Policy Coordination in China: the Cases of Infectious Disease and Food Safety Policy

A fundamental research question addressed by the book is: What are the relative impacts of policy type on policy coordination in governance? It focuses on the variation of coordination pattern between regulatory (food safety policy as the case) and distributive policies (infectious disease policy as the case). Based on the investigation in these two policy areas in China, the study finds that when new coordination structures are appropriate to the characteristics of particular policies, there will be improvements in coordination between levels of government and different public sectors. Otherwise, there will be little or no improvement. In short, government should apply different rather than identical coordination structures to different types of policies.