The Authoritarian State does ‘Customer Service’: The Outsourcing of Chinese Mayor’s Hotlines

• In Event: 2229 - Section on Political Sociology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Political Sociology Refereed Roundtable #8

Abstract

How does the engagement of privatization impact social governance in authoritarian regimes? This article addresses the question by studying Mayor’s Hotlines, a channel set up by Chinese municipal governments to address local residents’ suggestions, appeals, inquires, and complains. Evidence shows that while the expansion of government hotlines is a typical government act in China, the operation of call centers has been outsourced to professional tele-corporations; it is for-profit companies and its employees, rather than governments and officials, that represent the state to communicate with the public. Drawn on the ethnographic fieldwork in two call centers of Chinese Mayor’s Hotlines, this article both examines the labor process of call operators and also explores the impact of government outsourcing. In the current mode of outsourcing, call centers are administratively supervised by governments and meanwhile operated by for-profit organizations, so frontline call-taking not only undertakes the governance duty of the state but also faces with the performance pressure from the market. This dual-pressure structure exacerbates employee turnover and aggravates frontline operators’ emotional burnout. At the same time, it makes Mayor’s Hotlines hard to handle the dilemma between call quantity and service quality.
Keywords:　authoritarian regimes, call centers, government outsourcing, Mayor’s Hotlines, contracting out, privatization, China.

Author

• Rui Hou, Queen's University