Governance and Bureaucracy Lab

The Governance and Bureaucracy Lab (GOVBUR Lab) serves as an intellectual platform for faculty and students to thrive and enhance research impact. Working across the intersection of political science and public administration GOVBUR Lab examines:

• Artificial intelligence: algorithmic governance and politics, algorithmic transparency in government bureaucracy
• Citizen and bureaucratic behaviour: behavioural and cognitive political science and public administration, citizen-government relationships
• Effective government: government performance, public service innovation
• Government and identity: contentious politics, public opinion, social identity

GOVBUR Lab is a focal point for faculty and students to implement methodologies including replications, experiments and computational social science and operates on open science principles.

Team Members

• Walker, Richard M., Director, Head of Department
• Kwok, Chi (Leo), Assistant Professor
• Yang, Kai (Eago), Assistant Professor
• Yang, Shen (Terry), Assistant Professor
• Zhu, Hongshen,  Assistant Professor

Current funded research

• A Humanities and Social Science Prestigious Fellowship Scheme (RGC) grant examining Management Innovation in Public Service Organizations (Richard M. Walker)]
• An Early Career Scheme (RGC) grant on “Epistemic Injustices and Corporate Arrangements” (Leo Kwok)
• A General Research Fund (RGC) grant on “How State Concessions Impact the Dynamics of Contention? Institutional Accommodation and the Changing Landscape of Veterans’ Activism in China” (Kai Yang)
• A General Research Fund (RGC) grant on “Reassessing and Explaining Identity Shift in Hong Kong: Machine Learning Classification and Experimental Designs” (Shen Yang)

• A Lingnan Research Committee grant on “Political Economy of China’s Local Governments’ Energy Transition” (Hongshen Zhu)

Publication

Chen, Xi, and Kai Yang. "The puzzle of cross-provincial activism in China: From relational dynamics to state strategies." Comparative Politics 55, no. 4 (2023): 597-615.  https://doi.org/10.5129/001041523X16776927248933.

Kwok, Chi. "The epistemology of corporate power: The limits of the firm–state analogy." Journal of Applied Philosophy (2024). https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12748.

Kwok, Chi, and Ngai Keung Chan. "Human-automated collectives: Automating communication for social movement mobilization." New Media & Society 26, no. 9 (2024): 4992-5012. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444824125179.
 

Kwok, Chi, and Ngai Keung Chan. "Datafication and implicated networks of demobilization: social movement demobilization in datafied societies." Social Movement Studies 23, no. 3 (2024): 373-390. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2022.2128326.

Steinhardt, H. Christoph, and Kai Yang. "Value-driven Contention in China: Forms, Tactics and State Responses." The China Quarterly (2024): 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741024001085.

Walker, Richard M., Oliver James, M. Jae Moon, and Wen Wen. “A cross‐cultural replication of “citizens' blame of politicians for public service failure: Experimental evidence about blame reduction through delegation and contracting”." Public Administration Review (2024). https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13845.

Walker, Richard M., Jiasheng Zhang, and Edmund W. Cheng. "Puncturing the knowledge illusion does not reduce policy and political extremism: Evidence from a replication and extension." Political Psychology 45, no. 3 (2024): 581-599. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12938.

Walker, Richard M., Jiasheng Zhang, Yanto Chandra, Binzizi Dong, and Yao Wang. "Revisiting the academic–practitioner divide: Evidence from computational social science and corpus linguistics." Public Administration Review 83, no. 6 (2023): 1599-1617. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13724.

Wu, Jie, and Shen Yang. "The Rise of Pro-Regime Intellectuals and Their Mass Persuasion Strategies on China’s Internet." Journal of Contemporary China 33, no. 149 (2024): 887-902. https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2023.2238624.

Yang, Kai. "Demobilizing veterans: Campaign-style stability maintenance in China." Modern China 50, no. 4 (2024): 469-497. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00977004231209992.

Yang, Shen. "Decoding mixed identities in Hong Kong: A clustering analysis of multiple identity indicators." Social Indicators Research 171, no. 2 (2024): 585-603. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-023-03248-w.

Yang, Shen, and Alfred M. Wu. "The political effects of economic inequality: Evidence from Hong Kong." Social Indicators Research 171, no. 2 (2024): 749-769. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-023-03156-z.

Zhu, Hongshen, Melanie Manion, Viola Rothschild. Conditionally Accepted. ‘Crisis and correction: Do government rectification efforts restore citizen trust after governance failure?”, Political Behavior.

Zhu, Hongshen. "Contentious origins of authoritarian social protection: China’s “threat-driven” strategy in redistribution." Studies in Comparative International Development (2024): 1-32. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-024-09429-z.

Zhu, Hongshen, and Viola Rothschild. "Applying Insights from China: A Typology for Subnational Comparative Politics." Chinese Political Science Review (2024): 1-22.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s41111-024-00264-0.

Recognition

Public Administration – one of the core disciplines of GOVBUR Lab – is ranked 51-100 by QS in the Social Policy and Administration Ranking. Professor Walker, the Director of the Lab is recognized as a highly cited scholar and included in the Stanford 2% scientists. Walker is also the number 1 cited scholar in political science and public administration in the Greater China (Research.com). For more details on research impact of the Lab, please see our research impact page.