This research focuses on innovation and its diffusion in public services in authoritarian China. A mechanism between vertical government intervention and diffusion of innovation in public services is established by conducting a comparative case study between Sichuan and Tianjin. Administrative commands facilitate the formation of the ‘mandatory policy diffusion’ that rapidly diffuses policy instruments. Competition in the performance evaluation-based personnel system contributes to the formation of ‘championship policy diffusion’, which leads to the divergence of policy instruments in neighbouring local governments. Therefore, classic theoretical hypotheses on geographical proximity, competition, and vertical intervention concerning innovation diffusion need to be modified.

An increased interest in policy diffusion research on China has emerged in recent years. However, the multiple diffusion mechanisms in China have not been explored adequately. In this research, we employ the directed dyadic event history analysis, a new approach introduced into recent policy diffusion research, to examine the diffusion of China’s provincial level administrative licencing centres from 1999 to 2015. Our research provides consistent evidence that horizontal learning, imitation, and the vertical top-down diffusion mechanisms can coexist in China, which provides substantial empirical support for the application of policy diffusion theory in non-western countries.

Although regional policy experimentation has become a global trend, the distinct features of experimentalist governance in a given country, such as China, remains to be investigated. This article extends policy process theory by proposing the framework of experimentalist governance with interactive central–local relations or Chinese‐style experimentalist governance, which combines three features. First, policy goals and instruments are formed separately and interactively by the central and local governments. Second, the central government is burdened with its own concerns about policy performance for maintaining authority and legitimacy. Third, the evaluation of policy pilots relies primarily on the responses of local governments. We further conceptualize three new patterns of experimentalist governance in China, namely, “comparative trial,” “selective recognition,” and “adaptive reconciliation,” in addition to “hierarchical experimentation.” These patterns are illustrated with case studies on four pension policies in China, which are for public sector employees, urban employees, rural residents, and migrant workers.

Bureaucratic control, the constraint that a superior imposes on subordinate agencies’ discretion through guidelines, is ubiquitous in administrative organizations. Despite scholarly discussions on the merits and shortcomings of bureaucratic control, we still know little about the impact of the extents of bureaucratic control on subordinates’ compliance patterns. In this article, we argue that bureaucratic control might intensify subordinates’ burdens and incentivize them to strategically reduce compliance with the central guidelines that impose such control on them. We build a database containing 42 social regulatory guidelines issued by the Chinese State Council (central government) and 848 implementation documents issued by provincial governments between 2003 and 2012. As bureaucratic control in a central guideline increases, provincial governments might postpone the release or withhold the implementation documents and reiterate less content of the corresponding central guideline. Interestingly, when provincial governments lack financial resources, the aforementioned reactions to bureaucratic control is weakened and even reversed to be positive. Moreover, central mobilization alleviates the negative impact of bureaucratic control on the surface but might fail to address subordinates’ decrease of compliance in hidden ways. Central monitoring raises the overall level of subordinates’ compliance but does not moderate how subordinates circumvent central guidelines with high degree of control.