“Scrambling”: Logic of horizontal competition between local governments based on three cases of interprovincial disaster counterpart support

Interprovincial counterpart support is a cooperative system used by local governments to achieve horizontal flow of resources based on cross-regional cooperation.Existing research has mainly focused on governance ef‐ficiency,institutional advantages,and ranking incentives while ignoring the scrambling behavior and opera‐tional mechanisms of local governments formed by ranking incentives and territorial responsibilities.This study selected the Wenchuan earthquake,Yushu earthquake,and COVID-19 as three typical cases.We con‐structed a theoretical framework for competition among provincial local governments and found that competi‐tion in interprovincial disaster counterpart support followed a dual behavioral logic of“striving to be first”and“fear of being last”.Specifically,local governments will choose striving to be first under the logic of time coercion,content games,and territorial responsibility;they will choose fear of being last under the logic of re‐sponsibility avoidance and moral pressure.This type of scrambling-based horizontal competition reflects the logic of local government competition tournaments.This study further revealed the specific processes,mecha‐nisms,and results of horizontal local government competition,which can provide inspiration for cross regional and provincial cooperation.

Local Governments as an Integrative Organizer:The Policy Practice of Constructing Innovation Platforms in South China

Based on an in-depth study of one city district and four new investment projects in South China,this article analyses the implementation practice of innovation policy by Chinese local governments.It is found that at the regional level,innovation policy as practice is a highly mixed-up and integrated process composed of steps from targeting emerging industries,to constructing platforms,and to developing new clusters,during which the most important policy concept of“innovation platform”is used in a distinctive way by local governments to effectively foster regional innovation-oriented development.In general,the local government intervenes heavily in or even“manages”every step of the implementation process with specific policy approach and instrument.Managing regional development as a whole process of innovation,the entrepreneurial Chinese local government indeed plays a role of meso-level organizer equivalent to the innovation project manager in business sector.These new practical approaches of regional innovation development with Chinese characteristics can inspire other emerging and catch-up economies for their policy making in five aspects.

Developing an index of sustainable development goals for local governments:the case of Gyeonggi province in korea

This study aims to develop and evaluate the indicators of Sustainable Development Goals(hereafter SDGs)for local governments in Gyeonggi Province,South Korea from the perspective of the glocal mainstreaming of SDGs and localization.Through surveys and focus group meetings,35 SDGs indicators that are to be implemented by both the Gyeonggi Provincial government and 31 separate local governments were selected and an overall index was calculated by standardizing 27 indicators.Through the comparative analysis of the fuzzy-set,this paper revealed the four ideal types along with the arrangement of two variables,the socio-economic SDGs index(S)and the environmental SDGs index(E),which are derived from 31 local governments.In short,some examples of this arrangement are the Type 1(S^(*)E:“sustainable local gov.”)including Hanam City(fuzzy score,0.729);Type 2(S^(*)e:“imbalanced local gov.(I)”)including Hwaseong City(0.862);Type 3(s^(*)E:“imbalanced local gov.(II)”)including Gapyeong County(0.922);and Type 4(s^(*)e:“unsustainable local gov.”)including Pyeongtaek City(0.650).As a result,this paper suggests policy priority should be placed on the local governments of Type 4 where all three dimensions of sustainable development pose challenges.Furthermore,it is important for Type 2 and Type 3 to enhance policy coherence for sustainability.

A Small “Think Tank” Integrating Foresight,Innovation,and Practicability: A Review on Practice and Reflections on Local Governments' Response to Major Natural Disasters

Practice and Reflections on Local Governments’Response to Major Natural Disasters Authors:He Zhen et al.Year:2014Publisher:People’s Publishing House ISBN:9787010137049(478 pages,in Chinese)China is a countr y with frequent occur rence of major natural disasters.Especially since the 21st century,natural disasters。

Land finance of Chinese local governments:formation and distortionary effects on urbanization

This paper explores the distortionary effects of the 1994 reform of the system of tax revenue sharing between the central and local Chinese governments and its interaction with the incentives for local officials to promote local economic growth. One of the major distortions was to encourage local governments to rely on land finance in their efforts to promote urbanization and growth. This paper analyzes the causes and effects of increasing dependence on land finance and provides constructive suggestions for solutions to the problems that over reliance on land finance have generated, including their distortionary impacts on the urbanization process.

