Download or read book Understanding Local Agency in China s Policy Reform written by Xiaoye She and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-08-23 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges the common perception or assumption that greater state intervention and re-centralization will result in convergence towards a more equitable and inclusive growth model in China. Instead of asking whether local agency matters, this project examines the conditions and latitude of local agency under initial decentralization followed by increasing top-down re-centralization. The central argument is that in response to common policy directives and pressures from above, disparities in local growth strategies have interacted with political institutions in generating “embedded” sub-national welfare mix models, with varying articulations of state, market, community, and family in Chinese welfare production. The bottom-up feedback effects from these embedded models have somewhat offset growing top-down pressure for re-centralization, contributing to persistent sub-national variations. This author contributes to a growing literature of comparative political economy that seeks to examine the political and economic logics of social policy in non-western and authoritarian political systems.
Download or read book Understanding Local Agency in China s Policy Reform written by Xiaoye She and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The meticulously researched case studies in this book reveal the nuance and complexity of Chinese politics and the modern authoritarian welfare state. Xiaoye She challenges the outdated notion of an unchanging authoritarian welfare state that is all too often treated as an afterthought. Her refreshing focus on sub-national politics speaks to pressing debates about economic development paradigms. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to better understand the realities of Chinese politics today, and authoritarian regimes more broadly." - Sarah Wilson Sokhey, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Colorado Boulder, USA This book challenges the common perception or assumption that greater state intervention and re-centralization will result in convergence towards a more equitable and inclusive growth model in China. Instead of asking whether local agency matters, this project examines the conditions and latitude of local agency under initial decentralization followed by increasing top-down re-centralization. The central argument is that in response to common policy directives and pressures from above, disparities in local growth strategies have interacted with political institutions in generating "embedded" sub-national welfare mix models, with varying articulations of state, market, community, and family in Chinese welfare production. The bottom-up feedback effects from these embedded models have somewhat offset growing top-down pressure for re-centralization, contributing to persistent sub-national variations. This author contributes to a growing literature of comparative political economy that seeks to examine the political and economic logics of social policy in non-western and authoritarian political systems. Xiaoye She is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science at California State University San Marcos, USA.
Download or read book State Market and Bureau contracting in Reform China written by Yuen Yuen Ang and published by Stanford University. This book was released on 2009 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why and how has China succeeded as a developmental state despite a seemingly rents-ridden bureaucracy? Following conventional wisdom, "Weberian" bureaucracies are an institutional precondition for development, especially in interventionist states like China. However, my research finds that China's fast-growing economy has not been governed by a purely salaried civil service. Instead, Chinese bureaucracies still remain partially prebendal; at every level of government, each office systematically appropriates authority to generate income for itself. My study unravels the paradox of "developmentalism without Weberianness" by illuminating China's unique path of bureaucratic adaptation in the reform era -- labeled as bureau-contracting -- where contracting takes place within the state bureaucracy. In a bureau-contracting structure, the state at each level contracts the tasks of governance to its own bureaucracies, assigning them revenue-making privileges and property rights over income earned in exchange for services rendered. Contrasting previous emphases on the prevalence of illicit corruption in China, my study shows how and why bureaucracies in this context are actually authorized by the state to profit from public office. Specifically, I identify two factors that constrain arbitrary and excessively predatory behavior among Chinese bureaucracies: first, mechanisms of rents management, and second, the mediation of narrow departmental interests by local developmental incentives. In short, I argue that it is the combination of an incentive-compatible fiscal design and increasingly sophisticated instruments of oversight that have sustained an otherwise unorthodox structure of governance in China. In a phrase, bureau-contracting presents a high-powered but opportunistic alternative to the Weberian ideal-type. The Chinese experience suggests that "market-compatible" bureaucratic institutions need not necessarily conform to -- and may even diverge significantly -- from standard Western models, at least at early stages of development. My research draws on interviews with 165 cadres across different regions and governmental sectors, as well as statistical analysis of previously unavailable budget data.
