领导重视与数字政府回应力——基于双重差分与合成控制法的实证分析

Leadership Attention and Responsiveness to Digital Government: An Empirical Analysis Based on the Difference-in-Differences and Synthetic Control Methods

公民网络问政日趋流行,但是政府回应情况却差别较大。本文提出地方官员对政民互动的重视程度会正向影响政府回应力,并利用某省2008—2019年人民网"领导留言板"的三万余条公民诉求数据进行实证分析。基于双重差分法和合成控制法,发现领导重视对政府回应力具有正向作用,而领导重视对政府回应力的影响存在逐层递减的现象,因而区域间具有明显的差异。这些研究发现为理解和推动数字政府建设提供了理论解释和经验依据,说明推动领导干部重视网络问政,加强政府回应制度建设,是推进数字政府建设和提升网络政府回应力的关键策略。

Citizens’online petitions have become increasingly popular,but the level of government responses has been quite different.Existing studies mainly analyze the driving forces behind government responses from the perspective of the macro structure and mechanical elements,but they pay little attention to the micro actors,resulting in insufficient explanations for the changes in government responses over the short term.This paper proposes that local officials’attention to the interactions between the government and the people will have a positive impact on the government’s responsiveness.We empirically analyze the process of interaction and test this hypothesis based on data on more than 30000 citizens’appeals on the local leaders’message board of People’s Daily Online in one province from 2008 to 2019.In terms of the characteristics of the appeals,citizens are more willing to appeal to high-level leaders.There are more appeals to the provincial party secretary and the municipal party secretary than there are to the provincial governor or the municipal mayors.After 2018,there were more appeals to municipal party secretaries than to the governor.Moreover,the rate of replies from provincial and municipal party secretaries is higher than that of governor and mayors.Finally,there is a large gap in the appeal and response rate among regions.In terms of the motivation for the government’s response,based on the Difference-inDifferences(DID)method and the Synthetic Control Method(SCM),this paper examines the influence of leaders’attention on government responsiveness,as well as the temporal and spatial differences in such a linkage.The research shows that the proportion of government responses increases significantly after leaders who attach importance to network politics take office.This causal relationship always exists whether it passes a balanced trend test of the DID method or a robustness test of the SCM.Therefore,the response of the government is greatly affected by the leaders’attention.In addition,the influence of leaders’attention on the government’s responsiveness decreases by the leaders’level,so there are obvious differences among regions.However,compared to calls from the national level,the attention of provincial leaders can promote the prefectural levels to pay more attention to their response to digital political platforms.These findings provide theoretical explanations and empirical evidence to understand and promote the development of digital government.They show that the key strategy to promote digital government is to encourage leading cadres to pay attention to online petitions and to strengthen the government’s response system.However,in order to avoid"ups and downs"in the government’s response,we need to promote an"institutionalization"of network politics so that they are not affected by excessive attention from the leaders themselves.Only in this way can we really promote positive interactions between citizens’demands and government responses.