Interactive Governance Between and Within Governmental Levels and Functions: A Social Network Analysis of China's Case Against COVID-19

• Author: Jing Li,Wenhong Yan,Yijing Chen,Qiunan Gao,Dongmin Yao
• Published date: 01 April 2022
• Date: 01 April 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/02750740211059534
• Subject Matter: Articles

Interactive Governance Between and

Within Governmental Levels and

Functions: A Social Network Analysis of

China’s Case Against COVID-19

Dongmin Yao

1

, Jing Li

1

, Yijing Chen

1

, Qiunan Gao

1

and Wenhong Yan

1

Abstract

COVID-19 has created long-lasting yet unprecedented challenges worldwide. In addition to scientific efforts, political

efforts and public administration are also crucial to contain the disease. Therefore, understanding how multi-level gover-

nance systems respond to this public health crisis is vital to combat COVID-19. This study focuses on China and applies

social network analysis to illustrate interactive governance between and within levels and functions of government, con-

firming and extending the existing Type I and Type II definition of multi-levelg overnancetheor y. Wecharacteri ze four inter-

action patterns—vertical, inter-functional, intra-functional, and hybrid—with the dominant pattern differing across

governmental fu nctions and evolvi ng as the pandemic p rogressed. Empiric al results reveal tha t financial departments of dif-

ferent levels of gove rnment interac t through the vertica l pattern. At the same time, intra-functional interaction also exists

in provincial financial departments. The supervision depar tments typically adopt the inter-functional pattern at all levels. At

the cross-level and c ross-function as pects, the hybrid int eraction pattern prevails in the medical function and plays a fair

part in the security, welfare, and economic function. This study is one of the first to summarize the interaction patterns

in a multi-level setting, providing practical implications for which pattern should be applied to which governmental lev-

els/functions under what pandemic condition.

Keywords

multi-level governance, COVID-19, public health crisis, China, social network analysis

Date received: 3 March 2021; final manuscript received: October 24, 2021; accepted: 25 October 2021

COVID-19 is a deadly pandemic that proliferates rapidly and

unboundedly. By October 22, 2021, the WHO has

announced that 223 countries and territories worldwide

have reported 242,348,657 COVID-19 cases with

4,927,723 deaths. Although 6.6 billion doses of vaccine

have been administered, COVID-19, especially its Delta

variant, remains an unprecedented healthcare crisis.

Combating the disease requires the joint effort of pharmaceu-

tical and non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs

1

). Among

existing studies on NPIs against COVID-19, most have

focused on evaluating the effects of NPIs. These studies

survey how NPIs influence people’s behavioral patterns

(Cooper et al., 2020; Jiao et al., 2020), assess how NPIs

affect the proliferation and health outcome of COVID-19

(Kraemer et al., 2020; Pan et al., 2020), and comment on

some aspects of NPIs (Bonaccorsi et al., 2020; Zaremba

et al., 2020).

However, a review of COVID-19 NPIs by Perra (2021)

suggests that the literature has understudied the contextual

aspect of NPIs. The few studies that emphasize the impor-

tance of institutional arrangements or public administration

practices on NPI strategies (Weible et al., 2020; Yan et al.,

2020) have not delved into how the arrangements translate

into anti-COVID-19 practice. Therefore, such a shortage of

discussion regarding the governmental response patterns in

anti-pandemic NPIs provides opportunities for further

research.

This study introduces the multi-level governance (MLG)

as the theoretical foundation, and hence it constructs

1

Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China

Corresponding Author:

Jing Li, Room 126, Teaching Compound #10. Central University of Finance

and Economics, Beijing 102206, China.

Email: 17801051019@163.com

Article

American Review of Public Administration

2022, Vol. 52(3) 191–205

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/02750740211059534

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