It only works somewhere: unveiling the impacts of territorial administrative division on policy implementation

• In Event: The Nuances of Employment in the Public Sector

Abstract

Despite its variations across countries, administrative division at subnational levels commonly serves the effective local governance. However, little is known about how it shapes policy implementation. This study incorporates theories of economic geography, information economics and principal-agent relationships to develop a theory that explains how administrative division affects policy implementation at the more local levels. It argues that in the administrative territory where the policy has been implemented, policy implementation is more effective in the subdivided administrative units closer to the higher-level administrative centers because of higher level of resources availability and vertical intergovernmental communication to the implementation. To empirically test the hypotheses, this study utilized a quasi-experimental triple-differences (DDD) design with a matching strategy to examine how administrative divisions within Chinese prefecture-level cities shape the implementation of smart city projects in the subdivided units. The empirical findings indicate that policy implementation has been systematically different between central and peripheral units within the same prefectures. This study advances policy implementation theory by identifying the role of administrative divisions in shaping the spatial pattern of local policy implementation.

Author

• Fangda Ding, University of Hong Kong
  Presenting Author