Differentiated governance in the Pearl River Delta: Fragmentation and flexibility (PRD 1)

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Given the authoritarian nature of power relations in China, we surprisingly find a great variation of governance arrangements, involving formal and informal factors, across the PRD mega urban region. But what does this mean for the governability of the region? In the first phase of this project we have focused mainly on investigating how territorial differences are reflected onto the governance arrangements at the neighbourhood level – on how variations are produced. In the second phase, we have expanded the analysis to entities outside the urban areas, while at the same time investigating socio-spatial impacts of the boundaries produced by the particular modes of governance. In this third phase we wish to research the consequences of this spatial differentiation for the overall governance in the PRD. Do we see a process of fragmentation in a mega city that is sliding towards planning failure, increasing segregation and internal competition? Or are we witnessing the emergence of a new form of flexible governance, where the tension between government authoritarianism and flexibility is giving way to local variations of governance modes that indeed produce economic growth and integration? We will ask these questions across three different geographic and political contexts that we have identified during our investigations, namely the urban, the suburban and the periurban, to unravel the ways in which fragmentation and flexibility are impacting governance. We expect that the combined efforts of the three phases of our project can contribute to the broader questions that the program is asking at the mega city level.