Governance in Transition: The Political Economy of Subnational Policy Reform in Southeast Asia and China

权力下放和地方民主是否带来了更好的政府绩效？发展中国家的证据好坏参半。机构努力“让政府更贴近人民”已经产生了非常不同的结果。对这些政策差异的理论解释仍然存在争议：虽然一些文献强调了社会或精英阶层的压力，但另一些文献指出了国家以下经济结构的差异。这项研究提出了现有代理和结构理论的综合。主要的假设是，在经济集中度适中的地区，地方政府更注重服务(也不那么腐败)：利益集团凝聚力和竞争的恰当平衡，为社会力量和政府领导人之间基础广泛的改革联盟奠定了基础。为了验证这一假设，这项研究将聚焦于三个亚洲转型国家，它们都进行了明显的分权改革：印度尼西亚、菲律宾和中国。通过比较案例研究和回归分析相结合，我试图对地方改革的政治经济学有新的认识。这项研究的结果将为权力下放和治理文献提供参考，并有助于关于国家以下各级发展的区域政策辩论。

Have decentralization and local democracy led to better government performance?The evidence in the developing world is mixed. Institutional efforts to ‘move governments closer to people’ have produced highly diverse results. Theoretical explanations for these policy variations remain controversial: while some literatures highlight societal or elite-based pressures, others point to differences in subnational economic structures.This study proposes a synthesis of existing agency and structural theories. The main hypothesis is that subnational governments are more service-oriented (and less corrupt) in areas with moderate economic concentration: the right balance of interest group coherence and competition paves the ground for broad-based reform coalitions between societal forces and government leaders. To test this hypothesis, this research will focus on three Asian transition countries with pronounced decentralization reforms: Indonesia, the Philippines, and China. By combining comparative case studies and regression analyses, I seek to shed new light on the political economy of subnational reform. The results of this study will inform decentralization and governance literatures and contribute to regional policy debates on subnational development.