Download or read book The Political Economy of Making and Implementing Social Policy in China written by Jiwei Qian and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the institutional factors in social policymaking and implementation in China. From the performance evaluation system for local cadres to the intergovernmental fiscal system, local policy experimentation, logrolling among government departments, and the “top-level” design, there are a number of factors that make policy in China less than straightforward. The book argues that it is bureaucratic incentive structure lead to a fragmented and stratified welfare system in China. Using a variety of Chinese- and English-language sources, including central and local government documents, budgetary data, household surveys, media databases, etc., this book covers the development of China’s pensions, health insurance, unemployment insurance, and social assistance programs since the 1990s, with a focus on initiatives since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Providing a deeper understanding of policymaking and implementation in China, this book interests scholars of public administration, political economy, Asian politics, and social development.
Download or read book Social Policy in China written by Chak Kwan Chan and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2008-02-13 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This much-needed new textbook introduces readers to the development of China's welfare polices since its conception of an open-door policy in 1978. Setting out basic concepts and issues, including key terms and the process of policy making, it overcomes a major barrier to understanding Chinese social policy. The book explores in detail the five key policy areas of employment, social security, health, education and housing. Each is examined using a human well-being framework comprising both qualitative and quantitative data and eight dimensions: physical and psychological well-being, social integration, fulfilment of caring duties, human learning and development, self-determination, equal value and just polity. This enables the authors to provide not only factual information on policies but also an in-depth understanding of the impact of welfare changes on the quality of life of Chinese people over the past three decades. A major strength of the book lies in its use of primary Chinese language sources, including relevant White Papers, central and local government policy documents, academic research studies and newspapers for each policy area. There are very few books in English on social policy in China, and this book will be welcomed both by academics and students of China and East Asian studies and comparative social policy and by those who want to know more about China's social development.
Download or read book How Reform Worked in China written by Yingyi Qian and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-11-24 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A noted Chinese economist examines the mechanisms behind China's economic reforms, arguing that universal principles and specific implementations are equally important. As China has transformed itself from a centrally planned economy to a market economy, economists have tried to understand and interpret the success of Chinese reform. As the Chinese economist Yingyi Qian explains, there are two schools of thought on Chinese reform: the “School of Universal Principles,” which ascribes China's successful reform to the workings of the free market, and the “School of Chinese Characteristics,” which holds that China's reform is successful precisely because it did not follow the economics of the market but instead relied on the government. In this book, Qian offers a third perspective, taking certain elements from each school of thought but emphasizing not why reform worked but how it did. Economics is a science, but economic reform is applied science and engineering. To a practitioner, it is more useful to find a feasible reform path than the theoretically best way. The key to understanding how reform has worked in China, Qian argues, is to consider the way reform designs respond to initial historical conditions and contemporary constraints. Qian examines the role of “transitional institutions”—not “best practice institutions” but “incentive-compatible institutions”—in Chinese reform; the dual-track approach to market liberalization; the ownership of firms, viewed both theoretically and empirically; government decentralization, offering and testing hypotheses about its link to local economic development; and the specific historical conditions of China's regional-based central planning.
Download or read book Government and Policy Making Reform in China written by Bill K.P. Chou and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-05-07 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China’s rapid economic development has not translated automatically into political development, with many of its institutions still in need of major reform. In the post-Mao era, despite the decentralization of local government with significant administrative and fiscal authority, China’s government and policy-making processes have retained much of the inefficiency and corruption characteristic of the earlier period. This book analyzes the implementation of government and policy-making reform in China, focusing in particular on the reform programmes instituted since the early 1990s. It considers all the important areas of reform, including the enhancement of policy-making capacity, reform of taxation and fund transfer policies, tightening of financial control, civil service reform and market deregulation. Bill K.P Chou assesses the course of policy reform in each of these areas, considers how successful reforms have been, and outlines what remains to be done. In particular, he explores the impact on the reform process of China’s entry into the WTO in 2001, demonstrating that the process of reform in China has been one of continuous conflict between the agenda of political elites in central government, and the priorities of local leaders, with local agents often distorting, delaying or ignoring the policies emanating from the central government.
