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Previous studies of business‐government relations have tended to
take either a macro approach (using a single theoretical framework to
explain all business‐government relations) or a micro approach (one that
fails to explain why business‐government relations have not improved
over time). This article applies Lowi′s four‐part typology of policy
types. In order to test the typology′s usefulness, a survey of business
executives and government officials was carried out. The findings
confirmed the thesis: business satisfaction with its relationship to
government will be highest in the case of distributive policies, and
decline to lowest in the case of constituent policies. A
"meso‐level" theoretical framework is recommended to provide
not only a better understanding of the multi‐levelled character of
business‐government relations, but also future research with a practical
orientation.

The evolving nonprofit–government relations in China have attracted increasing attention from scholars over the past four decades. The complexity and fluidity of the relations, however, pose substantial challenges to analysis. Recently, to disentangle the myth of the important relationships, research has been progressing primarily in three directions toward greater methodological diversity, stronger focus on the behaviors of nonprofit organizations vis-à-vis the governments, and more research synthesis. This symposium brings together three studies that represent these trends. After providing a brief historical overview of the study on nonprofit–government relations in China, individual contributions to this symposium are characterized.

As prefectoral systems are generally regarded to be systems that underpin and serve as the basis for centralization, this article examines how they have developed and how they work, and why they are still considered necessary in decentralized Scandinavia. The article finds that the prefect's authority towards the municipalities varies in Scandinavia. The Norwegian and Swedish prefectures hold rather powerful roles, while the Danish ones do not. The article suggests that this may have something to do with the need for an institution that brings about cohesion and coordination. Prefectoral systems are basically pragmatic solutions to the problem of enforcing national standards and common values across regions and municipalities, but their role may vary with institutional conditions created by local government reforms. The article further suggests that the authority of the prefecture varies with the character of central-local relations, and that it is vulnerable to changes in dominant political goals and values. en. References. Adapted from the source document.

Focuses on municipalities. Argues that recent decentralization serves to increase central state control over local government expenditure.

Central-local relations have been of particular interest since the Labour government came to power in 1997. Both academics and practitioners have pointed to tensions within the Labour government's reform agenda—between a 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' approach; between a drive for national standards and the encouragement of local learning and innovation; and between strengthening executive leadership and enhancing public participation. It is argued that while Labour's modernisation strategy has clear elements of a top-down approach (legislation, inspectorates, white papers, etc) there is also a significant bottom-up dimension (a variety of zones, experiments and pilots, albeit with different degrees of freedom). This article utilises a multi-level governance framework of analysis and argues that, while much of the research using such frameworks has hitherto focused on the EU, recent developments in governance at neighbourhood, local authority, sub-regional and regional levels facilitate its application within a nation state. The central thesis is that, while there is extensive interaction between actors at sub-national level, this should not be seen as a proxy for policy influence. The local political arena is characterised less by multi-level governance than by multi-level dialogue. Sub-national actors participate but they are rarely major players in shaping policy outcomes: the plurality which characterises sub-central governance does not reflect a pluralist power structure.

Concludes that given the amount of discretion that local government is allowed, and its firm integration into the 'Swedish model' of state welfare provision, current reforms can have only marginal effects. (SJK)

Divergent conclusions have been drawn from research about whether or not local government in Sweden has become more independent of central government during the post-war expansion of the Swedish welfare state. By using a multi-dimensional resource perspective it is argued that local government could be viewed as potentially strong with regard to constitutional–legal, political, financial and professional resources. However, during the 1980s as several decentralist and deregulative programs were being implemented, central government strengthened its financial control over local government. An increasing interdependency between local government agencies and private institutions could also be observed. Thus, the current relations between central and local government in Sweden can be summarised in the formula: centralising (financial) power — decentralising responsibility.

In April 1980 a group of urban historians and political scientists met at the University of York under the auspices of the Social Science Research Council to pool what they knew about the changing relations between central and local government and to identify areas for future research. The initiative had come from the political scientists whose interest in the subject had been stimulated by recent government policy. Those who attended from among the historians had to confess that this was not a subject that had recently been much discussed among them. When I was invited by the editor of thisYearbookto contribute an article on a neglected aspect of urban history, it seemed a good opportunity to draw the attention of the urban history group to the subject. What follows is an amended version of the paper that had originally been written for the SSRC seminar.

NGOs have been a major actor in South Korea's democratic governance and have sometimes played key roles in cooperation with the government. However, their once prominent status is in decline, attributed here to their structural weakness, over-politicization, and the risk of being potentially co-opted by the government