Social ties and citizen-initiated contacts: the case of china’s local one-stop governments

Abstract

Citizen-initiated contacts with the government considerably influence the outcomes of public management. Nevertheless, the following question remains inadequately explored and explained: Why are some citizens more likely to initiate contact with the government than others? This study examines how two distinct types of social ties, namely, daily and political ties, influence citizen contacting. We point out that daily and political ties can generally help reduce the information constraints involved in citizen contacting. Particularly, political ties may also increase citizens’ civic skills and capability to punish unresponsive government officials. We use original data from a nationally representative survey conducted in China in 2015 to verify our expectations. We find that citizens with strong political ties are significantly likely to initiate contact with local one-stop governments. Although consistently positive, the effects of daily ties are not statistically significant and tend to be smaller than the effects of political ties.