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AbstractThis contribution applies the Q methodology to investigate Chinese public employees' accountability preferences under different accountability relationships in delivering public services. We identify four accountability preferences: a vertically oriented accountability, a network‐style accountability, a style of accountability between market and participatory accountability, and a vertically oriented style of market accountability. Our data show that Chinese public employees hold varied accountability preferences in public service delivery, and hierarchy is a relatively popular one. It is suggested that governors should effectively align different accountability relationships with the aim of better steering the behavior of public employees in public service delivery.

Chinese central government in the past few years has embraced the expansion of various sharing economy initiatives. However, the expansion of these initiatives has given rise to public concerns. Central government in turn has adopted different strategies to address them. In this article, we investigate the question of how central government in China governed the two most popular sharing economy initiatives: ridesharing and bike sharing. An analytic framework is constructed, consisting of three government strategies: monitoring, developing frameworks, and managing processes, and two governance styles: go-alone and collaborative. Our study has found that central government generally applied two different strategies, namely, monitoring and developing frameworks, to govern these two sharing economy initiatives. Moreover, a go-alone governance style dominated the processes of governing ridesharing, whereas a collaborative governance style dominated the processes of governing bike sharing. We also found that four conditions, namely, the influence on incumbent industries, market structure, investment model, and time difference, are important in explaining the emergence of different governance styles in governing these two initiatives.

China's growing number of environmental conflicts represents a significant challenge to local governments, who are charged with responding to, and resolving disputes. However, little is known about how these environmental conflicts are resolved. This article reports an in-depth case study concerning the construction of a waste incineration power plant in Liulitun, Beijing, which was strongly opposed by local residents. We argue that the Chinese state is responsive to the demands of citizens and continuously adjusts its strategies in resolving social conflicts. We first identify six different government strategies: go-alone, suppression, tension reduction, giving in, nonassisted negotiation, and mediation. Then, we distinguish six conditions that explain the application of government strategies: the nature of protests, the position of higher level governments, the stage of the project, the involvement of national mass media, the involvement of activists, and the occurrence of events. We find that local governments in Beijing changed their strategies from go-alone, to tension reduction, to giving in, and the six conditions identified are useful in explaining these changes.

Governments have widely applied policy pilots to test new policy initiatives before their full rollout. However, little is known about their upscaling styles. In this contribution, in relation to two attributes of the issues that policy pilots attempt to resolve – ambiguity and salience – we construct an analytic framework consisting of four policy-pilot upscaling styles: command replication, refinement by doing, waiting by doing, and putting on hold. Four representative cases in Chinese health governance, namely, the Sanming healthcare reform, the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme, medical staff's salary reform in public hospitals, and income–expenditure two-line management in primary healthcare institutions, have been investigated to exemplify them. Our study contributes to the existing governance and policy literature by adding new building blocks to the upscaling of policy pilots.

AbstractPolicy piloting has become a popular form of organization in implementing public policies. However, the current literature surprisingly discusses little about its management. This study investigates how two policy-pilot attributes – ambiguity and compatibility – shape policy-pilot management. To accomplish this, we developed an analytic framework consisting of four management strategies: experimentation, refinement, upscaling, and institutionalization. We chose a representative policy pilot in Chinese health governance, the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme, to examine the adoption of these four strategies. Our finding that, at various junctures, the Chinese state adopted these four strategies to manage policy piloting demonstrates the applicability of the analytic framework constructed in this study. This study contributes to the existing public policy literature by providing new insights into policy implementation in temporary organizing settings.

AbstractCoordination is one of the most challenging crisis management issues governments face worldwide. In this contribution, we examine the coordination mechanism applied by Qingdao control command in China to fight against COVID‐19. Its coordination is implemented contingently via five different approaches: achieving compromises through a centralized tiered meeting system, developing standard operating procedures through issuing documents, encouraging pragmatic problem‐solving through improvisation, establishing routines through finding shortcuts, and following commands and suggestions from higher‐up. Two perspectives, the structural‐institutional and cultural perspectives, have been applied to explain the choice of the contingent coordination mechanism. Our study contributes to the existing crisis coordination literature through substantiating the approaches underlying contingent coordination and providing a preliminary explanation of it.

Governments' preferences for governing non-profit organizations (NPOs) are a relevant but understudied issue for governance scholars. Using Q methodology, this study investigates Chinese government officials' preferences for governing NPOs that deliver public services. We identified three government preferences: capable supervision, pragmatic engagement, and hands-off steering. We found different theoretical perspectives identified in the literature combine with one another to formulate these government preferences for governing NPOs. A key implication is that the Chinese state predominantly prefers the traditional public administration perspective, although it pragmatically borrows useful ingredients from other steering perspectives simultaneously. We recommend that governments, when governing NPOs, seriously address the configurations of governance strategies.

AbstractCoordination of the response to the COVID‐19 crisis may be understood as the multimonth management of a temporary organisation instead of classical crisis management. A key question is how to maintain operational flexibility, that is, an organisation's ability to adapt its day‐to‐day functions to accommodate a changing environment. This contribution describes how a control command established by a Chinese municipality in response to COVID‐19 tried to cope with the problems at hand. Based partially upon participatory observation the following aspects are considered: shifting political attention, adapting interaction frequency, changing organisational structures, improvising routines, and altering priorities.

Interagency collaboration helps governments to better resolve various complex societal problems. This contribution examines the mechanisms underlying the collaboration of disparate national government agencies engaged in Chinese environmental protection. We test three dominant mechanisms, namely, the institutionalization of collaborative networks, resource interdependence and exchange, and preferential attachment. It is concluded that a collaborative network over time becomes cohesive, that national government agencies prefer to collaborate with popular agencies and tend to collaborate with those whose resources are different from their own, and that popular agencies tend to maintain their core positions over time. Our study enriches the current governance and policy literature through adding building blocks for the evolution of collaborative network and network partner selection.