Regulatory intensity varies substantially across jurisdictions, with important implications for market development, fiscal sustainability, and state capacity. Yet existing scholarship has devoted greater attention to the consequences of regulation than to the institutional sources of its subnational diversity. This question is particularly important in developmental contexts, where governments must balance financial risk control with growth-oriented policy objectives. This study highlights the role of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as semi-state actors positioned between governmental authority and market coordination. We argue that these organizations reshape local regulatory outcomes by mediating between state authority and market activity. Using subnational evidence from China, where centralized regulatory authority coexists with pronounced local variation in implementation, we show that regions with a stronger SOE presence tend to adopt less stringent penalizing regulation. By theorizing SOEs as organizational intermediaries, this study contributes to comparative debates on regulatory governance and uneven policy implementation. More broadly, it offers a transferable framework for understanding how semi-state actors generate regulatory diversity.
Although overqualification among public employees is becoming increasingly prevalent, previous studies have largely overlooked its nonlinear effects. Based on Conservation of Resources Theory, this study analyzes data from 2089 civil servants and finds that: (1) A U-shaped relationship exists between perceived overqualification and performance, with this relationship mediated by task significance. (2) Public service motivation moderates the impact of overqualification on task significance. These findings offer a nuanced perspective on overqualification, suggesting that public sector should more effectively recognize and manage varying levels of overqualification among civil servants.
This study examines how the state apparatus can be mobilized by central governments for the purpose of poverty alleviation without undermining local knowledge and initiative, engaging directly with James Scott's critique of top-down modernization schemes. Using county-level panel data from 706 nationally designated poor counties (NPCs) in China between 2012 and 2018, we identify the separate and combined effects of two key mobilization tools deployed during China's recent poverty-alleviation campaign: quantitative poverty-reduction targets and changes to cadre performance evaluations that prioritized poverty outcomes over GDP growth. A difference-in-differences design shows that both policies boosted rural per capita incomes, with effects conditioned by target difficulty, cadre career horizons, and local tenure. From these results, we identify three features that enhanced effectiveness: (1) granular identification systems enabling precise, monitorable goals; (2) incentive realignment toward redistribution; and (3) stability in local leadership to accumulate and apply local knowledge. These findings highlight a governance model that combines central coordination with locally attuned implementation, offering practical lessons for other developing countries seeking to design centrally driven, target-oriented mobilization strategies while mitigating the risks of overreach.
This article examines how a local environmental NGO in southern China transformed Guantouling Hill, once a prominent poaching hotspot along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, into a recognised model of community-based biodiversity conservation. Drawing on 6 months of ethnographic fieldwork, including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and documentary analysis, this study analyses governance practices that have emerged through the sixteen-year conservation efforts of the Guangxi Biodiversity Research and Conservation Association (BRC). At the macro level, the analysis situates NGO action within polycentric governance, public value governance, and state-reinforced self-governance frameworks that shape state-society relations. At the meso level, it conceptualizes 'two-way embeddedness' as NGOs' simultaneous integration within state institutions and local communities, enabling them to translate policy priorities into context-specific interventions. At the micro level, it explores collaborative governance practices grounded in trust, relational authority, and everyday participation. The case of BRC illustrates how sustained ecological monitoring, joint enforcement with state actors, and community trust-building can produce gradually stabilized governance practices without formal delegation of authority. The findings contribute to debates on non-state actor roles in development-oriented environmental governance and demonstrate how NGOs can extend state capacity, institutionalize local participation, and generate new governance spaces within fragmented institutional landscapes.
Social enterprise can be seen as citizen's active participation in the pursuit of public value in a financially sustainable manner. Despite a burgeoning interest in social enterprise in the public administration and policy fields, the marketing capabilities of social enterprises for sustainable public value creation have received little attention. While the literature has developed theoretical linkages between marketing capabilities and public value, the ability to partner with other organizations and to absorb and create knowledge as essential antecedents of marketing capabilities remain understudied. Using a capacity-capability-outcome framework, we investigated whether and how social capital influences social enterprise's marketing capabilities via the mediating mechanism of absorptive capacity in the context of East Asia. Our study extends current discourse in 'social enterprise as a means for public value creation' by testing several alternative pathways that explain capacity-capability-outcome as mechanisms that simultaneously contribute to financial performance and sustainable public value creation. Our study offers practical implications to social enterprise operators and policymakers.
