Single or pluralistic? The game and balance of China’s community governance policy tools

Hongxun Xiang; Yangfan Bu; Xunhua Wang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0288665

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionApril 23, 2023
30 May 2023 Decision Letter - Jinlong Liu, Editor PONE-D-23-12250Single or Pluralistic? The Game and Balance of China's Community Governance Policy Tools：A study of policy documents.PLOS ONE Dear Dr. xiang, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process based on the reviewers' comments. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 14 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Jinlong Liu Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide. 3. Please amend either the title on the online submission form (via Edit Submission) or the title in the manuscript so that they are identical. 4. Please amend either the abstract on the online submission form (via Edit Submission) or the abstract in the manuscript so that they are identical. 5. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read "Single or pluralistic? The game and balance of China's community governance policy tools". This paper analyzes the tool selection of community governance policy based on China’s work reports and policy documents during the 12th to 14th five-year period of China. This topic is worthwhile. I think this topic provides an important contribution to the literature. The analytical framework of the three dimensions of time, space, and tools is of great significance to the modernization of grassroots governance in China. The manuscript has some potential. However, the manuscript needs further refinement before it can be accepted for publication. The reviewers list some specific comments that may help the authors to further improve the quality of the manuscript. Please consider the specific comments listed below: 1. Suggest that the author add some illustrations or tables to clarify your point of view and make your article more attractive. 2. The manuscript still has some occasional grammatical errors, especially the articles "the", "a" and "an" are missing in many places, besides these minor problems, please check the spelling. Also, some sentences are too long to be read easily. It is recommended to change to a shorter sentence that is easier to read. 3. Results and discussion section. The two sections are also well structured and organized. However, it is best to discuss further how your findings differ from past work. Reviewer #2: The topic of this paper is innovative and has practical value. It is a good paper with sufficient demonstration.There are still grammar and spelling errors in the English version of this article. Please revise it carefully. Reference materials, citing literature from scholars outside of China, need to be added, especially those from authoritative authors who are systematic and groundbreaking in policy tools. Figure 1 is not clear enough and needs to be remade. Reviewer #3: 1. The literature review is incomplete, especially the literature review for the classification of policy tools policy tools. The article only includes competent, learning, persuasive, command, induce, capacity building, systemic transformation, voluntary, mixed, and coercive. There are other categories that have not been mentioned and it needs to be supplemented. 2. The study selected 163 policy texts including national government work reports, civil affairs development plans, representative provincial government work reports and other policy documents related to community governance. However, the process of screening 163 policies has not been presented. The policy collection process needs to be demonstrated. 3. The text encoding is too simple, please supplement the process of text encoding completely 4. To ensure the reliability of the results, two researchers jointly encode a policy text, the percentage was greater than 70%, it was considered to have high confidence. Is the reliability of this method too low? Maybe need to supplement the explanation of the reliability of this method. 5. The discussion is not closely related to the quantitative analysis of the previous 163 policy texts. The discussion between “The Homogenization of Policy Tools Based on the Criterion of Instrumental Rationality” and “The Trend Towards Diversification of Policy Tools Guided by Value Rationality ”cannot reflect the conclusions drawn from the policy texts well. The analysis content of the policy text is not closely related to the discussion. It is recommended to combine the discussion in the future with the analysis content of the previous policy text. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes: liu bangfan Reviewer #3: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: 3.Comments for Manuscript Number PONE-D-23-12250.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288665.r001
Revision 1
8 Jun 2023 Author Response Response to Reviewers Dear Editor Liu, We appreciate you and the reviewers for your precious time in reviewing our paper and providing valuable comments. It was your valuable and insightful comments that led to possible improvements in the current version. The authors have carefully considered the comments and tried our best to address every one of them. We hope the manuscript after careful revisions meet your high standards. The authors welcome further constructive comments if any. Below we provide the point-by-point response. All modifications in the manuscript have been highlighted in blue. Sincerely, Hongxun Xiang xianghx@stu.scu.edu.cn Ph.D., School of Public Administration Sichuan University Response to Reviewer 1 [Comment 1] Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us. We reorganized the study data and graphed them to be added to the text. For example, Figure 2 (Pg10, Ln349), Figure 3 (Pg11, Ln399), Figure 4 (Pg12, Ln440). Make the data in the manuscript more adequate. [Comment 2] Suggest that the author add some illustrations or tables to clarify your point of view and make your article more attractive. Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us. We have added tables or illustrations from the temporal dimension (Pg10, Ln349), the spatial dimension (Pg11, Ln399), and the tool dimension (Pg12, Ln440) to make the data display more intuitive and the article more attractive. [Comment 3] The manuscript still has some occasional grammatical errors, especially the articles "the", "a" and "an" are missing in many places, besides these minor problems, please check the spelling. Also, some sentences are too long to be read easily. It is recommended to change to a shorter sentence that is easier to read. Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us. We re-examined the grammar of the entire text, especially the articles "the", "a", and "an", and corrected a total of 32 grammatical errors. In addition, we have rewritten overly long sentences to make them simpler and easier to read. Specific changes can be found in a marked copy of the manuscript. [Comment 4] Results and discussion section. The two sections are also well structured and organized. However, it is best to discuss further how your findings differ from past work. Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us. We have revised the discussion section to better correspond to the previous policy text encoding. In addition, we have added some notes to the conclusion section to explore how the current findings differ from previous ones. The first is to shift the analysis of policy texts from qualitative to quantitative analysis to make them more persuasive. The second is to expand the field of analysis of policy tools, which in the past focused more on the tools themselves, while research introduced tools into community governance. Finally, the construction of the three-dimensional model is not only analyzed from the policy tool itself but also combined with the time dimension and spatial dimension to make the research more explanatory (Pg10, Ln605-621). Response to Reviewer 2 [Comment 1] There are still grammar and spelling errors in the English version of this article. Please revise it carefully. Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us. We re-examined the grammar of the entire text, especially the articles "the", "a", and "an", and corrected a total of 32 grammatical errors. In addition, we have rewritten overly long sentences to make them simpler and easier to read. Specific changes can be found in a marked copy of the manuscript. [Comment 2] Reference materials, citing literature from scholars outside of China, need to be added, especially those from authoritative authors who are systematic and groundbreaking in policy tools. Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us. We rewrote the literature review and added references. The focus is on completing the previous lack of foreign scholars, especially pioneering scholars, including Hughes OE., Salamon LM., Kirschen ES., Dahl RA., Hood C., Howlett M., Schneider AL., etc. Specific changes can be found in a marked copy of the manuscript (Pg3, Ln84-114). [Comment 3] Figure 1 is not clear enough and needs to be remade. Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us. We redrew the picture to ensure its clarity of the picture (Pg5, Ln182). Response to Reviewer 3 [Comment 1] The literature review is incomplete, especially the literature review for the classification of policy tools policy tools. The article only includes competent, learning, persuasive, command, induce, capacity building, systemic transformation, voluntary, mixed, and coercive. There are other categories that have not been mentioned and it needs to be supplemented. Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us. We rewrote the literature review and added references. The focus is on completing the previous lack of foreign scholars, especially pioneering scholars, including Hughes OE., Salamon LM., Kirschen ES., Dahl RA., Hood C., Howlett M., Schneider AL., etc. Specific changes can be found in a marked copy of the manuscript (Pg3, Ln84-114). [Comment 2] The study selected 163 policy texts including national government work reports, civil affairs development plans, representative provincial government work reports and other policy documents related to community governance. However, the process of screening 163 policies has not been presented. The policy collection process needs to be demonstrated. Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us. We've added a new selection process for policy texts, which are as follows. Judging from the results of data published on the websites of relevant departments at all levels, the concept of community governance first appeared in policy documents after the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee. Although there were previously relevant contents of community management, they were scattered in various documents and did not form a system. Due to the lack of policy texts related to community governance, the documents issued by different levels of departments have different characteristics. Therefore, the following principles were adopted when selecting sample files. First, the sample period is from 2013 to 2022; Second, the sample mainly comes from policy documents at or above the provincial level, including five-year planning documents, special planning documents, government work reports, etc.; Third, because some provinces have not issued special policies for community governance, the provincial sample range is three provinces in each of the three major regions of the eastern, central and western regions delimited by the state, and the government work report of the sample province is the main line. The papers number these texts according to the principle of ”region-period-order” to form a library of policy texts required for research (Pg4, Ln134-151). [Comment 3] The text encoding is too simple, please supplement the process of text encoding completely. Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us. We've added a new description of the coding process. In this paper, a total of 163 samples of policy texts such as national and provincial five-year plans, special plans, and government work reports were selected as the text library. Therefore, the study uses Nvivo.20 text encoding software to encode the files of the policy text library, so that the qualitative policy text can be converted into quantitative node data. In the coding process, according to the classification of policy tools in the analysis model, the coding structure of ”tree node-subnode-reference point” and ”reference point-subnode-tree node” is adopted. When encountering policy texts that are difficult to classify, the research adopts the semantic analysis method, combined with the context content of the text to make comprehensive judgments. Specifically, according to the theory related to the theme, the coding nodes are identified, and according to the actual situation of the theory and policy text, the policy tools are divided into five categories: command-type, motivation-type, persuasion-type, system-change-type, and capacity-building-type. Secondly, subnodes are established under the tree node, and then the text reflecting each dimension is set as the reference point by line-by-line coding, and then its hierarchical classification is programmed into the child node and the tree node, and finally the coding structure of the tree node-child node-reference point is formed. Finally, when the text content can be compiled into multiple child nodes, the method of semantic judgment is used to determine its true meaning in combination with the context and then compiled into the corresponding node (Pg7, Ln251-270). [Comment 4] To ensure the reliability of the results, two researchers jointly encode a policy text, the percentage was greater than 70%, it was considered to have high confidence. Is the reliability of this method too low? Maybe need to supplement the explanation of the reliability of this method. Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us. We've added a description of the consistency ratio. According to the practice of humanities and social sciences, a consistency coefficient of 0.0~0.20 indicates extremely low consistency, a consistency coefficient of 0.21~0.40 indicates general consistency, a consistency coefficient of 0.41~0.60 indicates medium consistency, a consistency coefficient of 0.61~0.80 indicates a high degree of consistency, and a consistency coefficient of 0.81~1 indicates almost complete consistency. The formulation in the text has been revised to make it more reliable (Pg8, Ln279-283). [Comment 5] The discussion is not closely related to the quantitative analysis of the previous 163 policy texts. The discussion between “The Homogenization of Policy Tools Based on the Criterion of Instrumental Rationality” and “The Trend Towards Diversification of Policy Tools Guided by Value Rationality ”cannot reflect the conclusions drawn from the policy texts well. The analysis content of the policy text is not closely related to the discussion. It is recommended to combine the discussion in the future with the analysis content of the previous policy text. Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us. We have restructured the discussion section to better align with the policy text encoding data described earlier. The description is as follows. First, the current status of simplification of policy tools is based on the current results of text encoding. From the coding results, the proportion of command-type policy tools far exceeds the sum of other tools, and the current policy tools are mainly imperative. Second, the trend of diversification of policy instruments is derived through the analysis of the time dimension. Although the current command-type policy tools are the mainstay, the proportion of other policy tools has increased, so it shows a diversified development trend. Specific changes can be found in a marked copy of the manuscript. In addition, we have added some notes to the conclusion section to explore how the current findings differ from previous ones. The first is to shift the analysis of policy texts from qualitative to quantitative analysis to make them more persuasive. The second is to expand the field of analysis of policy tools, which in the past focused more on the tools themselves, while research introduced tools into community governance. Finally, the construction of the three-dimensional model is not only analyzed from the policy tool itself but also combined with the time dimension and spatial dimension to make the research more explanatory (Pg10, Ln605-621). Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288665.r002
2 Jul 2023 Decision Letter - Jinlong Liu, Editor Single or Pluralistic? The Game and Balance of China's Community Governance Policy Tools：A study of policy documents. PONE-D-23-12250R1 Dear Dr. Xiang, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Jinlong Liu Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288665.r003
Formally Accepted
23 Aug 2023 Acceptance Letter - Jinlong Liu, Editor PONE-D-23-12250R1 Single or pluralistic? The game and balance of China’s community governance policy tools Dear Dr. xiang: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Professor Jinlong Liu Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288665.r004

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .