| ID | 175562 |
| Title Proper | Politics of Scale, Bargaining Power and Its Spatial Impacts |
| Other Title Information | Planning for Intercity Railways in the Pearl River Delta, China |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Xu, Jiang ; Zhang, Mengmeng ; Chung, Calvin King Lam |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | The recent proliferation of China's railways has posed challenges to the dominance of the national-level railway authority on railway development. Since the 2000s, the planning of new railways has evolved into a politics of scale in which actors across multiple scales of government have bargained over railway alignment and station siting for their respective interests. This politics is shaped by the uneven bargaining powers of the contending state agents over railway planning. Interscalar division of regulatory oversight over strategic resources for railway development enables state agents at some scales to bargain more successfully, whereas variations in administrative and economic standing further differentiate the interscalar bargaining powers of municipal governments. Different results of bargaining across scales for each city have produced, as intercity railway planning in the Pearl River Delta illustrates, significant intercity variations in average travel times to the stations for the new railways that these cities share. Owing to the peculiar scalar distribution of the costs and benefits of the new railways, municipal governments with greater bargaining power have, contrary to traditional wisdom, bargained for less accessibility to intercity railway stations. |
| `In' analytical Note | China Quarterly , No.243; Sep 2020: p.676 - 700 |
| Journal Source | China Quarterly No 243 |
| Key Words | Bargaining Power ; Local Protectionism ; Politics of Scale ; Central–Local Relations ; Intercity Railway |