A Review on the Research of Urban and Regional Governance in China

Abstract

Governance illuminates the interactions between state,market and civil society,and in particular highlights the role of government and social responsibility of civil society.This paper first reviews urban and regional governance among Chinese literature and finds that research of governance in China begins with observations at the urban level and proliferates due to more theoretical and empirical inputs from regional dimension.The second part deals with the scales of governance.Four types of governance have been identified from existing literature in human geography and related disciplines,namely,global,regional,urban and grassroots governance.Global governance tackles transnational issues regarding global peace,security and development.Regional governance aims to stimulate regional development under highly competitive global environment,which encompasses jurisdictional restructuring and inter-jurisdictional trade-offs.Urban governance depicts variegated local politics though which civil society stands out.Grassroots governance indicates the rising bottom-up initiatives that shake the mode of mono-state dominated urban development.The third part of the paper examines into the concept of collaborative governance,a new approach to facilitate formal engagement of principle stakeholders with a view to achieving consensus towards policy making.

在理解转型中国的城市与区域发展时,管治的理念提供了一个较为完备的理论框架。管治的研究与其他关于政府的研究不同,它强调政府与市民社会以及市场的互动关系,探讨政府角色的定位和市民社会的责任,构建和谐社会。本文综述十余年来内地以及港澳人文地理学者的主要研究成果,适当结合国内其他社会学科的有关研究,回顾管治研究的发展,追踪其前沿,以期对我国管治研究做一个较为全面的梳理。首先回顾自上个世纪九十年代末管治研究被引入我国人文地理学界以来,其兴起和进展两个阶段的主要研究成果与贡献以及存在问题。文章接着围绕尺度的概念,对当下各相关学科在管治领域的研究做了横向比较,指出人文地理学在管治研究中从尺度切入的优势。进一步地,文章介绍了管治研究的一个新探索—协作管治。文章指出,无论是城市还是区域尺度,地理学界对于'管治'的研究可以继续有所贡献。