Government technological capacity and public–private partnerships regarding digital service delivery: evidence from Chinese cities
| Author | Liang Ma,Tom Christensen,Yueping Zheng |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523211018849 |
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Government
technological capacity
and public–private
partnerships regarding
digital service delivery:
evidence from
Chinese cities
Liang Ma
Renmin University of China, China
Tom Christensen
University of Oslo, Norway, and Renmin University of China, China
Yueping Zheng
Sun Yat-sen University, China
Abstract
Governments have increased their collaboration with the private sector regarding
public service delivery, and their propensities to do so are largely shaped by their
own in-house capacities. In this article, we theorize and analyze wh ether governments
with an extremely low or extremely high technological capacity are more likely to
collaborate with third-party platforms in order to jointly provide digital services. We
expect there to be a U-shaped relationship between the technological capacity of those
governments and their public–private partnership choices. An empirical analysis of
digital service delivery across 290 prefecture-level cities in China corroborates this
hypothesis. These results deepen our understanding of the competing motivations that
drive the public–private partnership process.
Corresponding author:
Yueping Zheng, Center for Chinese Public Administration Research, School of Government, Sun Yat-sen
University, No. 135, Xingang Xi Road, Guangzhou 510275, China.
Email: zheng_yueping@126.com
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
!The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/00208523211018849
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
2023, Vol. 89(1) 95–111
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Points for practitioners
Public–private collaboration has been widely adopted to promote digital service
delivery. This article confirms the U-shaped relationship between government
technological capacity and public–private collaboration in digital service delivery at
the city level. To encourage the collaboration, it is crucial to target governments
with varying capacities, which seems to be easier in large cities with high administrative
rank and that are overall technologically mature and in a competitive environment
technologically.
Keywords
Chinese cities, digital service delivery, government technological capacity, public–
private partnership, third-party platforms
Introduction
Historically, governments around the world have, in various ways, been collabo-
rating with the private sector to initiate, decide on, and implement public policy –
in modern terms, often called “governance features” (Osborne, 2010). Such
arrangements vary across different countries according to structural, cultural, eco-
nomic, and other factors (Hood, 1996). Our knowledge of cross-country gover-
nance features, in all respects, is far more advanced for developed rather than
developing countries like China, which is the focus of this article.
Governments are increasingly working with the private sector and
nonprofit organizations to deliver public services (Savas, 2000). One of the
best-established emergent form of such collaborations is the public–private part-
nership (PPP) (Hodge and Greve, 2013; Wang et al., 2018). Thanks to the rev-
olution in and penetration of information and communication technologies
(ICTs), public services around the world are increasingly being delivered via
digital means. However, given the cybersecurity and privacy concerns, digital
services are mainly delivered by the public sector. Although the technological
role played by the private sector is pivotal and PPP in this field is of paramount
importance, its adoption has been relatively limited. Thus, it is theoretically
interesting and empirically relevant to examine the antecedents of PPP regarding
digital service delivery.
In the field of e-government, the application of ICTs is rapidly evolving, but few
studies have examined them through the lens of PPP. In this article, the case of
Alipay City Services in China reveals the PPP practices underlying digital service
delivery. Accordingly, our research questions are:
1. What characterizes the coverage and diversity of digital service delivery through
PPP in China?
96 International Review of Administrative Sciences 89(1)
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