Doing more among institutional boundaries: Platform-enabled government in China |
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Authors: | Yu Zeng Quan Zhang Qi Zhao Huang Huang |
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Institution: | 1. School of Government and the Institute of Public Governance, Peking University, Beijing, China;2. School of Marxism Studies and the Institute of State Governance Studies, Peking University, Beijing, China;3. School of Urban Economics and Public Administration, Capital University of Economics and Business, Beijing, China |
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Abstract: | The concept of Government as a Platform (GaaP) has recently encountered setbacks in practice worldwide. While existing literature on inter-governmental collaboration has emphasized organizational restructuring and data sharing, this study argues that a pragmatic way to improve administrative efficiency in the absence of formal institutional change is to adopt an alternative model to GaaP: platform-enabled government. Enabled by innovations of the middle-tier platform, this new model of platform governance integrates the functions of distributed systems of multiple departments into a sequential workflow without the requirement of institutional reform or sharing proprietary data. To demonstrate how this model facilitates information flow across institutional boundaries and improves collaborative governance, we analyze horizontal, vertical, and public-private collaboration using a diverse case study design. We examine administrative review, law enforcement, and contact tracing during the pandemic in the context of China. Our findings suggest accommodating institutional boundaries is a practical and effective approach to advance the digital government agenda in decentralized contexts. |
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Keywords: | collaborative governance cross-agency integration government-as-a-platform platform governance platform-enabled government gobierno habilitado por plataforma gobierno como plataforma gobernanza de plataforma gobernanza colaborativa integración entre agencias 平台驱动的数字政府(platform-enabled government) 政府即平台 平台治理 协同治理 跨部门整合 |
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