The 2018 Party and state institutional reform established the Department of Veterans Affairs to centralize veteran management by integrating functions previously held by human resources and civil affairs agencies.However,a case study of the Veterans Affairs Bureau in L City reveals a stark contrast in implementation.While the new bureau successfully assumed preferential treatment duties from the Civil Affairs Bureau,it struggled to take over the resettlement of military transfer cadres from the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau.Adopting the Guikou Lingdao system framework,this paper examines the mechanisms driving this implementation paradox.The study finds that preferential treatment is a typical administrative function of the government,involving no Guikou supervision by Party functional departments.It aligns with the administrative integration logic of the reform plan,thus facilitating a smooth transfer.Conversely,the resettlement of military transfer cadres is deeply embedded in the Guikou Lingdao system chain of the"Organization Department—Human Resources and Social Security Bureau."This creates a structural misalignment between the horizontal integration of administrative functions and the vertical concentration of existing Party leadership power.The study argues that administrative restructuring must align with the overarching Guikou Lingdao system;unless vertical Guikou relations are synchronized,the effectiveness of administrative integration will be significantly constrained.
The application of technology in organizational power relations constitutes a core mechanism of digital governance. Existing scholarship tends to analyze this relationship through static structural-functional frameworks. These approaches leave underexplored the dynamic processes through which technology becomes embedded in vertical intergovernmental power interactions. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Chengdu in 2024 and 2025, this study analyzes how municipal, district, and street-level governments interact through the city's three-level Urban Operations Platform. A total of 33 interviews were conducted with officials across all three tiers. Two analytical dimensions are introduced in this study. The first is power mobilization. The second is technology integration. These dimensions yield a four-type classification of digital governance scenarios. The four types are the authority-consolidating scenario, the tiered deployment scenario, the local experimentation scenario, and the autonomous co-construction scenario. The study finds that higher-level and lower-level governments exhibit a dual logic of centralization and delegation within digital space. Higher-level governments exercise centralization across three key areas. They retain control over cross-jurisdictional governance by aggregating data flows that transcend administrative boundaries. They monopolize risk governance through predictive algorithms and emergency dispatch systems that exceed grassroots capacity. They also strengthen behavioral oversight by generating traceable digital records of lower-level operations across governance tasks. At the same time, higher-level governments delegate selectively. In tiered deployment scenarios, grassroots officials are granted initial handling authority over routine cases. Dynamic authorization mechanisms allow them to claim and process tasks within designated parameters. Jurisdiction over non-standard cases follows a primary-contradiction attribution principle. Higher-level governments retain the right to intervene and resume control when the situation warrants it. Grassroots governments also exercise centralization. They build fine-grained scenarios by leveraging localized data assets to address needs that higher-level authorities cannot anticipate in advance. Grassroots governments likewise engage in delegation. The Baobiaotong platform illustrates this logic well. Originally an innovation designed to reduce redundant reporting tasks, it gained institutional recognition only after developers aligned it with higher-level technical standards and ceded platform control to upper tiers. Grassroots governments thus trade platform autonomy for legitimacy recognition within the overarching governance architecture. These dynamics together produce a flexible and nested governance structure. Digital governance scenarios serve as the primary medium through which power boundaries are tested, negotiated, and adjusted across levels. This study offers a new analytical lens for understanding power operations in government digital transformation. It advances theoretical discussions on the technology-power relationship in public administration.
Contemporary social science pedagogy exhibits a pronounced theory-empirical dichotomy.Curricula tend to privilege training in data collection and inductive techniques,while the cultivation of theory-building capabilities—represented by deductive methods—is either marginalized or conflated with the interpretation of classical texts and courses on disciplinary history.This fragmentation renders researchers ill-equipped to conduct"theory-driven empirical research."In an era where big data and artificial intelligence(AI)have disrupted the traditional primacy of induction,deductive competence has emerged as an irreplaceable intellectual asset for researchers.In research practice,the deficit in deduction manifests as:adopting theoretical perspectives without engaging in deductive reasoning;conducting literature reviews that are disconnected from the subsequent research design;presenting empirical data with insufficient analytical depth;and offering empirical summaries that lack extrapolative generalization.To address these,we propose a pathway of"deductive operationalization":sustained interrogation of foundational paradigmatic questions,engagement with deductive trajectories in seminal literature,forward-looking deduction to innovate theoretical frameworks,dimensional analysis of empirical evidence,and explicit articulation of boundary conditions.Born of methodological self-awareness during the Industrial Revolution,social science must now reclaim its foundational ethos in the face of the AI revolution—cultivating both empirical rigor and theoretical robustness.Only by providing unique epistemic contributions that retain a comparative advantage over AI can social science scholars defend both their profession and their vocation.
