ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the process of how the RTFR became a national policy. It identifies the central-and local-level actors that were involved in designing the RTFR, and explores how they were related to each other and to the main actors of the previous phase. Furthermore, it analyses the instruments that these actors used in influencing the formulation of the policy, and relates both the constellation of the actors and the instruments they employed to the resulting policy. The main point to be made is that a crucial juncture was reached at this point of the reform process. While the agenda-setting stage had been dominated by decentralized policy networks and bottom-up innovation, the centre now took over the reins, discontinued this steering mode, and once again stimulated competition under hierarchy to come up with a policy that was both unified and adapted to local circumstances. Although the dynamics of the reform process clearly shifted from agency-heavy to institution-heavy, it will be seen that agency still played a crucial role at this stage. The chapter starts by outlining the different models that had emerged in the phase of local-level experimentation, and goes on to show how implementing a rural tax reform quite suddenly became a priority issue for the central government, and how networked bottom-up innovation was instantaneously replaced by competition under hierarchy. The subsequent analysis of the policy document that formed the legal base of the reform, serves to reiterate this point.
