ABSTRACT
Village development blueprints and bottom-up initiatives regarded as necessary by all the actors involved, since the villages ultimately provided the greatest proportion of the sub-county supplementary funds needed for the realization of many projects. For the county and township governments, this provided another means of steering activism and implementation effectiveness. In defense, the township head then revealed a whole plethora of complex problems, pointing out that complete re-settlement of 'hazard villages' was a much easier task than pushing the in situ rebuilding and renovation of houses. Townships could exert some influence, however, when it came to application processing, project adjustment and the proposal of eligible new demonstration or model sites. Public response and participation examined during the New Countryside construction acted as a certain constraint on local implementors' agency and as a crucial resource for securing the effectiveness and, not least, legitimacy of BNSC implementation on the ground.
