The lessons of the ‘Nookat events’: central government, local officials and religious protests in Kyrgyzstan

Central environmental protection inspections have completed their goal of full coverage of 31 provinces in China, and more than 17,000 officials have been held accountable. The media has evaluated the effectiveness of central environmental protection inspections using the notions of “instant results” and the “miracle drug of environmental governance.” Can this approach effectively promote local environmental governance? This paper takes the treatment effect of central environmental protection inspections on air pollution as an example. Using the method of regression discontinuity, central environmental protection inspections are found to have a positive effect on the air quality index (AQI), but this effect is only short term and unsustainable. Additionally, there are inter-provincial differences. Judging from the research results on sub-contaminants, the treatment effect of central environmental protection inspections on air pollution is mainly reflected in PM10, PM2.5 and CO. Under the current situation in which PM10 and PM2.5 are the main assessment indexes, this phenomenon indicates that due to the political achievements and promotion of local officials and for reasons of accountability, it is more effective for the central government to conduct specific environmental assessments through local governments than to conduct central environmental protection inspections.

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Initiative Cooperation: Exploring a New Intergovernmental Model for Dealing with Risk of Tobacco Monopoly Administrative Law Enforcement

Tobacco Regulatory Science ◽

10.18001/trs.7.5.1.70 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 (5) ◽

pp. 3003-3011

Author(s):

Xu Jing

Keyword(s):

Law Enforcement ◽

Local Governments ◽

Central Government ◽

Analytical Framework ◽

Administrative Law ◽

Risk Society ◽

Survey Method ◽

Local Officials ◽

The Stability ◽

Tobacco Monopoly

Objective: The risk of administrative law enforcement is slowly being exposed to the public. The law enforcement of tobacco monopoly administration plays an important role in maintaining the stability of tobacco market and promoting the benign development of tobacco industry. However, due to the combination of subjective and objective factors, there are many risks in the process of tobacco monopoly law enforcement, which seriously affect the effectiveness of tobacco monopoly law enforcement. In risk society, risk has the characteristics of fluidity and cross-region, which increases the difficulty of administrative law enforcement among local governments. The purpose of this paper is to explore a new model to deal with the risk of local government enforcement against tobacco monopoly administration. Methods: The research adopted the field survey method, 75 local officials were interviewed, including 68 effective interviews and 7 invalid interviews, then analyzed the manifestations of passive cooperation through multiple cases. Results: We found that when risk of tobacco monopoly administrative law enforcement occur frequently, local intergovernmental still choose not to cooperate or cooperate passively at the request of the central government. By analyzing the forms of passive cooperation, we established an analytical framework of initiative cooperation and worked out three elements of initiative cooperation: trust, consensus and tacit understanding. Conclusion: Initiative cooperation is the highest form of cooperation and the best choice for local intergovernmental to deal with risk of tobacco monopoly administrative law enforcement.

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Reconfiguring Local Authority Through Land Reform

10.7591/cornell/9781501753626.003.0004 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 80-103

Author(s):

Alice Beban

Keyword(s):

Land Reform ◽

Central Government ◽

Local Level ◽

Local State ◽

Local Authorities ◽

Land Distribution ◽

Multiple Strategies ◽

Land Titling ◽

Land Survey ◽

Local Officials

This chapter shows how the land titling reform worked to wrest power away from local-level officials into the hands of the central government. It talks about local officials that managed to amass land by clearing forest in expectation of the land reform, while in other areas local people mobilized to prevent the elite's capture of the reform and produce new relationships with local officials. It also examines the relationships between local state officials and their constituencies during the Order 01 land reform. The chapter reviews the leopard skin land reform, which can be seen as the prime minister's attempt to wrest control over land distribution from local authorities in upland areas. It analyzes the rural people's narratives that suggest multiple strategies local authorities and other elites used to grab land, such as clearing forestland in advance of the land survey.

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National-Local Networks and Immigration Governance

Hrvatska i komparativna javna uprava ◽

10.31297/hkju.19.3.1 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 19 (3) ◽

pp. 345-376

Author(s):

Jill L. Tao

Keyword(s):

