Multi-Firm City Versus Company Town: A Micro Foundation Model of Localization Economies

When do we have a company town and when do we have a multi‐firm city? In this paper I analyze the impact of public infrastructure investment decisions on types of cities in a decentralized urban system. This is done in a one‐sector spatial general equilibrium model of a closed economy. Investment in public infrastructures reduces the fixed set up cost of all firms within the city resulting in multi‐firm cities. Thus, in this approach localization economies are modelled explicitly instead of assuming that larger industrial size within the city enhances productivity. On the other hand, when the infrastructure is not provided, a company town will be formed by a developer because of the fixed cost required by each firm. The decision of whether to invest in the provision of public infrastructures depends on the type of city that will provide households with the highest utility. This paper characterizes the conditions that lead to each of the two equilibrium configurations.     

第二轮志书应当写好改革篇——以《修文县志（1978～2008）》为例

方志界对志书如何更好地记述改革有三种观点：集中记述、分散记述、集中与分散相结合记述。文章以《修文县志（1978～2008）》为例,主张采用政治部类集中,经济、文化部类分散的方式记述改革。同时,记述改革要在篇目上体现时代特色;充分占有反映改革内容的资料,深入基层收集鲜活的资料;要以精炼的文笔、时代的语言完整地记述改革。     

Assessing the Empirical Impact of Environmental Federalism

Abstract Many theoretical models analyze the effects of decentralized environmental policymaking. The predictions range from a race to the top, a race to the bottom, or no effect. However, little empirical evidence exists to resolve this ambiguity. This paper fills the void by examining the impact of decentralized environmental policymaking in the U.S. under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. For abatement expenditures, Reagan's decentralization had no discernible impact before the mid‐1980s, but by the mid‐1980s the data are consistent with decentralization leading to a race to the top. No statistically significant effect is found on nitrogen oxide or sulfur dioxide emissions.     

The stubborn persistence of local land use powers: a comment on Morrill

Contrary to Professor Morrill's thesis, land use powers in the United States are not centralizing in the hands of regional and national elites favoring metropolitan consumption interests. Indeed, the article cites evidence that land use powers have decentralized since the 1970s. The white middle and upper classes, concentrated in suburban residential enclaves, are well-served by decentralized land-use controls. Morrill is right to be concerned about threats to local democracy in the United States. But his suggested solution, leaving local governments alone to set land use policies, is flawed. Regional land use planning, does not necessarily reduce local liberty but could enhance it by dampening the beggar-thy-neighbor chase for tax ratables and enhancing the residential choices of low-income, as well as minority, households.     

Scaling down or scaling up? Local actor decisions and the feasibility of decentralized environmental governance: a case of Páramo wetlands in Southern Ecuador

In Latin America and the Global South, policy-makers are adopting community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) principles for local governments. The idealized emphasis on ‘local’ collaborative approaches is known to neglect human geographic contexts and issues of capacity, power, and human drivers of change at larger scales. However, critiques lack empirical evidence of policy implementation decisions. How do local government and community actors choose to use decentralized environmental governance policies in relation to a threatened cultural and natural landscape across their jurisdictions? This question is explored in an ethnographic case of a high Andean wetland region in southern Ecuador by focusing on the context and micro-politics of two seemingly contradictory local government decisions: proposals to nationalize a local community protected area and to work with other local governments to construct a road across the wetlands that could threaten protected area status. When different sectors are devolved to different local actors without strong sub-state institutions for conflict management, decentralization may create incentives for conflict rather than conservation. Governance design depends on understanding how and why diverse local actors engage in boundary-spanning regional strategies, calling for additional contributions from political geographers.     

Network Dynamics in Natural Resource Governance: A Case Study of Swiss Landscape Management

Structural characteristics of social networks have been recognized as important factors of effective natural resource governance. However, network analyses of natural resource governance most often remain static, even though governance is an inherently dynamic process. In this article, we investigate the evolution of a social network of organizational actors involved in the governance of natural resources in a regional nature park project in Switzerland. We ask how the maturation of a governance network affects bonding social capital and centralization in the network. Applying separable temporal exponential random graph modeling (STERGM), we test two hypotheses based on the risk hypothesis by Berardo and Scholz (2010) in a longitudinal setting. Results show that network dynamics clearly follow the expected trend toward generating bonding social capital but do not imply a shift toward less hierarchical and more decentralized structures over time. We investigate how these structural processes may contribute to network effectiveness over time.     

中国企业家成长路径的地理学研究

通过建构中国786位企业家四个成长阶段空间信息数据库,本文运用地理空间分析方法和复杂网络模型,在对企业家成长时空规律分析的基础上,对中国207个城市在企业家成长中发挥的作用进行了研究,并着重对在企业家成长中发挥重要作用的30个城市的角色进行了精准识别,得出以下结论：①中国企业家成长在空间上呈现出分散-集中-分散的演化过程,长三角地区是中国企业家成长最为依赖的空间载体;②企业家成长视角下的中国城市创新网络等级层次明显,北京市以绝对优势成为中国城市创新网络的核心;③在30个扮演重要角色的城市中,只有北京与宁波两市同时身兼两个角色,其中北京为成功兼创业型,宁波为成功兼奠基型。     

Sustainable cities—who put the civil into civilisation?

