The durability of governance reform: A two‐wave audit of notice and comment policymaking in China

Steven J. Balla and Zhoudan Xie

Regulation & Governance, 2023, vol. 17, issue 2, 549-569

Abstract: The notice and comment process, in which government organizations make public draft laws and regulations and solicit feedback on these proposals, is a prominent governance reform in contemporary China. This article examines the durability of notice and comment policymaking by conducting a pair of audits of the practices of dozens of central government ministries and provincial governments. There are a number of reasons to expect that it is difficult to sustain governance reforms in China. Nevertheless, the audits—which the authors carried out in 2014 and 2021—demonstrate that, subject to a number of constraints, notice and comment policymaking was routinely implemented by government organizations throughout the period under analysis. Although the notice and comment process is a durable governance reform, additional research is needed before it can be concluded that the procedure brings more than a veneer of transparency to Chinese policymaking.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12477

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:reggov:v:17:y:2023:i:2:p:549-569

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Regulation & Governance from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().