A Tale of Four Districts: Policy Experimentation and Local Labor Governance in China

Using a case study of the roles of four district-level Bureaus of Human Resources and Social Security (BOHRSS) in Guangdong under a national pilot project, this study delves into the process of policy experimentation at the local level in China through four dimensions identified from the literature: intergovernmental relations, local bureaucratic offices’ interactions with policy targets, their relations with societal actors, and district officials’ policy entrepreneurship. It reveals a nuanced policy diffusion process characterized by a mix of emulation of policy ideas and competition over practical policy designs. Notably, projects rated as “more innovative” by the Chinese government did not prioritize strengthening the rule of law or collective consultation. Instead, they delegated the BOHRSS’s conflict resolution duties to businesses and social organizations, thereby alleviating the burden on formal institutions. Moving beyond the state-society paradigm, this study contributes to the labor governance and public administration literature by elucidating the involvement of everyday policy agents in labor policymaking. Moreover, it underscores that these policy experimentation efforts are integral to broader Chinese government initiatives aimed at reassigning social governance functions to enterprises and social organizations, resonating with governance principles from the Maoist era.