Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Understanding Chinese "Welfare States": Rural Health Policy and the New Cooperative Medical System

政治学博士论文研究：认识中国“福利国家”：农村卫生政策与新型合作医疗制度

• 批准号: 1023872
• 负责人: Edward Friedman
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: University of Wisconsin-Madison
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-09-01 至 2011-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1023872&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

Without the pressures of elections or independent civil society, what motivates the Chinese government to expand social welfare provision? Moreover, what accounts for local variation in implementation of social policy in China? Through an analysis of rural health delivery in China, this project will address the larger issue of welfare state performance in non-democratic developing countries, which comprise half of the world's people and nations. Despite the significance of this issue, the dominant research paradigms ignore or misrepresent authoritarian systems and instead focus on the impacts of democratic forces, such as civil society and electoral competition.Another gap in the current literature limits its utility for policy analysis in the quest for good governance. Much policy analysis of welfare regimes in developing countries is overly focused on policy adoption at the national level. In reality, all regime types have to grapple with the difficulties inherent to the geographic and regional diversity that produces the complex realities of local communities. Without understanding variation within a country, an analyst cannot fully grasp the causes driving policy successes and failures. This research begins to fill in these glaring lacunae.To this end, the dissertation will examine the adoption and variation in implementation of the New Cooperative Medical System (NCMS) in rural China. Building on the existing literature, this project will evaluate three broad categories of hypotheses: political and historical context, economic constraints, and social forces. The extant literature on the welfare state in developing countries examines the first two sets of hypotheses at the national level; this research will test whether these factors affect variation in implementation of the NCMS at the local level in China. As for the effect of social forces, the current literature typically emphasizes the role of democracy and democratization; this project will examine whether and how social forces affect the adoption and implementation of social policy in an authoritarian context. To test these theories empirically, the dissertation will rely on qualitative research, including archival research; semi-structured interviews with government officials, medical personnel, and villagers; and the analysis of an original survey of county-level Public Health officials in five provinces.In addition, this dissertation will have concrete broader impacts through the dissemination of an original survey and the presentation of results in China and other developing countries. First, the original survey will be archived for public use. Second, the co-investigator will collaborate with Chinese partners and present the results of her research in Chinese at Chinese universities. Third, the dissertation has policy implications for social policy in developing countries and will include a comparative chapter on social policy in other developing countries. Thus, the results will have implications for both academic debates and policymakers concerned with social welfare provision in China and beyond.

如果没有选举或独立公民社会的压力，是什么促使中国政府扩大社会福利？此外，是什么原因导致了中国社会政策实施的地方差异？通过对中国农村卫生服务的分析，该项目将解决占世界人口和国家一半的非民主发展中国家福利国家绩效这一更大的问题。尽管这一问题的重要性，占主导地位的研究范式忽视或歪曲专制制度，而是集中在民主力量的影响，如民间社会和选举竞争，在目前的文献中的另一个差距限制了其效用的政策分析，在寻求善治。对发展中国家福利制度的许多政策分析过分侧重于国家一级的政策采纳。实际上，所有类型的政权都必须克服地理和区域多样性所固有的困难，这些困难造成了当地社区的复杂现实。如果不了解一个国家内部的差异，分析师就无法完全掌握政策成功和失败的原因。本文的研究正是为了填补这一空白，对新型农村合作医疗制度在中国农村实施过程中的采纳和变化进行了研究。在现有文献的基础上，本项目将评估三大类假设：政治和历史背景，经济制约因素和社会力量。现存的文献中的福利国家在发展中国家检查的前两组假设在国家层面上，本研究将测试这些因素是否影响在中国的地方层面上实施的新型农村合作医疗的变化。至于社会力量的影响，目前的文献通常强调民主和民主化的作用;本项目将研究社会力量是否以及如何影响专制背景下社会政策的采纳和实施。为了实证检验这些理论，本文将依靠定性研究，包括档案研究，对政府官员、医务人员和村民的半结构式访谈，以及对五省县级卫生官员的原始调查的分析。此外，本论文将通过在中国传播原始调查和介绍结果，产生更广泛的具体影响，其他发展中国家。首先，原始调查将存档供公众使用。第二，合作研究者将与中国合作伙伴合作，并在中国大学用中文展示她的研究成果。第三，本论文对发展中国家的社会政策具有政策意义，并将包括一个关于其他发展中国家社会政策的比较章节。因此，研究结果将对中国及其他地区的学术辩论和社会福利政策制定者产生影响。