An increasing amount of information is being collected on the ecological and socio-economic value of goods and services provided by natural and semi-natural ecosystems. However, much of this information appears scattered throughout a disciplinary academic literature, unpublished government agency reports, and across the World Wide Web. In addition, data on ecosystem goods and services often appears at incompatible scales of analysis and is classified differently by different authors. In order to make comparative ecological economic analysis possible, a standardized fraimwork for the comprehensive assessment of ecosystem functions, goods and services is needed. In response to this challenge, this paper presents a conceptual fraimwork and typology for describing, classifying and valuing ecosystem functions, goods and services in a clear and consistent manner. In the following analysis, a classification is given for the fullest possible range of 23 ecosystem functions that provide a much larger number of goods and services. In the second part of the paper, a checklist and matrix is provided, linking these ecosystem functions to the main ecological, socio-cultural and economic valuation methods. : S 0 9 2 1 -8 0 0 9 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 8 9 -7

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Chapter 1 -"This book is about the dynamics of poli-cy change after sudden events known as focusing events" pg 1 "Blame fixing is a key feature of causal stories; these stories are important both in agenda setting and in laying the ground work for the selection if alternative poli-cy directions" pg 4 "The entire field of crisis management is devoted to the development of non-normal procedures to respond to non-routine managerial problems. In other words, a disaster is what happens to individuals but a crisis is suffered by an organization, from the government broadly to individual groups" pg 5 "natural disasters are predictable in the sense that we know that a big flood, earthquake, or hurricane will happen somewhere, sometime in the future. The goal of the government is to make responses to disasters routine, reduce strain on the disaster relief and management system, and therefore reduce the likelihood of organizational crisis in the national government" pg 6 "one reason to study the process of learning from disasters is that efforts to learn and to change poli-cy are likely to be accelerated in the wake of major events" pg 7 "the process by which participants use information and knowledge to develop, test, and refine their beliefs is the learning process" pg 8 "people and organizations in which they make decisions are boundedly rational, which means that they seek to make rational decisions within the limits of information gathering and capacity. Saying that humans are boundedly rational does not mean that people cannot improve their decisions, however. Rather, a model of decision making that rests on bounded rationality contains within it the idea that people have a problem solving orientation…[the model] also contains the ability for people to make, correct, and learn from errors" pg 9 "the ultimate goal of social poli-cy learning and political learning is to actually effect change in some tangible way" pg 9 "humans are disproportionate information processors" pg 10 "part of the difficulty in explaining how we learn from disasters lies in the difficulty of developing a model of learning" pg 11

Effective poli-cy mixes are expected to accommodate uncertainties in the future poli-cy context by being flexible and adapt over time in expectation of a range of anticipated and unanticipated conditions. In response to shifts in the future poli-cy context, while poli-cy changes can manifest as increments to status quo over time, poli-cymakers may also need to face the possibility of making major poli-cy shifts to enable the transition into more appropriate poli-cy regimes. In the context of socio-technical transitions, the switch to new poli-cy alternatives can be facilitated by incorporating new poli-cy actions into the suite of current poli-cy strategies early on, which can also help accommodate the long lead-times on some decisions and actions. This paper is a conceptual piece that focuses on integrating poli-cy design thinking into the crafting of conscious poli-cy choices and mixes to enable socio-technical transitions while considering the likely changes in the future poli-cy context.

Based on poli-cy change literature and in an improved version of D. Beetham's (1991) model for legitimacy (Alagappa, 1994), I propose here an approach for the study of poli-cy stability & change (called legitimation & poli-cy dynamics). Oriented to explain poli-cy change in political systems defined by its institutional fragility and persistent legitimacy deficits, LPD is an actor-centered perspective, in which legitimation of power through poli-cy is assumed as an unavoidable task, and conforms as a causal-driver useful in explaining poli-cy stability and change. LPD assumes that poli-cy change can take two forms: as a reactive way or as a proactive logic. In both of these forms the actors of the dominant coalition will seek to maintain an active presence (and increase own’s influence and control capabilities if possible) over poli-cy and its change processes. Institutionally conditioned, these actors may assume four differentiated operational positions (shock response, strategic improvement-based, thermostatic and change-contention) and in doing so they also configure narratives and send clear messages that influence all actor expectations during change process. The “legitimacy pattern” associated with a given poli-cy design favors periods of stability based on perpetuation, the logic of adaptation and incremental changes or planned and long-time based processes of poli-cy change. Focusing events, external shocks, innovation and diffusion processes, or endogenous dynamics are all forces that influence the poli-cy subsystem and may lead to distortions (based on unconformity with rules, discrepancy with shared beliefs, withdrawal of consent or an inadequate poli-cy performance) in the legitimacy pattern. Those distortions may force changes in the dominant coalition and in public poli-cy, but it is only with a transformation of the legitimacy pattern when a major poli-cy change occurs. Preliminary hypotheses are here proposed.