Abstract

How do we define civilisation? Who created the conditions for the quality of life we now enjoy? Who have been the greatest civilisers? What are our key life support systems and who provides the skills which create them? What do we want from our urban environment and who can give it to us? Are our cities in the prime of life, or are they geriatric? Are they sustainable? These and other challenges are considered and addressed in this review of the infrastructure of modern society and of the choices we face as we embrace the twenty-first century, with the emphasis on the urban environment.     

Cities of the Sea: Maritime Trade and the Origin of Philistine Settlement in the Early Iron Age Southern Levant

The question of the origins of the Philistines, who settled in the southern Levant in the early Iron Age (12th century BC) has long been the subject of debate. Traditionally, they have been understood to lie with the 'Sea Peoples,' raiders who were thought to have wreaked havoc in the eastern Mediterranean at this time. A new conceptualization of the 'Sea Peoples,' phenomenon as the emergence of decentralized maritime trade leads to new questions regarding the settlements associated with it, namely those along the southern Levantine coastal plain and especially those considered 'Philistine.' It is the aim of this paper to reinterpret these sites in terms of their functional role within this decentralized network and it is suggested that they were established and maintained specifically for that purpose. Finally, the development of this network of interconnections is related to the parallel emergence of the Phoenicians and the Israelites in the eleventh and tenth centuries.     

城镇化过程中农居点迁并整理与建设用地置换研究

本文以舟山市小沙镇为典型案例,探讨当前城镇化过程中所面临规划建设用地集中使用与现状居民点用地分散布局的矛盾,提出通过土地整理与置换的途径,推动城镇化规划建设顺利进行。     

人口城镇化不是农村工业化、乡村城镇化

人口城镇化和农村工业化、乡村城镇化哪种提法更符合社会发展的趋势?它们之间的最大区别,是人口城镇化必然要求较大规模的人口乡→城异地迁移,农村工业化和乡村城镇化更强调人口的就地转化。人口城镇化是现代社会的发展趋势,而农村工业化和乡村城镇化只适用于部分条件较为优越的地区,大部分现有的农村是不可能工业化、也不可能城镇化的。所以,作为未来的发展方针,必须提人口城镇化,而不是农村工业化或乡村城镇化。并且,人口城镇化还肩负着转移农村剩余劳动力、提高农业经营规模和节约利用土地资源等多重使命,需要作出系统的政策安排。     

Information transparency,monitoring, and incentives under decentralization: Evidence from China's fiscal reform of “province managing county”

Monitoring is deemed crucial for the incentivization of a decentralized organization, but its function relies on information transparency between the central authority and the delegated individuals. We test this hypothesis by considering changes in the fiscal behavior of Chinese county governments following an exogenous fiscal reform in 2004/2005 that removed information obstacles between provinces and counties. Employing data on 590 Chinese counties from 2000 to 2009, we find that counties in the reform provinces adopt a more proactive fiscal policy after the reform, suggesting that they become more incentivized in the political competition for economic growth. Such effects are stronger in counties with fewer competing peers and counties with either high or low ranks in the records of economic growth among peers. The increase in counties' productive spending leads to higher economic growth in later years.     

论春秋战国时期中国社会的转型

春秋战国时期中国社会发生的变化一直被看作是“从奴隶社会转变为封建社会”,其实是中国社会发生了转型。这一社会转型是中国从封建分权的王国时代进入了专制集权的帝国时代。     

Ethnic Land Rights in Western Ghana: Landlord–Stranger Relations in the Democratic Era

In Citizen and Subject (1996), Mahmood Mamdani denounced the ‘bifurcated nature’ of the African state which, in his account, imposed ethnic hierarchy and chiefly despotism on rural dwellers while reserving democratic citizenship for the urban minority. Have twenty years of ‘decentralized democracy’ in many countries washed away these distinctions? This article takes up this issue in an analysis of the politics of land allocation and landlord–stranger relations in Western Ghana. An analysis of historical trajectories, and our own field observations and interviews in two Western Region districts, suggest that at the local level, the bifurcated character of political authority that was identified by Mamdani persists in the domain of economic rights. The record also shows that state policies and institutions, rather than working to chip away at ethnic hierarchy and chiefly authority, work at least in part to reproduce these features of the local political economy. In both non‐democratic and democratic eras, Ghana's central government has played an important role in shoring up chiefly and ethnic privilege in the land domain. These local hierarchies influence the practical meaning of democracy and economic liberalization for rural citizens, and should be explored more systematically in future studies of democratic and electoral politics in Ghana and elsewhere.     

