| Improving the national emergency management system and public safety governance is a critical component of Chinese-style modernization.With the acceleration of industrialization since the reform and opening,the issue of workplace safety has become increasingly prominent.The total number of various types of workplace safety accidents and serious workplace safety accidents remains high,endangering people’s lives,health,and property.In response to the serious workplace safety situation and the long-established regulatory system for workplace safety,the central government has implemented a series of policies to promote workplace safety transformation since the twenty-first century.In 2004,2010,and 2018,the central government implemented policies such as the target evaluation system(TES),listing supervisory system(LSS),and administrative interviews system(AIS)to strengthen local workplace safety governance.These policies are extremely important in terms of strengthening local governments’ responsibility for workplace safety supervision,improving overall workplace safety,and reducing serious workplace safety accidents.The study’s central question is: How effective is China’s workplace safety regulation policy?How can intermediate channels of policy effects be identified? Given the gap in the literature in terms of research field,research content,and research methodology,this study uses workplace safety policies as the research object to investigate the governance effects and mechanisms of action of China’s workplace safety policies in the transition period.Understanding the significance and value of TES,LSS,and AIS as three important governance tools for the central government to strengthen local workplace safety work is beneficial.Three research objectives can be interpreted as the core issues: first,tracing the changing characteristics and internal logic of the macro policy system of workplace safety from the macro level.The fundamental properties of TES,LSS,and AIS were dynamically compared,and the implementation history and internal relationship of the three policies were clarified.Second,to discover the theoretical operation mechanism of TES,LSS,and AIS,a theoretical model of the impact of workplace safety policies on governance effects from the meson level was built.Third,this study evaluates the effects of TES,LSS,and AIS on governance effects and their mechanisms of action at the micro level.Internal and external mechanisms were investigated further using the dual perspectives of organizational attention distribution and organizational learning.The three research objectives point to historical,theoretical,and empirical analysis,in that order.The following conclusions were drawn from this study based on the above research elements.First,long-term interruptions and short-term equilibrium characterize historical changes in China’s work safety regulation policy.Work safety regulation policy has gone through four phases: a period of strong equilibrium under the "safety first" oriented policy picture from 1978 to 2002;a period of weak equilibrium under the "people first" oriented policy picture from 2003 to 2009;a period of significant interruption under the "life first" oriented policy picture from2010 to 2018;and a period of "integrating development and safety" from 2019 to the present.The fourth period is one of enhanced equilibrium under the policy picture of "integrating development and safety," which runs from 2019 to the present.The main driving factors influencing changes in workplace safety regulation policy are high-level central promotion,focal event outbreaks,and policy paradigm shifts,but they differ at different times.The implementation of TES,LSS,and AIS is inextricably linked to macropolitical shifts.The three policies are both distinct and interconnected.Second,intergovernmental relations are an important theoretical perspective for understanding how the effectiveness of workplace safety regulation policy.Vertical assessment pressure and horizontal assessment incentives are created by the effective combination of "vertical multi-level contracting" and "horizontal performance competition," ensuring the stable operation of TES.The LSS’s primary function is goal setting at the vertical level,as well as consultative governance and performance competition at the horizontal level.Vertical structural mechanisms and pressure transmission,as well as horizontal consultative governance,are critical to achieving the AIS’s policy objectives.This study discovered that TES,LSS,and AIS significantly reduced total control indicators when using panel data from 31 provinces in Chinese mainland and the DID model to assess the effects of workplace safety policies.The policy effects,however,revealed differences in key area control indicators and serious accident indicators.The effectiveness of various policies on workplace safety at the provincial and official levels have similarities and differences.Third,the allocation of organizational attention serves as a critical internal mechanism for understanding how the workplace safety regulation policy operates.The shift in development philosophy,as well as the enhancement of the appraisal system and the implementation of the workplace safety regulation policy,has gradually increased the authority and position of higherlevel emergency management authorities.This has given upper-level emergency management an advantage in competing for lower-level emergency departments’ organizational allocation.Higher levels of emergency management provide incentives for lower levels of emergency management to focus on workplace safety,which improves the effectiveness of workplace safety governance.Organizational learning aids understanding of the external mechanisms that contribute to workplace safety.Although the presence of risk-averse and value-creating effects resulted in positive spillover effects of TES,LSS,and AIS on the effectiveness of workplace safety governance in spatially linked areas,policy spillover effects differed between and within groups.This study finds that TES,LSS,and AIS significantly contribute to the distribution of local government attention to workplace safety,based on panel data from 31 provinces in Chinese mainland and the DID model.TES,LSS,and AIS had positive policy spillover effects,and produced a ’structural dividend’ in terms of scale effects on the effectiveness of safety governance in spatially linked areas that also implemented the policy,but had a risk transfer effect in spatially linked areas that did not implement the policy,according to this study,which used the DID model and the spatial Durbin model together.This study attempts to answer the key questions at three levels: historical,theoretical,and empirical,with the main contributions and innovations reflected in four areas.First,the policy changes and internal logic of China’s workplace safety since reform and opening are dynamically sorted out from the standpoint of historical changes;the background and implementation logic,and logical connections of TES,LSS,and AIS are thoroughly compared.Second,a theoretical model of the operation of TES,LSS,and AIS is developed from an intergovernmental relations theoretical perspective,with the goal of justifying and explaining the relationship between policy implementation and governance effectiveness and its mechanism of action.Third,from the empirical perspective of causal inference,the policy effects of TES,LSS,and AIS are more accurately assessed.A series of robustness tests ensures that the underlying conclusions are reliable.Fourth,key policy mechanisms are understood in terms of organizational attention allocation and spatial spillover.This provides an initial meso-level explanation for the achievement of safety policy objectives. |
