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Decentralization is a widespread and international phenomenon in public administration. Despite the interest of public management scholars, an in-depth analysis of the interrelationship between two of its forms – deconcentration and devolution – and its impact on policy and management capacities at the local level is seldom investigated.

This article addresses this gap by examining the implementation of deconcentration and devolution processes in France and Italy in the cultural field, combining the analysis of national reform processes with in-depth analyses of two regional cases. The research is the result of document analysis, participatory observation and semi-structured interviews.

The article reconstructs the impacts of devolution and deconcentration processes on the emergence of policy and management capacity in two regions (Rhone-Alpes and Piedmont) in the cultural sector. The article shows that decentralization in the cultural sector in France and Italy is the result of different combinations of devolution and deconcentration processes, that the two processes mutually affect their effectiveness, and that this effectiveness is deeply linked to the previous policy and management capacity of the central state in a specific field/country.

The article investigates decentralization as a result of the combination of deconcentration and devolution in comparative terms and in a specific sector of implementation, highlighting the usefulness of this approach also for other sectors/countries

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on peripheral ports, hub ports and concentration – deconcentration factors. This is an issue, as investments in port development in more peripheral locations are challenging due to the difficult financial situation currently faced by the maritime industry.

This paper presents a narrative literature review focusing on peripherality in the context of seaports and transport. Moreover, it gathers the reasons why ports concentrate–deconcentrate, and how these factors evolve over time.

This paper develops a future research agenda for peripheral ports.

The paper provides insights for ports in developing countries in their efforts to upgrade their port facilities and infrastructure.

This paper contributes to the research on ports in peripheral locations which have been under studied compared to larger hub ports.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the Moroccan Roadmap to regionalize the country (with the Western Sahara) that is currently presented in principle or general guidelines. By providing greater operational definition to the Roadmap and specific recommendations (including budgetary) for its implementation, the Moroccan and international public and policy makers will see the challenges and merits of the plan, including the potential to significantly advance human development and resolve the Western Saharan conflict.

There are three methods applied in the research of this paper. First, public statements made by King Mohammed VI of Morocco related to regionalization and all aspects of development (community, gender (though not addressed here), human, participatory, reconciliation, and sustainable) were organized chronologically and categorized. This put in place the principle tenets of Morocco's Roadmap. Second, the basic constructed Roadmap is then evaluated against the literature in the field of decentralization and development. This provides a sense of direction the Roadmap intends for transferring power to the sub‐national level and promoting local development. Finally, recommendations for the Roadmap's implementation are presented that reflect the literature and the author's 18 years experience in development in Morocco.

Morocco's Roadmap is relatively innovative as compared against other international decentralization models because it incorporates three of the four major approaches applied in cases around the world to transfer power from the national to sub‐national tiers, and does so in a way that intends to marshal local to national resources toward supporting community‐driven initiatives. This presents considerable opportunities to improve socio‐economic and environmental conditions, and reform vital institutions.

Morocco's Roadmap is broadly stated, and the Advisory Committee on Regionalization appointed by the King is due to have its recommendations for implementation ready to present by 2011. Thus, there is an element of projection in the research by way of building a more clearly defined Roadmap (in order to make it operational) through a literature analysis of its basic‐stated precepts.

The leaders and people of the region and the international community feel a new sense of urgency to resolve the Western Saharan conflict because of the disunity it creates in North Africa, and therefore insecurity and volatility at a crossroads of its hemisphere in a globally insecure time. The international community also seems generally receptive to Morocco's regionalization proposal, which now extends to the whole of the Kingdom a transferring of power from the capital to the regions. The essay provides a clear rationale and description of the proposal/plan, and specificity as to how it can be implemented. It will likely be well received by policy‐makers internationally and those charged in Morocco with implementing the plan.

Just in this past year, there has been a real increase in scholarly, governmental, civil, and public attention on Moroccan regionalization, but it generally remains abstract and unclear as to what it is and involves. This essay provides more vivid detail by thoroughness of research of Moroccan and international sources and the author's extensive experience in working with Moroccan administrations in regards to development, project management, and applying the participatory method (the approach Morocco's King repeatedly stated is intended to drive Moroccan regionalization).

This paper analyses container throughput developments in the East Asia container port system. Throughput evolutions and concentration/deconcentration patterns in the multi-range container port system of East Asia are analysed. The paper also provides a more in-depth qualitative analysis of the reasons underlying the observed trends and results. It is demonstrated that the East Asian port system is undergoing major structural shifts in cargo patterns and is witnessing a cargo deconcentration trend as a result of the rise of the Chinese ports and the relative stagnation of the Japanese range.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of governance reforms also called conceptual innovation for public hospitals in Malawi.

It focuses on the reforms for central and district hospitals. It uses semi-structured interviews to collect data and thematic approach to analyse it.

The results show that the reforms for central hospitals are structurally well characterised as aimed at corporatisation though they are termed as automatisation. The terminological seems not to pose any harm on the direction of the reforms due to the thorough structural characterisation. On the other hand, reforms for district hospitals are vague as such implementation is retrogressive, in that, instead of progressively moving the hospitals towards greater autonomy the opposite is happening.

The paper highlights the significance of characterisation of the intended outcome on the direction of the reforms and proposes a framework to guide conceptual innovation for public hospitals in a devolution-mediated environment.

