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AbstractComparing and evaluating the performance of governance networks are important tasks for researchers and practitioners of network governance and public administration. Limited by the lack of network data across space and time, the study of network performance and effectiveness at the network level is not on pace with advances in theories and methodologies in network analysis. With a novel methodology to measure clean energy governance networks using hyperlink network analysis across the contiguous United States, this article collects a large sample of self‐organizing policy networks in the same policy domain across geographic locations. This article proposes that governance networks with high overall bridging and bonding social capital perform better. Regression analyses show that network structures have statistically significant effects on governance outcomes. States with high average closeness and average clustering in their governance networks are more likely to have faster clean energy development.

This article aims to extend the political market framework by exploring whether policy demand or supply is the key consideration for local governments' policymaking and under what financial conditions local governments favor one over the other. We expect that local governments with good fiscal conditions are more likely to respond to public demand, but local governments with poor fiscal conditions pay more attention to supply influences. To test this idea, this study examines the moderating role of fiscal conditions within the political market framework regarding what factors account for adopting local governments' Pay-As-You-Throw (PAYT) recycling programs in solid waste management (SWM). The results of the fixed-effect logistic model support that fiscal conditions play a moderating role in shifting organizational attention on the supply side based on cross-section data covering 1,840 local governments in the United States.

AbstractMost studies on public sector benchmarking focus on performance indicators, processes, and outcomes of managed benchmarking. This article, instead, explores the formation of spontaneous interstate benchmarking networks among U.S. state agency leaders. Informed by social comparison theory, we first recategorize benchmarking into best practice benchmarking and competitive benchmarking. Then, we quantify two benchmarking networks with a survey dataset and employ the Exponential Random Graph Model to analyze both endogenous and exogenous factors in the formation of both types of benchmarking networks. We find that the best practice benchmarking network has a popularity effect, while the competitive benchmarking network has mutuality and transitivity effects. Both types of benchmarking networks are more likely to form among states with historical policy diffusion ties and similar economic and geographic characteristics. This study contributes to the literature on public sector benchmarking and network research by exploring the factors that influence the formation of benchmarking networks.

This article examines the mechanisms underlying the formation of U.S. national clean energy policy network. Informed by the Institutional Collective Action (ICA) framework, this article develops and tests hypotheses regarding cooperation versus coordination hypotheses regarding the reasons underlying clean energy policy actors' networking activities. Using a webcrawler data collection strategy and measuring policy network with hyperlink network, a data set of network relationships among the clean energy policy actors is collected. Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) are applied to test the proposed hypotheses, and results show strong empirical evidence supporting cooperation hypotheses, with partial support for coordination hypotheses.

AbstractPolicy tourism is an important but rarely studied phenomenon describing a widespread practice, through which local public and business leaders form delegations, choose target cities, and implement intercity policy diffusion, business exchange, and economic collaboration. Our research examines how executive leadership characteristics, city‐level contextual factors, and interdependence mechanisms relate to cities' decisions to visit. Using two‐stage probit selection models with instrumental variables on a dyadic balanced panel dataset recording all policy tourism events between major U.S. cities from 2007 to 2016, we answer this question accounting for potential endogeneity problems. Our findings suggest that cities with experienced yet newly appointed, minority leaders tend to visit cities with experienced white or female leaders. Additionally, policy tourism happens among cities embedded in highly complex, munificent, and turbulent environments. Finally, cities tend to learn from peers with higher economic prosperity or interact with their competitors.

AbstractLocal public managers are mobile in their career trajectories. While the extant public administration literature has predominantly examined this topic from a leadership turnover perspective, few studies have approached the career trajectories of local managers from a holistic, system-level angle. This article draws upon the vacancy chain literature and frames local managers' interconnected career trajectories within a nationwide professional job market, which we term "leadership turnover chains." We examine factors influencing the formation of such leadership turnover chains among cities. With a dataset containing information from the resumes of 517 US local managers across 28 years, we employ panel dyadic logistic regressions to analyze the leadership turnover chains among cities. Our findings suggest that managers are more likely to move among dyads of cities that are geographically close and with similar levels of economic prosperity, population size, racial diversity, and political climate. A promotion intercity turnover tends to take place from a populous city to a less populous city, while a demotion intercity turnover exhibits an opposite pattern. This study contributes to the theory of leadership turnover of local managers, highlighting a macro vacancy chain perspective on their career trajectories.

AbstractRenewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) is one of the most widely adopted clean energy policies in the U.S. However, organized elite power groups, backed by ample political and economic resources, have been known to lead RPS termination efforts. In the context of state renewable energy politics, organized elite power includes legislators affiliated with American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and anti‐renewable energy business groups. Focusing on the roles of organized elite power, this study investigates the drivers of the formulation of RPS rollback (goal freeze) and termination bills, which we refer to collectively as negative policy experimentations. We find that RPS termination attempts are explained by the presence of ALEC legislators and anti‐renewable energy business groups, whereas RPS goal freeze bills are better explained by conditions of policy operations. This study contributes to the policy process theory by providing critical insights into the post adoption decisions, including policy termination and rollback legislations, with a focus on the role of organized elite power.

AbstractDisentangling the relationship between economic development and environmental protection has attracted much attention from public administration scholars. While traditionally scholars approach the relationship from either a substitutive or a complementary perspective, we offer a nuanced perspective by examining how the target‐setting on economic growth shapes environmental performance. This article proposes an explanation for the impacts of gross domestic product growth targets on environmental performance based on a yardstick competition model, where the upper‐level governments use relative performance to create competition among lower‐level governments. We argue that a trade‐off exists between economic development and environmental performance; however, the substitutive relationship tends to transit to a complementary relationship when environmental performance is incorporated into the cadre evaluation system. Analyzing a panel dataset of economic targets and PM2.5 air pollution across Chinese cities from 2001 to 2010, we confirm the relationship between economic targets and environmental performance by highlighting local leaders' political incentives.

AbstractChange agents play important roles in the diffusion of policy innovation. Scholars argue that the career paths of change agents could facilitate the diffusion of innovation through network‐based mechanisms of portable innovation or policy wormholes, but have not fully distinguished between direct and indirect connections inherently important in a leadership transfer network. This study proposes an indirect portable innovation hypothesis and an indirect policy wormhole hypothesis to highlight the effects of leadership transfer networks through indirect network connections, extending the agent network diffusion (AND) model. We test the hypotheses empirically with the diffusion of local financial subsidy policies for new energy vehicles (NEVs) among cities in China from 2009 to 2016. The results confirm the effects of direct and indirect portable innovation and policy wormholes.

Local water governance is challenging given the significance to public health and the difficulties to manage it in a fragmented administrative system. A collaboration network is a popular governance tool in local governance to cope with functional fragmentation problems and institutional collective action (ICA) dilemmas. Empirical works are needed to examine the outcomes of such governance networks, especially in the context of environmental governance. With fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), this article seeks to evaluate the outcomes of collaboration networks by investigating the influence of network structures on local water governance performance in China. Based on empirical analyses on a dataset of twenty local water governance networks implementing the Water Ecological Civilization Pilot Project in China, the findings suggest that a high overall bridging and bonding of social capital and a low network density are important determinants of effective collaboration networks. This study has policy implications for the design of local collaboration networks in facilitating effective environmental governance.

Designing and implementing effective new energy vehicle (NEV) policy are policy priorities for policymakers and energy policy scholars. However, the formulation, adoption, and diffusion of the NEV policies have not been fully examined in the extant literature. This article explores the mechanisms driving the diffusion of local financial subsidy policy for NEVs in China. In this context, we aim at analyzing the factors affecting the diffusion of local financial subsidies for NEVs in cities, to explain why some cities have taken the lead in adopting local financial subsidy policies for NEVs, while other cities have lagged behind. Based on a data set of 286 cities in China from 2009 to 2016, and with event history analysis (EHA) to analyze the strategic behaviors of local governments, we found that the number of the city's neighbors that have adopted the NEV policy, the financial incentive policy of the provincial government, the administrative ranking of the city, the city's financial situation and innovation capacity have a direct impact on whether the city adopts a local financial subsidy policy for NEVs. This study has practical implications for policymakers in designing and promoting the spread of NEV policies.