South Korea ◽

Immigration Policy ◽

Local Governments ◽

Central Government ◽

Local Level ◽

Local Economy ◽

Local Autonomy ◽

Local Networks ◽

Local Officials ◽

The Impact

The ability to regulate the flow of goods, capital and people across borders is one of the defining characteristics of nation-state political power. But there is not always agreement between the central government and local officials as to the desirability of immigration, where local governments may desire greater, or fewer, numbers of immigrants, depending on the local economy and labor needs. In South Korea, a unitary form of government offers an opportunity to examine the policy distance between the national government’s stance on immigration based on the politics of the ruling party, and the attitudes of local officials who work for metropolitan-level governments (those with a population of one million or more). I look at the impact of local economic market needs on local attitudes towards national immigration policy through the lens of intergovernmental relations and Lipsky’s concept of bureaucratic discretion. Comparing two cases drawn from local governments in South Korea with dissimilar economic bases but similar levels of local autonomy, I find that economic needs at the local level are addressed by local approaches to immigration policy. Contrary to expectations, the cases illustrate the relative importance of fiscal autonomy and a new understanding for political autonomy. These cases illustrate the need for caution when applying political and institutional theory within new contexts and offer new variables for future investigations of local autonomy.

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Transfer-Based Decentralization and Poverty Alleviation: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment in China

Publius The Journal of Federalism ◽

10.1093/publius/pjy044 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 49 (4) ◽

pp. 694-718 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Fubing Su ◽

Ming Li ◽

Ran Tao

Keyword(s):

Poverty Alleviation ◽

Central Government ◽

Local Politics ◽

Regression Discontinuity ◽

Democratic Regime ◽

Elite Capture ◽

County Governments ◽

Local Officials ◽

Quasi Experiment

Abstract China launched a massive poverty alleviation program in the 1990s that focused on nationally designated poverty counties. By injecting earmarked transfers with clear spending mandates, the central government hoped for major investments in productive capacities in the poverty counties so they could develop sustainably. Comparing fiscal data of county governments through a regression discontinuity approach, we show that the opposite was true. Poverty county officials failed to make extra investments in production-oriented areas while diversion of central transfers for administrative consumption was rampant. This article develops a better empirical strategy to challenge some earlier findings. Theoretically, this article offers a different case of elite capture under a non-democratic regime. Our focus on poverty regions also reveals the importance of maintaining bureaucratic support in local politics. It complements the popular notion that Chinese local officials are mostly geared toward growth.

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Water Pollution Progress at Borders: The Role of Changes in China's Political Promotion Incentives

American Economic Journal Economic Policy ◽

10.1257/pol.20130367 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 7 (4) ◽

pp. 223-242 ◽

Cited By ~ 45

Author(s):

Matthew E. Kahn ◽

Pei Li ◽

Daxuan Zhao

Keyword(s):

Regime Shift ◽

Central Government ◽

Metal Pollutants ◽

The Social ◽

Political Boundaries ◽

Local Officials ◽

Using Data ◽

Heavy Metal Pollutants ◽

Local Leaders

At political boundaries, local leaders have weak incentives to reduce polluting activity because the social costs are borne by downstream neighbors. This paper exploits a natural experiment set in China in which the central government changed the local political promotion criteria and thus incentivized local officials to reduce border pollution along specific criteria. We document evidence of pollution progress with respect to targeted criteria at province boundaries. Heavy metal pollutants, not targeted by the central government, have not decreased in concentration after the regime shift. Using data on the economic geography of key industrial water polluters, we explore possible mechanisms. (JEL D72, O13, O18, P25, P28, Q25, Q53)

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Fen Drainage, the Central Government, and Local Interest: Carleton and the Gentlemen of South Holland

The Historical Journal ◽

10.1017/s0018246x00019580 ◽

1983 ◽

Vol 26 (1) ◽

pp. 15-37 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Mark E. Kennedy

Keyword(s):

Central Government ◽

Julius Caesar ◽

The West ◽

Local Authorities ◽

High Expectations ◽

High Court ◽

Local Officials

In 1591 Julius Caesar, then judge of the High Court of Admiralty, initiated ‘ an important experiment…in the Admiralty court's continuing quest for greater respect and authority’. Despite high expectations on the part of Caesar, however, the experiment, a circuit of the west and southwest of England undertaken ‘in hopes of forcing the local authorities in those regions to submit to the supremacy’ of the Admiralty, was abortive. Caesar, beset by corrupt local officials and profiteering inhabitants, abandoned his circuit when only half completed and after obtaining results far less than he had anticipated. Caesar's failure, according to Lamar Hill, the historian of the ill-fated experiment, was not merely that of one Westminster bureaucrat unable to impose his authority in the provinces.

