Improving Municipal Governance in China

Abstract

In recent years, a serious effort to remake the Chinese administrative system has accelerated. This article explores the dynamics of reforms aimed at improving the bureaucracy's effectiveness in providing services to the public. To illuminate key features of the process of local-level administrative reform, it examines in detail the pathbreaking Service Promise System experiment carried out in the city of Yantai. This case study shows how useful innovative ideas about reform filter into China and then diffuse across organizational and administrative boundaries. It sheds light on the role played by “entrepreneurial executives” (local bureaucrats) in promoting innovative policies and on the features of the Chinese administrative system that shape how reforms are implemented. Drawing on the New Public Management approach to administration, the Service Promise System represented a serious attempt to make the bureaucracy more customer-oriented and professional. The analysis presented in this article highlights the difficulty of achieving these aims while the Chinese Communist Party remains averse to being bound by clear rules and by public opinion.