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Abstract
There has been considerable research progress in understanding how governments adapt public policies in response to public opinion. We propose a new concept, ‘implementation responsiveness’, which refers to the extent to which policy implementation is adapted in response to public opinion. By examining documented texts about the actions of Chinese city executive bureaus in response to online public opinions on environmental protection issues, we provide insight into implementation responsiveness. The coding results reveal that implementation responsiveness is widespread in the responses of Chinese city administrations and is manifested as an increase in intensity or expanded scope of implementation. Based on the sandwich model, we also compare the impact of top-down and bottom-up pressure on implementation responsiveness by testing variables such as written directives, repeated complaints, and intensity of public sentiment. The results show that only written directives have a significant and stable positive effect on implementation responsiveness, which implies that leadership authority affects implementation responsiveness more significantly than social pressure. The findings offer novel perspectives on responsiveness theory and have practical implications for grassroots governments facing the challenge of balancing scarce policy resources with the need to make changes in response to public opinion.
Disclosure statement
The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.
Notes
1 Page, “Democratic Responsiveness”; and Roberts and Kim, “Policy Responsiveness in Post-communist Europe.”
2 Brooks and Manza, “Social Policy Responsiveness”; Hobolt and Klemmensen, “Government Responsiveness”; Kang and Powell, “Representation and Policy Responsiveness”; Su and Meng, “Selective responsiveness”; and Drew, “Can local government by Lottery Increase Democratic Responsiveness.”
3 Saltzstein, “Bureaucratic Responsiveness: Conceptual Issues”; and Erlich et al., “Media Attention and Bureaucratic Responsiveness.”
4 Steunenberg, “Different shades of responsiveness.”
5 Jiang et al., “From Internet to social safety net”; Kornreich, “Authoritarian responsiveness”; and Huang and Kim, “When Top-Down Meets Bottom-Up.”
6 Distelhorst and Hou, “Ingroup Bias in Official Behavior”; see Su and Meng in note 2 above; Chen and Xu, “Why Do Authoritarian Regimes Allow Citizens”; Li et al., “Discursive strategy of opinion expression”; and Meng and Su, “When top-down meets bottom-up.”
7 See Kang and Powell in note 2 above; Lax and Phillips, “The Democratic Deficit in the States”; and see Kornreich in note 5 above.
8 See note 4 above.
9 See note 4 above.
10 O’Toole, “Research on Policy Implementation,” 266.
11 Saltzstein, “Conceptualizing Bureaucratic Responsiveness”; and Bevan, “Bureaucratic Responsiveness: Effects of Elected Government, Public Agendas and European Attention on the UK Bureaucracy”; Besselink and Yesilkagit, “Market regulation between economic and ecological values”; and Lee and Park, “Bureaucratic responsiveness in times of political crisis.”
12 Bagozzi et al., “When does open government shut?”
13 Chen et al., “Sources of Authoritarian Responsiveness”; see Chen and Xu in note 6 above; see Li et al. in note 6 above; and Cai and Zhou, “Online Political Participation in China.”
14 See Cai and Zhou in note 13 above.
15 See Chen and Xu in note 6 above.
16 See Chen et al. in note 13 above; see Li et al. in note 6 above; and Zheng and Meng, “The Paradox of Responsiveness.”
17 See Su and Meng in note 2 above; see Kornreich in note 5 above; Liu et al., “Do citizen participation programs.”
18 King et al., “How Censorship in China.”
19 Smith, “The policy implementation process”; and see note 10 above.
20 Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy.
