Research On The Generating Path And Internal Logic Of Provincial Government Policy Innovation Diffusion

Public policy is an important tool of national governance.There are abundant policy practices in the process of promoting economic and social development,among which policy innovation diffusion is the key motivation to improve the governance ability of local governments.At present,the policy innovation and diffusion activities of local governments are in full swing.The strong policy governance capacity of local governments at all levels has become an important force to promote the modernization of national governance system and governance capacity.Therefore,responding to practical concerns to carry out research on policy innovation diffusion is helpful to better understand and grasp the development trend and law of policy innovation diffusion practice.This paper focuses on the practice of policy innovation diffusion of local governments at all levels in China,and puts forward two core questions about policy innovation diffusion: How does policy innovation diffusion happen? How does diffusion of policy innovation happen? Based on the research questions,the paper carries out related research on policy innovation diffusion,and clarifies the core concept of policy innovation diffusion on the basis of sorting out relevant theoretical literature.By referring to the theory of diffusion of innovation and the theory of pressure system,this paper examines China’s local situation and closely combines with the Chinese political system which is completely different from the western system,so as to build a theoretical analysis framework which is more in line with China’s institutional environment.In the empirical analysis stage,16 policy cases at the provincial government level were selected,and the clear set qualitative comparative analysis method(cs QCA)was used to introduce the configuration theory into the study of policy innovation diffusion,explore the combination path of policy innovation diffusion under different influencing factors,and the contracted path in the conditional combination path was explained theoretically.The paper summarizes the different driving types and internal logic of provincial government policy innovation diffusion,and puts forward the optimization path of provincial government policy innovation diffusion.The study consists of 7 chapters.The first chapter is the introduction: research background,research questions,research significance,and sorted out the research status at home and abroad,elaborated research methods and ideas,main content and innovation,etc.Chapter 2 to Chapter 3 is the theoretical part: defining the related concepts of policy innovation diffusion,sorting out the historical context and development process of innovation diffusion theory and pressure system theory,and discussing their specific applications in this paper.Second,it examines the institutional environment of policy innovation diffusion in China,seeks the differences between the institutional background of policy innovation diffusion in China and that in the west,constructs a theoretical analysis framework from the government dimension,environment dimension and policy dimension based on the innovation diffusion theory and the pressure type institutional theory,and designs the conditional variables that affect the policy innovation diffusion in provincial governments.Chapter 4 to Chapter 5 is the empirical research: the case selection principle and data collection method are explained in detail,the operation principle of qualitative comparative analysis method(QCA)is systematically expounded,the clear set qualitative comparative analysis method(cs QCA)is used for data processing,and the research conclusion is drawn.Based on the results of qualitative comparative analysis,this paper summarizes the driving types of the diffusion path of provincial government policy innovation,and explains the internal logic of different types of policy innovation diffusion.Chapter 6 to Chapter 7 is the conclusion: Based on the empirical analysis results of provincial government policy innovation diffusion,the research conclusion is drawn,the experience of provincial government policy innovation diffusion is refined,the optimization path of government policy innovation diffusion is proposed,and the shortcomings of this paper and the prospect of future research are pointed out.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)Constructing an analytical framework of policy innovation diffusion in China’s local context is more helpful to explain and analyze China’s local policy governance practices.The practice of policy innovation diffusion is rooted in the specific institutional environment and policy environment.China’s local situation is the soil environment in which the government’s policy innovation diffusion activities can take place.China’s unitary political system has different policy arrangement and agenda setting from Western federalism.Although the practice of policy innovation diffusion in China contains the universal law of policy innovation diffusion,the operation logic of China’s national governance system and the particularity of policy practice cannot be ignored.(2)The occurrence of policy innovation diffusion is not the result of single factor control.The combination of configuration effects of different variables and their formation conditions shapes the generation path of policy innovation diffusion of provincial governments in China.In this study,configuration thought is introduced into the analysis process of influencing factors of policy innovation diffusion,and more attention is paid to the combination effect of different variables in inducing policy innovation diffusion of provincial governments,which effectively makes up for the defect of weak explanatory power of single variable.The empirical analysis results show that the policy innovation diffusion of provincial government consists of four complex paths,four intermediate paths and one contracted path.These paths are the combination of different condition variables,which constitute the basic pattern of policy innovation diffusion of provincial government.(3)The simplified path of policy innovation diffusion of provincial governments is administrative instruction*social demand*operability.Based on this,three different types of driving policy innovation diffusion and their internal logic can be concluded.The data processing results of qualitative comparative analysis output a simple path of provincial government policy innovation diffusion.The results show that the policy directive(AO)～social demand(SE)～operability(OP)constitutes the necessary conditions and simple path for the diffusion of provincial government policy innovation.Based on the three necessary conditions,the research concludes the diffusion of provincial government policy innovation into three different driving types:pressure oriented,demand guided and autonomous optimization.The pressure oriented type indicates that the central government’s vertical intervention plays a key role in the diffusion of policy innovation.Demand-guided mode indicates that the policy innovation diffusion behavior of the government is the government adoption behavior guided by the external environment.Autonomous optimization indicates that the government has subjective initiative to optimize the development of governance issues.(4)Based on the empirical analysis results of provincial government policy innovation diffusion,this paper puts forward the optimization path of provincial government policy innovation diffusion.From different dimensions,this paper puts forward ways to optimize the diffusion of government policy innovation,including:improving the government’s learning ability and strengthening regional exchanges and interactions;Rich government innovation resources,pay attention to the use of resources management;Optimize the government innovation environment and stimulate the vitality of policy innovation;We will expand channels for policy advice and improve policy feedback mechanisms.There are two main research innovations in this paper:(1)Innovation of research content.Based on the theory of innovation diffusion and the theory of pressure system,this paper constructs an analytical framework of innovation diffusion theory which is more in line with China’s local institutional situation from the dimensions of government,environment and policy.(2)Innovation of research methods.This paper adopts the multi-case comparative research method and qualitative comparative analysis tool to explore the influencing factors and generating paths of policy innovation diffusion,which is not only a supplement to the single case study,but also an interactive verification of independent variable research.Due to the exploration and attempt in the research content and methods,the research also has some shortcomings:(1)The index content of theoretical construction needs to be improved.As a complex government behavior,policy innovation diffusion is influenced by multiple and multi-dimensional factors,so it is difficult to theoretically include all the influencing factors.The 7 variables extracted in this paper are difficult to accurately describe all the patterns of policy innovation diffusion,which can further improve the theoretical analysis framework in future studies.(2)The quantitative structure of case selection needs to be optimized.Due to my lack of experience in case studies,both the number and structure of the cases studied need to be optimized and perfected.The policy cases selected in this paper are mainly those that have been widely studied,but it may ignore some highly representative cases that have not been widely studied.