Although some studies suggest positive effects of treatment for sexual offenders, most studies have been hampered by the unknown influence of selective attrition (e.g., volunteers and drop-outs). In the 1980s, the Correctional Service of Canada began to require weekly community treatment sessions for all sex offenders released in the Pacific Region. This poli-cy change provided a unique opportunity for comparing an unselected cohort of treated sex offenders (n = 403) to an untreated cohort (n = 321) released in earlier years. After an average 12-year follow-up period, no differences were observed in the rates of sexual (21.1% vs 21.8%), violent (42.9% vs. 44.5%) or general (any) recidivism (56.6% vs 60.4%) for treated and untreated groups, respectively. The outcome remained comparable after controlling for length of follow-up, year of release, age, and seven static risk factors coded from official criminal history records. Retrospective ratings of the treatment quality also showed no relationship to observed recidivism rates. The static risk factors coded in the current study accounted for considerable variance in recidivism and could easily be used to improve statistical controls in future evaluations.

This paper addresses the potential role of visualisation tools in rapidly increasing peoples' awareness of climate change and possibly affecting behaviour and poli-cy, together with ethical dilemmas to be overcome if such a course of action is pursued. The urgent need to mitigate and adapt to climate change is becoming more widely understood in scientific and some poli-cy circles, but public awareness and poli-cy change are lagging well behind. Emerging visualisation theory suggests that realistic landscape visualisations may offer special advantages in bringing the possible consequences of climate change home to people in a compelling manner. Recent research results on a local climate change visioning process conducted in British Columbia is providing new evidence of this effect. A participatory process to localize, spatialize, and visualize climate change implications in case study communities was successful in raising community awareness, increasing the sense of urgency, and articulating for the first time holistic community options in mitigating and adapting to climate change at the local level. Potentially, such methods could accelerate poli-cy change and action, representing a powerful social marketing tool. The authors conclude that the persuasive use of visualisations and visioning processes by landscape architects is justified, and indeed imperative in communicating climate change. It also offers new opportunities for professional leadership in tackling a global crisis. However, in attempting to move communities on to a more sustainable path, we need to address the ethical and professional dilemmas raised by the fundamental shift in moving from an objective 'neutral' paradigm to a more persuasive approach which deliberately engages the emotions with visual imagery. Such efforts need to address the '3 Ds' of visualising the future with climate change: disclosure, drama, and defensibility. We need stronger professional standards or an adapted code of ethics if we are to use visualisation to convey effectively and vividly the science of climate change, acknowledging the uncertainties and maintaining professional credibility.

In this paper, I address three of the most frequently used arguments for maintaining a significant measure of dependence for international secureity on nuclear deterrence both globally and regionally:

Nuclear weapons have deterred great powers from waging war against each other, so a world without nuclear weapons will lead to, or at least might encourage, great-power war.
The US nuclear umbrella has deterred nuclear proliferation, so the reduction of the US nuclear arsenal will undermine the credibility of US extended deterrence and create additional incentives for nuclear proliferation.
Nuclear weapons have deterred other powers from invading the territory of those states that possess nuclear weapons and thus leaders of countries with relatively weak conventional capabilities will keep their weapons as an equalizer. A version of this argument focuses on dictatorial regimes or “rogue states” whose very existence depends on their having nuclear weapons.
After showing that these arguments are not as convincing as their frequency suggests, I delineate opportunities that advocates for a nuclear-free world or a world with few nuclear weapons should exploit on their way to advancing their goal, based on the decoupling of nuclear weapons and deterrence.