Download or read book Health Policy Reform in China written by Jiwei Qian and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2014 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of the existing literature on health system reform in China deals with only one part of the reform process (for example, financing reform in rural areas, or the new system of purchasing pharmaceuticals), or consists of empirical case studies from particular cities or regions. This book gives a broad overview of the process of health system reform in China. It draws extensively both on the Western literature in health economics and on the experience of health care reform in a number of other countries, including the US, UK, Holland, and Japan, and compares China''s approach to health care reform with other countries. It also places the process of health system reform in the context of re-orienting China''s economic policy to place greater emphasis on equity and income distribution, and analyzes the interaction of the central and local governments in designing and implementing the reforms. This book will be of interest to policymakers, academics, students of health economics, health policy and health administration, and people who are interested in Chinese social policy. Sample Chapter(s). Chapter 1: Health Policy in China: Introduction and Background (189 KB). Contents: Introduction: Health Policy in China: Introduction and Background; Health Systems and Health Reform: International Models; Main Components of Health Reform: Strengthening China''s Social Insurance System; Providing Primary Care; The Hospital Sector and Hospital Reform; China''s National Drug Policy: A Work in Progress; Health Care and Harmonious Development in China: Health Policy and Inequality; Decentralized Government, Central-Local Fiscal Relations, and Health Reform; China''s Health System in the Future: Health Services in the Future: Social Insurance and Purchasing; China''s Future Health Care System: A Mixed Public-Private Model?. Readership: Policy makers, academics, students of health economics, health policy, and health administration, and people who are interested in Chinese social policy.
Download or read book Urban China written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2014-07-29 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last 30 years, China’s record economic growth lifted half a billion people out of poverty, with rapid urbanization providing abundant labor, cheap land, and good infrastructure. While China has avoided some of the common ills of urbanization, strains are showing as inefficient land development leads to urban sprawl and ghost towns, pollution threatens people’s health, and farmland and water resources are becoming scarce. With China’s urban population projected to rise to about one billion – or close to 70 percent of the country’s population – by 2030, China’s leaders are seeking a more coordinated urbanization process. Urban China is a joint research report by a team from the World Bank and the Development Research Center of China’s State Council which was established to address the challenges and opportunities of urbanization in China and to help China forge a new model of urbanization. The report takes as its point of departure the conviction that China's urbanization can become more efficient, inclusive, and sustainable. However, it stresses that achieving this vision will require strong support from both government and the markets for policy reforms in a number of area. The report proposes six main areas for reform: first, amending land management institutions to foster more efficient land use, denser cities, modernized agriculture, and more equitable wealth distribution; second, adjusting the hukou household registration system to increase labor mobility and provide urban migrant workers equal access to a common standard of public services; third, placing urban finances on a more sustainable footing while fostering financial discipline among local governments; fourth, improving urban planning to enhance connectivity and encourage scale and agglomeration economies; fifth, reducing environmental pressures through more efficient resource management; and sixth, improving governance at the local level.
Download or read book Understanding China s Political System written by Susan Lawrence and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2012-05-10 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report is designed to provide Congress with a perspective on the contemporary political system of China, the only Communist Party-led authoritarian state in the G-20 grouping of major economies. China's Communist Party dominates state and society in China, is committed to maintaining a permanent monopoly on power, and is intolerant of those who question its right to rule. Nonetheless, analysts consider China's political system to be neither monolithic nor rigidly hierarchical. Jockeying among leaders and institutions representing different sets of interests is common at every level of the system.
Download or read book Modernization of Government Governance in China written by Ronghua Shen and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an all-round analysis and exploration of the course, status quo and future of the Chinese Government's governance reform under the framework of government governance modernization. The authors bring their decades of experience in crafting policy in China to explain the relationship between China's government and market, between government and society, between the central government and local governments, functional transformation, organizational structure optimization, reform of public institutions, allocation of fiscally supported personnel, the building of a law-based government and other major issues, while also laying out a case for structural changes in the years to come.
