Public participation and local environmental planning: Testing factors influencing decision quality and implementation in four case studies from Germany

Public and stakeholder participation in environmental planning is often assumed to enhance effectiveness through improving the environmental quality of decisions and enhancing implementation. We draw on the literature on participatory environmental governance in order to derive key participation-related factors that are hypothesized to impact on decision quality and implementation. We then outline four cases of decision-making processes in local environmental planning in Germany, representing a variety of forms of public participation, and what we suggest can be seen as four different pathways to ‘success’ in participatory planning. The case studies, recounted on the basis of stakeholder interviews and secondary research, are subjected to a cross-case analysis in order to examine the influence of participation in each case. We consider how key participation-related factors played out across the cases, and assess both decision quality and implementation against counterfactual non-participatory, or less-participatory, scenarios. In moving beyond accounts of ‘what happened’, and considering how participation changed the order of things relative to ‘what would have happened’ under different scenarios, the research highlights how very different pathways may lead to ‘success’ in participatory environmental planning from the viewpoint of process organizers and planners sympathetic to environmental issues. We conclude that, given the significance of context and surprises, planners and process organizers must be open to different pathways to the successful conclusion of participatory planning processes.     

Rethinking the Role of State-owned Enterprises in China’s Rise

The massive overseas expansion of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is a central aspect of China’s ‘rise’ to great-power status. There is significant disagreement, however, over how to interpret SOEs’ role. Are they instruments of Chinese statecraft, being directed purposefully from Beijing as part of a ‘grand strategy’? Or are they relatively autonomous, profit-maximising businesses, their free-wheeling behaviour often undermining Chinese foreign policy? Finding that there is evidence for both theses, we provide a framework to explain this. We propose theorising party-state/SOEs relations using the concepts of state transformation and regulatory statehood. We show that the Chinese state’s fragmentation, decentralisation and internationalisation since the late 1970s has substantially increased SOE autonomy and weakened but also transformed the executive’s control, reconfiguring it towards a regulatory mode of governance. Party-state/SOEs relations are thus characterised not by direct command and control but weak oversight and ongoing struggles within the party-state. We illustrate this using a case study of China Power Investment Corporation and its Myitsone hydropower dam project in Myanmar. Here, a central SOE clearly defied and subverted central regulations, profoundly damaging Sino-Myanmar state-to-state relations. Party-state authorities are now struggling to rein in this and other central SOEs.     

10kV电力工程外网配套施工技术管理初探

电力系统在进行电力供应时,原有的城市架空线路逐步被电缆所替代,城市无杆化已成为城建工作的重要部分,加上城市建设道路拓宽等原因,使用城区内l0kV外网配套施工量越来越大。但是由于电缆埋藏于地下,运行环境复杂,使电缆故障的寻找较为困难,因此,在施工时一定要从型号、敷设、电缆头制作及在施工过程中要考虑问题等进行分析,确保施工质量,提高电力系统供电可靠性、减少用户和供电部门的经济损失。     

浅谈如何加强建设项目财务管理

文章对建设项目财务管理中存在的一些主要问题,阐述了加强建设项目财务管理的主要措施,仅供大家做些参考.     

基于VFP实现数据库项目制作技术

文章介绍了利用较为流行的Visual FoxPro 6.0数据库开发环境制作数据库管理软件的技术,为促进信息管理、提高计算机利用率提供一定支持。     

铁路项目评价中运营成本的探讨

将《铁路建设项目经济评价方法与参数》与《铁路建设项目经济评价办法》（第二版）中运营成本的确定方法进行比较,指出《方法与参数》的先进之处在于应用了＂有无对比＂原则、引入了作业成本法,并合理地确定成本计算区间;指出《方法与参数》尚存运营成本归集遗漏、＂有无对比＂原则应用不彻底致使成本内部口径不一致的问题;建议在运营成本确定时要完善作业细分,全面贯彻有无对比原则;同时,应及时更新运营成本费率,充分发挥作业成本法的成本管理功能。     

城市户外广告监管的多元互动

基于城市户外广告媒体监管机制的文献梳理和现实回顾,分析了城市户外广告的监管主体和监管机制,阐述了城市户外广告媒体监管的不确定性风险,即政府俘获造成寻租风险,资源开发造成产权风险,特许经营造成市场风险,并结合监管过程中的治理冲突,尝试构建城市户外广告监管的协作性公共管理系统。该系统以政府、行业与公众三方互动为输入,通过协作性管理的转换机制输出良好的广告秩序和经济效益,实现治理模式从单一垄断向多元互动模式的转变。     

History of the Suez Canal Company, 1858–2008. Between controversy and utility

Between 1790 and 1860, US state governments chartered 22,419 businesses, with minimum authorised capital totalling $4.58 billion, by special statute. The US, in both total and per capita terms, had considerably more corporations and authorised corporate capital than the UK, France or Prussia did over that same span. Differences in incorporation and capitalisation rates between nations were largely a function of differences in laws and politics but differences among American states resulted more from differences in the timing and character of economic development.     

Law,politics and the governance of English and Scottish joint-stock companies, 1600–1850

This article examines the impact of law on corporate governance by means of a case study of joint-stock enterprise in England and Scotland before 1850. Based on a dataset of over 450 company constitutions together with qualitative information on governance practice, it finds little evidence to support the hypothesis that common-law regimes such as England were more supportive of economic growth than civil-law jurisdictions such as Scotland: indeed, levels of shareholder protection were slightly stronger in the civil-law zone. Other factors, such as local political institutions, played a bigger role in shaping organisational forms and business practice.