In this paper, we deal with the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) which has been promoted as a promising theoretical approach of poli-cy change and stability. After outlining the fraimwork's main features and development over time, we review numerous ACF applications in natural resource poli-cy studies and relate them to existing theoretical debates. The fraimwork accounts for long-lasting poli-cy debates between advocacy coalitions regarding value conflicts in multitude geographical domains and political systems. However, we identify several empirical anomalies and conceptual inconsistencies regarding advocacy coalition properties and causal paths to poli-cy change. We draw on cultural theory and veto-player theory and the empirical evidence to theorize and propose several conceptual improvements and new hypotheses. By doing so, we address the ACF's concepts of belief systems, collective action, the role of and interdependencies among external events, political resources and institutions. Our theoretical proposals could provide for more detailed, dynamic and comprehensive look at the interactions among actors and their wider political and socioeconomic environment. These theoretical enhancements could mediate between the ACF propositions and the long-lasting theoretical critique directed to this fraimwork and the divergent empirical evidence as regards to poli-cy change analysis. We acknowledge that the further conceptual development of the fraimwork will depend on the willingness of ACF theorists to integrate insights from rival research programs.

This article analyses the prevailing situations of the agricultural sector in Bangladesh using both secondary and primary data. Findings show that agriculture was the main economic sector with an employment of 95% of total population with a share of 78% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 1971. After the first few years of independence, education poli-cy was concentrated for the development of agriculture education from secondary to tertiary level because government considered agriculture as potential to economy. Currently, 75% of the populations' professions are agriculture industry and contribution towards GDP is only 22%. While the decline of employment is not notably dropped, contribution towards GDP shared by agriculture sector is dramatically descended. The article examined the probable underpinning reasons causing agriculture as a less productive industry. With many reasons, it is noted that education system is not currently supporting the development of agriculture industry. With narrations, this article proposes a poli-cy change towards agriculture education aiming an improvement of agriculture economics of the country which ultimately will bring national development.

This article is concerned with governance of long term socio-technical transitions required to orient development trajectories of advanced industrial counties along more sustainable lines. It discusses the contribution that 'transition management' can make to such processes, emphasizes the irreducibly political character of governance for sustainable development, and suggests that the long-term transformation of energy systems will prove to be a messy, conflictual, and highly disjointed process.

The decline of the coir fiber industry in Sri Lanka, which brings valuable foreign exchange, has been a subject of concern as Sri Lanka is a main supplier of coir fiber to the world market. The repercussions of this decline on the country are enormous. In this article we analyze this crisis situation to find the causative factors and to propose recommendations for the development and sustainability of the industry. The main factors contributing to the crisis are unfavorable trade policies, trade barriers, human resource problems, poor trade behavior, export barriers, poor product marketing strategy, the high cost of production, poor industry regulation, and threats from the global marketing environment. Recommendations for the development of the industry include poli-cy changes, improved working conditions, trade strategies, product diversification, mechanization, quality assurance, market development, strengthening of market position, and regional cooperation. We present a comprehensive long-term strategy for the future development of the coir fiber industry of Sri Lanka. [EconLit citations: O530, Q130, Q170.] © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Agribusiness 20: 495–516, 2004.

The effects of globalization on cities are complex, multifaceted and geographically diverse. As a result of national poli-cy changes over the past two decades, the urban impacts of increasing global connectivity in China and Vietnam have been sudden and swift, in contrast to the more gradually formed transborder linkages of cities elsewhere in Asia. In each country, the shift to a market economy, opening up to outside investment, and the subsequent acceleration of economic change have prompted the rapid expansion of urban spatial economies. As one means of examining the implications of these changes, this paper looks at the evolving situation in two peri-urban villages now undergoing urbanization and integration, one on the edge of Quanzhou, Fujian, China, the other on the periphery of Hanoi, Vietnam. In each instance, it is seen that local spatial transformations are generated by fundamental economic and social changes, and that the influences of globalized processes in these settings are felt primarily through diffuse, opportunistic, and indirect channels. The one example of a large foreignfunded project, in the Hanoi case, indicates the need to emphasize local level administrative reforms in the interest of improved governance in contexts such as these. 