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The Role of Social Media in Promoting Information Disclosure on Environmental Incidents: An Evolutionary Game Theory Perspective

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su10124372 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 10 (12) ◽

pp. 4372 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Shan Gao ◽

Shuang Ling ◽

Wenhui Liu

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Local Governments ◽

Information Disclosure ◽

Central Government ◽

Evolutionary Game ◽

Active Role ◽

Regional Government ◽

Local Officials ◽

Efficient Information

In recent years, social media has had a crucial role in promoting governments to act more responsibly. However, few studies have investigated whether social media use actually leads to increased disclosure during environmental incidents, or how social media influences regional governments’ information disclosure, even though delayed and insufficient disclosure on relevant incidents is often widespread in China. In this article, we model information disclosure during environmental incidents as an evolutionary game process between the central government and local governments, and examine the role of social media on game participants’ strategy selections in the information disclosure game. The results indicate that social media plays an active role in promoting the regional government to proactively disclose information during environmental incidents through two mechanisms: the top–down intervention mechanism, and the bottom–up reputation mechanism. More specifically, social media can provide efficient information channels for the central government to supervise local officials’ limited disclosure during environmental incidents, essentially sharing the central government’s supervision costs, and thus improving its supervision and intervention efficiency. Social media helps focus the public’s attention on the limited disclosure of local officials in environmental incidents, and actively mobilizes citizens to protest to maintain their interests, placing considerable pressure on the reputation of local governments.

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Central Control, Localized Interests, and Interprovincial Conflict in the People’s Republic of China

Subnational Hydropolitics ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190864101.003.0010 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Scott M. Moore

Keyword(s):

Water Resource Management ◽

Central Government ◽

Mainland China ◽

People’S Republic Of China ◽

Local Policy ◽

People's Republic Of China ◽

Republic Of China ◽

Local Officials ◽

Policy Objectives ◽

Territorial Government

From a comparative perspective, the People’s Republic of China represents perhaps the world’s most distinctive combination of political centralization and fiscal and administrative decentralization. The basic unity of the state, referred to as Dayitong (大一统), has long been seen as the organizing principle of governance in mainland China and underpins the modern system whereby decision- making is tightly concentrated at the central government level (Wang 2009). At the same time, however, the practical challenges of governing a large and diverse territory have historically led Chinese officials to delegate substantial administrative powers to subnational levels of government. Moreover, in economic terms China is one of the most decentralized countries in the world, with revenue and expenditure powers largely in the hands of local officials (Dziobek, Mangas, and Kufa 2011). Chinese officials are thus caught in an institutional matrix known as tiao-kuai (条- 块), in which they are responsible both to line control by functional bureaucracies, such as the various central government ministries, as well as to territorial government leaders, including mayors and provincial governors, and to equivalent officials within the parallel Chinese Communist Party (CCP) structure. The CCP effectively controls all important political appointments, creating a potent mechanism to ensure the coherence of central and local policy objectives (Mertha 2008). This matrix is intended to ensure that subnational officials pursue priorities set by the central government but also to provide them with the flexibility to implement these policies according to individual local circumstances. In practical terms, this flexibility also translates into autonomy in a wide range of policy areas, including water resource management. Like their counterparts in more politically decentralized countries, China’s subnational officials therefore also confront the dilemma of autonomy, and they sometimes attempt to resolve it through conflict with neighboring jurisdictions (Moore 2014a).

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Court and Country

The Medieval History Journal ◽

10.1177/0971945816654817 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 19 (2) ◽

pp. 351-393

Author(s):

Ari Daniel Levine

Keyword(s):

Central Government ◽

Credit Policy ◽

The Public ◽

Rural Credit ◽

Urban Elites ◽

Military Administration ◽

Northern Song ◽

Local Officials ◽

Micro Level

The Northern Song Empire (960–1127) was the most spatially integrated and bureaucratically centralized polity in the late medieval world, and its rulers articulated ideological claims to unitary and universal sovereignty. Both its monarchs and ministers shared a discourse of authority that postulated the throne as the only legitimate source of authority, which was not openly challenged by organized blocs of aristocratic, religious, or urban elites. Yet, the Northern Song Empire was much less autocratic in practice than in theory, since monarchs chose to delegate the making of state policy and the civil and military administration of the empire to a hierarchy of central, regional, and local officials, so that intra-bureaucratic dynamics limited arbitrary monarchical action. Using a micro-level case study of the abolition of the Green Sprouts rural credit policy (qingmiao fa 青苗法) in 1085–1086, this article analyzes the debates within the Northern Song imperial bureaucracy about the reach of state power. The court’s anti-reformist high officials were united in their opposition to the policy, and individual ministers used a court-centered discourse of authority to denounce it for undermining the public good of the polity. Yet, its abolition required mobilizing extensive bureaucratic support within the central government and in local administration. By paying closer attention to the contexts and generic constraints of political rhetoric, and the intricacies of bureaucratic dynamics, it is possible to demonstrate more subtle fluctuations within the force fields of socio-political authority at court and in the country.

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