How Is Policy Attention Allocated in Crisis Recovery? A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 31 Provincial Governments in China

Bibliographic Data

ID12782428
AuthorsYu Zhao (0000-0001-9446-644X, Xi'an Jiaotong University), Xuesong Guo (0000-0003-0969-3299, Xi'an Jiaotong University, corresponding author), Mingyu Wu (0000-0001-8094-8915, Xi'an Jiaotong University), Zonghao Yuan (0000-0002-5723-7194, Xi'an Jiaotong University)
Year2025
Volume43
Issue2
Publication date2025-07-16
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReview of Policy Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1541-132X • E-ISSN: 1541-1338
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/ropr.70036
OpenAlexW4413088905
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited60

Investigating how government departments allocate attention provides insights into the different levels of emphasis placed on different types of policies. Identifying factors that shape local governments' strategic policy choices helps describe policy diffusion, transmission, and learning processes. At the same time, the growing complexity of crises makes the conventional approach to policy agenda‐setting, based on external pressures, insufficient. As such, this study focuses on the differences in policy choices related to the public health event of a pandemic, a unique form of crisis, and develops a framework for analyzing the allocation of attention to post‐pandemic recovery policies under conditional constraints based on the attention‐based view. The study conducts a qualitative comparative analysis using a sample of 31 provincial governments' post‐COVID‐19 recovery policies in China to investigate how different factors influence local recovery policy preferences. The analysis reveals four distinct configurations leading to an economic recovery preference, all of which share low fiscal dependence as a core condition. In contrast, a single, different path—combining high fiscal dependence and high regional economic growth rate with low GDP per capita—explains the emergence of a social recovery preference. The findings suggest that effective crisis recovery requires policymakers to align their policy focus with their specific local constraints rather than adopting a uniform strategy

China · Economics · Government (linguistics · Microeconomics · Per capita · Policy analysis · Political science · Population · Preference · Public economics · Qualitative comparative analysis · Sociology · Policy Transfer and Learning · Public Administration · Public Policy and Administration Research · Qualitative Comparative Analysis Research