Can Local Governments Buy Truth From the Public?

In line with China’s shift toward developing a more harmonious society, local governments are working hard to pay greater attention to the needs of the people. Recently,

2017 BRICS Friendship Cities and Local Governments Cooperation Forum Successfully Held

On July 12,the 2017 BRICS Friendship Cities and Local Governments Cooperation Forum was successfully held in Chengdu by the CPAFFC, CIFCA and Chengdu Municipal People’s Government. It was hosted by the Chengdu Foreign Affairs Office. Wang Jiarui, vice-chairman of the National Committee of the CPPCC; Li Xiaolin, president of the CPAFFC and CIFCA; Deng Chuan, vice-

Role of local governments in fostering the development of an emerging industry: A market-oriented policy perspective

This research investigates the role of local governments in stimulating an emerging industry and focuses on the specific growth of the new energy vehicle industry in Hangzhou,China.This research confirms that enabling firms to access emerging technology,acquire financial support,and touch customers and/or suppliers are critical to foster the emergence and development of industries.Moreover,the primary contribution of this study is to emphasize the support of the local government in the development of emerging industries on the perspective of the creation of a large-scale market demand.The creation of large-scale market demand may inspire actors to be proactive in responding to these incentives;thus,public and private actions may help increase the accessibility to technology,infrastructure,and finances.Hence,a market-oriented policy that incentivizes the creation and expansion of market demand among diverse public and private actors should be seen as the key issue for the emergence and growth of emerging industries.Policies should also be adopted promptly with the development of the market.

Local Government Behavior behind China's Excessive Investment under Decentralization——Theoretical and Empirical Analysis Based on Manufacturing Sector

This paper investigates the effect of local government intervention on capital deepening of manufacturing sector by using interprovincial panel data sets of 28 Chinese provinces,municipalities and autonomous regions between 1994 and 2011.Theoretical research indicates that as a transitional economy,China's local government intervention in corporate investment behaviors will cause excessive investment,thus bringing about a long-term and sustained tendency of capital deepening in manufacturing sector.Empirical test further discovers that in a certain range,the phenomenon of capital deepening in manufacturing sector is not an inevitable result endogenous to economic development and technology progress,and that investment behaviors of manufacturing sector are largely subject to the external institutional environment.Fiscal decentralization has indeed promoted capital deepening of manufacturing sector.Financial credit expansion and interventions in SOEs are major instruments for local governments to intervene in the capital deepening of manufacturing sector and such an influence is particularly significant for China's central,western and northeast regions.Therefore,clarifying government functions and improving local government performance review mechanism are of great significance to the healthy development of China's manufacturing sector.

Socio-Economic Implication of Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Project in Bonny Local Government Area, Rivers State, Nigeria

Notably, the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) project is the pioneer Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant in Nigeria, aimed at both the diversification of the petroleum industry and utilization of the vastly flared natural gas resources of the nation. However, large scale energy projects have been known to generate both positive and/or negative impacts. Environmental Management Plans (EMP) have often been the compendium of information on approved mitigations, which normally include activities that could maximize the benefits of the host communities, and it’s not unusual for the Community Development and Corporate Social Responsibility (CDCSR) department of such an organization to be saddled with these contributions. But the activities of Nigeria LNG Ltd.’s CSR department have often been the source of criticism, as well as aspiration for improvement by host communities and other stake holders. This article thus aims to present a comprehensive compendium of NLNG’s CDCSR activities, up to the year 2010, and also highlight the level of satisfaction of the immediate and distant host communities against the level of performance of other donors in the area. Also the arrays of negative socio-economic consequences of the Nigeria LNG Ltd.’s activities were identified based on community perception. The results generally showed that comparatively, NLNG project has made more innovative positive socio-economic and health contributions to its areas of operation than the three tiers of government and other donors (including SPDC and Mobil Producing Nigeria). Surprisingly, agitations against Nigeria LNG Ltd.’s activities have not overshadowed its community development provisions, which have been of major assistance in several communities. There is however a dire need to review several aspects of Nigeria LNG Ltd.’s CDCSR activities, especially in the fulfilment of documented promises, as well as in project conception and community participation, for better completed projects acceptance by indigenous host communities. Conflict management strategies also need to be improved, while the dissatisfaction over benefits in New Finima needs to be urgently addressed.

Alternative policy implementation: Theoretical explanation and case analysis of local government's action logic

Since the reform and opening up, the local government has played a key role in promoting the economic and social development of our country, and the effective implementation of the local government has become an important research topic. Therefore, based on the literature, the observation method of in-depth interviews, practice investigation and participation is adopted in this paper, which focuses on the implementation of special groups of social assistance policy. The theoretical framework of government' rational choice reveals the status of local government implementation policies and behavior behind the mechanism and organizational structure. The study found that:(1) the local government is easy to choose a quantifiable policy to implement;(2) there is a coexistence between the local government departments;(3) the local government selectively meets the needs of special personnel;(4) the local government's seeking political promotion and power leads to its behavior alienation.

Growth Model of Local Government Websites

To clarify the concept framework to assess web based information systems (WIS) evolution from an information perspective instead of the usual systems perspective, and to seek for in-depth understanding of maturing patterns of WISs based on the framework, several central concepts related to the information aspect of WIS are firstly discussed, then a growth model of local government websites based on a survey study is proposed.

China-Africa Local Government Cooperation Essential for Growth

The First Forum on China-Africa Local Government Cooperation was held in Beijing on August 27-28, 2012. Vice President of the Chinese People＇s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries （CPAFFC） Feng Zuoku, shared his insights on the Forum and China-Africa local-level cooperation with ChinAfrica reporter Yu Nan. Excerpts follow：

Local State Capacity and Uneven Taxation across Industrial Firms

In this research we investigate the association between local state capacity(LSC)and effective tax burdens(ETBs)on industrial firms within counties between 1998 and 2013.The LSC measures a state's capacity for policy implementation and specifically its ability to acquire low-cost agricultural land for nonagricultural(industrial or commercial)purposes.Based on China's government-led development experience since the 1990s,we draw on two unique household survey datasets to capture LSC at county level.We find robust evidence that greater LSC was associated with much lower ETBs on large industrial firms.This taxation pattern implies local government's primary reliance on larger manufacturing firms,while the ETBs for small-and-medium enterprises are not as prominently addressed.This research highlights that LSC can affect both the amount of revenue a local government can generate and the methods it uses to collect these revenues.

Exploring the dynamic evolutionary mechanism of game model on the protection of traditional villages

With the rapid improvement of urbanization and industrialization in countries around the world,how to effectively solve the rapid demise of traditional villages is a social dilemma faced by all countries,which is why a series of relevant protection regulations have been promulgated in different historical periods.However,the formulation of relevant policies is still not scientific,universal,and long-term.In this study,we constructed an evolutionary game model of local governments and residents based on the evolutionary game theory(EGT),which is used to explore the evolutionary stability strategy(ESS)and stability conditions of stakeholders under the premise of mutual influence and restriction.Besides,the study also included the analysis about the impacts of different influence factors on the evolution tendency of the game model.At the same time,numerical simulation examples were used to verify the theoretical results and three crucial conclusions have been drawn.Firstly,the strategic evolution of stakeholders is a dynamic process of continuous adjustment and optimization,and its results and speed show consistent interdependence.Secondly,the decision-making of stakeholders mainly depends on the basic cost,and the high cost of investment is not conducive to the protection of traditional villages.Thirdly,the dynamic evolutionary mechanism composed of different influence factors will have an impact on the direction and speed of decision-making of stakeholders,which provides the basis for them to effectively restrict the decision-making of each other.This study eliminates the weaknesses of existing research approaches and provides scientific and novel ideas for the protection of traditional villages,which can contribute to the formulation and improvement of the relevant laws and regulations.

