Article

Performance ranking, span of control, and grassroots government responsiveness

Author

Youlang Zhang, Associate Professor, School of Public Administration and Policy, RUC

Wenzhao Li, Professor, School of Public Administration and Policy, RUC

Abstract

Policy makers have increasingly relied on performance ranking regimes based on information collected through public complaint systems to improve grassroots governments'accountability, transparency, and responsiveness. This article contributes to the existing literature by examining whether grassroots governments strategically adjust their responsiveness according to their ranking positions and the number of their peers that are supervised by the same superior government (i.e., span of control).

To test the theorized relationships, we built an original panel dataset consisting of monthly responsiveness information and socioeconomic and leadership characteristics of 333 grassroots governments in Beijing, China from February 2019 to December 2020. Our empirical findings consistently show that having a high/low ranking is associated with a decrease/increase in grassroots governments' responsiveness in the next period.

Additionally, as the span of control increases, the effect of ranking position on responsiveness changes among grassroots governments weakens. A series of robustness checks were used to validate the theorized relationships.

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