Interactive Governance Between and Within Governmental Levels and Functions: A Social Network Analysis of China's Case Against COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 has created long-lasting yet unprecedented challenges worldwide. In addition to scientific efforts, political efforts and public administration are also crucial to contain the disease. Therefore, understanding how multi-level governance systems respond to this public health crisis is vital to combat COVID-19. This study focuses on China and applies social network analysis to illustrate interactive governance between and within levels and functions of government, confirming and extending the existing Type I and Type II definition of multi-level governance theory. We characterize four interaction patterns—vertical, inter-functional, intra-functional, and hybrid—with the dominant pattern differing across governmental functions and evolving as the pandemic progressed. Empirical results reveal that financial departments of different levels of government interact through the vertical pattern. At the same time, intra-functional interaction also exists in provincial financial departments. The supervision departments typically adopt the inter-functional pattern at all levels. At the cross-level and cross-function aspects, the hybrid interaction pattern prevails in the medical function and plays a fair part in the security, welfare, and economic function. This study is one of the first to summarize the interaction patterns in a multi-level setting, providing practical implications for which pattern should be applied to which governmental levels/functions under what pandemic condition.

International Trade of Masks and COVID‐19 Pandemic Containment

“…When the traded products are antivirus supplies, international trade will play a positive role in pandemic containment. Third, after the outbreak of the pandemic, China has achieved good results through its unremitting efforts, and the pandemic has been effectively controlled [ 19 – 22 ], which provides valuable lessons for the countries still in dire straits. Meanwhile, China's rapid resumption of production and exports of antivirus supplies have both played a pivotal role in the fight against COVID-19 globally.…”

“…Measures taken in China are currently proven to reduce human-to-human transmission successfully [ 21 ]. China has achieved remarkable results in preventing the spread of the pandemic, ensuring the safety of people's lives, quickly resuming work and production, and promoting economic recovery; in addition, the theoretical framework and successful experience of China's multilevel and multifunctional governance structure are both theoretical and practical and can provide reference for other countries in the world [ 22 ]. At the same time, other countries had to stop production because of COVID-19, so the production in China has become the key to providing medical supplies.…”

How to co-exist with COVID-19? A health economics explanation based on the Chinese experience

“…Public health governance usually involves functions that are exercised by different levels of government, which directly determine the effectiveness of policy implementation. The government functions that are relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic include finance, health care, security, the economy, welfare, technology, and regulation [26]. The means through which effective interactions between multiple layers of government that span several levels and departments can be synchronized merit further in-depth study.…”

Improving Public Health and Governance in COVID-19 Response: A Strategic Public Procurement Perspective

“…After the outbreak of COVID-19, the representative viewpoints on emergency procurement advocated the improvement of relevant procurement procedures and procurement methods ( 22 , 23 ), building a whole chain of emergency procurement supervision and management system ( 24 ), establishing a supply chain risk management and synergy mechanism, and optimizing the decision-making capacity of reserves ( 25 , 26 ). From the perspective of emergency management, other scholars pointed out that active anti-epidemic willingness, government-centered resource mobilization and unified scheduling, and the coordination and cooperation among multiple sectors ( 27 – 29 ) are China's successful experiences in dealing with emergency material support. However, the existing literature lacks a systematic reflection on China's emergency procurement against COVID-19.…”