Governing the Chinese Economy: Regulatory Reform in the Service of the State

Pursuant to its extensive program of market reforms, China’s government tried to restructure itself to support a market‐dominated economy. Reform efforts have included elements that are familiar to scholars of public administration: streamlining government, strengthening bureaucratic capacity, distancing government from firms, and establishing independent regulators. But how deep have these reforms been, and with what ultimate goals? This article examines a crucial segment of the economy—China’s so‐called lifeline industries—to show how reforms to China’s economic governance system have been mapped onto an existing system characterized by extreme institutional fragmentation and an inability to imbue new governmental bodies with authority. Moreover, for these key industrial sectors, the Chinese party‐state’s strong interests in ownership, revenues, and social policy dictate that it use a variety of tools to protect these interests.     

Embedded Government Control and Nonprofit Revenue Growth

This research combines insights from resource dependence and institutional theories to examine the growth of Chinese nonprofit revenues. The authors propose the concept of embedded government control (EGC) to capture the complexity of the government–nonprofit relationship along two dimensions: government regulation of nonprofits’ public fund‐raising qualifications and the political embeddedness of nonprofits with the government. Using a data set of 2,159 Chinese philanthropic foundations for the period 2005–12, the authors test hypotheses about the implications of EGC for nonprofit revenues in China following two major external shocks: the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 and the Guo Meimei scandal in 2011. The empirical analysis shows that EGC can help philanthropic foundations obtain more government subsidies, donations, and market revenues. However, external shocks may either strengthen or weaken the enabling role of EGC in helping foundations acquire relatively more donations.     

THE INFLUENCE OF E‐GOVERNMENT ON ADMINISTRATIVE DISCRETION: THE CASE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS IN EGYPT

One important but often understudied area of research in public administration is the effect of e‐government on administrative discretion. This article examines e‐government factors that influence administrative discretion through a survey of local governments. The focus of this study is on Egyptian local governments, which are using e‐government to modernise public service delivery. Through a survey of administrative officials in these governments, this study found evidence that e‐government factors of collaboration and organisational change influenced administrative discretion. Other common factors noted in the literature such as size of the local government and demand by citizens for e‐government did not register an effect on administrative discretion. The results of this study imply that local governments should do more to enhance e‐government to reduce administrative discretion, especially in the area of increasing collaboration. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Building e‐government in East and Southeast Asia: Regional rhetoric and national (in)action

Among many regional policy initiatives taken by states in East and Southeast Asia in the wake of the 1997 financial crisis, one central project launched by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and taken up by its dialogue partners in East Asia, was promotion of information and communication technology. While part of ASEAN's 1999–2004 action plan focused on services for business, another part sought to put public sectors online, and to promote electronic government, or e‐government. Taking the 16 states and quasi‐states of East and Southeast Asia, this article evaluates progress at the action plan's mid‐point in January 2002. It begins by defining e‐government and reviewing three academic literatures on the information age, developmental states, and Confucian societies. It then describes the major policy initiatives taken by ASEAN and its partner states, and surveys implementation progress through an analysis of government homepages and sites. Its main finding is that e‐government activity in East and Southeast Asia is highly diverse, reflecting national strengths and weaknesses rather than regional capacity for policy change. The article argues for increased attention to national implementation strategies. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

地方政府公共服务创新：驱动机制与路径选择——中国情境下的分析框架和经验证据

不断推进地方政府公共服务创新是破解当前公共服务供给困境,构建我国治理体系和治理能力现代化的重要组成部分。在对国内外相关文献分析的基础上,从政治制度、社会需求和资源支撑等视角出发,构建了中国情境下地方政府公共服务创新驱动机制的分析框架,通过模糊集定性比较分析的方法,对"中国地方政府创新奖"下公共服务创新类项目进行了系统比较分析。研究发现,在中国情境下,晋升激励是引致地方政府创新成功的充分条件,领导支持是驱动地方政府创新成功的必要条件;而在创新的代表性路径中,公民参与和媒体报道也发挥着重要作用,经济发展水平和改革本身的难度对创新工作的影响有限;行政主导型、需求诱发型和多方互动型的创新模式是我国地方政府公共服务创新时选择的主要路径模式。未来中央应更注重从制度层面激发地方政府公共服务的创新热情,降低社会公共服务需求的政府进入门槛,同时应注重激发公共服务创新要素组合的叠加效应。     

