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中国研究

Discovering the labyrinth: the complex interplay of values conflicts and the voicing dilemmas of street-level bureaucrats

·473 字·1 分钟
Polihot 公共行政 中国研究 Street-Level Bureaucrats Values Conflicts Employee Voice Workplace Social Capital Survey Experiment
PMR — pp. 1-32 2026-04-23 Original Discovering the labyrinth: the complex interplay of values conflicts and the voicing dilemmas of street-level bureaucrats Yean Wang, Yixin Wu, Changyu Fan, Zixiang Xie, Guanghuai Zheng

Conditional Embeddedness: Local Government Attention Under Institutional Incentives

·599 字·2 分钟
Polihot 公共行政 比较政治 中国研究 Local Government Attention Principal-Agent Environmental Reform China Promotion Incentives
PAR — 2026-04-21 Original Conditional Embeddedness: Local Government Attention Under Institutional Incentives Jiali Wang, Junming Zhu, Huibin Du Abstract ABSTRACT Government attention is crucial to policy change and outcome. For local agents, their attention is explained by various factors, and a thorough understanding is needed to integrate diverse perspectives. Combining vertical, horizontal, local, and personal influences, we formulate a conditional embeddedness framework for local agents. The framework explains that agents' attention is primarily directed by principals, but this directed shift is horizontally and locally shaped by political and economic contexts, conditional on agents' traits. Empirically, we test attentional responses of 328 prefecture‐level governments to an environmental reform in China. Results corroborate our hypotheses, showing that local government attention generally increases following a reform, but the increases vary due to promotion competition and firm dominance and are further moderated by mayors' education and work experience. The findings demonstrate the importance of interactions between contextual and individual features in the shifts of local government attention and their responsiveness in a principal‐agent relationship.

Shaping watershed collaboration: how government attention transforms informal interaction into formal cooperation

·401 字·1 分钟
Polihot 公共行政 公共政策 中国研究 Watershed Collaboration Government Attention Informal Collaboration Digital Governance China
PMR — pp. 1-25 2026-04-15 Original Shaping watershed collaboration: how government attention transforms informal interaction into formal cooperation Jing Cui, Yichen Tang Abstract This study adopts a public value perspective to examine how government attention allocation influences watershed collaboration. Based on the panel data from 30 provinces in China from 2020 to 2024, we employed negative binomial regression. Results show that attention allocation significantly enhances both formal and informal collaboration, with informal collaboration mediating this relationship. The expected positive moderating effect of digital governance is not consistently supported. Furthermore, by distinguishing between formal and informal collaboration, this study deepens the understanding of the dynamic processes within the collaboration continuum. It provides evidence from Chinese river basins for understanding cross-jurisdictional collaboration.

Governing through Visibility: Local Government Experimentation with Internet Celebrity Cities in China

·558 字·2 分钟
Polihot 比较政治 公共行政 中国研究 Internet Celebrity Cities Local Government Experimentation Policy Entrepreneurship Visibility Governance China
CQ 266 pp. 365-384 2026-04-15 Original Governing through Visibility: Local Government Experimentation with Internet Celebrity Cities in China Lu Liu, Yahua Wang Abstract Abstract The rise of internet celebrity cities has become one of the most striking phenomena in China since 2021. How do local governments respond and harness this trend to advance their development goals? This study focuses on local experimentation in creating such cities, drawing on the case of the Village Football Super League ( Cun chao 村超) in Guizhou. We identify policy entrepreneurship as a key driver of local experimentation and highlight three core strategies for creating internet celebrity cities: crafting local symbols, co-producing viral content and mitigating public opinion risk. Further analysis shows that this experimentation, by attracting massive public attention, simultaneously promotes economic growth, strengthens social cohesion, reinforces state narratives and projects China’s national image onto the global stage. Overall, the findings suggest an emerging model in which public attention becomes a core resource for local development and governance in China’s digital era.