Since the 1990s, more local governments across China have launched Internet-based citizen participation in government performance evaluation. However, we know little about how it is perceived by bureaucrats whose attitudes are critical in determining the outcome of this citizen participation. In this article, we present an analytical framework to identify major factors influencing bureaucratic perceptions of the effectiveness of online citizen participation. We use survey data collected from local government bureaucrats in Guangdong Province, China, to test our research hypotheses. The results suggest that the effectiveness of online civic participation is primarily a function of citizens’ capacity and motivation, inter-agency difference, and administrative burden. This article concludes with a discussion about how our study extends previous research on citizen participation and the implications for practitioners and future research.

Social distancing restrictions for COVID-19 epidemic prevention have substantially changed the field of youths’ social activities. Many studies have focused on the impact of epidemic-preventative social distancing on individual physical and mental health. However, in the field of social distancing for epidemic prevention, what are the changes in youth anti-epidemic action and states caused by their interpersonal resources and interactions? Responding to this question by studying the impact of the elements of social capital in youths’ anti-epidemic actions and anti-epidemic states could help identify an effective mechanism for balancing social distancing for effective epidemic prevention and sustainable social-participation development among youth. Bourdieu’s field theory holds that the elements of social capital change with a change in the field. Therefore, we introduced the specific elements of social capital as independent variables and used a multinomal logistic model to analyze and predict the levels of youth anti-epidemic action through an empirical investigation of 1043 young people in Guangdong Province, China. The results show that, first, level of social distancing for epidemic prevention shows differences by occupation status and income level and correlates with social support. Second, social support and social norms play positive roles in promoting youth participation in anti-epidemic activities when social distance is certain. Third, social capital has a significant positive effect on youth social satisfaction and core relationships; however, social trust has a significant negative effect on youth physical and mental health. This study emphasized that social distancing for epidemic prevention is a special social situational state, which is a field where social capital has an impact on the differential changes in the public-participating actions and habitus of youth.

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In grassroots water environment governance, political–community dialog is an unavoidable issue. Traditional policy analysis tools emphasize top-down stages and sequences, often ignoring the essential role of social factors (organizations, resources, or individuals)—outside the policy subsystem—in policy advocacy. The Advocacy Alliance Framework (ACF) provides a perspective on the role of social factors in policy changes and the interaction mechanism driving the relevant stages and alliances. In this study, we re-examine the key elements of the ACF and extract the grassroots logic of policy advocacy by discussing how actors act from policy divergence to policy learning, constructing an action framework to explain grassroots social policy advocacy in China. We find that policy advocacy depends on the joint influence of multiple elements such as the alliance members, alliance belief system and alliance resources. Therefore, social forces can better intervene in the policy agenda and achieve effective political–community dialog by identifying the relevant elements.