China’s Local Government Innovations in Inter-Local Collaboration

Abstract

Over the past decade, Chinese local governments have adopted numerous innovations to address pressing social, economic, and environmental concerns. Realizing the limitations of unilateral policy actions, cities have increasingly relied on inter-local collaboration to address urgent regional policy issues in service delivery, environmental protection, infrastructure construction, economic development, and disaster response. Despite the fact that inter-local collaborations have been adopted widely in China, there is still a lack of theoretical understanding of their motivations and mechanisms. Drawing on the Institutional Collective Action framework, three mechanisms of inter-local collaborations—informal partnership, formal collaboration, and imposed authority—are studied. Case studies are conducted to show the dynamics and mechanisms of innovative inter-local collaboration mechanisms in China. The framework presented in this study could serve as a useful lens for additional empirical research.