Search results

This paper reviews Korean intergovernmental relations in the 1990s with an emphasis on fiscal relations among the different levels of the government. In the 1990s, Korea reinvigorated its system of local autonomy first established in the sixties. A major issue in the implementation of this system is the presence of vertical and horizontal disparities in local fiscal capacity. Although some efforts have been made to transfer tax sources from central government to local governments or establish local transfer (block grants), fiscal autonomy still remains below expectation, jeopardizing the realization of full local autonomy. This paper is an effort to look into these issues and search for solutions.

Changing political landscape often renews the call for dramatic changes to federal community and economic development grant-in-aid programs. The most dramatic proposal in recent years was President Bush’s 2006 call to consolidate federal assistance programs for communities into a new block grant known as the Strengthening America’s Communities Initiative (SACI). This conceptual study reviews key characteristics of intergovernmental transfers including grant types, features, changes in the intergovernmental fiscal environment, the fungibility/flypaper debate, and the symmetry/asymmetry response of governments to declining intergovernmental revenue. The effects of intergovernmental transfers on state and local governments are connected to differences in grant design features. Potential fallout from proposed or similar changes to grant structure is discussed using the SACI proposal as an example.

Community development was one of the first block grant programs, a “hybrid” which retained categorical features and constraints. The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) has proven to be resilient and popular with local officials. It has been reauthorized by Congress a number of times over the past three decades, and is among the 15 largest federal grant-in-aid programs. In recent years, the Bush administration, Government Accountability Office, and others have called for major changes in the program, including funding formula, program priorities, performance reporting, and agency location. This paper describes the general characteristics of block grants, the dynamics of the block grant “balancing act,” and lessons from experience. In this context, the varying expectations of CDBG stakeholders and reformers are identified and implications for policy-makers are discussed. Options for the future design and direction of the program are offered.

This paper is an attempt to theorise the recent changes to accounting practices in local government in the UK. The principal theory used is regulation theory, which incorporates aspects of hegemony theory and governance. Regulation theory attempts to explain major changes in national economic structures by examining underlying systems of capital accumulation, regulation and hegemony. Central to these structures and systems are the role and operation of the state and its institutions. Changes in economic structures will result in conditions, which favour different governance structures for these institutions; comprising markets, hierarchies, civil society, and heterarchic combinations. Several researchers in these areas have characterised “traditional” institutional practices as Fordist and are associated with a particular approach to regulation. However, the underlying economic structure is seen to be in crisis and a new Post‐Fordist regime may be emerging. Post‐Fordism is associated with new institutional practices, particularly decentralised management, contracting out of public services, extended use of public private partnerships and concerns for value for money, charters and league tables. The introduction of such practices may therefore be explained by the changes in underlying structures rather than as a teleological development of accounting. Moreover, some researchers have characterised such changes as representing a fundamental shift from government to governance. The very nature of the relationship between governance, accountability and accounting may therefore have also changed. These issues are explored in the paper.

If intergovernmental relations are necessary in normal times, it should be even more required to face complex intergovernmental problem (CIP) as the COVID-19 pandemic. However, collaboration between governments depends on institutional rules as well as on political will. To discuss this issue, the analytical model is based on two dimensions: institutional design and political agency. As for the first dimension, since COVID-19 pandemic is considered as a CIP, three aspects are relevant when discussing how federations can organize the coordination between different levels of government: autonomy of subnational governments, mechanisms of coordination, and policy portfolio. As for political agency, the performance of political leadership (national presidents and governors) will be analyzed. The possibility of sharing collective goals across the federation is also a consequence of the political agency that takes place within the institutional systems of each federation. In short, it seeks to analyze the relationship between institutional design and political agency to deal with this CIP in five American federations.

The process of public policy making involves different levels of government administrative organs and other interests affected by it. One of the essential aspects of the implementation process of public policies is that of intergovernmental relations as, in many cases, the central government’s policies are put into practice, not only by territorial government agencies, but also by regional and local government. Undoubtedly the particularity of the autonomous Basque Community’s administrative system, in which intergovernmental relations are the key to its functioning, make it deal to observe and also to draw conclusions about the working relationships between different levels of the administration and other organizations of a private nature which can then be applied to the solution of programmes and social policies. In this way one attempts to detect possible institutional, political and administrative obstacles which hold back the development of coordination and cooperation and may finally determine the failure or inefficiency of public action.

The rise of cultural governance has made cultural democracy important in East Asia. South Korea and China have chosen to develop cultural democracy by means of developing community-based cultural houses. Cultural houses in Korea were first managed from the center but have now been decentralized, and those in China have been developed based on local financing and administration. Since central-local intergovernmental relations, as they relate to public culture, have gone untouched in East Asia, the purpose of this paper is to study how central-local intergovernmental relations have impacted the development of cultural democracy in this area, in order to better understand how public culture should be developed.

A comparative study of the cases of South Korea and China has been used. The materials and information collected for the study were gathered by a review and an analysis of extant literature, policy documents, data and other materials from the relevant departments of both countries. It was also based on semi-structured interviews conducted with the national cultural departments, regulatory institutions, and with officials and scholars.

This study shows that central-local intergovernmental relations can have an impact on the management of community-based cultural houses and the effectiveness of cultural democracy’s development. Only complete decentralization that directly invites democratization will provide positive local conditions for cultural democracy’s growth. In short, meaningful governmental responses to local demands and a strong civil society are critical for the advancement of cultural democracy.

This study seeks to provide insights into the relationship between central-local intergovernmental relations and cultural democracy. At the micro project level, cultural project management should be improved; at the medium local level, the public must be made part of any decentralization effort; and at the macro national level, the multiple impacts caused by decentralization need to be considered.

This study is unique in terms of both its research questions and its research area. Central-local intergovernmental relations, as they relate to public culture, have gone comparatively untouched, especially in the context of East Asia. It is in this context that studying how central-local intergovernmental relations impact the development of cultural democracy is worthwhile, in order to better understand how public culture has developed and will be developed in future. A comparative study of the cases of South Korea and China has been used to discover the impacts of different dimensions of central-local decentralization on cultural development.

This paper aims to examine the effects of domestic structure forces on “sub-national” foreign policy (SFP); an analytical concept provides a suitable operational framework for research on international activities of sub-national entities or regions.

The paper is carried out on the basis of a theoretical framework proposed by the author. First, the dependent variable is defined. Then, domestic structure is broken down into four variables, including legal grounds, the level of autonomy, the type of intergovernmental relations and institutionalization. A comparative method is used to examine the validity of the theoretical framework.

The paper finds out that domestic structural forces influence level and form of SFP with some regularity. The influence of these forces on SFP can be explained, as they recur and have such consistent effects that they create patterns and regularities in SFP. Such regularities can be detected through systematic analysis.

The topic of SFP is relatively controversial because of academic debate over international agency of substate actors. However, it is a worthwhile subject of research, as it has the potential to revolutionize research in foreign policy analysis. Moreover, the phenomenon of SFP is in need of theorizing and comparison as the literature on SFP is still in its infancy.