Increasing the coverage of social programmes

Wazir, Rekha; Oudenhoven, Nico van

doi:10.1111/1468-2451.00116

Cited by 17 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Though hands-on experimentation is delegated to local officials, China's central government plays an indispensable role in scaling up and generalizing local innovations, thereby providing coordination to the reform process. This approach to experimentation resembles the modes of social program replication that have been discussed in the development community (see Wazir and Oudenhoven 1998), in particular, the approach of "staged replication," which moves from local pilot testing through implementation in a broader selection of demonstration sites to universal replication. In contrast to the experience of other countries, including India, where the "corpses of pilot projects litter the development field" (Pyle 1980, pp 123, 124), Chinese-style experimentation managed to transform many pilot projects into fullscale operational programs that cover a broad policy spectrum ranging from economic regulation to organizational reforms within the Communist Party.…”

Section: Policy Experimentation As a Distinct Mode Of Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

Policy Experimentation in China’s Economic Rise

2007

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Policy experimentation is frequently highlighted as a potent means to facilitate institutional innovation, and avoid reformist leaps in the dark by injecting bottom-up initiative and local knowledge into the national policy process. Yet experimentation remains a surprisingly vague concept in the debate over variants of economic governance. This article contributes to the study of experiment-based policymaking by examining the distinctive tools, processes, and effects of experimental programs in major domains of China's economic reform. China's experience attests to the potency of experimentation in bringing about transformative change, even in a rigid authoritarian, bureaucratic environment, and regardless of strong political opposition. Large-scale experimentation stimulated policy learning and economic expansion effectively in those sectors in which political elites could benefit from supporting new types of private and transnational entrepreneurial activity. Conversely, experimental programs largely failed in generating an effective provision of social goods which would require a combination of active societal supervision and strict central government enforcement to make it work. Though the impact of reform experiments varies between policy domains, China's experimentation-based policy process has been essential to redefining basic policy parameters. At the heart of this process, we find a pattern of central-local interaction in generating policy-"experimentation under hierarchy"-which constitutes a notable addition to the repertoires of governance that have been tried for achieving economic transformation. St Comp Int Dev (2008) 43:1-26 for their encouragement and comments. Nancy Hearst made a crucial contribution by bringing precious sources from the Fairbank Center's library to my attention that I otherwise would have overlooked.

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Section: Policy Experimentation As a Distinct Mode Of Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

Policy Experimentation in China’s Economic Rise

2007

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“…Chinese scaling-up experience nevertheless shares common features with similar efforts elsewhere, especially those undertaken by governments. Staged replication, as conceived by Wazir and Oudenhoven (1998), involves a process of pilot testing followed by carefully evaluated implementation in various sites followed by broad expansion. Demand from below and careful pilot testing and replication were central features of the Chinese experience.…”

Section: Conceptual Framework: Three Phases Of Organizational Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Quality of Care in China: Scaling Up a Pilot Project into a National Reform Program

Kaufman

Erli

Xie

2006

Studies in Family Planning

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China's family planning program ranks as history's most intensive effort to control national population growth. Although advocates for global population control have lauded China's effort to limit births as afundamental part of its sustainable development goals, the country's population policy has also generated much international criticism. As China enters the new millennium, a long-overdue reform of its approach to implementing its family planning program has begun to refocus the program on clients' needs, informed choice of contraceptives, and better-quality services. Originally inspired by the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo, the reform program began as a pilot project among six counties and has now become a blueprint for reorienting the national family planning program. This article reviews the process by which a small, innovative pilot project was scaled up into a national reform effort and the key lessons learned about scaling up sensitive but necessary innovation in a difficult political environment.

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Facilitating Large‐scale Transitions to Quality of Care: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Simmons¹,

Brown

Díaz

2002

Studies in Family Planning

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In the field of reproductive health, investigation of the transfer of knowledge gained from demonstration and pilot projects to large public-sector programs typically has not been considered a relevant domain for research or other investigation. This article draws on a range of research in the social sciences and presents two frameworks for understanding the critical attributes of successful expansion of small-scale innovations. Seven key lessons are developed using examples from family planning where scaling up was an explicit objective, including the early Taichung Study of Taiwan, the Chinese Experiment in Quality of Care, the Bangladesh MCH-FP Extension Project, the Navrongo Project in Ghana, and the Reprolatina Project in Brazil. Unless small, innovative projects concern themselves from the outset with determining how their innovations can be put to use on a larger scale, they risk remaining irrelevant for policy and program development.

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Increasing the coverage of social programmes

Cited by 17 publications

References 1 publication

Policy Experimentation in China’s Economic Rise

Policy Experimentation in China’s Economic Rise

Quality of Care in China: Scaling Up a Pilot Project into a National Reform Program

Facilitating Large‐scale Transitions to Quality of Care: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

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