ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Polit. Sci.
Sec. Comparative Governance
Functional Differentiation Pyramid and Adaptive Reconstruction: A Computational Analysis of Multi-Level Governance in China's Policy Experimentation Zones
Provisionally accepted
- 1Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Macao Polytechnic University, Macao, China
- 2School of Mathematics and Statistics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China
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Reconciling strategic alignment with local innovation is a core governance challenge for policy experimentation zones worldwide. This study investigates this challenge by elucidating the operational dynamics of multi-level governance in China, using the unique Guangdong-Macao In-depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin as a natural laboratory for institutional experimentation. Integrating semantic network analysis (SNA) and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling, we systematically analyze 623 policy documents from 2009 to 2024, spanning four administrative levels: national, provincial, municipal, and cooperation zone. Our findings reveal a "functional differentiation pyramid" governance architecture, where the national level provides strategic guidance, while lower-level governments engage in significant issue disaggregation and reorganization during implementation. We find that policy transmission across levels is not a linear replication but a dynamic process we term "adaptive reconstruction"—a form of institutional work actively undertaken by subnational governments to enhance policy fitness. We argue that this mechanism is key to how the governance system simultaneously maintains strategic coherence and local flexibility. The results provide new empirical evidence for multi-level governance (MLG) theory. This "Hengqin model" contributes to global governance debates by empirically demonstrating a distinct architecture for policy implementation, while also showcasing the potential of computational social science in policy analysis.
Keywords: multi-level governance, policy experimentation zone, Adaptive reconstruction, Policy transmission, Hengqin
Received: 04 Sep 2025; Accepted: 27 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hu, Yin, Xie, Cai and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Chunning Wang, p2424662@mpu.edu.mo
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