Introduction

Local government innovation has become one of the most important topics on China’s policy agenda in recent decades. The adoption of innovation has become an important strategy for governments to achieve the goals of improving government performance or regime legitimacy, attracting human and economic capitals, and supporting socioeconomic development. Studying local government innovativeness in China is important for the development of the theory of organisational innovation in the public sector, identifying the institutional origins of socioeconomic equity and distributional consequences, and providing practically meaningful suggestions for administrative reforms. In Chapter 1, I first introduce the background and the basic concepts of the main research topics in this book. I then explain why studying government innovativeness is important in terms of its main theoretical, normative, and practical implications. On this basis, I provide an overview of the book’s general aims and briefly put forward the subjects of the next five chapters.