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Increasing interest in participatory budgeting has been observed in local governments around the world. This paper stresses direct citizen participation in the budgeting process leads to good governance, deepens democracy and improves social justice, while also highlighting some challenges in its efficiency and effectiveness. Unlike participatory budgeting, the Sub‐borough Chiefs Forum is a community‐based representative democratic mechanism; it could be regarded as a form of participatory budgeting in a broad sense. If so, then did the Taipei programme simply duplicate the goals of the Forum or lead to a better governance by making up for the inadequacies of the Chiefs Forum? To find out whether the Taipei participatory budgeting programme made a difference, we carried out qualitative and quantitative comparisons of projects passed under the participatory budgeting process and at the Forum. We also interviewed several participatory budgeting participants and sub‐borough chiefs. The findings suggested that participatory budgeting and the Forum generated different proposals and budget requests, and the Taipei programme supplemented the shortcomings of the Forum and therefore led to deeper civic engagement and better urban governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many phthalates are endocrine‐disrupting chemicals that are associated with adverse birth outcomes, the relationship between maternal phthalate exposure and birth outcomes is not yet conclusive. The objective of the present study was to investigate the association between prenatal exposure to phthalates in human maternal and cord blood and birth outcomes of the infants. Sixty‐five mother–infant pairs were recruited in Taipei City and New Taipei City, and birth outcomes of the infants were recorded. Twelve phthalate metabolites were measured in maternal and cord blood samples. The mean of mono‐ethyl phthalate, mono‐isobutyl phthalate (MiBP), mono‐n‐butyl phthalate (MnBP), and mono‐(2‐ethylhexyl) phthalate (MEHP) was relatively higher than that of the other metabolites in both maternal and infant blood. There was a significant difference (p < 0.05) for mono‐methyl phthalate (MMP) and MnBP between the maternal blood and cord blood of male infants. Mono‐benzyl phthalate (MBzP), MMP, MiBP, and ∑di‐2‐ethylhexyl phthalate (∑DEHP) in maternal blood were inversely correlated with the anogenital index (AGI) of male infants, with a p value between 0.011 and 0.033. Mono‐n‐octyl phthalate, MMP, MiBP, MnBP, and MBzP were positively correlated with the AGI of female infants, with a p value between 0.001 and 0.034. Cord blood levels of MnBP, mono‐(2‐ethyl‐5‐oxohexyl)‐phthalate, MEHP, and ∑DEHP were found to be inversely associated with head circumference in all the infants, adjusted for gestational age. Phthalate monoesters are potentially estrogenic and antiandrogenic chemicals. Longitudinal follow‐up of the present study population could help clarify the long‐term impact of phthalates on growth and the health effects of background exposure levels. Environ Toxicol Chem 2022;41:715–725. © 2022 SETAC [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taiwan's most significant natural hazards are caused by hydrological extremes resulting from excessive precipitation. The threat of extreme precipitation is posed by several different types of weather patterns that affect Taiwan. This study examined the bi‐decadal changes in rainfall by defining an extreme precipitation occurrence (EPO) for a range of event durations from 1 to 24 hr. Three major weather types affecting EPO in Taiwan were identified from 1993 to 2015: the front type consisting of either a frontal zone or convective systems developing with an apparent Meiyu cloudband, diurnal rainfall events when no apparent synoptic features are present, and a tropical cyclone (TC) type according to the maximum sustained wind radius of a TC. Results show that TC‐type events have the greatest overall contribution to EPO at longer (>6 hr) durations. Diurnal/afternoon convection events contribute most to the shorter (<3 hr) duration EPO, while frontal/Meiyu systems prevail in the medium (3–6 hr) duration. EPO of almost all durations have experienced an increase, with the 3‐ and 12‐hr EPO having increased by 4.6 days each over the 23 years. However, apparent decadal‐scale variability exists in these EPO associated with the decreasing tendency of EPO after the mid‐2000s, particularly the longer duration (>6 hr) EPO associated with the TC‐type events in summer. The distinction between EPO trends for the entire island of Taiwan and for the Taipei metropolitan area alone (northern Taiwan, population of 7 million) were compared, and an intriguing interannual variation is reported in the TC‐type EPO associated with the TC season 1 year to a year and half just before an El Niño–Southern Oscillation event. The analysis here provides refined statistical