Download or read book Teacher Mediated Agency in Educational Reform in China written by Hongzhi Yang and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-03-26 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines teacher agency in implementing English as a Foreign Language (EFL) curriculum reform in the Chinese university context. It theorizes the concept of teacher agency from a sociocultural theory perspective and draws on a study conducted in a conservative and less developed area in China. The book uses Engeström's activity theory and Vygotsky's concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) to understand the nature and extent of teacher agency in adapting one’s teaching with respect to beliefs, knowledge and instructional practices. The study concludes that curriculum reform in China needs to shift from reliance on 'top-down' policies to 'bottom-up' implementation that mobilizes local understandings and practices. One of the implications of this study is that transformative teacher education programs aimed at developing teacher pedagogical agency require that teachers have ongoing opportunities to design, develop and evaluate curriculum-based mediational means.
Download or read book China s Civil Service Reform and Local Government Performance written by Xiaoqi Wang, PH. and published by Open Dissertation Press. This book was released on 2017-01-27 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation, "China's Civil Service Reform and Local Government Performance: a Principal-agent Perspective" by Xiaoqi, Wang, 王曉琦, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled "China's Civil Service Reform and Local Government Performance: A Principal-Agent Perspective" Submitted by Wang Xiaoqi for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Hong Kong May 2006 This dissertation has examined the impacts of China's Civil Service Reform on the performance of government agencies in charge of environmental protection and education in three cities (Haidian district of Beijing, Changchun, and Ningbo). I have explored China's Civil Service Reform and its impact on local government performance within a principal-agent framework. Because of information asymmetry and conflict of interest, bureaucratic superiors on three hierarchical levels within the old Cadre Management System had trouble in obtaining full compliance from their bureaucratic subordinates. But, being rational, the bureaucratic superiors (especially the central leadership of the Chinese Communist Party) design rules and institutions to mitigate the problems. The introduction of China's Civil Service System in 1993 is one such effort to i manage cadres. The crucial outputs and outcomes of China's Civil Service Reform are the major focus of this study. In particular, this dissertation aims to answer the following related questions. How have the new sets of rules or initiatives shaped the incentives facing the civil servants and thus influenced the way they exercise their discretion (this being the managerial goal of the reforms)? How do the Reforms affect the ability of the Chinese leadership to control the bureaucracy (the political goal of the reforms), and what are the implications of the Reforms for the relationships among the political leadership, the bureaucrats, and the citizens? How might we explain the variations in reform implementations and performance across policy areas and regions after China's adoption of the Civil Service System? I find that components of China's Civil Service Reform provide superiors solutions to alleviate the control problems, which were embedded in three hierarchical levels of Chinese government, through incentive-alignment and information discovery. The alleviations of control problems manifest themselves in the improvement of local government performance, which is measured by objective indicators and citizen survey data in this study. In general, I find the managerial and political objectives of China's Civil Service Reform have been met. As the outputs of the reforms, evidence suggests civil service quality has improved and local governments have adopted and implemented China's Civil Service System to a large extent. Moreover, the implementation of China's ii Civil Service System has motivated the civil servants to put more conscious effort into their work and accordingly adjust the way they treat their clients. Referring to the outcomes of the reforms, the implementation of the components of China's Civil Service System and other administrative monitoring mechanisms has helped the central leadership in China to successfully strengthen control over the local governments and the local bureaucrats. The strengthened control of the bureaucracy has manifested itself in better provision and delivery of public services, which in turn leads to increased citizen satisfaction with regard to government performance. All these illustrate that local government
Download or read book Government and Market in China written by Jian Zhang and published by Nova Biomedical Books. This book was released on 2004 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the key role played by local governments in China's market-oriented economic reform process since 1978. In particular, it addresses the much debated questions of why Communist Party officials at the local level embraced market reform despite its potentially detrimental effects on their power, and how the choices they made have shaped institutional changes and the pattern of development in the economies under their jurisdiction. In contrast to most recent studies of local governments in China, which have tended to explain local state activism in terms of the economic interests of local government officials, this book highlights the role that political interests have played in shaping economic behaviour. The contention is that the active involvement of local governments in the economy has been motivated not only by a desire to seek economic benefits, but also, and more importantly, by political considerations. The political perspective emphasised in this book leads to a reassessment of the nature and effect of the role of local government in the economic growth and institutional changes in China's transitional economy. Tracing the behaviour of local government to its political origin, the book not only explains more fully the motivational sources of economic activism at the local level, but also demonstrates the contradictory ways in which local governments intervene in the economy, the internal weakness of the local state-led development, and how problems caused by politically-motivated economic intervention catalysed the privatisation of the local government-run economic sector during mid-1990s.
