Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Non-democratic Accountability--Experiments with Citizen Contacting in China

该项目通过在中华人民共和国进行实地实验，为非民主国家的政府问责制提供了新的视角。 中国共产党建立了持久的一党专政。然而，在经济改革中，它扩大了赋予中国公民权利的法律，并成立了一些机构，在这些权利没有得到实施时捍卫这些权利。显然，这些形式的公民与国家互动在中国已经发展起来。然而，我们对公民从这种互动中获得多少利益却知之甚少。本研究评估了中国公民与国家互动的一种形式的有效性：公民对政府服务信息的请求。首先，它衡量旨在提高政府对公民透明度的法律的改革的实施情况。第二，本项目使用实验技术来测试公民是否可以通过展示对法律或中央政策优先事项的了解来改善政府的反应能力。 第三，通过比较收到请求的县与没有收到请求的县的透明度做法，该项目实验性地测试收到公民信息请求是否会激励未来更透明的政府。这项研究的学术价值在于它对非民主国家治理研究的实质性和方法学贡献。 通过评估地方对国家透明度法规的遵守情况，它产生了一个新的量化指标，衡量中国公民在全国范围内享有的政府信息。它使用接触技术作为实验处理提供了新的证据，公民的法律的和政治知识的影响，在他们与政府打交道。通过制定一种方法来评估问责制，而不涉及选举，这项工作提出了新的机会，比较政府问责制在不同的国家与非常不同的政治制度。 政府透明度与各种政治环境下的良好政府成果有关。通过测量地方透明度及其相关因素，该项目将有助于指导中国研究机构和国际组织正在进行的提高政府透明度的政策实验。此外，该项目的实验性治疗所使用的接触技术映射到人们在接近政府官员时使用的真实的策略。通过评估其影响，这项工作可以提高日常的，普通的，但相当重要的政府响应机制的理解，即使在非民主国家。

This project sheds new light on government accountability in a non-democratic state by conducting field experiments in the People's Republic of China. The Communist Party of China has established a durable single-party regime. In economic reform, however, it has expanded laws that mandate rights for Chinese citizens and has formed institutions to defend these rights when they are not implemented. It is clear that these forms of citizen-state interaction in China have grown. What remains little known is how much citizens get from such interactions.This study assesses the efficacy of one form of citizen-state interaction in China: citizen requests for information on government services. First, it measures the implementation of legal reforms intended to improve government transparency to citizens. Second, this project uses experimental techniques to test whether citizens can improve government responsiveness by demonstrating knowledge about the law or central policy priorities. Third, by comparing the transparency practices of counties that receive requests with counties that do not, the project experimentally tests whether the very receipt of citizen information requests might incentivize more transparent government in the future. The intellectual merit of this study lies in its substantive and methodological contributions to the study of governance in non-democracies. By estimating local compliance with a national transparency regulation, it produces a new quantitative measure of access to government information enjoyed by Chinese citizens nationwide. Its use of contacting techniques as experimental treatments provides novel evidence of the impact of citizens' legal and political knowledge in their dealings with government. By developing a methodology to evaluate accountability without reference to elections, this work suggests new opportunities to compare government accountability across countries with very different political regimes.This project makes several broader contributions. Government transparency has been associated with good government outcomes across diverse political settings. By measuring local transparency and its correlates, this project will help guide ongoing policy experiments by Chinese research institutions and international organizations to improve government transparency. Moreover, the contacting techniques that comprise this project's experimental treatments map onto real strategies that people use when they approach government officials. By estimating their effects, this work can enhance understanding of everyday, ordinary, and yet quite important mechanisms of government responsiveness, even in non-democracies.