Policy Reinvention and Diffusion: Evidence from Chinese Provincial Governments

Since the late 1950s, more than 1,000 academic articles related to policy innovation and diffusion have been published; most focus on how a policy spreads once it has been created, yet less attention is paid to how it is changed by those who adopt it. We extend the focus of policy innovation research from policy inventors to followers by focusing on the diffusion and adoption of the “One Visit at Most” policy in China. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) is used to summarize the core factors affecting the reinvention of this policy by provincial governments in China. The results verify the characteristics of political systems are important factors in the provincial government’s policy reinvention. The vertical intergovernmental relation is the necessary condition to influence the policy reinvention. The combination of the factors for horizontal intergovernmental relations, the geographical leadership mobility of governors, and the characteristics of the government’s own economic environment also affect the provincial government’s policy reinvention. This study contributes the unique characteristics of the Chinese system and important theoretical developments to the study of policy reinvention within the broader policy innovation literature.