The Regional Collaborative Governance Mode Of Highway Operation In China

After years of large-scale construction,China’s highway mileage has reached 16.1million kilometers.‘A national network’ of highways has basically shaped,and the overall removl of all toll stations between provinces,marking a shift from ‘linear operation’ to‘networked operation’ of highways.However,the inward-oriented localized management model fails to unify the regional institutions and to cope with the externalized and crossregional problems of highway operation.Therefore,the central government has issued some documents to promote the institutional reform for regional collaborative governance of highway operation in China,such as the ‘14th Five-Year Development Plan of Highway’.Some local governments also explored the path of regional collaborative governance based on joint conferences,intergovernmental agreements,leadership groups or other paths,forming different governance modes.However,the time-sensitive missions,discrete goals of interest,and differential productive factors make it challenging to create sustained resultant forces among governments,thus the regional collaborative governance of highway operation in China cannot overcome the constraints of task-driven and territorialized management mode.In this context,it is of great significance to explore theoretical mode,critical collaborative stakeholders,behavioral influences,and pathway to optimizing the mode of regional collaborative governance of highway operation in China for building a country with strong transportation network and reforming the national governance system and governance capacity.Therefore,the following research has been conducted based on the research logic of ‘mode construction-mode analysis-mode optimization’:(1)Constructing a theoretical mode for the regional collaborative governance of highway operation in China.Coding the empirical data of regional collaborative governance of highway operation in China with the grounded theory to construct a theoretical mode.The results show that the theoretical mode consists of the core concepts of collaborative context,collaborative motivation,collaborative stakeholders,collaborative process,collaborative institutions,collaborative leadership,collaborative effects and their logical relationships.The theoretical mode can be divided into the interregional self-organized mode and the central government-driven mode,depending on whether the central government,represented by ministries such as the Ministry of Transport or the Ministry of Public Security,is involved in the governance process.(2)Analyzing the critical collaborative stakeholders and their behavioral influences in the interregional self-organized mode.The social network theory is employed to identify the critical collaborative stakeholders,the evolutionary game model is applied to analyze the interaction pattern between the governance behaviors of the critical collaborative stakeholders and their behavioral influences.The results reveal that local government departments such as transportation or public security are the critical collaborative stakeholders in the interregional self-organized mode.The governance behavior of local governments is highly sensitive to the influences of collaborative benefits,collaborative costs,opportunity costs,and competition intensity,and high benefits,low costs,and strong competition are conducive to enhancing the governance motivation of local governments.(3)Analyzing the critical collaborative stakeholders and their behavioral influences in the central government-driven mode.Identifying the critical collaborative stakeholders of the ‘ministry-province alliances’ with social network theory,and exploring the interaction law between the governance behaviors of critical collaborative stakeholders and their behavioral influences with the evolutionary game model.The results indicate that the central government,represented by the Ministry of Transport or the Ministry of Public Security,and the local government,represented by the local highway administration,are the critical collaborative stakeholders in the central governmentdriven mode.The regulatory,incentive,and penalty measures adopted by the central government have significant regulatory and restraining effects on the governance behavior of local governments.(4)Optimizing the mode for regional collaborative governance of highway operation in China.The fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis is conducted to discover the causal relationship between stakeholder’s relationship,stakeholder’s behavior,influencing factors and governance effect,and to construct a ‘One Core and Multiple Areas’ mode.The model covers three core components: networked organization,operation mechanism and support system.The networked organization is the organizational foundation of the mode.The operation mechanism demonstrates the operation process of the mode in four stages: initial condition analysis,face-to-face conversation,resource input and evaluation of phased outcomes.The support system ensures the operation of the mode in four aspects: overall planning,regulatory constraints,interest-driven,communication and coordination.Consequently,this paper achieves the main research objectives of constructing mode,analyzing mode,and optimizing mode for regional collaborative governance of highway operation in China by comprehensively applying the grounded theory,social network theory,evolutionary game model and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis.The research results improve the theoretical system related to regional collaborative governance,and provide a basis for the practice of regional collaborative governance for highway operation in China.