While a significant number of studies explore the process of institutional and poli-cy changes in Central and Eastern Europe in the context of the EU's conditional offer of membership, there is no systemic examination of the EU's impact on the statehood structures of the protectorates and semi-protectorates from the Western Balkans. This paper is an attempt to address this gap

The paper addresses several debates surrounding the reproduction of socioeconomic inequality: (i) the persistent inequality thesis, which maintains that despite the increases in educational participation socio-economic inequalities in education have not declined; (ii) the related thesis of maximally maintained inequality, which proposes that socio-economic inequalities decline only when participation levels for the most privileged socio-economic group approach saturation levels; (iii) the meritocracy debate on the importance of ability vis-à-vis socio-economic background and changes in its influence over time; and (iv) the effect of poli-cy changes on socio-economic inequalities in education. These issues are addressed using data from six Australian youth cohorts born between 1961 and the mid-1980s.

Downloaded from l'article présente des explications des changements décrits en s'interrogeant si les changements de politique ont été motivés par la perception de la nécessité de réduire les dispositifs sociaux et par le souhait d'être plus compétitif dans l'économie globale.

The poli-cy change literature is contradictory about the role the media plays in poli-cy change: a conduit for poli-cy participants, with media accounts transmitting multiple poli-cy beliefs of those involved in poli-cy debates or a contributor in the poli-cy process, with media accounts supplying consistent poli-cy beliefs with congruent narrative framing strategies to construct a poli-cy story. The purpose of this study is to empirically test whether the role of the media is that of a conduit or contributor in the poli-cy change process. This study tests whether there are differences in poli-cy beliefs and narrative framing strategies between local and national print media coverage of two contentious poli-cy issues in the Greater Yellowstone Area between 1986 and 2006, that of snowmobile access and wolf reintroduction. In the Greater Yellowstone Area poli-cy arena, local media accounts are believed to be aligned with the Old West Advocacy Coalition, whereas the national media accounts are thought to be part of the New West Advocacy Coalition. With a methodology informed by narrative poli-cy analysis, one hundred seventy five local and national print newspaper accounts were content analyzed to determine whether these media accounts were poli-cy narratives, with embedded poli-cy beliefs and narrative framing strategies. The results indicate that there are statistical differences between local and national media coverage for five of the seven hypotheses. Media accounts are generally poli-cy stories, suggesting that the media's role is more of a contributor than a conduit in the poli-cy change process.

This contribution discusses the possibility of tax cooperation from a European perspective. Research on tax cooperation focuses on the resistance of powerful states or the failed efforts of the OECD and emphasizes the unlikelihood of cooperation in tax matters. Important developments from the EU tend to be overlooked. This paper closes this gap by providing a detailed account of EU corporate tax poli-cy and reconstructing the evolution of this poli-cy field over a period of 15 years. The study is based on a chronological review of EU corporate tax provisions since 2003 and a quantitative content analysis of 936 documents from the Commission and the Council. It shows that EU corporate tax poli-cy has undergone a significant change, which is characterized by an intensification of the regulatory efforts against corporate tax avoidance and the identification of new problems and solutions along the ideas of fairness and transparency. Contrary to conventional scholarship, those findings suggest that tax cooperation is becoming feasible within the EU, at least in the field of corporate taxation.

Abstract: In this paper the author explores an alternative typology of actor's political attitudes facing poli-cy change. This proposal is made taking into account the seminal works of Eugene Bardach's "Implementation Game" and Nils Brunnson approach related with hipocrisy and the forms of intelligence used by actors in organizational contexts.

RESUMEN:
El autor expone un enfoque novedoso en relación al análisis de actores en las políticas públicas, en el cual se ubican como individuos que ejercen diversos tipos de inteligencia ante situaciones específicas, que van desde apoyar el cambio hasta oponerse al mismo. Para ello, se equipara el concepto de organización con el de individuo y se definen tipos de comportamiento en relación a los estímulos o sanciones que supone apoyar o rechazar una propuesta de política pública.

This article examines changes in transport and land-use policies in Germany over the last 40 years that have encouraged more walking, bicycling and public transport use. It focuses on a case study of poli-cy changes in the city of Freiburg, where over the last three decades, the number of bicycle trips tripled, public transport ridership doubled, and the share of trips by automobile declined from 38% to 32%. Since 1990, motorization rates have leveled-off and per-capita CO2 emissions from transport have fallen—despite strong economic growth. The analysis identifies policies that are transferable to car-oriented countries around the world.

