|
Abstract Local governments in China not only propose and advocate various policy innovations, but also play an important role in the diffusion of policy innovation. The study focuses on local governments as the core actors to examine the process of policy innovation diffusion in China. It contributes to the understanding of the underlying context and trends of Chinese government governance over the past decades, and further facilitates the exploration of governance innovation within the framework of modernizing the national governance system and governance capabilities. From a contingency perspective, this study places local governments as the core actors, and emphasize the critical factors they must consider when deciding whether to adopt a policy innovation and how to implement it. Accordingly, intergovernmental relations and policy attributes are considered as two core dimensions influencing local governments’ adoption behavior of policy innovations. The former can be divided into vertical superior-subordinate government relationships and horizontal inter-local government relationships, while the latter includes the relative advantages and replicability of policy innovations. These two dimensions collectively influence local governments’ attitudes of adoption and levels of learning in the process of policy innovation diffusion, shaping four types of strategies: proactive learning, intermediary promotion, imitation and following, and refusal to adopt. These strategies, in turn, lead to four types of diffusion outcome: complete diffusion, mediated diffusion, bandwagon diffusion, and diffusion failure. Thus, the study proposes a contingency model of policy innovation diffusion within the Chinese context, providing a new theoretical perspective and an integrative analytical framework for understanding and explaining the performance, mechanisms, and diverse outcomes of policy innovation diffusion. Employing a multiple-case comparative study design, the study selects four cases from the fields of education, environment, society, and economy to examine the contingent relationships between local governments as core actors and the influencing factors and mechanisms of policy diffusion. The selected cases include the College Entrance Examination Reform, the largest and most extensive policy reform in China’s education sector in recent years; the River-Director System Reform, one of the most influential and widely implemented policies in the environmental protection sector; the Smart City Construction, a significant policy innovation in urban development; and the Property Tax Policy, one of the most debated policies in the real estate sector in recent years. Through comparative case analysis, the study outlines the interactions between local governments as core actors and the influencing factors of policy diffusion, highlighting the differences in the institutional environments faced by local governments in the Chinese context compared to traditional Western policy research. It also reveals the agency of local governments in given structure, as well as their action logic within specific institutional environment. The study not only contributes to enriching the research on policy innovation and diffusion, but also provides practical recommendations for improving policy formulation, implementation, and diffusion at various levels of governments in China.
|
|
Published: 06 January 2026
|
|
|
|