Authoritarian Integrative Governance in China: Understanding the Crucial Role of Political Risk Aversion

Establishing a model of public administration distinct from those of Western countries has been a long standing hope of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chinese government. Using the Creating a National Healthy City (CNHC) campaign as a case study, this article demonstrates evidence for an emerging authoritarian integrative governance model (AIGM) in China. Given their limited and scattered resources in terms of both bureaucratic structure and geography, local government officials cannot effectively complete the numerous tasks transferred to them from higher‐level government offices. Therefore, relying on an authoritative system to integrate dispersed resources has become a rational solution. The emergence of AIGM is more contingent upon the weighing the political risks that originate from competition between different political ideologies, environmental feedback on the failure or success of solutions to bureaucratic problems are considered less significant, which furthers allow the emergence of AIGM to be an inevitable consequence. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Politics of E‐Government: E‐Government and the Political Control of Bureaucracy

This case study reports an innovative e‐government experiment by a local government in Seoul, South Korea—Gangnam‐gu. A new local political leadership in Gangnam made strategic use of e‐government applications to exert greater political control over the local civil service bureaucracy. The authors find that e‐government applications possess political properties that can be applied effectively by the political leadership as instruments to improve control over the government bureaucracy as well as to enhance essential government accountability and transparency. The political circumstances underlying e‐government development as well as its impact on local government are reported, along with key variables associated with this innovation and directions for future research.     

Made in China at a crossroads: a recourse‐based view

• The brand ‘Made in China’ has long stood for low cost and good value. But recent revelations about the quality of some Chinese products exported overseas have begun to put this brand at risk. In the end, much of what constitutes this country brand depends on the strategies Chinese firms pursue, which in turn subject to the firm resources. Drawing from the resource‐base theory, this paper investigates the sources of the competitive advantage of the brand ‘Made in China’ and discusses the choices to be made by the Chinese firms and government in order to maintain a stable and better country brand.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

E‐Participation,Transparency, and Trust in Local Government

This article examines the relationship between electronic participation (e‐participation) and trust in local government by focusing on five dimensions of the e‐participationprocess: (1) satisfaction with e‐participation applications, (2) satisfaction with government responsiveness to e‐participants, (3) e‐participants’ development through the participation, (4) perceived influence on decision making, and (5) assessment of government transparency. Using data from the 2009 E‐Participation Survey in Seoul Metropolitan Government, this article finds that e‐participants’ satisfaction with e‐participation applications is directly associated with their development and their assessment of government transparency. The findings reveal that e‐participants’ satisfaction with government responsiveness is positively associated with their perceptions of influencing government decision making. Furthermore, there is a positive association between e‐participants’ perception of influencing government decision making and their assessment of government transparency. Finally, the article finds that there is a positive association between e‐participants’ assessment of government transparency and their trust in the local government providing the e‐participation program.     

Authoritarian responsiveness: Online consultation with “issue publics” in China

In recent years, public consultation has become a standard feature of policymaking in authoritarian regimes. While previous studies found evidence of government responsiveness to citizens' demands, they did not measure responsiveness in terms of real policy change. This article presents the first systematic analysis of Chinese central government policy responsiveness to consultative input. In 2008, the Chinese government unveiled a blueprint for health‐care reform, inviting the public to post their opinions online. Having collected 27,899 online comments, the government subsequently published a revised draft. This article analyzes a random sample of 2% of this corpus of comments, assessing the effect of comments on revisions while controlling for both media content and bureaucratic preferences. The findings demonstrate that public comments have an impact upon policy revisions and suggest that the Chinese government is more responsive to street‐level implementers than to other social groups.     