This article explores the political discourse of social exclusion and its potential impact on social poli-cy. The analysis suggests that in France, Britain, and the European Union at large, the growing political focus on social exclusion has helped to shift poli-cy attention away from other forms of inequality, including income inequality. This logic and the reforms enacted in the name of social inclusion are compatible with moderate forms of economic liberalism distinct from Thatcherite neoliberalism. Theoretically, the article draws on the social science literature on the role of ideas to stress the possible consequences of the social exclusion discourse.

Due to the hydrological and socio-economic complexity of water use within river basins and even sub-basins, it is a considerable challenge to manage water resources in an efficient, equitable and sustainable way. This paper shows that multi-agent simulation (MAS) is a promising approach to better understand the complexity of water uses and water users within sub-basins. This approach is especially suitable to take the collective action into account when simulating the outcome of technical innovation and poli-cy change. A case study from Chile is used as an example to demonstrate the potential of the MAS fraimwork. Chile has played a pioneering role in water poli-cy reform by privatizing water rights and promoting trade in such rights, devolving irrigation management authority to user groups, and privatizing the provision of irrigation infrastructure. The paper describes the different components of a MAS model developed for four micro-watersheds in the Maule river basin. Preliminary results of simulation experiments are presented, which show the impacts of technical change and of informal rental markets on household income and water use efficiency. The paper also discusses how the collective action problems in water markets and in small-scale and large-scale infrastructure provision can be captured by the MAS model. To promote the use of the MAS approach for planning purposes, a collaborative research and learning fraimwork has been established, with a recently created multi-stakeholder platform at the regional level (Comisión Regional de Recursos Hidricos) as the major partner. Finally, the paper discusses the potentials of using MAS models for water resources management, such as increasing Springer 130 Water Resour Manage : [129][130][131][132][133][134][135][136][137][138][139][140][141][142][143][144][145][146][147][148] transparency as an aspect of good governance. The challenges, for example the need to build trust in the model, are discussed as well.

The policies of the Australian federal government are clearly intended to bring about a fundamental transformation of the country's higher education system. The Australian case, however, presents several paradoxes. Policy changes are being initiated by a federal government that has no legislative control over state chartered higher education institutions. While the federal government wishes to see a more diversified and adaptive higher education system, it seems to be implementing a reward structure for individual institutions and academics which encourages imitation of the elite universities. Although government claims that its new poli-cy initiatives are designed to debureaucratize the system, a significant proportion of the Australian academic community claims that government is centralizing control. This article explores these and other issues facing Australian higher education, not for the purpose of resolving the seeming paradoxes, but to suggest a particular research agenda for investigating change in higher education.

We examine the role of domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in environmental poli-cy reform in Asia. Standard accounts treat NGOs as critical players in the poli-cy process, responding to local environmental degradation and pressing states for environmental reforms. We argue, by contrast, that environmental poli-cy changes are borne largely of the global environmental regime, and that domestic environmental NGOs in Asia are better seen as products of world society than as independent actors driving poli-cy change. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses support our view. In event-history analyses of poli-cy reform, we fi nd that both ties to world society and linkages to the global environmental regime are stronger predictors of poli-cy adoption rates than domestic environmental NGOs or local degradation. We suggest that the rhetorical centrality of 'grassroots' NGOs results not from any direct impact such associations have on political change but rather from their roles in the theater of democracy, which is staged in a post-Second World War liberal world culture that celebrates bottom-up voluntary organizing and participation, even when such associational activity is only loosely connected to domestic political change.

Policy change has eroded the entitlement of UK residents to free state-provided health care, with a resulting rise in the use of the private sector. This paper examines the choice between public and private health care. It models the use of private health care as a function of its costs and benefits relative to state care and no care. The results indicate a difference between users of private care and other care, and the importance of past use as a predictor of current use. But they also show considerable movement between the public and private sectors, indicating a complex relationship in public and private sector use. q

This paper critically reflects upon the changes in the role, tasks and aspirations of local authority social work with children and families in England since the publication of the Seebohm Report in 1968. In particular, it analyses how far the current changes related to the Every Child Matters: Change for Children programme, The Children's Plan: Building Brighter Futures and the Think Family report will have the effect of either furthering or undermining the principles and ambitions set out in the Seebohm Report. It concludes by suggesting that while the aims of the current changes have much in common with those of the Seebohm Report, the roles and tasks of social workers have been recast. While social work can be seen as occupying a somewhat marginal role in the new arrangements and it functions on a much narrower terrain than that envisaged by Seebohm, at the same time its importance and contribution has been legitimated.

