Petitions from Peripheries of Empire: Louisiana and Québec

As stress on water resources increases from growing human demands and a changing climate, recognition of the need to develop effective strategies for water governance is expanding. Consequently, it is timely to consider the legacy of effective instances of water policy innovation that have been highly influential in water resource management in Canada. We present two historical examples of policy transfer – that is, when policy employed in one jurisdiction is adapted for use in another. The first is the late nineteenth-century adoption of water allocation law in the North-West Territories that was a noteworthy departure from how water had been allocated in eastern Canada. The second is the twentieth-century introduction of conservation authorities in Ontario as regional watershed-based management entities. These examples illustrate how, in an era of expert-driven natural resources management, notions of governance were adapted from Australia and the United States. They also reveal how the biophysically-based policy context of water influences which policy transfer mechanisms are appropriate for lesson-learning. We conclude that the potential for policy transfer and lesson-learning to shorten the policy innovation timeline must be viewed as a critical response to urgent and evolving demands on water.     

广州大都市外围地区二元发展的矛盾及治理

结合广州案例选择界定研究范围,从空间形态、产业发展、土地利用、规划管理多方面分析大都市外围地区二元发展矛盾与特征,认为该地区承担了主城\"自上而下\"的空间外拓和外围撤市(县)设区后\"自下而上\"式的城镇蔓延。进而运用区域治理理论分析,指出其根源在于双轨城市化路径依赖下,现有规划编制与实施体系难以协调当前城乡二元土地管理制度下不同团体的利益冲突,认为广州应当从传统集权管理转向治理理念的协作方式,由此提出建立\"发展需求管理、土地开发共同决策、发展利益分享\"三个机制的对策研究。     

The Institutional Collective Action Framework

Institutional collective action (ICA) dilemmas arise from the division or partitioning of authority in which decisions by one government in one or more specific functional area impacts other governments and/or other functions. The focus on externalities of choice in fragmented systems integrates multiple research traditions into a conceptual system to understand and investigate collective dilemmas ubiquitous in contemporary governance arrangements. The mechanisms for mitigating ICA dilemmas are classified according to their scope and enforcement. Incentives to participate in a mechanism are hypothesized to favor mechanisms that provide the greatest gain for the least cost under different conditions of collaboration risk as determined by the nature of the underlying ICA problem, the compositions of affected jurisdictions, and institutional contexts. After reviewing empirical applications of the framework, an agenda to advance the theoretical and empirical development of the ICA approach is advanced.     

中国区域性旅游障碍研究探析

建设无障碍旅游区是中国区域旅游合作纵深发展的必然成果,其关键在于消除区域性的\"旅游障碍\"。然而当前国内对区域旅游障碍的研究却较少有。从研究分析来看,行之不畅不爽、信息不对称、服务疲软、管理的地方化倾向是区域性旅游障碍的主要表现形式。本文以为,区域性旅游障碍的形成和发展,是与地方政府行为质量、市场诚信发育程度、信息交流技术平台等因素密切相关的。消除区域性旅游障碍,必须切实提高地方政府组织区域旅游经济的行政作为质量,进一步规范市场竞争秩序、推进诚信建设,提高旅游企业素质和服务质量,完善区域间旅游交通的便捷性与信息交流的技术平台,促进中国区域旅游和谐发展。     

20世纪90年代中国区域经济发展的历史考察与基本经验

从20世纪90年代初开始,中国区域经济发展开始由非均衡发展转向区域协调发展。区域协调发展战略的形成有着特定的历史与现实背景。1991年和1999年是中国区域战略大调整的转折点,1991年开始强调区域协调发展,1999年正式提出西部大开发战略。随着区域经济政策的制定与实施,中国区域经济格局发生了深刻变化。考察中国区域经济发展历程,其基本经验对中国未来区域发展有着重要的启示与借鉴意义。     