制约与主动建构:地方政府行政逻辑的“善治”之道——以义乌案例分析为视角

实现现代化,乃中华民族百多年来不懈探索追求的目标,但只是及至改革开放后的当下中国,社会转型中的现代性特质才得以渐趋明朗。然而,有着迥异于西方发达国家社会背景的中国,具体的现代化路径必然有其自身的独特性。文章以义乌为分析范例,通过对这里地方政府行政逻辑逐渐趋向"善治"的嬗变为描述依据,试图揭示在我国现实的政治经济体制框架下,地方政府是如何在制约与主动建构之间逐渐走向现代性的制度均衡。作为其中的核心议题,则重在关注地方政府与民间经济力量之间共容利益机制的形成及其对建构治理型政府不可小觑的积极影响。     

Digital Government: A Primer and Professional Perspectives

Digital technology is a critical enabler of public administration reforms. It can improve the efficiency and productivity of government agencies and allow citizens to transact with government anytime, anywhere. It can also deepen the democratic process, empowering citizens to participate in policy formulation. In this article Andrew Botros, the director of Expressive Engineering, and Maria Katsonis, from the Department of Premier and Cabinet (Victoria), explore the challenges of the digital world for the public sector. Katsonis presents a primer on digital government tracing its evolution from the e‐government movement of the 1990s to Government 2.0 in the 2000s to today's digital‐by‐default agenda. As technology and its role in public sector reform have progressed, so too have the governance, cultural, and leadership challenges deepened. Botros examines NSW approach to open innovation with the Premier's Innovation Initiative in NSW, the state's open data experience, and Transport for NSW and its management of public transport data. He argues NSW's approach involves a significant innovation trade‐off, requiring fresh thinking in digital‐era collaboration.     

COVID-19 and American Attitudes toward U.S.-China Disputes

The COVID-19 outbreak has fueled tension between the U.S. and China. Existing literature in international relations rarely focuses on virus outbreaks as factors affecting international relations between superpower countries, nor does research examine an outbreak’s potential influence on the public’s opinion about their country’s foreign policy. To bridge this research gap, this study explores the extent to which the American public may be prone to favor policies that “punish” China via existing U.S.-China disputes, such as the South China Sea dispute and the U.S.-China trade war. I conducted an online survey using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and ran multinomial and ordered logit models to estimate the association between an individual’s preferred policies and the country or government an individual blame for the impact of the pandemic. After controlling several essential confounding factors, such as one’s levels of nationalism and hawkishness, I found strong evidence that there is a positive association between people’s attribution of blame to the Chinese government and the likelihood of supporting aggressive policy options in the two disputes with China. That is to say, U.S. citizens who believe that the Chinese government is solely culpable for the outbreak in the U.S., compared to those who think otherwise, are more likely to support hawkish policy options, such as confrontational military actions, economic sanctions, or higher tariff rates. The research provides a glimpse into where Americans may stand in these disputes with China and the potential development of U.S.-China relations in the post-pandemic era.

     

Assembling E‐Government Research Designs: A Transdisciplinary View and Interactive Approach

There is a growing recognition in the field of e‐government that improving the quality and impact of research requires taking into account their complex contexts and drawing on more interdisciplinary and collaborative research. Limited attention so far has been directed toward the conduct of such research, particularly in contract‐based research arrangements for developing e‐government policy. A four‐nation study of public e‐procurement policy is used here to make transparent the process of designing and conducting transdisciplinary and interactive research. Further sharing of research designs and accounts is needed to advance theory, policy, and practice, and to develop a history of ideas in the e‐government research field.     

E‐government and public service quality in Ghana

This article contributes to the growing discourse on the potential of e‐government to transform the operations of public sector institutions, thereby improving public services. It does so by conceptualizing public service quality into efficiency, economy (cost reduction), customer satisfaction, and service accessibility and draws on qualitative data from the Ghanaian narrative for illustration. As previous studies have demonstrated, this study also affirms the potential of e‐government in improving public services delivery by increasing efficiency, reducing the cost of operations, expanding access to services, and achieving customer satisfaction. Yet, there remains a repertoire of challenges such as weak ICT infrastructure especially in towns and villages, incessant power outages and illiteracy, which are drawbacks to fully harnessing the benefits of e‐government in Ghana. The study recommends that these challenges should feature prominently in e‐government policies to increase the chances of solving them.     