Pastoralism and conservation: The politics and notions of environmental justice under the grazing ban policy in Inner Mongolia,China

Environmental justice is a key concept for understanding the contested relationship between pastoralism and conservation. Our study adopted a political approach to examine conservation, pastoralism, and justice in the context of the grazing ban policy in China. Employing a qualitative, in-depth case study, we investigated the local political actors and processes that lead to environmental (in)justice. The evidence shows how injustice is perpetuated by both centralized and decentralized political processes and how herders use their knowledge and strategies in resistance to the injustice. In addition, the study contributed to a pluralistic understanding of justice by examining the different notions of justice held by the herders. We found that herders perceive injustices through different lenses, namely economic, ecological, and cultural aspects. Further, the similarities and differences between Han and Mongolian herders are discussed in terms of their notions of environmental justice and counteractions.     

差异分权与多元碎化:大都市边缘地区城镇化空间模式研究——基于武汉市蔡甸区的实证

大都市边缘地区是大都市经济增长与空间拓展的主要地域,也是分权化治理最为复杂的区域。大都市边缘地区往往针对不同主体采取不同模式的分权化来调整其空间治理结构以适应发展需求。本文构建从分权化治理到城镇化空间的逻辑框架,从大都市边缘地区"差异分权"的空间治理格局入手,落脚在"多元碎化"的城镇化空间模式上,进而对从空间治理的"差异分权"到城镇化空间模式的"多元碎化"间的制度逻辑进行了解析,认为差异分权格局是当前大都市区边缘地区城镇化空间模式多元碎化的直接诱因,因此新型城镇化迫切需要从治理结构上予以破解。     

Sectarian demography,territoriality and political development in Northern Ireland

"Here we discuss, firstly, the limits of Census-based empiricism [in Northern Ireland] and the usually unacknowledged problems of data and interpretation which have resulted in a seriously misleading ?conventional wisdom'. Secondly, we question its sectarian terms of reference, the over-identification of religion and politics, and misconceptions of ethnicity.... Thirdly, we focus on some of the flawed policy ?solutions' associated with empiricism and sectarianism, including ?internal' power-sharing and ?consociational' strategies for political development."     

Competing imaginaries: Crypto-utopianism and the material forces of Bitcoin mining

Drawing on Marx's theory of history, this article argues that the competition and capital accumulation inherent in the production of Bitcoin (i.e. ‘mining’) are at odds with the narrative discourses that position Bitcoin as a revolutionary technology capable of subverting traditional power structures. Through an analysis of the evolution of Bitcoin mining, the article demonstrates how the material conditions of its production have shifted over time, leading to the concentration of mining power among a few large corporate entities and a concomitant erosion of the decentralized ethos that underpinned the early Bitcoin community. The article also argues that this shift is not simply a result of the ‘natural’ evolution of the technology, but also the outcome of specific social and economic forces that encourage the accumulation of capital over Bitcoin's democratic and decentralized potentialities. Overall, the article suggests that the narrative discourses surrounding Bitcoin need to be understood in relation to the material forces that shape its production and circulation, and that a more nuanced analysis of the interplay between material and discursive factors is necessary to fully grasp the dynamics of the cryptocurrency ecosystem.     

Drivers of (in)equity in collaborative environmental governance

Collaborative environmental governance seeks to engage diverse stakeholders to tackle complex challenges efficiently, sustainably, and equitably. However, mixed empirical evidence underscores a need to understand the conditions under which particularly equity is or is not achieved. Here, we use the empirical case of California Sustainable Groundwater Management to quantify the extent to which vulnerable small and rural drinking water users' needs are addressed in collaborative groundwater planning. Drawing on a diverse array of mixed method data, we then employ Boosted Regression and Classification Trees (BRCT) to assess potential driving factors including collaboration, representation, elite capture, stakeholder engagement, and problem severity/salience. We find each to be influential, highlighting their relevance for equitable planning. We also find evidence that these relationships are complex and outcome specific. Nonetheless, the overall effect on the three equity measures is modest at best. More institutional analysis of collaborative governance regimes from diverse contexts is needed to build a comprehensive understanding of how to meaningfully advance social and environmental equity in such decentralized reforms. Based on our results, we suggest the answer, if there is one, may transcend current focal domains such as stakeholder representation and engagement.     

Both Too Much and Too Little: Sources of Federal Instability in Canada

Federalism is often praised for being able to accommodate diversity within the confines of a single state while preventing secession. Federalism, however, is fraught with tensions and instability. Federalism is typically adopted as a second-best alternative among actors whose first choice is either a more centralized state or a more decentralized state. These preferences persist over time. Instability in federation, then, comes from federal partners pushing in opposite directions at the same time. From this dynamic comes the much-examined propensity for secessionism to develop within federations. Largely unexamined in the literature on federalism, but equally problematic from the standpoint of stability, is the equal and opposite risk of consolidation (or centralization). This article examines sources of federal instability by exploring the origins and evolution of federalism. I use examples from Canada to demonstrate the extent to which my argument is applicable to real world federations. In conducting the exploration, we come to understand how federations can be both unstable and durable.