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This chapter introduces the second part of the book, which focuses on the political economy of agricultural transition. It introduces the basic concepts to be used in the analysis: initial technology, wealth and structure of the economy, decentralization, historical legacy, and path dependency.

This chapter introduces and defines the terms ‘informal groups of states’, ‘groups of friends’, and ‘contact groups’. It develops a synergistic analytical framework, identifying the causal mechanisms that contribute to the formation of informal groups of states by borrowing from insights of theories of agency and delegation. It challenges the proposition that centralization and independence are key functional characteristics of international organizations which enhance efficiency. Instead, it argues that decentralization via informal groups of states allows the achievement of policy goals that would be unattainable in a centralized setting. The typology of exit, voice, and loyalty is incorporated into analytical framework to explain the dynamics between informal groups and the Security Council. Such an approach provides substantial explanatory leverage to explain the institutional effects of the Security Council under conditions of systemic change. The chapter concludes with an outline of the book’s contents.

This chapter summarizes the causes of informal groups of states and their effects on Security Council governance. It argues that those informal settings are changing the role of the UN Security Council in the international system. The functions of diplomatic problem-solving and its collective legitimization have become separate from one another. This has implications for the understanding of power, legitimacy, and change in the theory of international relations.

This chapter introduces Part I of the book, which contains a comprehensive summary of the main results of up-to-date research brought about by looking at five accounts of sectoral processes, namely: collective bargaining, organizations that serve as intermediaries for both capital and labor, social policy, the evolution of governing institutions of the state, and the state of corporate governance and financial markets in Germany before and after unification. The five accounts focus on the institutional structures that affect the outcomes of public policy and the endeavors of attaining collective and individual interests. Structural properties of the institutional settings for the five accounts are discussed. The discussion points out how sectors are experiencing disorganization through decentralization, individualization, ‘segmentalism’, competitive pluralism, and other such processes where market forces replace political decisions.

Candidate selection methods may be decentralized in two senses: territorial and social. When political parties select candidates using only a national party selectorate – inclusive or exclusive – without allowing for territorial and/or social representation, this is a centralized method. In a decentralized method, candidates are selected exclusively by local party selectorates – regardless of the level of inclusiveness – and/or intraparty social groups. Decentralization thus does not necessarily entail the shift from an exclusive to a more inclusive selectorate. Only if the decentralized selectorate is more inclusive than the earlier centralized selectorate does decentralization mean democratization. This chapter provides a new measurement for assessing the territorial decentralization of candidate selection, using the perspective of the candidates themselves. The chapter discusses the mechanisms used to ensure territorial and social representation – such as reserved positions or quotas – and concludes by examining the relationship between decentralization in the electoral system and decentralization within the political parties.

The constellation of post-1978 economic policy changes could, in principle, explain the accelerating pace of rural industrial growth, and this explanation features prominently in literature. The explanation offered by the orthodoxy is that private enterprise, both domestic and foreign, was crucial. In contrast, revisionist scholars emphasize the role played by fiscal decentralization. Neither explanation is compelling; the orthodoxy exaggerates the contribution of the private sector, whereas the revisionist approach understates the extensive decentralization of the Chinese fiscal system, which had already occurred before 1978. Both approaches err in neglecting the contribution made by the development of skills during the Maoist era to subsequent rural industrialization.

Chapter 6 moves to the third type of place examined in this book, the rural edge of the metropolitan region, where the influence of the metropolitan government gives way to low‐ranking township governments exercising informal power over rural land. Acting as power and property brokers between the state bureaucracy and peasants, township leaders try to avoid scrutiny from above while intensifying downward control over village land to develop illegal industrial, commercial, and residential projects. Townships' power and property brokerage is exemplified by their issuing of homeownership certificates that attract buyers of affordable homes but are not recognized by the state. Townships' limited formal power is secured through construction projects and expanded through the operation of the black market for property.

The basic idea is that activities that use state power should be within the state organization; the state should mainly finance social, cultural, and scientific activities involving externalities and dealing with basic human rights, and public non-state service organization should execute them. Additionally, public management reform is concerned with the democratic character of government officials’ decisions. Thus, while it emphasizes more autonomy for government officials in their decisions, given the complexity of the problems that government faces today and the speed required for some decisions, it demands, as a trade-off, greater transparency and accountability in the decision-making process. Finally, public management reform’s objective is not just to make the state organization more efficient but to build state capacity.

Besides decentralization to executive agencies and social organizations, public management reform involves devolution to sub-national units of activities and the corresponding fiscal resources to finance them. It involves also making public managers more autonomous and more accountable. In synthesis, decentralization–delegating authority to lower levels–is crucial to managerial public administration. Decentralization is a public management strategy, but devolution is a political decision with managerial consequences. Decentralization is often decided top-down and is a strategy for increasing the head-offices’ capacity to achieve proposed objectives, but devolution is usually a response to demands for more local or regional autonomy to which government officials in the central government reluctantly accede.

