Governance and Public Administration in China by James, Toby S.; Liu, Wei; Man, Caixia;

Short description:

China has traditionally been held around the world as architype of centralised governance and top-down system of public administration. But to what extent does this remain true of modern China? This book provides updated perspective on modern China through a series of cutting edge, original studies focusing on public administration in China.

Long description:

China has traditionally been held up around the world as the archetype of centralised governance and a top-down system of public administration. But to what extent does this remain true of modern China? This book provides an updated perspective on modern China through a series of cutting edge, original studies focusing on public administration in China.

The book opens with an overview of the key political institutions and the evolution of public administration research in China, followed by two distinct sections. Part I contains studies focusing on power, governance, and administration. Part II focuses on ‘what works’ in solving wicked problems in Chinese society. The volume shows that China has seen some localisation and decentralisation, alongside experiments with collaboration and networked-based policy making. However, the system of governance and public administration remains innately top-down and centralised with the centre holding strong policy levers and control over society. As the pandemic revealed, this statist approach provided both governing opportunities and disadvantages.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Policy Studies.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Governance and public administration in China: the evolution of a polity and a discipline  Part 1: Power, governance and public administration  1. Networked environmental governance: formal and informal collaborative networks in local China  2. More “Government”, less “Governance”: Chinese public employees’ preferences for governing public service delivery  3. Policy coordination in the talent war to achieve economic upgrading: the case of four Chinese cities  4. Government strategies in addressing three protests against PX plants in urban China: comparing cases using a most-similar-system design  5. Government annual report: decision usefulness, information accessibility and policy communication efficiency – Observations from 19 Chinese cities  6. Punctuations and diversity: exploring dynamics of attention allocation in China’s E-government agenda  Part 2: What works with wicked problems  7. Government size and citizen satisfaction in China: evidence that accommodates two contrasting views  8. Towards effective mobilization of social participation: from an instrumental approach to a value-oriented approach in China  9. The relationship between the application and effects of science and its influencing factors: an empirical study in northern China  10. Explaining social insurance participation: the importance of the social construction of target groups in China  11. Campaign-style crisis regime: how China responded to the shock of COVID-19