Research And Comparison Of The Modes Of Economic Cooperation Between Local Governments In Urban Agglomerations In Western China

The new round of the western development strategy and the proposal of the Chengdu-Yu economic zone show that the country attaches great importance to the development of the western region.In fact,as early as 2000,the western development strategy came into being due to the balance of economic development between the eastern and western regions.However,after more than 20 years of implementation,the western region’s economy has developed,but urbanization and urban agglomeration development have also been over-polarized.While the imbalance between the east and the west has not been resolved,a new regional imbalance has been created.In addition,due to the authoritarian system of China and implementation gaps in policy areas,the complexity of central policies being implemented by local governments has increased,and the selfishness and voluntariness of regional governance have gradually biased the initial purpose of urban agglomerations.Taking their own interests as the fundamental purpose,localities dilute the planning goals of urban agglomerations and try to establish metropolitan areas to produce GDP performance surrounding provincial central cities.Therefore,with few studies focusing on economic cooperation issues in the western region,this article attempts to apply institutional environment and institutional logic theories of organizational institutionalism in the context of western development to further explain the planning and implementation of urban agglomerations in China’s western region and the tension in the governance of urban agglomerations.This study explores the economic inter-governmental cooperation modes of the three major western urban agglomerations: Guanzhong plain urban agglomeration,Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration,and Beibu Gulf Urban Agglomeration(hereinafter referred to as Guanzhong plain,Cheng-Yu,and Beibu Gulf)and tries to reveal the institutional logic behind it.Using inter-governmental agreements as data support,this research collected 657inter-governmental agreements related to economic cooperation in the three major urban agglomerations in the west from 2009 to 2019 from the government websites,including132 agreements of Guanzhong plain,395 agreements of Cheng-Yu and 130 agreements of Beibu Gulf.Based on social network theory,it uses social network analysis methods and related tools to encode and network the agreements,explore the economic cooperation modes of the three major urban agglomerations in western China through empirical analysis,and use comparative research methods and text analysis methods to reveal the institutional logic behind cooperation.The study found different economic cooperation modes of the three major urban agglomerations in western China——the unipolar driving mode of the Guanzhong plain,the bipolar competition mode of Cheng-Yu and the multi-polar mutually beneficial mode of Beibu Gulf.It further revealed how the administrative division logic of provincial governments,the tournament logic of central city governments,and the efficiency logic of secondary central city governments step by step translate the centrally planned urban agglomeration strategy into a metropolitan area strategy under the province-region alliance.Finally,it puts forward countermeasures and suggestions on the existing problems in inter-governmental cooperation discovered in the research.