Urban government and market reforms in China

Chinese reformers wish through their economic programme to create a new form of developmental state in China and a new relationship between state and economy. This paper examines these issues through a study of the impact of Chinese economic reforms on the structure and behaviour of local government, focusing on urban government at the district level. It looks at three aspects of the issue—the trend towards financial decentralization, institutional changes in district administration and changes in the relationship between local government and the urban economy. It concludes (contrary to arguments which regard bureaucratic response to the reforms as one of pure inertia and obstruction) that urban local government has changed in several major ways, the most obvious being a trend towards institutional expansion and proliferation. From the point of view of the reform process, some institutional changes have been positive, others negative, resulting in a ‘dualistic’ state which contains elements of both old and new forms of developmental state. There is a need for systematic analysis of the specific future needs and evolution of China's urban government which would guide a process of politico-administrative reform comparable to the current economic reform.     

Does the Love of Money Moderate the Relationship between Public Service Motivation and Job Satisfaction? The Case of Chinese Professionals in the Public Sector

To what extent do attitudes toward money—specifically, the love of money—moderate the relationship between public service motivation and job satisfaction among public sector professionals in China? The authors collected data from full‐time public sector professionals who also were part‐time students in a master of public administration program in eastern China. After confirmatory factor analyses, the regression results show that a public servant’s love of money moderates the relationship between public service motivation and job satisfaction—that is, individuals with a strong love of money have a significantly stronger relationship between public service motivation and job satisfaction than those without, a finding that supports the “crowding‐in effect.” Alternatively, for high love‐of‐money civil servants with a “steel rice bowl” mentality, high job satisfaction is explained by the best offer (output) for the minimum amount of effort (input), at least within Chinese culture. Such findings are counterintuitive in light of Chinese personal values, equity theory, public servants’ institutional background, ethical organizational culture, and corruption.     

Institutions, Policy Innovation, and E-Government in the American States

Examining the rankings of American states in one fast‐growing policy area, e‐government, states with the most sophisticated and comprehensive policies varied over a five‐year period. What factors account for change in digital government policy innovation over time? Using time‐series analysis and 50‐state data, the authors find that state institutional capacity is important for continued innovation. They also find an association between reinvention in state governments and the institutionalization of information technology, suggesting a more general orientation toward government reform and modernization. Although state wealth and education were not significant in previous studies, they emerge as predictors of later innovation. The theoretical contribution of this study is to better understand the dynamic character of innovation over time and the role of institutions. The link between reinvention and e‐government raises the possibility that the modernization of state institutions generally facilitates innovation.     

Chinese Governmentalities: Government,Governance and the Socialist Market Economy

Abstract

This paper examines significant changes (and continuities) in the realm of government in contemporary China through drawing upon the insights of governmentality studies. It summarizes the organizing concerns of governmentality studies, arguing that they have functioned, albeit by default, to preclude a consideration of how governmentality is played out in non-liberal contexts. This argument is developed by outlining shifts in the nature of government in China, in particular the shift from a concept of ‘government’ to one of ‘governance’, and subsequently suggesting that the Chinese Party-state is ‘regrouping’ rather than ‘retreating’. The conclusion highlights the significance of the papers contained in this issue of Economy and Society in terms of extending the study of governmentality to both non-Western and authoritarian contexts.     

Local E‐Government in the United States: Transformation or Incremental Change?

In this article, the authors address the recent trajectory of local e‐government in the United States and compare it with the predictions of early e‐government writings, using empirical data from two nationwide surveys of e‐government among American local governments. The authors find that local e‐government has not produced the results that those writings predicted. Instead, its development has largely been incremental, and local e‐government is mainly about delivering information and services online, followed by a few transactions and limited interactivity. Local e‐government is also mainly one way, from government to citizens, and there is little or no evidence that it is transformative in any way. This disparity between early predictions and actual results is partly attributable to the incremental nature of American public administration. Other reasons include a lack of attention by early writers to the history of information technology in government and the influence of technological determinism on those writings.