Towards a constructed order of co-governance: Understanding the state–society dynamics of neighbourhood collaborative responses to COVID-19 in urban China

Abstract

The state–society relationship in neighbourhood governance has been a focal topic in the urban governance literature, though the existing scholarship was primarily drawn from non-crisis situations. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, this study investigates the intricate state–society dynamics manifested at the neighbourhood scale as state and societal actors collaborated during China’s COVID-19 responses. Our study reveals a pattern of collaborative rather than confrontational dynamics between resident committees and other stakeholders during pandemic responses, which reflects the emergence of a constructed order of neighbourhood co-governance in urban China. Previous community-building reforms consolidated the political legitimacy, power and capacity of resident committees, which were empowered to play a critical coordinating role in bridging hierarchical state mobilisation and horizontal stakeholders in the collaborative pandemic responses. These findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of neighbourhood co-governance in the international literature and provide lessons for resilience governance from a comparative lens.