| Policy mobilization is a significant arena in the field of Chinese local governance.Understanding the composition and complexity of the mobilization tactics exerted by the primary-level agencies in local policy implementation becomes vitally important for scholars who devote to decrypt the essence of two developmental tensions which are central authorities versus local power-holders,and state versus citizens.Along with the economic development and social transition,the climate of Chinese local governance has been transformed significantly in recent decades.Under the pressure system,local government insistently carries out top-down policies by using hybrid approaches.Such as the “campaign-style enforcement” and “projectification” have been employed to cope with the imbalance between the strict demand for administrative responsibility and the shortage of financial resources,aiming at protecting performance legitimacy.At the same time,the pace of urbanization is keeping advancing toward the same direction as ten years ago.Atomized citizens lose their bond with public units,while the party system takes the initiative to absorb society by transferring the masses into political agents.To face the challenges of maintaining social stability,and improve the living situations of ordinary citizens,local government designs a series of strategies which exert on policy mobilization.In the last few decades,there has been a surge of interest in decrypting the forging of policy mobilization,which embeds in the discourse of projectification,community governance,and campaign-style governance in the Chinese academics.Scholars barely feel enough to confront with the ostensible description,but instead applied empirical investigation to explore the functions of government projects and governance innovations.However,most of the latest studies take the label of policy mobilization for granted by referring to a bunch of strategies on allocating resources and implementing policies,without clarifying the connotation of the term.Thus,it is inevitable for these studies to turn blind to the paradox: If the policy mobilization,which in the form of campaigns,are distrusted by the post-Mao leadership because such actions can quickly get out of control and create social-economic disorder,why do they persist? In fact,after 1978,mobilization as a way to implement public policies can be seen in various policy domains,such as obligatory tree planting,family planning,environmental protection,and social stability maintenance.Before interpreting the underlying logic of the paradox,we should clarify the concepts,types,and functions of policy mobilization based on the inquiry to the following questions:What is policy mobilization? How many subtypes of policy mobilization are there in practice? What are the features presented by each type? How could policy mobilization become one of the policy toolkits for local government to achieve specific policy goals? Moreover,what are the underlying facilitators leading to the success or failure of policy mobilization?This research employed the grounded theory method to induct the critical concepts of policy mobilization and subsequently generate six primary constructs:administrative control,inner government mobilization,government outside mobilization,hierarchical adaption,leaders' attitude,and policy results.It also builds the analytic framework by using Qualitative Comparative Methods(QCA)based on the analysis of 47 cases from 7 major policy domains which are substantially affected by the projectification and campaign-style governance.From the two-stage qualitative analysis,the research raises three types of policy mobilization: Short-term mobilization with task orientation,long-term mobilization with inter-government orientation,and long-term mobilization with outer-government orientation.Given the constructed concepts and typology,this research designs a framework and corresponding instrument for the large-scale investigation and quantitative analysis.After combining stratified and cluster sampling methods,423 valid samples are collected from street-level and village-level governments in 28 provinces.The data analysis relies on Structural Equation Models(SEM)by using AMOS software with the percentile bootstrap method and bias-corrected bootstrap method.The result indicates that administrative control can exert a significant and positive effect on policy performance.Inter-government mobilization and outer-government mobilization can significantly and positively mediate the relation between administrative control and policy performance.Moreover,when leaders in the front-line agencies show a more positive attitude to the policy and deploy more time to the mobilization process,administrative control will present a better association with policy performance.The robustness check is conducted with MPLUS software by combining the two mediation models into a whole model and with adding in additional four control variables.The result of the whole model shows that two mediation effects are consistently robust,and the two specific mediation paths have no significant difference.Confirmatory case analysis is conducted with three groups of cases which are hundred-day projectification in City A,the integration policy for immigration in City B,and recycling policy implementation in County T.Such three groups represent the short-term mobilization,long-term mobilization with inter-government orientation and long-term mobilization with outer-government orientation respectively.The findings show that the type of mobilization is not the determinant to the success or failure of policy performance — the invalid mobilization usually generated from three situations: 1.Policy objectives are too vague that leave uncontrollable leeway for front-line agencies to manipulate interpretation;2.The demand for policy target groups is neglected.For example,higher-up authorities transfer their attention to some new policy areas,or they move to other bureaucratic positions;3.Policy requirements are not coordinated with the capabilities of front-line agencies,resulting in unsustainable incentives and the operational cost spiral out of control.At the last chapter of this dissertation,the main findings and suggestions are provided.This section also reviews the methodological,theoretical,and empirical contributions for the field of policy research and government management,and also summaries the current limitations.In the end,it points out some further research topics. |
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