21 So, “Civic Engagement in the Performance Evaluation”; and see Meng and Su in note 6 above.
22 See Meng and Su in note 6 above.
23 Chen et al., “Competing for father’s love?”; Chen et al., “Written directives and ministerial tenure.”
24 Tsai and Liao, “Concentrating Power to Accomplish Big Things.”
25 Tao and Chen, “Towards a politics of disaster response.”
26 See Chen et al. in note 23 above.
27 Anderson, Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications.
28 Bevan and Jennings, “Representation, agendas and institutions.”
29 Jones and Baumgartner, “A Model of Choice for Public Policy.”
30 See Tsai and Liao in note 24 above.
31 See Chen et al. in note 13 above.
32 See Su and Meng in note 2 above.
33 See Li et al. in note 6 above.
34 See note 12 above.
35 See Su and Meng in note 2 above; Jiang et al., “From Internet to social safety net”; see Li et al. in note 16 above; Meng and Yang, “Variety of responsive institutions”; and Liu et al., “Can Economic Growth Reduce Public Dissatisfaction.”
36 Nam and Pardo, “The changing face of a city government”; Chatfield and Reddick, “Customer agility and responsiveness.”
37 We used the emotional vocabulary ontology of the Information Retrieval Laboratory of Dalian University of Technology.
38 Ansell et al., “Improving policy implementation”; and Davidovitz et al., “Governmental Response to Crises.”
39 See Smith in note 19 above; May and Winter, “Politicians, Managers, and Street-Level Bureaucrats”; Carey et al., “Managing staged policy implementation”; and see Davidovitz et al. in note 38 above.
40 Wan et al., “Human trafficking in Malaysia.”
41 See Brooks and Manza, Hobolt and Klemmensen, and Kang and Powell in note 2 above; and see Roberts and Kim in note 1 above.
42 See Bevan (Citation2015) in note 11 above; see Chen et al. (Citation2016) in note 13 above; see Chen and Xu (Citation2017) in note 6 above; and see Li et al. (Citation2019) in note 6 above.
43 Interview with a staff member (B) responsible for receiving public opinions in grassroots environmental protection department, May 2024.
44 Interview with a staff member (A) responsible for receiving public opinions in grassroots environmental protection department, May 2024.
45 A total of 65 texts covering 23 major cities are included in The Compilation of Information on Petition Handling in Various Regions in 2019 compiled by the MBL, abbreviated as The Compilation.
46 Quoted from the 49th text in The Compilation, noted as N49.
47 Quoted from the 64th text in The Compilation, noted as N64.
48 Quoted from the ninth text in The Compilation, noted as N09.
49 Interview with a staff member (B) responsible for receiving public opinions in grassroots environmental protection department, May 2024.
50 See Chen and Xu in note 6 above.
51 See Su and Meng in note 2 above; and see Kornreich in note 5 above.
52 Zhu, “The Influence of Think Tanks”; Tsai, “A Unique Pattern of Policymaking”; and see Tao and Chen in note 25 above.
53 Quoted from the 36th text in The Compilation, noted as N36.
54 Interview with MBL’s direct manager, November 2019.
55 Interview with a leader of the grassroots environmental protection department, May 2024.
56 Interview with a staff member (A) responsible for receiving public opinions in grassroots environmental protection department, May 2024.
57 Interview with a staff member (A) responsible for receiving public opinions in grassroots environmental protection department, May 2024.
58 Interview with a staff member from the grassroots law enforcement team in grassroots environmental protection department, May 2024.
59 Interview with a leader of the grassroots environmental protection department, May 2024.
60 Interview with a staff member from the grassroots law enforcement team in grassroots environmental protection department, May 2024.
61 Liu et al., “Policy responsiveness and its administrative organization.”
62 See Zheng and Meng in note 16 above.
63 Liang and Langbein, “Performance Management”; see Chen et al. in note 13 above.
64 Wang et al., “Participatory governance and local government responsiveness.”
65 Zhong and Zeng, “Does top-down accountability promote responsiveness.”
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Yao Liu
Yao Liu, PhD, is an assistant professor at the School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiaotong University. His research interests include collaborative governance, government responsiveness, and science and technology policy.
Ye Zheng
Ye Zheng, PhD, is an associate professor at the School of Public Policy and Administration, Northwestern Polytechnical University. His research interests include science and technology policy and local government governance
Jiannan Wu
Jiannan Wu, PhD, is chair professor, the executive vice director of China Institute for Urban Governance and the dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He has worked on urban governance, performance improvement, and digital transformation.