Emerging Polycentric Pattern in Governing Transitional China

Abstract

Given the context of globalization which is hollowing out the sovereignty of nation-states through unraveling the central state, every nation-state has to restructure its governance systems to cope with the challenges and opportunities thereof. This chapter focuses on how China has modernized its systems and capabilities of governance through the perspective of a theoretical framework of the constitutional trinity of political state, market economy, and civil society in terms of polycentric governance. Specifically, polycentric governance means the separation and combination of corporate entities across public, private, and third sectors to form the unity and diversity of the ecological systems of governance. China in transition from a totalitarian regime lies in its corporatization rather than privatization with the Pareto-improved strategy of reforming public sector and having private and third sectors boomed. The incremental policy of reforming and opening up takes on institutional isomorphism across regions in terms of the distribution of diverse corporate entities based on the census data. A factor analysis as a decoupling method is thus applied to result in the emerging three clusters of corporate entities or the emerging polycentric pattern of governance, i.e., the cluster of enterprises, the cluster of governments and communities, and the cluster of associations and nonprofit organizations. No doubt, the emerging three clusters represent the three dimensions of institutional change from a totalitarian regime toward a market economy, a political state, and a civil society in contemporary China, which presages modernization of the systems and capabilities of governance under the rule of law.