Water,Geopolitics, and Economic Development in the Conceptualization of a Region

Two U.S.-based geographers outline three dimensions (geopolitical, economical, and biophysical) used to define the basin of the Mekong River as a region, which reveal multi-scalar water governance policies and discourses that lie at the core of current challenges and tensions within the basin. Drawing on their extensive knowledge and fieldwork, the authors demonstrate that processes integral to the framing of the Mekong as a region of economic integration and international cooperation (water resource development through construction of large dams) conflict sharply with the functioning of the Mekong as a region of highly connected biophysical processes. The approach utilized in the paper can be applied to the study of other transboundary river-basin regions in Eurasia and elsewhere facing similar contradictions among the geopolitical, economic, and biophysical dimensions used to define them. By focusing on a region as constructed simultaneously through multiple social and biophysical processes, the authors contribute to current debates within geography and related fields on the nature of regions.     

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.     

把握区域发展战略 促进区域协调发展

文章阐述了区域发展总体战略,分析了区域协调发展的现状,提出了促进区域协调发展的对策。     

区域市场营销与区域经济学拓展理论

区域市场的存在是营销行为区域化的必然结果。环境本底差异加上劳动地域分工出现了区域产品,各种类型区域产品空间分布在不同的地域单元,由此带来商品的市场流通,这就要求针对不同区域特点,制定企业的营销策略。区域市场营销理论是对区域市场、市场缺口理论、区际贸易理论以及市场区位论的拓展。企业在不同区域的营销行为,受区际因素和区际关系的影响使营销策略、营销效果发生变化。本文通过深入研究,揭示这些现象存在的本质问题。     

文化观念与区域可持续发展

区域文化观念始终潜移默化地影响区域发展主体。区域活性是对区域发展状态的一种模糊综合评判与描述。文化观念以发展主体为载体,影响区域活性各侧面,成为活性动力源。在具体时空环境下,经济现代化的地域模式与不同地域的历史传统和文化背景有密切的内在逻辑联系性、一致性和耦合性。在区域综合力各分力中,自然力是基础、经济力是核心、文化力是动力源。概而言之,区域文化观念在影响区域发展主体的同时,以区域发展主体为载体和中介,影响区域活性、区域发展模式和区域综合力,参与区域经济社会循环,成为区域可持续发展的重要影响因素。     

中国省直管县市与地方行政区划层级体制的改革研究

中国行政区划呈现出\"中央-省(自治区、直辖市)-自治州(盟)、市-县(旗)、市-乡镇\"的多层级状态。调整规模、减少层级、增强活力,是中国地方行政区划体制以及相伴生的政府管理体制进一步改革的长期战略任务和目标。实施省直管县市体制是中国地方行政区划层级体制及政府行政管理体制改革的关键环节,它事关国家的长治久安和地方社会经济的可持续发展,具有长远的战略意义和实践意义。     

“Where nothing was before”: (re)producing population and place in Ghana's Volta River Project

Significant infrastructural projects, and especially large hydroelectric dams, were envisioned and deployed by postcolonial governments to promote particular visions of industrialization, agriculture, democracy, and modernity. Newly independent states sought to annihilate formerly so-called backward and primitive landscapes and populations alike, promising to re-create both places and people as rational, economically productive entities. In this article, we re-examine such narratives as they related to Ghana's Volta River Project (VRP). Relying on archival and media sources between the 1950s and 1960s, we interrogate the Ghanaian state's pursuit of the VRP from a perspective rooted firmly in cultural geography and pay careful attention to the issues of population displacement/resettlement and landscape reconfiguration that permeated all dimensions of the project. We analyze the ways in which Ghanaian leaders used the VRP to translate a particular suite of cultural, economic, and political values into material reality, utilizing the techniques of displacement and population resettlement in efforts to enroll Ghana into a modern, global, industrial economic system. As such, this article augments the body of literature examining the modernist and state-building aspects of the VRP as well as studies critiquing the various processes of development that have unfolded in West Africa since the mid-twentieth century.