Government's Role in Urban Construction Land Expansion

Focusing on urban construction land expansion,governmental influence on expansion of urban construction land in China is analyzed from fiscal decentralization,government game and land system.Due to fiscal decentralization and coupled with GDP-based performance evaluation system,local government seeks to maximizing economic profits.Whereas,land systems such as land property,land expropriation and land transfer system,let the local governments' profit seeking behavior achieved.The conclusion is that the government's role in urban construction land expansion is mainly from local governments.

A Discussion for the Protection of the Environnement in the Law of Planification in China

This article aims to answer the question that if the law of planification of China,really takes account of the objectives of environmental protection.The answer is based on,first of all,the reform of system of land ownership(direct link of the development of urbanization).This article cracks the problem by two approaches:the state and collective property right.The first part of the analysis is macro-perspective,i.e.,the course of land reform and the land users.In general,the state remains the sole owner of all the land and delegates the local governments to manage the use of land in China.However,the high interest undermines their roles,and degradation of environment in the process of urbanization continues.Based on this observation,we analyzed their administration,i.e.,who are the actors and how the powers are shared.The lack of transparency and independence is in its structure,i.e.,they have ambitions to have a good protection but the conflict appears frequently.In the further part,micro-vision was employed.We focused on the regulations of planification,procedures and formalities that is deeply involved.In fact,we find that the volume of law was expanded and a need of consolidation is urgent for the coherence,accessibility and understanding of law.Then it follows the analysis of two typical procedures:the procedure of environmental assessment as well as participation.These procedures are the practical implementation of the consideration of the environment.The fact is that rapid urbanization resulted in a reconfiguration of the urban space,and the appearance of a variety of interests.The degradation of environment,coupled with the importance of urbanization has become a challenge to governance.People realized more and more issues related to housing,welfare and citizenship.This forces the government to change their policies and acts.From different points of views-historical,political,administrative,legal and social-this research determines how a better environmental protection can play in law of planification.The reforms are envisaged,and there are still problems:the harmonization and consistency of the regulations,the clarity of the law for his efficiency and law security,the improvement of the process.Contrary to what is received,the government has intention to solve this question,as demonstrated by his consistency to innovation and reform in the field.At the present,planification,rather than a method of protection,works for the growth of the economy.Due to the lack of effective regulation,the real consideration of environment is still very limited.

The Transformation of Environmental Governance from the Point of the Interaction between Government and National People's Congress

Taking cadmium pollution in X River as an example, the interaction between National People＇s Congress and local government was de- scribed. How the local government transforms its role in environment protection with the help of several deputies to National People＇s Congress was expounded from the angle of social construction, which also enlightened the way to build an environment protection road with Chinese characteristics.

The Covid-19 Pandemic and Its Repercussions on the Malaysian Tourism Industry

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus(Covid-19)has hit the nation’s tourism sector hard.With the closure of borders,industry players should now realize that they cannot rely and focus too much on international receipts but should also give equal balance attention to local tourist and tourism products.Hence,urgent steps must be taken by the government to reduce the impact of this outbreak on the country’s economy,by introducing measures to boost domestic tourism and to satisfy the cravings of the tourism needs of the population.It is not an understatement that Malaysians often look for tourists’destinations outside Malaysia for fun and adventure,ignoring the fact that Malaysia has a lot to offer to tourist in terms of sun,sea,culture,heritage,gastronomy,and adventure.National geography programs like“Tribal Chef”demonstrate how“experiential tourism”resonates with the young and adventurous,international and Malaysian alike.The main purpose of this paper is to give an insight about the effect of Covid-19 pandemic to the tourism and hospitality services industry in Malaysia.What is the immediate impact of Covid-19 pandemic on Malaysia’s tourism industry?What are the initiatives(stimulus package)taken by the Malaysian government in order to ensure tourism sustainability during Covid-19 pandemic?How to boost tourist confidence?How to revive Malaysia’s tourism industry?How local government agencies can help in promoting and coordinating domestic tourism?These are some of the questions which a response is provided in the paper.Due to the current Conditional Movement Control Order(CMCO)in Malaysia which started from 18th March 2020 to the time this paper is written,the methodology is largely reliant on daily news and information including national Malaysia news and daily updates in local newspaper.The paper also makes some recommendations which have implications for practitioners and policy makers.