TY - JOUR
T1 - When top-down meets bottom-up
T2 - Local adoption of social policy reform in China
AU - Huang, Xian
AU - Kim, Sung Eun
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/4/1
Y1 - 2020/4/1
N2 - Authoritarian local leaders face two driving forces in social policymaking: top-down pressure from the regime and bottom-up motivations derived from local conditions. Existing studies recognize the importance of both forces, but remain unclear as to how they interact and which of them is more influential in driving local policy adoption. Focusing on two health insurance integration policies in China, we find that when the policy entails substantial class or distributive conflicts and bureaucratic friction, top-down pressure for compliance is a dominant driver for local policy adoption; when the policy does not entail such conflicts or bureaucratic infighting, bottom-up motivations based on local economic geography together with top-down pressure drive local adoption. We find support for this argument from an analysis of an original city-level data set in China from 2004 to 2016. This study has implications for social policy reform, decentralization, and government responsiveness in authoritarian countries with multilevel governance.
AB - Authoritarian local leaders face two driving forces in social policymaking: top-down pressure from the regime and bottom-up motivations derived from local conditions. Existing studies recognize the importance of both forces, but remain unclear as to how they interact and which of them is more influential in driving local policy adoption. Focusing on two health insurance integration policies in China, we find that when the policy entails substantial class or distributive conflicts and bureaucratic friction, top-down pressure for compliance is a dominant driver for local policy adoption; when the policy does not entail such conflicts or bureaucratic infighting, bottom-up motivations based on local economic geography together with top-down pressure drive local adoption. We find support for this argument from an analysis of an original city-level data set in China from 2004 to 2016. This study has implications for social policy reform, decentralization, and government responsiveness in authoritarian countries with multilevel governance.
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U2 - 10.1111/gove.12433
DO - 10.1111/gove.12433
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85069804946
SN - 0952-1895
VL - 33
SP - 343
EP - 364
JO - Governance
JF - Governance
IS - 2
ER -