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

Abstract

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.

Qujing (取经) as policy mobility with Chinese characteristics: A case study of ultralow-energy building policy in China

“…Differing from the common practices of law-based liberal democracies, Chinese policymakers use discretionary legislations, special zones or pilot sites to allow localized experimentations that test out problem solutions or devise novel governance in advance of national legislation. While policy experimentations in the West are usually limited to narrowly defined moderation of existing policies, China’s experimentalist governance is notable for its prevalence and transformative impacts on economic policy, corporate regulation, political governance, social welfare programs, and sustainability strategies (Hasmath et al., 2019; Heilmann, 2008; Husain, 2017; Lim, 2017; Mei and Liu, 2014). Case studies of experimentation in diverse geographical settings and scales have also revealed the complex modes of central-local interactions rather than centralized model commonly associated with China (Hui et al., 2016; Lo et al., 2020; Miao and Lang, 2015; Zhu and Zhao, 2018).…”

The dynamic role of governments in adopting policy innovations in China

“…First, both cases include interactions between higher levels of government and local governments. Second, the cases represent two typical possibilities of intervention from superiors, and their approach of 'policy experimentation' (Heilmann, 2008) is commonly seen in the Chinese context (Hasmath et al, 2019). If we regard the intervention of higher-level governments as a continuous spectrum in which non-involvement and coercion constitute the outer fringes, then the role of higher-level governments in these two cases illustrates two alternative modes of involvement.…”

Cracking the Nest Egg: Comparing Pension Politics in Post-Communist Russia and Hungary

“…Bureaucratic-authoritarian policymaking was much studied in Latin and South American (O'Donnell, 1973;Remmer and Merkx, 1982;Schneider, 1991) and later in the Chinese case especially regarding policy experimentation (e.g. Hasmath et al, 2019). This style of policymaking can result in bureaucratic in-fighting that slows the policy process even when public input is limited or entirely absent.…”