The purpose of this research is to identify some determinants of rural‐urban disparity in the implementation of decentralised educational management programmes in Nigeria.

The study examines how political leadership's disposition to decentralised educational management, allocation of funds and physical facilities established for decentralised educational management programmes differ in rural, suburban and urban communitites of Nigeria. Employing a survey design, the study uses national survey data on educational statistics and planning of the Federal Ministry of Statistics, in addition to the administration of questionnaires to 200 key stakeholders in educational management. Sampled groups included political leaders, policy makers in educational administration, traditional rulers, women leaders, leaders of different unions and the youths.

Data collected were analysed using comparative means and findings show that several facts are responsible for the reported disparity between rural, suburban and urban communities in the implementation of educational decentralization programmes. These factors ranged from inequitable distribution of physical facilities, to poor leadership disposition, to decentralised educational management functions.

The implication of the findings from this study is that in spite of the rhetorics of universalisation of educational developments, national policies and attitude towards implementation of decentralised management reform programmes is still low, particularly in rural and suburban communities.

Hopefully, findings from this study would provide practical solutions to existing disparity between rural, suburban and urban communities in the implementation of educational decentralization programmes in Nigeria, since some of the impending factors for current disparity have been identified in this study.

This paper aims to explore management control structure change related to the development of a shared service centre (SSC).

The paper explores a transaction costs economics perspective (TCE‐perspective) on management control structure change related to the development of an SSC. Particularly, it explores and challenges the scope of such a perspective both in terms of contents (i.e. the nature of management control related to the dimensions of transactions) and process (i.e. the way change is effectuated). It does so by theorizing as well as empirically investigating management control structure change through a case study at PCM (a Dutch newspaper publisher).

The theoretical analysis broadens existing frameworks of management control structures by particularly pointing to the possibility of including governance structures for internal transactions and exit threats (connected to a market mechanism) in the management control structure of an organization. However, the paper's empirical investigations challenge the broader framework: the possibility of an exit threat was not explicitly considered by top management (“the designer” of management control). More profoundly, empirical investigations challenge the calculative approach of the change and show that the change in management control is to a large extent a drifting process.

An instrumental calculative approach towards SSC‐related management control change should be complemented with a relational perspective on such change, in order to further explore its drifting character.

A transaction costs economics approach to change in management control might provide practitioners with insights into the efficiency of specific management control structures.

The paper contributes to the extant knowledge by both exploring and challenging a TCE‐perspective on SSC‐related changes in management control.

The concept of ‘multi-port gateway region’ has been introduced by Notteboom (2010) and has been applied to important seaport markets such as Europe and Asia. However, the dynamics and port development patterns in secondary multi-port gateway regions, such as the Black Sea region, have received far less attention in academic literature. An empirical application of established spatial and functional development models to such secondary port regions might substantiate the external validity of these models as these ports operate in a different spatial, economic and institutional environment.

The aim of the paper is to characterize the spatial dynamics of container ports of the Black Sea multi-port gateway regions by testing the validity of established spatial models on port system development. Furthermore, the expected future evolution path for port hierarchy in the Black Sea basin is discussed. By doing so, the paper assesses to what extent the Black Sea port region is following an ‘expected’ development path as portrayed in a number of port system development models, or alternatively, can be characterized as an atypical port system following its own development logic.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relation between estate transformations produced during the governments of the Citizen Revolution (CR) in Ecuador (2007-2017) and welfare regime transformations.

The CR’s project registers an array of specificities that make it a relevant case study to understand it. Among them, it articulated the transformation of the development model with a comprehensive state reform: emphasized both the modernization of the state and the productive structure, and the creation of the basic pillars of a welfare state. The ambitious project materialized in an ambivalent manner, revealing accomplishments and limitations.

The recovery of resources for the state, the efficient organization of resources, decentralization and deconcentration processes, public administration transformations and policy de-corporatization processes accompanied and even propelled important achievements in the social sphere in terms of decommodification, stratification, commodification and defamiliarization. Ecuador’s starting point, as a small and impoverished country with pubic and communal goods and services dismantled through neoliberal reforms, was quite precarious. But, progress was made. Beyond the identified limitations, its accomplishments must be highlighted because they are novel in comparison to other progressive government experiences, especially in the context of Central Andean countries.

This article vindicates the need to link state transformation processes to welfare regime transformations, as well as the academic literature that informs both fields. The description of what took place in Ecuador in the field of social welfare during the ten years of the CR continues to confirm the theoretical potential of the concept of welfare regime with the necessary translations and appropriations that allow for the analysis of countries in the region. It enables an approach to a more theoretically and methodologically elusive object that is at the same time tremendously potent in analytical terms and in its contributions to social transformations. An object that alludes to areas gravely affected during neoliberal hegemony, linked to public institutionality, state capacity and state autonomy. This is why everything that affects the state and the management of public goods and services must be incorporated into the analysis.

Urban development and tourism 1.1 Does tourism matter? When we look at the way in which the agglomeration of Venice developed, the high speed of deconcentration of both population and economic activities — from the historical center to parts of the commune on the mainland and the last decade even to communes in the province, a process also known as suburbanisation — is at least noticeable (see for an English survey of existing literature Van der Borg, 1987).