“Central Government Issues Policy and Local Governments Choose”—— How to Avoid the Gradual Decline of Policy Implementation

Avoiding the gradual decline of policy implementation is a practical problem that remains to be solved in the academic and practical circles.In recent years,the creation of “national model cities” has become a new phenomenon of local governance.The central ministries and commissions have issued policies,and local governments below the provincial level have independently participated in,implemented and disseminated policies with high quality,realizing the full play of the effectiveness of the central policy at the grass-roots level.Through combing the 22 types of demonstration city policies launched by the central ministries and commissions from 2009 to 2020,the study found that the demonstration city policies have the policy attributes of low ambiguity,low conflict and high flexibility; At the same time,they provide “two-dimensional incentives” to couple the motivation of local government policy implementation,which not only ensures that local policy implementation can obtain external political,promotion or financial protection,but also pays attention to strengthening the internal perception of local government’s power status,role and mission.The national model city policy,through the mode of “Central Government Issues Poilicy and Local Governments Choose”,not only embeds the central government’s intention to transform the city to standardized and refined governance,but also changes the general bureaucratic relationship of policy implementation,endows local governments with freedom in policy implementation,activates local consciousness,and is a successful case of efficient policy implementation shown in practice.Future research can focus on the vivid city creation practice,and excavate the bureaucratic relationship and government action logic under the background of the implementation of model city policies from an empirical perspective.