Download or read book China Experiments written by Ann Florini and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Using detailed and empirically grounded analysis, examines the changing relationship between the Chinese state and the society it governs, how governance choices made affect the country and the rest of the world, and how local Chinese authorities have responded to the challenges they face in coping with China's rapid transformation"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Rural Policy Implementation in Contemporary China written by Anna Ahlers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the turn of the millennium, the disparities between rural and urban livelihoods, underdevelopment and administrative shortcomings in the Chinese countryside were increasingly seen as posing a manifest threat to social harmony and economic and political stability. At that time the term "three rural problems" (sannong wenti) was coined which defined the main issues of rural life that needed to be targeted by government action: agriculture (nongye), villages (nongcun) and farmers (nongmin). In turn, with the launch of the 11th Five-Year Plan in 2006, a pledge was made to shift the focus of developmental efforts to the long-neglected countryside, which is still home to half of the Chinese population. This book presents an analysis of adaptive local policy implementation in China in the context of the "Building of a New Socialist Countryside" (BNSC) policy framework. Based on intensive field work in four counties in Fujian, Jiangxi, Shaanxi and Zhejiang Provinces between 2008 and 2011, it offers detailed analyses of the form and impact of county governments’ strategic agency at certain stages and within certain fields of the implementation process (for example, the design of local BNSC programs, the steering of project funding, implementation and evaluation, the establishment of model villages and the management of public participation). Further, this study illustrates that BNSC is far more than the ‘empty slogan’ described by many observers when it was launched in 2005/2006. Instead, it has already brought about considerable shifts in terms of the process and outcomes of rural policy implementation. Altogether, the results of this research challenge existing paradigms by showing how, against the background of contemporary approaches to rural development and recent reforms initiated by the central state, local bureaucracies’ strategic agency can actually push forward effective – albeit not necessarily optimal – policy implementation to some extent, which serves the interests of central authorities, local implementors and rural residents. By tying into the larger debates on China's state capacity and authoritarian adaptability, this book enriches our understanding of the inner workings of the Chinese political system. As such, it will prove invaluable to students and scholars of Chinese politics, public policy and development studies more generally.
Download or read book Policy Entrepreneurship written by Michael Mintrom and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-13 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Policy entrepreneurs engage in collaborative action to promote broad societal changes. They distinguish themselves from other political actors through their willingness to promote policy innovations that are new within specific contexts. Policy Entrepreneurship: An Asian Perspective showcases an exciting collection of new research studies. Previous studies of policy entrepreneurship within specific contexts across this vast region have confirmed the explanatory power of the concept, even though the political systems under investigation are distinct from the political system in the United States, where the notion of policy entrepreneurship was coined. This book is the first ever comprehensive compilation of research on policy entrepreneurship in Asia, and focused on policy change in China, India, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand. All the studies gathered here assess the agency of policy entrepreneurs within broader structures that present them with both opportunities and constraints. In their different ways, each chapter explores how structural changes, specific strategies used by policy entrepreneurs, and the practice of boundary spanning shape policy agendas. The scholarship on display offers an inspiring treasure trove of ideas, insights, concepts, and research strategies. This book will prompt newer scholarship on policy entrepreneurs and the crucial role they play in contemporary politics, in Asia and globally. The chapters in this book were originally published in the Journal of Asian Public Policy.
