Governance capacity and regulatory enforcement: street-level organizations in Beijing’s food safety reform
| Author | Wai-Hang Yee,Peng Liu |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852321992110 |
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Governance capacity and
regulatory enforcement:
street-level organizations
in Beijing’s food safety
reform
Wai-Hang Yee
The University of Hong Kong, China
Peng Liu
Renmin University of China, China
Abstract
How street-level organizations enforce regulations carries important governance impli-
cations. Through reviewing the regulatory enforcement literature and categorizing it
into three broad governance modes, this article discusses the individual and organiza-
tional capacity prerequisites for street-level organizations to enact the corresponding
government–society relationship and improve governance outcomes. Through analyz-
ing enforcement challenges faced by street-level officers in Beijing’s recent food safety
reform, the article also identifies the essential capacities for street-level organizations
to regulate under a legal-hierarchical governance mode. The article hopes to inspire
further research to uncover specific governance capacity requirements for other
administrative organizations under different governance modes.
Points for practitioners
Apart from policy effectiveness, government regulators should also sometimes pay
attention to their impacts on governance. Despite frontline regulators’ discretion,
street-level organizations may improve governance outcomes by devising and imple-
menting regulatory enforcement programs and strategies in line with the
governance mode the government is engaged in as what they do enacts the specific
Corresponding author:
Peng Liu, Renmin University of China, 59 Zhongguancun Street, Haidian, Beijing 100872, China.
Email: liu.peng@ruc.edu.cn
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2021, Vol. 87(2) 256–274
!The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0020852321992110
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government–society relationship in the governing process. Administrators in charge of
street-level organizations may benefit from cultivating capacities essential to actualizing
the respective governance mode. Absence of these capacities is likely to undermine
governance effectiveness.
Keywords
capacity, China, food safety, governance, reform, regulatory enforcement
Introduction
A perennial focus of implementation research concerns improving effectiveness in
achieving policy goals (Mazmanian and Sabatier, 1987; Winter, 2007). The litera-
ture on regulatory enforcement emerged largely sharing this focus. Scholars have
been uncovering global variations in regulatory approaches and enforcement
styles, and understanding their relationships with the broader question of regula-
tory effectiveness (Bardach and Kagan, 1982; Hawkins and Thomas, 1984; Kagan,
1989; May and Wood, 2003). Over the last decade, the literature has also evolved
to examine the applicability of these approaches and styles to developing countries
(Braithwaite, 2006; Liu et al., 2018; McAllister et al., 2010).
While acknowledging this focus, this article proposes that administrative schol-
ars and practitioners can benefit from understanding regulatory enforcement from
a governance perspective (Howlett and Ramesh, 2016; Peters, 2014; Steurer, 2013).
Apart from identifying internationally distinctive enforcement styles and regula-
tory approaches, and evaluating them based on their effectiveness for achieving
regulatory goals, one may also consider how to regulate in ways that fit with
different modes of governance.
Granted, policy effectiveness is important, for it is foundational to any policy
design (Peters et al., 2018). However, distinctive approaches of regulatory enforce-
ment also enact different modes of governance, which state actors exercise over
nonstate ones to “solve familiar problems of collective action inherent to govern-
ment and governing” (Howlett and Ramesh, 2016: 302; see also Kooiman and
Jentoft, 2009). As governments engage in “establishing, promoting and supporting
a specific type of relationship between governmental and non-governmental actors
in the governing process” (Howlett and Ramesh 2016: 302), administrators often
have to pursue the corresponding practices of governance and develop the respec-
tive capacities, or even reform the structures, processes and practices of their
organizations for governance effectiveness.
It is with this rationale that the article asks: What capacities are necessary to
improve the effectiveness of different modes of governance in regulatory enforce-
ment? The question rests on an organizational approach to governance, which
treats governance as “a [dependent] variable that encompasses interactive as well
Yee and Liu 257
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