Authoritarian Integrative Governance in China: Understanding the Crucial Role of Political Risk Aversion
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.1778 |
| Published date | 01 December 2016 |
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
AUTHORITARIAN INTEGRATIVE GOVERNANCE IN CHINA: UNDER-
STANDING THE CRUCIAL ROLE OF POLITICAL RISK AVERSION
QIUSHAN XIE*
School of Public Administration, Xiangtan University, China
SUMMARY
Establishing a model of public administration distinct from those of Western countries has been a long standing hope of the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chinese government. Using the Creating a National Healthy City (CNHC) campaign
as a case study, this article demonstrates evidence for an emerging authoritarian integrative governance model (AIGM) in
China. Given their limited and scattered resources in terms of both bureaucratic structure and geography, local government
officials cannot effectively complete the numerous tasks transferred to them from higher-level government offices. Therefore,
relying on an authoritative system to integrate dispersed resources has become a rational solution. The emergence of AIGM
is more contingent upon the weighing the political risks that originate from competition between different political ideologies,
environmental feedback on the failure or success of solutions to bureaucratic problems are considered less significant, which
furthers allow the emergence of AIGM to be an inevitable consequence. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
key words—path dependence; authoritarian integration; public administration; political risk; collective learning
INTRODUCTION
Public administration practices in China have undergone a fundamental changes since the late 1970s (Su, Walker
and Xue, 2013), but existing frameworks, such as the prevalent public administration models, such as new public
management (NPM), good governance (GG), and network governance (NG), are insufficient for explaining
China’s emerging trends in public policy and governance (Welch and Wong, 1998; Huque Shafiqul and Yep,
2003; Cheung, 2005; Cheung, 2013; Wong, 2013; Ko, 2013; Haque, 2013; Haque and Turner, 2013). Therefore,
the call for distinct models of Chinese public administration based on the contextual realities of Chinese societies
(Haque and Ko, 2013; Haque and Turner, 2013; Haque, 2013) has become more audible in recent years. In order to
construct “concepts, models and frameworks of public administration that could be defined as Asian”(Haque and
Ko, 2013:240) and to promote the accumulation of knowledge in Asian public administration, considerable
numbers of influential international public administration journals have published research articles relevant to
Chinese public administration. In particular, Public Administration and Public Administration and Development
have published special issues to explore prevalent themes found within Chinese public administration develop-
ment. In 2013, Public Administration designed a symposium, “Reform and Transition in Public Administration
Theory and Practice in Greater China”, to explore changes in the field (Vol.91, No.2). Public Administration
and Development devoted two whole issues to themes relevant to Chinese public administration models: one is
“State Capacity Building in China”in 2009(Vol.29, No.1) and the other is “Knowledge-Building in Asian Public
Admin Research, Education, and Practices: Current Trends & Future Challenges”in 2013(Vol.33, No.4). Despite
these efforts to carve out an academic space, the number of scholars who focus on China’s public administration
frameworks are nonetheless fewer than those who devote time and attention to China’s models of economic devel-
opment (for example, Nee, 1992; Brandt and Rawski, 2008; Pettis, 2013).
*Correspondence to: Qiushan Xie, Ph.D., School of Public Administration, Xiangtan University, Yuhu District, Xiangtan City, Hunan Province
411105, China. E-mail: feather3891@hotmail.com
public administration and development
Public Admin. Dev. 36, 313–329 (2016)
Published online in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.1778
Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
In summary, some successful practices from Western models of public administration, such as, government pur-
chase of goods and services, and performance appraisal, were adopted by some local government in China, but the
CCP “only allow the importation of ‘Western’tools and systems as long as these could serve the best interests of
the party-state”(Cheung, 2013:276), and have been working at developing a public administration development
path that is distinctly different from that of Western. In fact, campaigns such as advocating the “Beijing Consensus”
as an alternative to the “Washington Consensus”demonstrated that China’s political and administrative leaders
have always emphasized selecting a public management framework that is distinguishable from the Western par-
adigm, which is an important part of political ideological competition. For instance, in 2013, another important
policy document titled, Opinions Concerning Cultivating and Practicing the Core Socialist Values, the CCP em-
phasizing the significance of indoctrinating the core socialist value system, and having the initiative to dominate
discourse power in the process of Sino–Western values exchange and battle. Above all other factors influencing
this preference is the success of China’s economic development model, which has encouraged ambitious Chinese
leaders to become more and more confident in taking a political and administrative development path that separates
China from Western countries. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CCCPC) explained this
endeavor as “continuously strengthening confidence in taking the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics, in
our theories and in our system”. In this specific context, does a truly authentic Chinese public administration model
exist in isolation? Or do successful Western-inspired experiences with distinct Chinese characteristics exist in the
process of establishing unique Chinese public administration practices?
Many scholars have studied China’s public administration reform, stressing the impact of experiences from
developed countries, and particularly Western models of bureaucracy (for example, Tsao and Worthley Abbott,
1995; Lan, 2001; Jing (2010a); Xue and Zhong, 2012), or comparing the similarities and differences between
Chinese public administration reform and models that have traditionally been considered the products of developed
Western countries (Zhang and Straussman, 2003; Christensen, Dong, and Painter, 2008). For instance, Jing
(2010b) argued that Chinese public administration is steadily marching toward globalization and modernization.
Christensen, Dong, and Painter (2008), as well as Haque and Turner (2013), argued that previous patterns and
styles of reform in China demonstrated marked similarities and parallels with the West and were strongly influ-
enced by Western public administration models. Further, Jing and other scholars (Jing, 2010a; Brown, Gongb &
Jing, 2012; Kuhn, 2015) asserted that the NG model and collaborative governance have become salient trends in
China’s public administration practices within the past three decades. In addition, Zhang (2012) views Chinese
public administration reform as a process of learning from other Asian countries such as Singapore, arguing that
China’s government has never thoroughly trusted and relied on neo-liberalism, and so its policy can quickly swing
from emulating laissez-faire Hong Kong to authoritarian Singapore.
On the whole, perspectives from the literature in this field can be narrowed down to the concept of learning by
imitation—that is, learning and borrowing ideas from the public administration practices of developed countries,
which in turn largely neglects the heritage, changes, and innovations of China-specific public administration prac-
tices and provides a weak dissection of the Chinese system as a type of new authoritarianism (Nathan, 2009:38).
Chinese public administration reform was certainly influenced by Western values and models and embodied certain
characteristics of international public administrative models in some areas. However, these trends are relatively
new, even in the most developed regions of China and crucially “the imitation of tools or practices alone, instead
of accepting the whole institutional logic behind them, is at best ‘superficial’imitation, as opposed to ‘supersti-
tious’imitation”(Cheung, 2013:276). Indeed, authoritarianism under one-party leadership is the lynchpin for
understanding China’s public administration reform, and “the unchanged nature of China’s highly authoritarian
party-state means that there is a ‘political’limit to the extent of administrative reforms”(Cheung, 2013:273) as well
as to the depth of learning advanced Western administrative experiences. In addition, China’s central government
also imitates the rhetoric of a conservative center in order to control the pace of local governments’liberalization
efforts (Huang, 2013).
Considering political landscape that has been in existence, this article attempts to show that an authoritarian
integrative governance model (AIGM) is emerging in Chinese public administration practices. Based on the case
study of campaign efforts to create a Chinese “National Healthy City”, this article also contributes to the
314 Q. XIE
Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Public Admin. Dev. 36, 313–329 (2016)
DOI: 10.1002/pad
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