Need, justice and central–local relations: The case of social assistance in China
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| Author | Mianguan Li,Robert Walker |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12689 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Need, justice and central–local relations: The case
of social assistance in China
Mianguan Li
1
| Robert Walker
2
1
Center for Chinese Public Administration
Research & School of Government, Sun Yat-
sen University, Guangdong, China
2
School of Social Development and Public
Policy，Beijing Normal University, Beijing,
China and Green Templeton College,
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Correspondence
Mianguan Li, Center for Chinese Public
Administration Research & School of
Government, Sun Yat-sen University, 135
Xingang West Road, Haizhu District,
Guangzhou, 510275 Guangdong, China.
Email: limianguan@126.com
Abstract
Social assistance is increasingly promoted as a means of
tackling poverty. However, in established democracies sta-
ble delivery has often proved difficult because of tensions
between national and local government, the former desiring
comprehensiveness and uniformity, the latter requiring flex-
ibility to meet local needs. These issues are explored in the
context of China and Dibao, the world's largest social assis-
tance system, with three questions posed: Do similar ten-
sions exist in China as in the Western world? How are they
resolved and what is the nature of the political compro-
mise? How do recipients fare? Policy analysis in a village in
south-central China reveals similar tensions. A regime in
which local government employed discretion to prioritize
social stability over poverty alleviation has been replaced by
an inherently unstable system based on surveillance of offi-
cials and local cadres who now prioritize their personal
security over the needs of applicants.
1|INTRODUCTION
Two longstanding interests in public policy, that of central–local relations and of the merits or otherwise of regula-
tion versus discretion, coalesce in discussion of social assistance, society's financial safety net. Social assistance is
generally delivered on a large scale, which favours national laws and regulation, but must respond to diverse and per-
ilous individual circumstances which speak to the strengths of discretion implemented locally. It is expensive and uni-
versal and thereby a national concern, but it is traditionally delivered locally where needs are better understood. The
perhaps irresolvable tensions inherent in this fourfold administrative puzzle help to explain why social assistance sys-
tems are politically contested and are seldom stable for long (Figure 1).
Academic debates have generally been conducted in the context of Western democracies, although many social
assistance schemes originated a long time before universal suffrage existed: Dole was invented in Ancient Rome and
Received: 29 December 2019 Revised: 29 May 2020 Accepted: 18 June 2020
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12689
Public Admin. 2021;99:87–102. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 87
Zakat very early in the history of Islam (Walker 2014). However, within the context of the Sustainable Development
Goals, notably 1.3 which demands social protection ‘with substantial coverage of the poor’, social assistance schemes
are appearing in jurisdictions lacking fully functioning democratic systems. This raises the question of whether similar
tensions arise in regimes that are quite different from Western democracies and, if they do, whether they can be
resolved more effectively than has hitherto proved possible in long-established welfare states. China, which now
boasts the world's largest social assistance scheme, Dibao, offers an interesting case study which highlights similar
tensions but different ways of addressing them (Appleton and Song 2010; Yang 2018). However, the current resolu-
tion between central and local government looks inherently unstable.
2|REGULATION, DISCRETION AND CENTRAL–LOCAL GOVERNMENT
RELATIONS
Several literatures on implementation and administration address the tensions inherent in governmental hierarchies.
Those dealing with single institutions or policies often contrast top-down and bottom-up approaches to implementa-
tion (Sabatier 1986; deLeon and deLeon 2002). Senior policy-makers in top-down systems not only set strategic
goals but prescribe the details of policies and how they should be implemented by bureaucrats at the street level. In
bottom-up systems, problems are resolved close to the ground leading to a range of implementation models, or the
development of a composite model combining the best features of the local schemes. There are rich literatures in
this vein in, for example, social development (Annamalai et al. 2016) and environmental policy development (Koontz
and Newig 2014), that generally conclude that bottom-up approaches are preferable because the resultant policies
tend to be responsive to local circumstances. As a result, they tend to be more effective and efficient, not least
because they are likely to have been developed in a participatory manner.
There are parallel distinctions to be found in the literature dealing with policy systems and which, because of
their scale, more often have a spatial as well as a hierarchical dimension: studies on federalism, regional development,
national planning and trans-national government are illustrative (Verspagen 2010; Kleinlein and Petkova 2017;
Botha 2018). In these contexts, there are similar issues relating to policy design and implementation and to the opti-
mal mix of strategic direction and local expertise, but there are others too. A much debated matter is subsidiarity, the
most appropriate level at which to develop and/or deliver policy linking to a generic concern with sovereignty: where
FIGURE 1 Tensions in central–local relations
88 LI AND WALKER
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