Incremental Co-governance: Investigation of Hangzhou Experience of Driving Reform Through Innovation

Abstract

Social co-governance is an inevitable tendency for the reform of China’s social governance mode. Under the contemporary institutions, it will meet fewer obstacles to realize co-governance through incremental reform, which is relatively feasible. The practices of social management innovation in Hangzhou are obviously characterized by incremental co-governance. The practices in Hangzhou include: (1) developing new governing fields (adding fields); (2) cultivating new-styled governing subjects (adding subjects); (3) constructing new governing aggregations (adding structures). These practices have built a new zone of social governance beyond the traditional social management institutions. There are three main mechanisms which help to realize effective co-governance: (1) forming universal values and concepts (co-value); (2) releasing more public governance space (co-space); (3) building cross-sector evaluation standards (co-evaluation). Incremental co-governance succeeded in Hangzhou because of its market economy, social capital as well as historical and cultural traditions. With the boosting of China’s comprehensive reform of social institutions, it can be forecasted that the incremental co-governance will also be applied in many areas where the market economy is developed, the societies are active, and the citizens highly trusted the governments.

This paper is written by Wang Ming and Liu Guohan, yet to be published.