Neighbourhood Committees and Community Service Delivery In China
Abstract In recent years, major environmental and planning issues have served to mobilise local communities and raise political consciousness. In response, many government authorities have embarked on pursuing policies aimed at decentralising certain services in order to increase community consultation. With this in mind, the author reports on the use of neighbourhood committees for local service delivery in Chinese cities. Following a discussion of the meaning of a neighbourhood in China, the author outlines the role and organisation of a neighbourhood committee in the City of Tianjin, and then discusses its possible relevance for local government administration in Australia.
Urban employment and labour allocation policies in post-Mao China
Abstract China's leadership has faced serious urban unemployment and inefficient state labour allocation systems. Their drive to increase employment through economic ‘readjustment’ makes developmental sense and the quantitative results appear impressive, but the problem of urban labour-surplus defies solution in the short term, given population pressures, planning weaknesses, economic constraints and ideological proscriptions. Efforts to improve the allocation and utilization of labour have foundered because they contradict employment policy and are opposed by key urban groups. These issues throw into relief the complex relationships between economic and political determinants in the Chinese reform process.
The European Council and The Council of the European Union: Shapers of a European Confederation
The European Council and the Council of the European Union play key roles in the European Union.' The European Council is largely concerned with system-steering, while the Council of the EU undertakes sectoral policymaking. What is common to these roles is the balancing act carried out by both institutions. Both have to mediate the centripetal dynamics of integration, termed cooperative confederalism here, and the centrifugal dynamics which are found in the strongly entrenched territorial nature of power, centered on the member states. Using new institutionalist analysis, the article illuminates different facets of the two institutions 'functioning in mediating the two dynamics.