Search results

This paper analyses the degree of political decentralisation and its relation to the local councils in Tanzania. It explores the institutional and political set-up of the local councils originating from the degree of political decentralisation and how it influences the tension between the bureaucrats and local politicians.

Qualitative approach by a comparative case study is adopted to investigate the phenomenon in two local governments in Tanzania. The data were collected through interviews with 37 senior local government officials and eight focus group discussions with 48 administrators and councillors.

The findings indicate that the two local governments are subjected to a similar political system guided by similar rules and guidelines from the central government bureaucracy for implementing the party manifesto and central government priorities. Thus, the local politicians have little room for negotiation in adopting local agenda to reflect the preferences of the local community. Any attempt to challenge this status quo creates political tensions between bureaucrats and the administrators.

The findings provide invaluable insights to different stakeholders such as political scientists, government officials, and policymakers with interests in research or practice of political decentralization and political-administrative relation.

This article examines the links between average city size, fiscal decentralisation, and national economic growth in 33 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

The data in this paper comprise an unbalanced panel dataset which contains economic growth indicators, average city size, fiscal decentralisation indicators and control variables in 33 OECD member countries from 1975 to 2015 in five-year intervals. Fixed-effects (FE) estimators are used for the analysis.

This research finds i) countries with larger weighted average city sizes have higher economic growth, ii) countries with greater fiscal decentralisation have higher economic growth, but iii) countries with larger weighted average city sizes with greater decentralisation have lower rates of economic growth.

The research highlights the importance of agglomerations and decentralised governance and management for economic growth. While the findings are consistent with previous evidence that larger city sizes and fiscal decentralisation are separately associated with higher rates of economic growth, the authors find countries which have larger cities and greater fiscal decentralisation experience lower rates of economic growth highlighting a need for caution on decentralisation agendas in such cases. The implications of this suggest policymakers should proceed with caution on decentralisation agendas in countries with large cities.

Over the past four decades, China has strived to make the market mechanism play a decisive role in resource allocation under the conditions of adhering to the basic socialist economic system. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

On this matter, this paper proposes a three-phase transition hypothesis for the Chinese institutional change models, namely, a de facto path, which gives potential to a successful incremental transition of a centralized country from planned economy to a market economy, lies in the incremental transitions of the institutional change models from a supply-oriented model at initial reform to a middle-proliferation model and to a demand-induced model along with the gradual establishment of exclusive property rights, thereby completing the transition to a socialist-market-economic system.

The Chinese economic model’s unique connotation is the reason why the solution to this model often baffles both the traditional political-economic logic and western mainstream institutional change theory.

This hypothesis corroborates that China’s unswerving practice of economic reform has provided unprecedented opportunities and challenges for the development of economic theory. The Chinese model constitutes the source of innovation for the subject of Economics with Chinese Studies.

As a crucial institutional form established since the Chinese economic reform, the system of competitive local governments has been shaping the characteristics of China's socialist market economy to a considerable degree.

This study not only adopts the view of existing studies that attribute the economic motive of local governments to rent and consider land public finance as a means through which local governments carry out strategic investment but also attempts to further develop the view within a Marxist analytical framework.

As a result, the local governments have helped to maintain an incredibly high investment rate over a considerable period of time, facilitating the continuous, rapid growth of the Chinese economy.

This study concludes that China's local governments function as the productive allocator and user of rent in the strategic investment based on land public finance and thereby embed themselves in the relative surplus-value production initially arising from competition amongst enterprises, forming the dual structure of relative surplus-value production unique to China's economy.

This paper aims to address to what extent local administration is involved in national planning focusing on drafting and reviewing processes of “Egypt Vision 2030”.

The paper plan to use focus group discussions and descriptive-analytical approach with representatives of local administration in three governorates.

Importance of local participation is not any more a question; however, participation concept and methodology are what matters. Participatory approach is not complex-free. It is crucial to consider conflicts of interest groups, ideologies, and political trends, communities’ high expectations, particularly of those who were marginalized and deprived for long time. Definitions should not be unified on national, regional and local levels. Each community needs to agree on its own definitions, needs, dreams and paths toward development. Accordingly, the role of the planner is to expand choices and opportunities for each citizen. Participation in planning for the future must include the coming generation who are opting to live this tomorrow. That requires institutionalization of youth participation in the decision-making processes.

It was difficult to ensure meeting adequate sample; however, the author does believe that the participated sample represents the case.

The impact of public participation in planning on enhancing the planning processes and strategic planning outcomes and implementation is not a matter of questioning anymore, although governments do not pay due attention.

Public participation in planning processes named participative planning is crucial for achieving development, social justice, economic development and public trust in governments.

The paper depends on focus-group discussions that were conducted by the author. Analysis and discussions reflect the author’s academic and practical experiences.

China’s economic development in the past 40 years has an array of distinctive features that have attracted the attention of the world. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The analysis logic is as follows: with regard to the mechanism, the above factors were met in a timely manner and jointly contributed positive energy to China’s economic growth, with the increase in the savings rate as the necessary condition and foundation, and the increase in the savings rate is attributed to the explosive expansion of the financial system at the beginning of reform and the formation of positive incentives for residents, enterprises and governments at all levels, and the expansion of the financial system and the formation of positive incentives are clearly the crystallization of the wisdom of Chinese-style progressive reform.

Therefore, we have every reason to believe that the growth prospects of the Chinese economy remain bright. The author is nonetheless confident that the new two-step strategy for economic development will be realized, proposed by the 19th CPC National Congress.

Moreover, the growth of China’s economy has long been accompanied by the “double surplus” of current accounts and capital and financial accounts in the international balance of payments, which is not completely consistent with the traditional paradigm of development economics. These phenomena are so unique that the international community calls it the “Mystery of China” or “China’s Development Path.”