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AbstractWe study the effect of favouritism via hometown ties of high‐ranking administrators in universities on China's university admissions. By constructing a gravity specification model and collecting the data on inter‐provincial admissions of nearly 1300 Chinese undergraduate universities between 2008 and 2015 and hometown information of the university's top administrators, such as the President or Party Secretary, we show that regional favouritism is prevalent in college enrolment. It is estimated that hometown ties of either the President or Secretary of the Party committee in a university increase the enrolments by almost 11% through admitting students with low entrance examinations scores from their hometowns. Interestingly, the hometown tie effects disappeared after President Xi's launched the anti‐corruption campaign in 2013 and we proved the hometown favouritism in university admissions is a form of corruption through a series of ways.

With the coming of risk society, natural and human-made disasters have challenged the governance capacity of national and local governments. Although decentralization is a governance trend in various fields, little is known about the appropriate mode and crucial factors influencing its capacity for disaster management. The authors contend that a twilight zone exists between decentralization and centralization, and thus the purpose of this study is to explore how different levels of governments in Taiwan may collaborate in flood control effectively. By conducting in-depth interviews with public officials in Taiwan's branches of flood control in central and local governments, we analyzed the existing conflicts of power and responsibility between central- and local authorities. We defined the factors that influence the construction of effective collaboration across the levels of governments. Based on our empirical findings, this study ultimately makes policy suggestions to facilitate the establishment of mechanisms for effective governance.

In recent years, challenges in terms of both man-made and natural disasters as well as the lack of resources to deal with such challenges have become increasingly critical to local government. This article adopts an alternative view of strategy-based approach to examine how different strategic styles affect organizational capability in a crisis response. The results of a survey of middle managers in Taiwan's local government highlighted the relations between strategic styles and crisis response capability. Such results provide public managers with a better understanding of what strategic styles they should adopt to improve their organizational capability in responding to crises.

AbstractA large body of research focuses on the institutional factors that shape country‐level corruption and the effectiveness of macro‐level anticorruption measures; however, corruption at the individual level remains understudied and thus poorly understood. This article examines the underlying causes of and mechanisms through which individual government bureaucrats engage in corruption. The researchers develop a framework that incorporates intrinsic motivations, work‐related opportunities, and work‐related well‐being to test the ways in which these micro‐level factors shape bureaucrats' propensity to engage in corrupt behaviors (or corruptibility). Using survey data from more than 1,300 Chinese public employees, the authors identify direct and indirect effects on corruptibility and discuss theoretical and practical implications.