The governance of megacities is an important component of China's national governance.Improving the responsiveness of grassroots governments in megacities is conducive to building a service-oriented government centered on individual well-being.The"Swift Response to Public Complaints"mechanism,originating in Beijing,China's capital,is a significant reform innovation aimed at improving the responsiveness of grassroots governments—that is,efficiently responding to public demands—through the 12345 hotline.This reform has received high attention from the central government and has been promoted nationwide.However,with the nationwide rollout of the"Swift Response to Public Complaints"mechanism,driven by the 12345 citizen hotline,many local practices have faced a structural dilemma of being"busy but ineffective".The theoretical community has two competing research paths:"increasing"and"decreasing"the intensity of response,leading to a dilemma. This paper introduces a typological analytical framework based on the attributes of demands,and examines the internal process of effective response by grassroots governments in megacities using a case study of D Street in Beijing.The results show that,based on the interaction of demands based on"publicness-rationality"grassroots governments differentiate into four action strategies:service optimization,substantive resolution,emotional reassurance,and decentralization of consultation. This paper further derives a theoretical explanation of"transformative response":as an open system constantly interacting with its environment,rational grassroots government organizations view the large-scale public demands within their jurisdiction as a multi-layered system with positive and negative externalities.By linking the handling of these demands with multiple basic governance functions,they transform them from governance burdens and tasks into positive elements such as governance resources and leverage points,thereby restoring the grassroots governance ecosystem.This process ultimately reduces the likelihood of demands arising at their source,alleviates pressure from demands and offsets institutional pressure,and achieves coordination rather than suppression with other governance efforts.This situation is more pronounced in the context of megacities.In this respect,a short-sighted,pragmatic response lacking transformative response may be a deep-seated reason for the"inefficient results"of grassroots governance in megacities. Therefore,this paper suggests achieving a balanced response from two aspects:diversion from higher levels and transformation at the grassroots level.This paper's theoretical contributions include incorporating the attributes of demands into research on grassroots government responsiveness and proposing the theoretical concept of"transformational response",thus enriching current theoretical work.Furthermore,this paper offers a practical action path for shifting government responsiveness from a short-term perspective to a long-term one.
The Four Global Initiatives advanced by China represent not only significant public goods contributed to the international community,but also a distinctive Chinese approach to restructuring the provision architecture of global public goods.These Initiatives steer the international order toward greater equity and rationality.In addressing the persistent dilemmas of collective action and supply deficits in global governance,The Four Global Initiatives are strategically anchored in the core vision of a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind.They establish a coherent analytical and operational framework encompassing four sequential pillars:value advocacy,agenda setting,experience sharing,and capacity building.This framework facilitates a paradigmatic transition in the supply of global public goods from traditional hegemonic and competitive modalities toward a symbiotic model grounded in inclusive multilateralism.The paper delineates this trans-formation across four dimensions:underlying philosophy,strategic objectives,substantive content,and implementation pathways.To further actualize The Four Global Initiatives and amplify China's catalytic role in this systemic evolution,the study proposes a forward-looking agenda.Recommendations include pursuing incremental institutional reforms that accommodate the realities of a multipolar order,steadfastly upholding the principle of extensive consultation,joint contribution,and shared benefits,ensuring the concrete operationalization and local embeddedness of the Initiatives,and strategically leveraging emerging technologies as enabling mechanisms.This new paradigm of global public goods provision contributes to overcoming persistent difficulties in public goods supply and to constructing a more resilient and equitable global governance cooperation system.
