Suchergebnisse

Collaborative governance is a crucial approach to addressing cross-jurisdictional environmental problems. With the ample water resources across China, lack of coordination for water governance however has become a severe barrier to regional development. Taking the largest freshwater lake in east China – Lake Tai as an example and drawing upon intergovernmental collective action theory, issue salience theory, and resource dependence theory, this research explores how the combination of contextual factors and intra-alliance factors contribute to the formation of stable collaborative water governance. Specifically, we applied a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to examine the 32 collaborative water governance cases in Lake Tai basin from the year of 2010 to 2019, and found that the presence of governmental intervention is a necessary condition for shaping collaborative water governance in China, and two configurational pathways represent the issue-oriented model and path-dependence model, which provides possible insights for promoting inter-governmental collaborative governance in the future.

The purpose of this research is to assess the renewable energy potential of an extensive urban parkland and develop an approach for a zero-carbon operation with affordable renewable energy systems. In this research, wind, ground source geothermal and solar energy potentials have been generally assessed and a case study of solar photovoltaics system has been made for a representative sample location, which is one of the largest urban parks in Sydney, Centennial Parklands. As awareness of climate increases, people are seeking effective solutions to reduce their carbon emissions. Renewable energy is considered one of the best methods. With prices for renewable energy systems, such as photovoltaic systems, becoming comparable to established forms, renewable energy is also becoming an alternative energy solution for commercial and residential customers. Centennial Parklands management is seeking renewable energy and energy efficiency responses to approach zero-carbon. To assess available renewable energy resources, Geographic Information System (GIS) 3-dimensional data is used as an effective tool to find and evaluate the resources. The system designs provide performance simulations which can be carried out using commercial software. Different ways to match the systems' production to the loads are discussed. A renewable energy private wire network is suggested as one approach to reduce utility energy consumption. Impacts on the urban utility grid and local environment are analysed and discussed. A thorough investigation of available support measures from federal, state and local government is conducted to reduce the cost of systems. Considering renewable energy resources and systems costs, solar energy is the best solution for Centennial Parklands. Simulation results suggest that photovoltaic systems can be effective in reducing the carbon emissions and fossil energy consumption in an urban area. The financial analysis indicates that Centennial Parklands will benefit from these systems within a short simple payback ...

To tackle the multifaceted environmental challenges and bolster environmental law enforcement in China, environmental courts have proliferated across many cities since 2007. However, their actual effects on economic growth, a central concern for governments at all levels, have yet to be thoroughly investigated. Leveraging the panel data of 230 cities from 2007-2016 and taking the establishment of environment courts as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper uses the difference-in-differences (DID) approach to examine the effects of building environmental courts on green economic growth at the prefectural level. We find that first, the effect is positive and significant; second, on possible channel for the boosting effect of environment court is through increasing technological innovation; third, the effect of court on green growth is more significant after two to three years. These findings provide references for both scholars of environmental politics and practitioners of green development in local governments.

The past few years have seen severe political decay in a number of countries across the world, having attracted wide attention from the international community. While existing research has delved into the causes of political decay from both internal and external perspectives, there has been a notable lack of attention given to the disproportionate influence wielded by armed forces, political parties, and bureaucrats. Taking the case of Egypt as an example, we demonstrate how the interplay between the military, parties and bureaucrats created a stable nexus that contributes to prolonged political decay. Furthermore, we draw comparisons between the well-known case of civil–military relations in Thailand and that of Egypt, highlighting how the social cognition forged in the historical process may contribute to the political power imbalance that makes it difficult for some countries to escape political decline. This research provides novel insights into understanding political decay in certain countries, shedding light on the complex dynamics at play and offering potential avenues for addressing this pressing issue.

AbstractWhile the Chinese government's responses to COVID‐19 since its outbreak have been widely discussed, scant attention has been paid to the cross‐regional variation in China in handling the pandemic in the early stage. This article adopts and synthesizes the theory of regionally decentralized governance and the institutional collective action dilemma framework to offer a novel analytical characterization of the pattern of sub‐national governments' counter‐COVID‐19 initiatives in different policy areas and highlights the peer effect and regional competition dynamics. We provide three brief case studies to illustrate various institutional collective action dilemmas under this framework that emerged in pandemic responses and must be addressed through re‐centralization. Despite its focus on China's regional responses to COVID‐19, this paper prompts the construction of a broad analytical framework for precipitating a better understanding of the complex structure of China's political and governance system in a time of crisis.

Faced with the burgeoning NGOs in China in recent years, the Party-state has adopted a model of adaptive party building to maintain its presence and strengthen its grip over the evolving social sphere. Based on a two-year field work in Shanghai, this article finds that the new model is characterized by the party's rigidity in the principle of social penetration and an array of flexible strategies to facilitate its entry. While promoting the party's rapid organizational expansion in NGOs, the adaptive tactics also bring up problems, which may undermine the effectiveness of the party's permeation in the long run. This article highlights the behaviors of the party's agencies in the state-society interaction, which we suggest may shape the country's grassroots political development in the future. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

The political and economic transformation of former Soviet Bloc Europe has been far-reaching in the last 30 years. Although most former socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe abandoned the Communist ancien régime, not all of them managed to fully integrate liberal democracy and market economy into society. Some scholars explained this divergence in development through the dichotomous regime types. From the perspective of what propels the retreat of political power from market and with the theory of competitive rent-seeking, we demonstrate that the retreating logic is underlain by the competition between rent-seekers. A competitive rent-seeking regime dissipates the rent through distorting market mechanism and dampens both political authority and rent-seeker's enthusiasm, providing a better prospect for economic liberalization. Through a comparative case study of transitional experiences of Hungary and Belarus, we find that countries with pre-existing socioeconomic infrastructures that facilitate the formation of competitive rent-seeking regime are more successful in economic liberalization. We suggest that the academic interest previously paid to dichotomous regime-type argument should be diverted into a deeper inquiry of the evolution of socioeconomic institutions that shape the state–market interaction.

Citizen participation in policy making is essential in democracies, but there is much less understanding of the process and substance of it in non-democratic states. Taking local budgetary process as an example, this article compares three pathways of participatory reform undertaken by the communist regime in China, namely the representative pathway, the consultative pathway and the transparency pathway. All three are initiated and administered by the local governments, but differ in a number of crucial aspects from the level of institutionalisation to the form of state–citizenry interaction. These three pathways provide directions the Party-state might consider for nationwide policy reform.