Exploring ‘ritualized institutions’: public health emergency plans in China’s rural communities

ABSTRACT

Public health emergency plans reflect the strong determination of the Chinese government to prevent, control, and eliminate the hazards of public health emergencies. In order to explore whether the public health emergency plan in rural communities can be effectively implemented and play its due functions, based on Smith’s policy implementation process theory, we have conducted a field study in 44 townships from 22 provinces across China. We find that rural communities, as the main battlefields for pandemic prevention and control, face the problem of ritualization of public health emergency plans, resulting in a state of ‘substantial system ritualization’. From the realistic scene back to the theoretical discussion, this study theoretically classifies ritualization into functional-failure ritualization, functional-delay ritualization, functional-vacancy ritualization, and functional-devaluation ritualization. Regardless of the type of ritualization, the direct cause is that institutional rules don’t play their authoritative role in solving practical problems, and the key to solving such problems is the ‘law-based governance’. This study aims to explore the generation mechanism of the ritualization of public health emergency plans in rural communities, and at the same time summarize and extract some insightful new viewpoints and new knowledge.

KEYWORDS:

• Rural community
• public health emergency
• emergency plan
• ritualization

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the respondents of the questionnaire and interview for their time and the valuable information they afforded.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, Chao Wang; Funding acquisition, Chao Wang; Investigation, Chao Wang, Tao Zhang and Jiayi Tang; Methodology, Tao Zhang and Jiayi Tang; Software, Jiayi Tang; Writing – original draft, Chao Wang, Tao Zhang and Jiayi Tang; Writing – review & editing, Chao Wang, Tao Zhang and Jiayi Tang.

Notes

1. At the state level, the national public health emergency plan has four levels of ‘emergency classification’: particularly major (level I), major (level II), large (level III), and general (level IV) However, the plan only briefly and abstractly enumerates seven types of particularly major emergencies, and there are no clear measurement indicators and standards for various types of emergencies. As for the other three levels of emergencies, they are not involved in the emergency plan at all. The national public health emergency plan guarantees the autonomy of local governments to a certain extent, leaving considerable space for local governments to formulate local plans, but it also leads to hidden dangers.

2. ‘Pandemic prevention in forms’, ‘war for inspection’ and ‘encouraging conference’ refer to the formalism and bureaucracy of pandemic prevention and control in rural communities.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the National Social Science Fund of China [no. 20FGLB018]; the Major Project of Philosophy and Social Sciences Research in Universities of Jiangsu Province [no. 2019SJZDA050] and the Innovation Project of Jiangsu Province.

Notes on contributors

Chao Wang

Chao Wang is a professor at the School of Public Policy & Management (School of Emergency Management), China University of Mining and Technology. He specializes in grassroots governance, emergency management, social policy and public health.

Tao Zhang

Tao Zhang is a lecturer at the School of Public Administration and Human Geography, Hunan University of Technology and Business. His research focuses on emergency management, government public services, and social governance.

Jiayi Tang

Jiayi Tang is a Phd student at the School of International Relations & Public Affairs, Fudan University. Her research interests include grassroots emergency governance and public policy.