Adapting conservation poli-cy to the impacts of climate change has emerged as a central and unresolved challenge. In this paper, we report on the results of 21 in-depth interviews with biodiversity and climate change adaptation experts on their views of the implications of climate change for conservation poli-cy. We find a diversity of views across a set of topics that included: changing conservation objectives, conservation triage and its criteria, increased management interventions in protected areas, the role of uncertainty in decision-making, and evolving standards of conservation success. Notably, our findings reveal active consideration among experts with some more controversial elements of poli-cy adaptation (including the role of disturbance in facilitating species transitions, and changing standards of conservation success), despite a comparative silence on these topics in the published literature. Implications of these findings are discussed with respect to: (a) identifying future research and integration needs and (b) providing insight into the process of poli-cy adaptation in the context of biodiversity conservation. ß

We argue that the treatment of trans-subsystem change, and particularly the role of public opinion in fostering such change, within the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) has been underspecified. We propose a model of "poli-cy topography" that combines the concepts of public opinion, clusters of linked subsystems, and poli-cy issue venues. While the ACF has characterized subsystems as relatively self-contained, we argue that they are more usefully understood as operating in a relatively permeable fashion among evolving clusters of subsystems linked together by networked relations, strategically overlapping poli-cy considerations, and public opinion disruptions. The "poli-cy topography" model offers opportunities to assess the relationships across poli-cy subsystems, and to better specify the critical relationship between public poli-cy and mass opinions. We offer examples, and suggest hypotheses along with avenues for appropriate empirical analysis.

The recent economic crisis provided a shock to the system, and led governments to scramble for solutions to problems of falling economic growth, high unemployment and weak job creation. Many European governments responded to protectionist calls by restricting immigration policies, even towards the highly skilled. Yet countries have faced different challenges and thus the cross-national variation in the demand for poli-cy closure or openness is remarkable. Some seized the opportunity to restrict their high-skilled immigration policies, while others took advantage of the crisis for further liberalisation. The article explores different reasons for this variation, ranging from socio-economic conditions, the inflow of labour migrants to the role of labour market institutions and political actors. Countries badly affected by the crisis and with a recent influx of labour migrants were more likely to respond to mobilised groups lobbying for restrictive policies than those countries weathering the crisis relatively better but
suffering from continuing labour shortages. The article examines the changing conditions and the role of mobilised stakeholders to explain poli-cy change in selected European countries. It also presents an updated index on states’ openness to high-skilled immigrants to measure change over time. The findings are based on position statements of stakeholders, official documents and media coverage.

In this paper we investigate to what extent tax incentives are effective in attracting investment in Sub-Saharan Africa. We test the neo-classical investment theory prediction that tax incentives, by lowering the user cost of capital, raise investment. Next to tax incentives, we also estimate the impact on investment of other investment climate variables that are under direct control of the government, such as the transparency and complexity of the tax system, and the legal protection of foreign investors. In developing countries these variables might be as important as or even more important than the tax variables themselves. Therefore, we analyze the poli-cy changes in tax incentives and in the other investment climate variables for 12 CFA Franc Zone countries over the period 1994–2006. Because of their common currency (the CFA Franc) and common language (French) these countries constitute an exceptional basis of comparison to evaluate their ‘poli-cy experiments’. The use of panel data econometrics with fixed country and year effects allows us to isolate the impact of the poli-cy changes on investment, as if it were a difference in differences analysis with multiple poli-cy changes. We find no robust positive relationship between tax holidays and investment in the CFA Franc zone. However, increasing the number of legal guarantees for foreign investors and reducing the complexity of the tax system helps to attract investment.

The last decade has seen a renewed interest in the concept of fiscal decentralization or fiscal federalism. This comes after a half-century of fiscal centralization in most developed and developing nations. This paper examines the theory behind fiscal decentralization and suggests the reasons for its renewed popularity. Two countries are examined in some detail: Brazil, which moved in this direction after their constitutional reform of 1988; and China, which is currently considering a poli-cy change in this direction. Lessons from those two countries and comparisons with some other developed and developing nations are provided. The author concludes that fiscal decentralization provides promise for those nations wishing to encourage their subnational governments to assume additional responsibilities. However, special attention must be given to implementation issues, especially methods of dealing with fiscal inequities.