Experimentalism as a Policy Style: The Case of China

Abstract

Policy styles in contemporary China can be understood in the institutional context. Given the political institutions of the party state, all major decisions must be approved by top leaders and top leaders can have a substantial discretion to shape the policy process. Further, providing the importance of the bureaucracy, how to overcome principal-agent and collective action problem with the bureaucracy is the major issue associated with the policy styles. In contrast to many western countries, many policies have been made in very general terms in China and a significant portion of policy making and implementation is specified by the bureaucracy at the local level. Local policy experimentation has been widely applied in the policy process in China. This chapter discusses the local policy experiment as well as some policy instruments which the politicians may use to motivate local bureaucracy and address the collective action and principal-agent problems in the local policy experiments. This chapter highlights the implications of local policy experiments for the policy styles in China.