The failure of public good provision in developing countries implies that many environmental and natural resource allocation problems that have been solved in developed countries, such as water pollution from sewage and indoor air pollution from cooking fires, continue to loom large. Decentralization and transparency in decision making, due process, and stakeholder participation in reform are needed to address these shortfalls. Because of poverty, efficiency is crucial to minimize overall costs. This, together with the wide dispersion in the distribution of pollution between polluters, speaks in favor of the use of flexible instruments such as information and market based mechanisms. At the same time, risk aversion, poverty, and unequal distribution imply that considerable attention must be paid to the distribution of costs and to a participatory approach in policy design.

The incidence of environmental protest in France is examined by means of an analysis of all the environmental protest events reported in Le Monde during the years 1988–97. The relatively low level of protests reported is partly explained by the systematic bias of Le Monde toward institutional politics and formal political actors, as well as by its tendency to neglect local and regional associations and events. Nevertheless, the impression remains that environmental protest in France was relatively subdued during the decade, and explanations are offered in terms of the tendency of environmentalism in France to become mobilized into formal politics via Green parties, and to have become institutionalized at local and regional levels through partnerships with decentralized governmental agencies. The disastrous defeat of the anti‐nuclear movement of the 1970s appears to have depressed levels of national environmental protest in subsequent years.

Ian Bache and Matthew Flinders assess the value of multi‐level governance in relation to British politics. A number of authors in this field have developed governance approaches, often in explicit counterpoint to the dominant framework for understanding British politics, the Westminster Model (WM). The governance literature points to challenges to state power in the context of the upwards, downwards, and sideways flows of competences discussed above. However, they argue that the related processes of devolution and decentralization have given added resonance to the ‘multi‐level’ dimension of governance within the territorial boundaries of the British State.

This chapter asks a deceptively simple question: How do we understand the relationship between the prime minister, cabinet, and the rest of the Westminster system? It explores the dilemmas posed by the alleged centralization of power on prime ministers. It concludes the arguments for presidentialism are not persuasive. The chapter suggests that four factors shape and constrain both the capacity of prime ministers and the expectations about cabinet in Westminster systems: the contingent nature of ‘court politics’, traditions of leadership, competing notions of cabinet and its role as authoritative decision-maker, and territorial interdependence. There is recurring dilemmas running through the debate between Westminster and the governance tale with its stress on the prime minister as one actor embedded in, and dependent on, webs of organizations and governments. The inescapable fact for all governments, unitary or federal, is that they have to work in, with and through a complex of organizations, governments, and networks with power constrained by ever more pervasive and complex patterns of dependence.

Chapter 2 first examines how the relationship between nation-building and social policy emerged in Canadian society during and immediately following the Second World War. It then demonstrates how the transformation of Québécois nationalism during the 1960s generated a positive connection between sub-state nationalism and progressive social policy, and how this new connection affected the enactment and implementation of social policy in Canada. Next, it explores the contemporary links between nationalist mobilization in Quebec and the issue of social policy reform in the context of retrenchment and, more recently, federal budget surpluses. Finally, it looks at the impact of the Québécois nationalism–social policy nexus on the structures of Canadian federalism.

The chapter concentrates on one of the four transformations identified in Ch. 6 as necessary if the Soviet Union were to make a transition from authoritarianism to democracy – the need to transform national and centre‐periphery relations. The unintended consequences of democratization and of reform in the area of inter‐ethnic and federal relations led to the attempted coup of August 1991 to prevent the signing of a new and voluntary Union Treaty, which would have legitimized greatly decentralized power within the Soviet Union. The chapter discusses the general issue of state boundaries and democratic transitions and pays attention to various national hotspots in the Soviet Union of the perestroika years, among them Alma‐Ata (Almaty), Nagorno‐Karabakh, Tbilisi, and the Baltic states. Gorbachev's tactical retreat in the winter of 1990‐91 in the face of a conservative backlash is analysed, as is his break with the conservative forces in the spring of 1991 and his launch of the Novo‐Ogarevo process, designed to preserve the Union on the basis of a pacted settlement. The chapter concludes with discussion of the extremely damaging effects of the August coup on Mikhail Gorbachev's authority and on his prospects of preserving any kind of Union. On 25^th December 1991, Gorbachev signed a decree divesting himself of his authority as President of the USSR and transferring his powers as Commander‐in‐Chief of the armed forces to Boris Yeltsin who had been elected President of Russia in June of that year. Control of nuclear weapons, together with the Soviet seat at the United Nations, passed to Russia as the largest successor state to the USSR and its ‘continuer state’.