Policy transfer and the movement of Chinese river chief system

Much has been written about policy learning and transfer over the past 20-years. However little of this has examined the role of transfer within authoritarian nations. We propose to start addressing this by examining the movement of the river chief system from its original setting in the city of Wuxi in the Jiangsu Province to Suqian, Nantong, Suzhou and Huzhou, in Zhejiang Province. To do this we looked at two basic patterns of transfer: (1) horizontal transfer from one municipality (or combination of several) to another, and (2) vertical transfer up to and down from the Provincial level. This allowed local agents to act either autonomously in the transfer and learning processes or act under some level of compulsion to engage in the act of transfer. Based on our four case studies we argue that even when transfer involves a high degree of autonomy and translation of the transferred model to the local circumstances, successful outcomes are not guaranteed, just as when agents are forced into transfer a given model to their jurisdiction, there is no guarantee that it will result in policy failure.