Fiscal transfers for biodiversity conservation: The Portuguese Local Finances Law

Biodiversity loss is a serious and ongoing global environmental problem. Economic instruments in biodiversity policies can contribute towards reconciling the conservation costs encountered at local level with the benefits of biodiversity conservation at higher levels of governance, from regional and national levels up to the global level. This paper outlines the theoretical foundations of fiscal transfers in conservation policies and also offers a concise account of existing international experience and future prospects. The recently amended Portuguese Local Finances Law (LFL) of 2007, with its groundbreaking new article on the promotion of local sustainability, is analysed in terms of the significance of fiscal transfers for municipal budgets. It is compared with its predecessor law, highlighting changes in fiscal revenues for selected municipalities in the country in relation to their designated conservation areas. The analysis shows that these ecological fiscal transfers can be significant for those municipalities with a large proportion of land under protected status. However, because it also introduces a considerable number of changes to the Portuguese fiscal transfer scheme, the ecological impact of the new LFL is difficult to grasp due to the presence of several crossover effects. The results obtained offer significant insights both for improving the Portuguese LFL and for designing new ecological fiscal transfer schemes.     

A Case Study on Analysis of the Stylistic Features of News Coverage

With the guidance of discourse analysis, this paper attempts to explore the stylistic features of news coverage with concrete example from angles of global and local analysis, aiming at promoting people's knowledge of news coverage style and furthering understanding of it.     

我国地方财政困境辨析

地方政府是一国政府体系中极为重要的组成部分，地方政府职能作用的合理化和地方财政的有效运行是衡量一国整体财政运行质量的重要指标。随着中国经济体制改革和现代化建设的推进，地方财政尤其是县乡财政的困境问题日益凸现，成为中国市场经济条件下建立健全公共财政框架的一个桎梏。通过从中国地方财政困境的现状入手，着重分析了这种困境形成的多方面原因，并进而提出化解困境的几点对策建议。     

Tensions in local government employment relationships

Abstract

A wide variety of initiatives characterized under the umbrella term of new public management have been introduced over the past two decades to improve efficiency and cost-effectiveness in the public sector. The implications of these initiatives for public sector employment relationships have been the subject of on-going debate. This article contributes to this debate through examining how employees within local authorities are managed in a time of personal crisis with a particular focus on long-term sickness absence in the context of increased management drives for efficiency under the NPM agenda. The findings reveal that for managers in two local authorities that form the focus of this study there is a tension in struggling to achieve a workable balance between the needs of employees and wider operational requirements, resulting in role ambiguity for line managers and detrimental effects for vulnerable public service workers.     

Aid dependence,sustainability and technical assistance Designing a monitoring and evaluation system in Tanzania David Hirschmann

This article demonstrates how aid dependence operates in very concrete terms in the process of consultancy and technical assistance. It draws on the author's experiences in preparing a monitoring and evaluation system for Tanzania's Local Government Reform Program. It illustrates how a comprehensive system of aid dependence, such as prevails in Tanzania, has meant that concern with local ownership, institutional development, affordability and sustainability appeared to find limited support among Tanzanian professionals and in-country donors. The article illustrates how the contradiction between the critically poor data collection system, which seems to demand realism and low cost as priorities and the comprehensive nature of foreign aid operates in four M&E design issues, namely institution building, ambition of performance indicators, pressures for rapid computerization and participatory methods. Finally the article draws a few concluding thoughts about the experience and its relationship to the debates on aid dependency and local ownership.     

Sector choices for public service delivery The transaction cost implications of executive turnover

The question of whether private firms should contract out for products and services or provide them internally (i.e. become more vertically integrated) has been a topic that has concerned scholars for many years. This article argues that the transaction costs in local contracting choices are linked to the characteristics of political systems that influence political and administrative uncertainty. Our analysis examines the transaction costs that result from executive turnover. Specifically, we are concerned with how uncertainty resulting from turnover in leadership positions in city government affects the ability of a municipality to negotiate contracts, make credible commitments to suppliers and faithfully uphold and enforce contracts once they are in force. We find that manager turnover reduces the likelihood of contracting with private sector providers. Mayor turnover has the opposite effect increasing contracting with both government and for-profit providers.     

Local Government Modernization: UK and Comparative Analysis from an Organizational Perspective

This article analyses three strands of local government modernization. The first takes an overview of the development of 'modernization' and 'improvement' of local government in the UK under the Labour government since 1997 and the overall programme of reform. We discuss both the shifts and the continuities with the previous decade and a half of the 'new public management' of Conservative administrations. We examine the implicit assumptions about how to achieve organizational and cultural change, arguing that much modernization is premised on a mechanistic metaphor of organizational change. The second section of the article examines other metaphors and theories of organizational change, arguing for the need to consider institutional and organizational perspectives in analysing local government modernization. The third section of the article then applies some organizational concepts to the comparative analysis of local government modernization.     

我国开征不动产税与增强地方政府公共服务能力的思考

在物质生活基本得到满足的情况下．老百姓对医疗、教育、社会保障、公共安全以及环境保护等公共产品和公共服务的需求越来越突出，对地方政府的目标要求也不再是发展经济这一单一目标，而是更加强调其公共服务的能力。地方政府的公共服务能力在很大程度上取决于其收入能力。本文将探讨不动产税改革将如何在增强地方政府公共服务能力中发挥作用，并针对开征不动产税过程可能遇到的难点问题，提出相关对策建议。     

基于政府利益要求及其实现方式的非财务指标重要程度实证研究

从政府角度出发,对政府所关注的反映其利益要求和实现方式信息的非财务指标的重要程度进行排序研究和分组研究,可以发现:不同类的反映政府利益要求和实现方式信息的非财务指标对政府的重要程度存在显著的差异;政府利益要求和实现方式重要性的大小决定着反映政府利益要求和实现方式信息的非财务指标的重要程度和排列顺序。反映政府利益要求和实现方式信息的非财务指标的重要程度排列顺序同政府所看重的相应利益要求和实现方式的排列先后顺序并不一致。企业因素产生了利益相关者政府间同一类反映其利益要求和实现方式信息的非财务指标重要程度差异。     

我国增值税地方分享部分的区域间分配办法及其改进

1994年分税制财政管理体制改革以来，我国增值税地方分享比例出现了不断下降的趋势。与其他开征增值税、并实行增值税中央与地方分享的OECD国家相比，目前我国地方政府的增值税分享比例并不高。但是，增值税地方分享部分按来源地在各地区间分配的操作办法仍然难以平押地方政府的投资冲动，不利于促进区域间基本公共服务的均等化，也不利于改进政府的执政理念。在仍将增值税地方政府分享部分明确为地方收入的基础上，应改革按来源地在各地区间分配的办法，建立一种综合考虑各相关因素的更为合理的分配策略。