Attention Distribution to Hierarchical Policy Diffusion A Case Study of China's Fertility Policy

Abstract

Attention is a scarce resource for governmental decision-making, and the allocation of governmental attention affects its judgment of and attention to the priorities of various affairs in public utilities. The traditional gradual model and the non-gradual model with policy outbursts as the typical pattern together outline the overall picture of China's policy diffusion practice, but what is the generative mechanism of the two? Starting from the matching relationship between the focus of the government's attention allocation and the diffusion characteristics of public policies, and following the logical progression of "situation-process-result" of the attention-based view, the analytical framework of China's policy diffusion under the attention perspective includes The three core chains of "high-level promotion-attention allocation-policy diffusion". The "absorption-radiation" process dominated by high-level promotion is the decisive force that induces the large-scale policy diffusion under the pressure-based system; driven by the attention allocation mechanism, the competitive performance construction of local source innovation realizes the effective attraction of higher-level attention, and the vertical transmission of high-level attention catalyzes the redistribution and aggregation of the attention of the potential adopters at the lower level, constructing the "attention allocation-attention diffusion" chain, which is the core chain. The vertical transmission of top-level attention catalyzes the redistribution and aggregation of the attention of potential adopters at lower levels, and builds up the general diffusion path of "local first innovation - superior absorption and promotion - local follow-up adoption".