The Incentive to Innovate? The Behavior of Local Policymakers in China

Summary This paper engages with the theoretical perspective of policy entrepreneurship to examine the pattern and process of policy change in the context of China's urban redevelopment. Drawing upon a strategic‐relational reinterpretation of policy entrepreneurship, this paper identifies a distinctive form of reluctant policy innovation in the “three old renewals” scheme initiated in Guangzhou where profit concession and informality tolerance were practiced to create a small window of opportunity for the project of urban redevelopment to break ground. The motivation of policy entrepreneurship in the successful urban renewal projects in Guangzhou was heavily contingent upon the geographically important location of the project site and the historically incidence of hosting the 2010 Asian Games, which forced municipal government to become entrepreneurial and innovative in decision making and income redistribution in order to get things done as quickly as possible. The distinct fashion of policy innovation identified in the case of Guangzhou points to the polymorphous and dynamic nature of policy entrepreneurship and advocates a relational treatment of the strategies and motives of policy entrepreneurs embedded in concrete geographical and historical context.

Section: Reconceptualizing Policy Entrepreneurship From a Strategic‐rmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Reconceptualizing Policy Entrepreneurship From a Strategic‐rmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reluctant policy innovation through profit concession and informality tolerance: A strategic relational view of policy entrepreneurship in China's urban redevelopment

Lin

Yeh

et al. 2019

“…Although much of the literature on policy experimentation is based on the study of Western electoral democracies (see Roberts & King, ; Shipan & Volden, ), scholars have increasingly researched this topic in authoritarian states such as China (see Hammond, ; Teets, Hasmath, & Lewis, ; Zhu & Zhang, ). Most studies analyzing policy experimentation in authoritarian regimes have a tendency to look at the behavior of the bureaucratic state as the primary actor, without factoring in other actors such as private businesses and civil society organizations in this process and thus, mostly focus on the role of officials in promoting policy experiments (see Gel'man & Lankina, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The innovative personality? Policy making and experimentation in an authoritarian bureaucracy

Hasmath

Teets

Lewis

2019

Self Cite

Why do local officials in an authoritarian bureaucracy experiment with policy, even when directed not to do so by central-level officials? This study suggests that policy experimentation in this institutional environment can best be understood as an interaction between the structure in which local officials are embedded and individuallevel personality attributes. Leveraging a new data set from a series of original surveys with local policy makers in mainland China, conducted between 2016 and 2018, we discern three baseline personality types: authoritarian, consultative, and entrepreneurial. We thereafter examine the individual-level characteristics of local officials who will innovate irrespective of a centralization of bureaucratic power and interests, as currently experienced under Chinese President Xi Jinping. We find that local policy makers engage in policy innovation when they are more focused on resolving governance problems and that increased risk reduces but does not eliminate their willingness to innovate. Based on these findings, we contend that future studies of policy innovation should use an evolutionary framework to examine the interaction between preferences and selection pressures.

“…Some even argue that space for local experimentation has been curtailed (Schubert & Alpermann, 2019). Any deviation from routine missions or superior instructions will entail more risks (Teets et al, 2017). In this sense, policy diffusion under Xi still exists, but probably to greater extent a result of superior steering in the interlocal tournament.…”

Section: Policy Diffusion In the Administrative Context Of Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

How does policy innovation diffuse among Chinese local governments? A qualitative comparative analysis of River Chief Innovation

Zhang

Wang

2021

It is well-documented that interlocal learning and competition could drive policy innovation diffusion. However, their interconnection in non-western regimes as China is less explored. Utilizing the method of qualitative comparative analysis on the case of River Chief Innovation, this article intends to explore the multiple conjunctural causation of Chinese policy diffusion and the impacts of central recognition. Our findings suggest that interlocal learning and tournament could intimately stimulate Chinese policy diffusion through different combinations.Different governments would adopt innovation for various reasons in a continuum of diffusion mechanisms, involving the technical learning, the championship-induced learning, the mandate-induced learning, and the innovation tournament. Hence, despite the ongoing centralization under Xi, space for local spontaneous learning remains. We also find that central recognition could activate the interlocal tournament and extend the diffusion continuum to the tournament side. Therefore, it facilitates policy diffusion toward governments that lack learning motivations and promotes the local implementation of central preferences.