widening gulf between the reality of outer urban change and this policy framework by considering changes in the location of jobs and in the employment experiences of residents in Greater Western Sydney (GWS). Evidence is drawn from census journey‐to‐work data (1991–2001). While holding a majority of manufacturing jobs in Sydney, GWS also experienced continued growth of jobs in service industries during the 1990s. Yet the relative importance of employment in the city's fast‐growth finance and business services sector still lags well behind that of inner and northern parts of the city. The focus on growing the regional stock of jobs has not addressed problems of labour market access faced by residents of particular localities and the goal of employment self‐sufficiency has not delivered greater equity to outer suburban labour markets. A focus on sufficiency of access to employment for residents of GWS draws attention not only to regional stocks of jobs but also to the provision of social infrastructure and state‐provided services to outer suburban populations as they continue to expand.     

HISTORY,INSTITUTIONS, AND CITIES: A VIEW FROM THE AMERICAS*

ABSTRACT Every nation, formally or informally, defines and establishes the lines of political and fiscal authority among its national, regional, and local governments. Historically, centralized governments tend to restrict the power and autonomy of provincial and local governments. In this paper, we exploit the quasi‐experimental distribution of political institutions in the Americas caused by variation in European colonial experience to examine the impact of institutions on urban and local development, specifically on the degree of urban primacy, the size distribution of cities, the number and density of local government units, and the fragmentation of metropolitan areas. We argue that centralization of political power at the national level, as experienced in many countries in Latin America, contributes to urban primacy and a size distribution of cities favoring large cities. Additionally, even in more politically decentralized countries such as Canada and the U.S., variance in political centralization at the provincial (state) level over local governments led to significant divergences in urban primacy, the distribution of city sizes, as well as the form, number, and density of local governments. While we cannot rule out the importance of other factors, our findings suggest that political centralization affects spatial economic development.     

地方治理与利益诉求:民国初年陕绥划界纠纷研究

陕绥划界是民国初年西北地区省界调整中发生的一起政治事件。上自北京政府、陕绥各级地方政府,下到争议区的伊克昭盟王公、士绅民众,分别从国家政令统一、边疆安全、争议区经济利益归属、基层社会事务决策权归属等角度,围绕蒙陕边界地区的划界问题展开利益诉求。蒙陕边界地带士绅民众在清末督办蒙旗垦务大臣贻谷整理垦务时期认购土地,拥有了争议区土地的所有权,其是否会因为政权更迭而发生改变,遂成为陕绥划界纠纷的核心问题。在近八年的纠纷过程中,北京政府与地方政府、地方政府与地方政府(陕、绥双方)、地方各系势力与两级政府之间展开利益角逐。最终,北京政府让步于既成事实的陕西一方,即移民不可能退回去的事实。而陕北沿边地方政府和士绅利用自身的威望和号召力,对争议区内民众进行宣传和引导,组建利益共同体,维护地方社会事务话语权的“正当性”。