distributions of extreme rainfall, and these can contribute to the revision of governmental definitions for weather disasters that are used in mitigation and response strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illuminates the social nature of bureaucratic practice by analyzing the everyday speech of bureaucrats in a polyglossic society. My ethnographic analysis shows how Taipei city government administrators mobilize ideologies associated with Taiwan's two primary languages, and stereotypes associated with bureaucracy, to undermine both. Instead, they present themselves as a postethnonational and postbureaucratic avant-garde of their new democracy. In doing so, they draw on local values and tropes of legitimation, which place a premium on the personalistic relations and social imbrication of government actors-relations that democracy, for all its potential to spawn dangerous chaos, is seen to facilitate. They represent their government employer not by claiming a superordinate status for it but by situating it as one participant within a complex of institutions, networks, and values. In illuminating both the internally and the externally social nature of government bureaucracy, I highlight the creative and progressive possibilities hidden within the drab government office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses how government agencies allocate their program budgets in response to citizen dissatisfaction. It examines three unpopular public programs with varying budget allocations overseen by different government agencies in New Taipei City, Taiwan. The article argues that low levels of citizen satisfaction do not necessarily lead to budget cuts. Rather, budget allocation is mediated by the policy preference of the elected mayor and the intrinsic characteristics of a program. An unpopular program gets cut only if it is of less political priority and there is a lack of interest in the given agency. According to the bureau-shaping model, bureau heads only expand programs give them primacy as policy makers rather than program operators or fund distributers. However, this article shows that whether the program does this or not, the program can still be in preference if the mayor remains in sympathy with the program or the program is associated with the agency's policy function. The former would lead to the reallocation of funds for gaining citizen support; the latter would earn more funds to improve the program performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The function of 'learning' as a key to enhancing public responsiveness, outwards accountability and performance improvement has been well identified. But is there any variation in impact if different learning roles are played by people at different levels in organisational hierarchies? Through a comparative study of two frontline service systems and their performance management mechanism in Taipei City of Taiwan, the author identifies two kinds of learning: policy learning and instrumental learning, and argues that if policy learning is taken by a policymaking/supervisory agency, it will strengthen upwards accountability of its subordinate executive agencies at the expense of outwards accountability, and will stimulate their instrumental learning for target-based performance measurement, on the other hand, if policy learning spurred by their own performance evaluation is taken by executive agencies, it will strengthen their outwards accountability without any negative impact on upwards accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Keelung River is one of the major branches of the Danshuei River estuarine system, which runs the metropolitan capital city of Taipei, Taiwan, and receives a large of amount of wastewater. The dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration is generally low in the tidal portion of the Keelung River. Hypoxia/anoxia occurs often, particularly during a low-flow period. The sediment oxygen demand (SOD) amounts to a significant value, hence increasing the total oxygen demand load of the river. The present work reports on laboratory SOD made on grab sediment core samples in situ that are undisturbed. The results reveal that SOD values fluctuate with variations in seasons and are higher in summer due to a high-temperature effect. It was found in the laboratory tests that the average SOD (at 20 °C) value is 0.76 g/m2/day and the maximum SOD (at 20 °C) value reaches 1.58 g/m2/day. The mean values of measured SOD at each station were adopted in the vertical two-dimensional water quality model to simulate the DO distribution along the tidal Keelung River. The simulated results are in reasonable agreement with the measured DO distribution in the river. Model sensitivity analyses were also conducted with increasing and decreasing SOD. It reveals that SOD is an important parameter that affects the DO distribution in the tidal estuary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]