Policy implementation in contemporary rural China : the case of the village redevelopment program

Abstract

A case study of China's Village Redevelopment Program (VRP, hereafter), this dissertation examines how VRP has been implemented in two counties in the provinces of Shandong and Anhui. It reveals that county governments can demonstrate a surprising degree of divergence and flexibility when implementing similar policies from above. Officials in Chenggu and Beian interpreted the policy and implemented it differently; and higher-level authorities played very different roles as supervisors and subsidy providers. Government-villager relations were also very different in the two counties. Yet, outcomes were ultimately the same. In both counties officials diverged significantly from the genuine goal of VRP to decrease rural economic inequalities, instead channeling government resources to those who already have and leaving the less developed behind. To reconcile the puzzle of different forms of implementation yet similar outcomes, this dissertation focuses on both the concept of local discretion and on the larger economic-political-social environment in which local officials operate and which shape local officials' "own" decision making and actions. Through the prism of VRP, the dissertation illuminates two pressures they face - local economic conditions on the one hand and a politics of command on the other- which have influenced and shaped the modes of implementation and outcomes in each of the counties. This case study of VRP shakes one of the most common conceptualizations of hierarchical relations in the Chinese political system, the commonly used paradigm of principal-agent relations. Show more